Tim Williams – Google

7000 years old and you're this boring? This pedestrian? Have you learned nothing? And where's the empathy and emotion? The detail and nuance so beloved of us Marvel nerds? The Avengers lot look like they go boozing together off set. This lot look like they've met for the first time at a wake. Some uneven performances, particularly from familiar faces, and an exposition-heavy script with often mistimed humour doesn't help. Might have been better as a series rather than an overlong film (it felt every second of its 157 minute running time). A rare duff outing from Marvel. I struggled through it with my 13 year old son who said it felt like a DC movie. Ouch.

Jostein Gaarder meets Nick Hornby in this saccharine-tinged, predictably- plotted novel that can be read in a weekend. It's an easy enough read with some nice lines: "Nora tried to act as if every sentence he said wasn't an animal running into the road" is a favourite, but it's all a bit glib. Take out the swearing and it would do nicely for a 14 year old experiencing their first hints of existential crisis. Adults need to get to grips with more robust ideas. Richard Curtis is bidding for the screenplay rights as we speak.

The demise of Brooker and Jones as a writing team continues apace, it seems. The last series of Black Mirror was a huge let down. But where that show had glimpses of the brilliance that made the writing partnership so hugely succesful, this has none. With a script that sounds like a YouTube try out written by a couple of sixth formers, it might raise a smile in a teen audience. But clever satire it ain't. Give it a miss and remember Grandad the way he was.

Proof things can be dull and complicated at the same time. Every character a cliche and a plot that insists the absurd, improbable tech does the heavy lifting so it can head towards it's obvious end point. The only scenes missing were the helicopter rising up out of a valley and the one where the protagonist walks away as the background explodes. Clare Foy gives it her best (previously Queens Liz and Anne Boleyn but here turning up in the guise of a lesser known Plantagenet) but she's shouting into a vacuum. Its glossy and stylish and owes a lot to the Bond and Bourne franchises but, at the end, you just think 'Whatever'.