What’s it about?
There are a million ways to die in the West, and a cowardly Seth MacFarlane has to navigate them all.

What did we think?
Elizabeth says: Family Guy, Back to the Future 3, Blazing Saddles and Barney Stinson walk into a bar… and stumble out two hours later, drunk and slightly less funny than they went in.

What’s it about?
Two middle-aged British comedians tour Italy sampling the local food & women in this sequel to the cult BBC film / TV series The Trip.

What’s it REALLY about?
Edited-down “best bits” of a six-part BBC docu-comedy where The Observer commissioned comedian Rob Brydon to write restaurant reviews in Britain’s Lake District (series one) and Italy (this film/series two). Brydon invites fellow comedian Steve Coogan along, and we are served the best bits of their improvisations and  impersonations based on an EXTREMELY loose plot.

What did we think?
We are force-fed a game of one-upmanship (that starts off tedious and becomes painful) sandwiched between an excuse to follow in Byron-Shelley’s footsteps across Italy, and the veiled excuse of truncated food-porn.

I won’t lie: I laughed a couple of times at their James Bond / Godfather / Michael Caine impersonations. However if this premise sounds interesting, watch the TV show – at least it’s served up in palatable courses. As a movie it’s tedious. And thanks to the lack of a decent steadicam during the yacht sequence, it’s also seasickness inducing.

What’s it about?
Best buddies Davy and Ally return home to Edinburgh searching for love after their tour in Afghanistan ends in tragedy.

What did we think?
Stephen says: In a word: “twee”. In a sentence: It’s a musical version of EastEnders. In an odious comparison: Take Mamma Mia, replace ᗅᗺᗷᗅ with The Proclaimers, dumb down the story, and you have Sunshine On Leith.

Jokes aside, The Proclaimers music is infectious, so even if you only know the opening and closing songs, you’ll still be tapping along throughout. The main problem is the script: the current climate of creating musicals from popular bands’ back catalogues is stripped back to its ugliest form: “hey, they have a song about a Jean – let’s name on of the characters Jean… and one about sending a postcard back from America… and lots of songs about love”. Voila! Extremely flimsy and lacklustre plot written! Thankfully it’s performed and shot well. It’s just bland. Bland but fun. I’m sure mum will enjoy it.

What it’s about?
In the dystopian future, outlawed superhuman mutants are hunted down and killed, so gnarled and knuckle-clawed Wolverine is sent back to the 1970s to warn the younger versions of his fellow X-Men, thwart destiny and satiate the kidult Supanova crowd who still covet action figures in their 30s. Like me.

What did we think?
Careful, one of the mutants says of time travel, the mind can be stretched only so far before it snaps. Consider yourself warned. The exposition-and-character-heavy Days of Future Past could lose non-cosplayers fast. But hang in there. Paraplegic telepath Charles “Professor X” Xavier and metal-manipulating Erik “Magneto” Lehnsherr, again portrayed with impeccable dramatic heft by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender of 2011’s first-class X-Men refresh, make franchise rivals Thor and the Hulk look like the rather silly cartoons they are.

Returning director Bryan Singer adds flesh to his pioneering but outmoded early-2000s X-Men template, melding atomic-grade effects setpieces with Inception’s out-of-body mind-thumps (and Ellen Page), while introducing a tremendous take on the JFK magic-bullet theory. Oh, and there’s Tyrion.

So, Marvel’s latest mutation is both super AND cerebral? Your move, Avengers.