Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joel Edgerton, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan
Certificate: 12A
Trailer

Say something enough times and it begins to lose all meaning. The Great Gatsby, adapted from the classic American novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is essentially two and a half hours of people saying the word “Gatsby” over and over again. By the end, it’s a hollow experience.

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Director: Justin Lin
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Luke Evans
Certificate: 15
Trailer

If you had to bet on one film from 2001 being turned into a franchise, The Fast and the Furious was never going to be top of the list. But here we are 12 years later and Fast & Furious 6 is pumping its engine full of codswallop and showing no signs of stopping. This is a series where characters say things like “You’ve got serious balls” / “I’ve been told” with a straight face. Where they live by a code that gives them two options in life: ride or die. Not eat. Not sleep. Not wash their hands. Ride - or die. So to call Fast & Furious 6 a bad movie almost seems irrelevant. Bad doesn’t even come into it. It’s ride or die. That’s it.

Director: Tobias Lindholm
Cast: Pilou Asbæk, Søren Malling, Dar Salim, Abdihakin Asgar
Certificate: 15
Trailer

“Hey, do you want to watch a hijacking?” isn’t a phrase people tend to say when they’re looking for a fun evening’s entertainment. It’s quite understandable. Because that’s exactly what Tobias Lindholm’s film feels like: watching a hijacking. It’s gripping, horrible, shocking, sad. It’s great. You know, if you like watching hijackings.

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Director: J.J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban
Certificate: 12A

When J.J. Abrams seized the helm of the USS Enterprise in 2009 and kicked it into reboot gear, he wowed everyone by producing a film that had one warp coil in tradition and the other in a 21st Century blockbuster; an agile machine that jumped over itself to blaze a new direction for the franchise. Star Trek Into Darkness takes that mandate and boldly goes… where we’ve already been before.

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Directors: Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield
Cast: Oscar, Tim Allen
Certificate: U
Trailer

Meet Oscar. Oscar’s a chimpanzee. He spends his day keeping up with the group and trying to crack open nuts with a rock. It’s tough work. But he’s a happy chimp. Awww.

Meet Disney. They may be a corporate identity but they love nothing more than attributing human emotions to non-human creatures and objects. It’s tough work. But they’re a happy company. Awww.

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Director: Peter Ho-Sun Chan
Cast: Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro
Certificate: 15

As the old saying goes, never trust a man who works in a paper mill. Especially if they're played by Donnie Yen. It's definitely true in the case of Liu Jin-xi, a mild-mannered husband who finds his workplace under attack from a group of bandits – and unwittingly kills them all with his own clumsy two hands.

Enter detective Xu Bai-ju (Kaneshiro), who believes there’s more to Liu than meets the A4 size chart. All acupuncture and glasses, he digs around the crime scene like a hipster psychic, prompting wild flashbacks, reverse slo-mo and all kinds of visual trickery. It’s like watching A History of Violence reimagined as an episode of CSI: Hong Kong.

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Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Javier Cámara, Raúl Arévalo, Carlos Areces, Lola Dueñas, Cecilia Roth
Certificate: 15
Trailer

“Then she contacted the beyond through Alex and Benito’s crotches.” If you don’t hear those words in a cinema, it might as well not be a Pedro Almodóvar movie. On that basis, I’m So Excited definitely fits the bill. After years of progressively more mature masterpieces, this airbound comedy sees Pedro revert right back to his juvenile years – a heyday of raunchy chaos and unabashed silliness. Oh yes, it’s un film de Almodóvar all right. The bad news? It’s not a very good one.

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Director: Shane Black
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany
Certificate: 12A
Trailer

“They say a man creates his own demons…” narrates Tony Stark before rewinding back to the beginning of his story, which sees him pair up with Don Cheadle’s sidekick to take out another bad guy.

A wibbly-wobbly voiceover. A bickering odd couple. Robert Downey Jr. Marvel’s latest sequel may be called Iron Man Three, but it’s closer to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang 2. Except, you know, starring Iron Man.

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Director: Susanne Bier
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Trine Dyrholm, Paprika Steen
Love Is All You Need trailer

I don't know Phillip. I don't know Ida. I know that he's a lonely Englishman who sells vegetables and looks an awful lot like an old Pierce Brosnan. I know that she's a former cancer patient, recovering from chemotherapy who has no hair. Still, I don't know them. I have no reason to give a flying horse fart about either of them or their romantic attachments.

But halfway through Susanne Bier's Love Is All You Need, a funny thing happened: I started to care. I actually wanted to know whether these two middle-aged adults would get together at their children's wedding in Greece. I worried that they might not. It took all my restraint not to shout at the screen: "JUST KISS HIM YOU BALD IDIOT, HE'S JAMES RUDDY BOND!" And you know what? I enjoyed every minute of it.

Director: Fede Alvarez
Cast: Lou Taylor Pucci, Jane Levy
Certificate: 18
Trailer

The story of how Sam Raimi's demonic 'video nasty' The Evil Dead (1981) came to pass is almost as entertaining as the film itself. From the production's cheap 'n' cheerful DIY aesthetic (some of the most memorable shots were achieved by Raimi and Bruce Campbell running around the woods with a camera attached to a piece of lumber) to the hellish nature of the low-budget shoot (Raimi allegedly liked to 'torture' his actors by making conditions on-set as arduous as possible) it's a goldmine of nerdy trivia.

One of the most endearing pieces of Dead mythology is how the film ended up largely funded by dentists. What a shame, then, that Fede Alvarez's 2013 reboot – produced with the co-operation of Raimi and Campbell - feels entirely toothless and lacking in bite.