Rating: 2.5

‘My Name is Nobody’ (due to its budgetary constraints and modest scale) doesn’t hold a candle to the greats of the sub-genre, but it harbours one saving grace – and it’s a nasty one.

Naruto’s first cinematic outing does just about enough to pass the time, but it remains a far cry from the quality that we have come to expect from the series.

‘Naughty Boys’ should only be viewed for one reason – the action. All other aspects of the film fall flat on their face.

The story is weak as water and most of the humour falls flat, with even the puppet thing getting old very quickly.

While it clearly still has a number of issues, ‘Ninja Apocalypse’ remains a fairly entertaining low-budget action romp that is worthy of at least one watch.

It may be an award of distinction for a non-commercial director to have his film populated by bland, feckless characters and have them doing bland, feckless things, but for the viewer there’s nothing admirable about it.

‘Of Cooks and Kung Fu’ does feature some inventive action and a star in Jacky Chen who is adept at acrobatic fisticuffs.

Existing fans will no doubt spend the majority of the movie bemoaning the loss of certain key scenes, while newcomers will be left scratching their heads throughout.

Wordy, but with nothing to say, this is a verbose movie populated by monumentally dull characters and bland ‘twists’ that fail to hold the attention.

‘Painted Skin 2’ ramps up the CGI spectacle and melodramatic romance, all but forgets the action and excitement and thus is a rather hollow but undeniable pretty to look at fantasy.

If the rest of the film had been as good as the last half hour then ‘Prince of the Sun’ would be more fondly remembered.

Scenes are chopped at strange junctures, the plot jumps all over the place and the simple act of allowing actors to have proper reaction shots to the drama unfolding is mostly absent.