Warcraft (2016)

Duncan Jones (Moon) almost pulls off a triumph in bringing the Warcraft online game to life. His stock fantasy world is fully realised, where even the Orcs can be good guys; there’s plenty of bash, crash and smash, griffons, golems, wizards, fell beasts, wargs and that bloke from Vikings getting all angsty. So it’s Paula Patton (MI4) who takes the honours as leather-bikini-clad Garona, half-orc warrior, acting the rest off-screen through a set of joke-shop fangs whilst painted green like one o’ them birds out of Start Trek TOS.

Captain America: Civil War

An Avengers movie in all but name, this shambolic sequel contains too many Marvel franchise promotional puffs, looks like a cos-play comic convention, has one ludicrous action set-piece too many, a superfluous Bourne car chase, and, as everyone in it points out, no Thor and no Hulk.

Whilst Chris Evans ups his acting game again, neither he, nor Downey Junior, nor the excellent Daniel Brühl (Rush) can save this civil ho-hum-trying-too-hard franchise behemoth.

Deadpool (2016)

Marvel’s audacious X-men/Wolverine spin-off-spin-off wants to have it’s cake and eat it: sweary, subversive and knowlingly parodic, it is also puerile, violent, gory and laughs too often at its own jokes.

Which is presumably why they got puerile, self-referential Ryan Reynolds in the lead, despite his dubious track record (Blade Trinity, Green Lantern).

The Sweeney (2012)

The critical hammering this 70’s cop-show reboot received on release in 2013 kept me away from it; catching up with it now, I was probably right. Abandoning the ramshackle charm of TV’s lovable rogues Regan and Carter, director Nick Love (of various terrible Danny Dire movies not worth naming) goes sweary and loud in an attempt to make this the British Heat, right down to a running street battle across Trafalgar Square. Ambitious but foolhardy, this Sweeney misses the mark, like the automatic fire in all its set pieces.

Worth seeing only for the monumental performance of Ray Winstone (Snow White, Hugo) as out-of-control dinosaur cop Jack Regan, the rest of this under-budget crime ‘thriller’ is by turns cliched, ludicrous, laughable and cheap. Does anyone really think this is how the modern Met Police operates?

The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016)

This prequel/sequel to Snow White and the Hunstman smacks of cynical profiteering; visually stunning design it’s poorly served by a script that is Snow White’s not-so-Greatest Hits with leftover bits of Narnia and assorted Hobbitses.

Clichéd, formulaic and derivative, this bargain-bin script is left without a Snow White and can only afford four fairly redundant dwarfs.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015)

Having run the maze and escaped from the wicked, err, WCKD agency, teen Thomas and his Glade-dwelling crew are whisked away to a full-on zombie apocalypse – for which it seems they hold the cure.

But more conspiracy guff abounds in this expensively-rendered, post-apocalyptic(sic), Y-A, dystopian fiction sequel. Expect evil corporations, mad scientists, abusive adults and fast zombies.

Hail, Caesar (2016)

The Coen Brothers love letter to the golden age of Hollywood is a parade of sketches filled with nods and winks to thrill film aficionados. Leaving aside whether or not everyone else will get the joke, there are plenty of delightful cameos, smart lines, dry wit and sharp satire on the movie industry. But is that enough?

The main plot concerns a made-over version of Capitol Pictures studio ‘fixer’ Eddie Mannix’ (Josh Brolin – No Country) keeping the show on the road, while leading man Baird Whitlock (George Clooney – Tomorrowland) is kidnapped by Communist screen writers.