MAN OF STEEL
Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Russell Crowe - Dir: Zack Snyder
Everybody has their own verdict on the latest Superman reboot. I have very mixed feelings. But it is Superman, so I guess you gotta take a look.
Once again this is an origin story, one which realises how familiar the basic building blocks are by now. So it tries to do it from a different perspective, giving a little more backstory about Krypton and a different motivation for Shannon's General Zod to eventually seek revenge. Poor Russ - as Supe's real daddy - is saddled with a pile of exposition and generally crap dialogue (he gets to emote wildly on lines such as 'But Zod – this is madness!”), while Kevin Costner, who doesn't appear to age at all in the film, is stern but loving earth dad and Diane Lane is earth mum. (Elsewhere Lawrence Fishburne is Perry White and Adams a completely undeveloped Lois Lane. Jimmy Olsen is thankfully absent.)
There are some fun set-pieces of Supes being super and a lot of guff as the military struggle to trust him after Zod and his minions arrive for the big dust-up. Said final barney is actually the movie's low-point as vast swathes of Metropolis are destroyed at boring length causing such a massive casualty toll that nobody thinks to mention it afterwards.
Dunno. It could have done with a little humour. I counted one joke. Batman earned its seriousness. This thinks seriousness equals importance. Wrong. You just want to slap it and say 'lighten up.”

Sometimes smart execution can get the most out of an initially dodgy-seeming premise. The Purge postulates a world in which there is no crime. Except for one night of the year. On that night you can commit any crime you want with impunity. This, supposedly, allows people an outlet for their apparently unstoppable natural aggression. OK. Silly idea. But, as Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey lock their family into their fortified suburban mansion for the night, the filmmakers find sufficient complexity and moral interest, as well as general nerve-tingling tension to sustain events, as urban siege escalates into violent home invasion.

Deadfall has a snappy plot, some nifty bursts of action, various moral dilemmas, and an eclectic cast. It's not the most ambitious of films but it turns its tricks with pride. The set-up has Eric Bana on a post-heist escape along with sister Olivia Wilde. An unexpected accident forces them to separate. She meets Charlie Hunnam, falls for him, and holes up with his folks (Kris Kristofferson, Sissy Spacek). Meanwhile the sheriff (Treat Williams) and his daughter/deputy (Kate Mara) hunt for Bana. The entire ensemble are headed for a rendezvous at Kris's place for thanksgiving dinner. It's quite fun.

Who would have thought - six instalments in – that there was still life in the 'Killer doll” premise? But the return of director Don Mancini from the first sequel and a back-to-basics approach makes direct-to-DVD effort Curse of Chucky one of the year's surprising horror successes. Wheelchair-bound Nica lives with her mother when in short order a mysterious doll arrives in the mail, her mother mysteriously dies, and her niece comes to visit (not very mysteriously). Bad Things – unsurprisingly – ensue, all couched in the 'haunted house” tropes and black humour of the original Child's Play. Not bad; expect another.

I'm a big fan of South Korean cinema, and with the success of Bong Joon-Ho (The Host, Memories of Murder) and Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy, Stoker) films from there are getting easier to see. There've been some killer crime thrillers recently but sadly The Tower plummets back to everything that used to put western viewers off eastern movies, notably iffy special effects, two-dimensional characters and bizarre overacting. The set-up is pure Towering Inferno but the combination of naff story and that dreadful need to ham up every emotional situation - and there are many – makes the film close to unwatchable.