"Sometimes it's fun to run with the pack," counsels self-confessed lone wolf Chuck Norris. For the most part, you'd be well advised to choose the opposite direction.

A generic cop thriller that rumbles along thanks to a quality cast but ultimately offers nothing fresh.

Despite some affecting moments, the lumbering Parkland feels more like a well-researched magazine feature than an involving drama. As Billy Bob Thornton’s lawman says: “This was not supposed to happen.”

Get your ass to Mars? A handsome new sci-fi adventure that feels rather familiar. Enjoyable enough while it lasts, John Carter is big on ambition and disappointingly short on action.

A superior thriller, with Cruise and McQuarrie slotting together like a bullet in a clip. Like Reacher on the firing range, the aim isn't always true – but the misses are fractional.

It’s too raw and difficult for one target audience, but the erratic tone might leave sick puppies equally nonplussed. Gunn’s jibes at Bible-bashers and gun-nuts are as blunt as Frank’s attacks, and the clash of kooky comedy and violence is as awkward as it is ugly.

It’s a delight to watch Amy Adams do Jekyll and Hyde as she incrementally transforms from cheery Giselle to noxious stepmother, while Maya Rudolph is a whole heap of fun as the ultimate control-freak soccer mom who - of course - becomes queen when Monroeville turns into “one big fantasia”.

There’s Fassbender’s charisma, an unhinged Sean Harris and Tom Rowland music.

His state of mind goes some way to explaining the something-missing air of his last film, but it inspires to see how deeply he cares about his craft.

Leigh Whannell has done it again, bringing his talents back to the world of Universal monsters with a worthy update to another horror icon. With solid performances, impressive effects and well choreographed action, Wolf Man may be sappy in places but it wears its tragedy on its sleeve to heartrending effect and balances it out with plenty of scares.

In a film with obvious ambition, though, it’s a shame that it resorts to formula so quickly.

It’s hardly fresh, but the spectacle is decent and the relationship dynamics absorb just enough to fill the lengthy run time.

A so-so Christmas romance undercut by some baffling choices, musically and narratively. A wasted opportunity.

The film’s only let down by its too-frequent recourse to narrative cliché.

Marvel’s woes won’t be solved by a disjointed mini-Avengers that doesn't make a great deal of sense. But the cats are Flerken great.

It’s a slow-burning, well-acted thriller that’s only really let down in its third act: an unsatisfyingly limp denouement that fails to convey what’s at stake with any sort of suspense.

Despite too many two-dimensional characters, a bloated story, and forgettable mutant dinosaurs, Rebirth still manages to deliver some of the franchise’s best set-pieces. Jonathan Bailey and Scarlett Johansson stand out in this unscary sequel that needed a little more time in amber before being extracted.

A late fight scene is staged with verve, and Gilpin is good value in an underwritten role. But given the politically fractious times we live in, this inane satire is a colossal missed opportunity.

Populist fare from across the channel that will amply repay those ready to put the time in. The scenery, meanwhile, makes you want to run out and buy a timeshare.

Skarsgård and Peña relish their roles, but this pitch-black action-com feels like 100 gags in search of a storyline.

The material is a French classic, and Auteuil directs as such: this is cosy, undemanding heritage cinema.

Love Eurovision? You'll love this. Never heard of Eurovision? You may find it all bewildering.

The future as candy-coloured paranoid nightmare: not quite Gilliam’s best, but still the most satisfying movie he’s made for years.

Bickering turns to bonding over the course of a predictable affair that only comes to life during a Texan steak-eating contest that has Babs ingest a mountain of meat.

An action vehicle that, in trying to do it all, does a little too much; Johnson and Blunt keep it afloat.

At least until its Turning Red-ish plot becomes subsumed by a tiresome showdown finale, there’s a lot to take pleasure from here - not least the invertebrate protagonists’ amusing elasticity, which recalls the madcap fun of Tex Avery’s cartoon classics.

Although only slightly more outrageous than reality, The Campaign is a funny, pacy peek behind the political curtain.

Handicapped by its paper-thin premise, even a strong cast can’t lift Jake ‘son of Ridley’ Scott’s film out of indie-by-numbers mediocrity.