Terminator Salvation (2009)

Unwisely, the Terminator series takes us for the first time to a time after the apocalyptic Judgement Day (until now, just an occasionally glimpsed bleak potential future our heroes have been working hard to avoid) and suddenly we are learning more than we ever cared to know about John Connor's dreary war against the machines - it is more Transformers with Mad Max stylings than Terminator - and muddying the Terminator formula even more than this is a lead Wolverine character whose uninteresting journey into the future delays the movie we actually wanted to watch which starts twenty minutes before the end.

★★☆☆☆

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Fright Night (2011)

Colin Farrell does a great vampire slinking around with menace and there are two inventive vampire special effects which raise a smile, but otherwise this update of the 1985 original about a high schooler who discovers a neighbour is a vampire, has, in adopting a more sophisticated look and abandoning restraint, lost some of the original's daggy fun and, er, bite.

★★☆☆☆

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Star Trek Beyond (2016)

That scene, barely a second long, showing Sulu when he is not at the helm of the Enterprise is a brilliant addition to a series that at its core is a celebration of universal diversity and inclusion, with this particular episode also succeeding where perhaps Into Darkness didn't, delivering good old reliable Star Trek space exploration, action, humour and philosophy — the franchise doesn't need too many tweaks or new skins or tricks, as its fifty year anniversary this year clearly demonstrates.

★★★★☆

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