All the signs pointed to a hit chiller: great cast, a director with fantastic form and a celebrated Jo Nesbø novel to draw from. So it’s a huge shame, then, that The Snowman is a bit grey and slushy when it should have been cool and crisp.

Though it gives good splat and the scenery’s to die for, Hansel & Gretel gets just about everything wrong. Hammy, boring, chronically unfunny - there’ll be nightmares before bedtime.

Alas, director Courtney Solomon burns out all the cool potential, leaving us with a witless and unforgivably tame car wreck.

"I'm getting sick of this!" says Sigourney during one of Cold Light's many shoot-outs. Those tempted to give it the benefit of the doubt will swiftly reach the same conclusion.

The moments where you feel the cast are off-script and riffing are fun if not actually funny, but the most horrific thing on offer here is misogyny.

Patric’s bullet-scarred killer-gone-clean is a tired character in every sense, and no amount of exploding blood packs can make up for this much banality. At least there’s enough momentum to keep you from checking the timer every two minutes.

Quite why A-listers Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman and Emma Stone (among others) aligned themselves with this excruciatingly moronic compilation of shorts is anybody's guess.

There is less depth to this film than a petrol station greeting card, but it’s essentially harmless.

This distinctly amateurish animation may be targeted at tots, but you’d have to particularly hate your children to inflict on them this tale of an elderly vet (Connery) trying to save a missing beaver.

The nurse-monsters look cool - think HR Giger in Ann Summers kit - but the plot and burning fairgrounds are so OTT they dispel any chill factor.

While the marriage of fluffy comedy and terminal illness was always going to be an uncomfortable one, this is an understated, genuinely poignant weepie bolstered by a top-drawer cast.

Limp, transparently plotted flight fodder. Jilt it.

That every jibe lands woefully wide is no surprise, though we’ll give leading lady Ashley Tisdale credit for giving her all to a film that mercifully won’t be around long enough to do any lasting damage to her post-High School Musical career.

By the end you will quite possibly hate cats, Spacey, and the ’80s.

It’s poorly made and in poorer taste.

The kills are inventive but Noble’s baggy trousered butcher is too sympathetic, and his teenage victims too generic for this to be in anyway scary.

It's stiff upper lips versus ruthless efficiency in Petter Naess’ modest WW2 drama.

It’s let down by some erratic, repetitive plotting.

Viewed as a Brit answer to ’70s and ’80s exploitation flicks, endless Seagal movies and First Blood (Dyer is rogue SAS; his colonel issues Trautman-esque warnings), it’s surprisingly decent.

Defying all boundaries, Martyrs relentlessly dishes the visceral pain and emerges as a work of not just ceaseless terror but also gravity and beauty.

If the final third’s sudden, Twilight Zone-lite genre relocation seems desperate, the hollow climax confirms suspicions: vital supplies of narrative oxygen are lacking here.

Juggling heartbreaking frankness with uplifting scenes of love and solidarity, this is a sensitive exploration of family, faith and opposing cultures.

An attractive if conventional biopic of French underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau.

A western as inept as it is preposterous.

Blending archive footage, contemporary interviews and dramatic reconstructions, the film reminds us how dangerous the sport could be.

Dennis Bartok’s sparse horror has a spooky central conceit, and just about overcomes its budgetary bumps, while Macdonald excels as the innocent.