Bruce Willis steals all his scenes and is fun to watch. But it ultimately goes everywhere and nowhere.

This is a spy movie for adults, where individuals don’t stand for themselves but for larger invisible forces we can’t see that exist implicitly in each interaction. This focus on the institution and process shatters any claim of inherent nobility to diplomacy as a profession.

The Walk is in some sense an old-fashioned adventure movie. It can be seen by the whole family, it is narrated by the hero from the Statue of Liberty (appropriate because that was a gift by France to America) and it switches between ‘60s France and early ‘70s America. It’s a movie with some amount of melancholy but mostly it’s about human endeavour and friendships. It’s about giving thanks.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is enjoyable fun, filled with likeable and charismatic lead roles and a good mix of humour, action and suspense. It’s a genre film that embraces its limits to the extent that it becomes its strength.

it provides a valuable lesson without preaching and communicates much of its ideas and themes visually, and does so without losing its lightness of spirit, and even allows for a Minion speaking in gibberish to be highly resonant and emotive in many key scenes.

The film has a few action scenes that are well shot, though on the whole the opening sequence of the dog on the front line in Afghanistan was much more tense and suspenseful than the later scenes. Ultimately, I can’t help feeling that Max would have been more interesting if the story focused on a dog on field duty or on a battlefield. The approach taken by the film does make Max an unusual family film, but it also makes sure that it remains despite its interesting premise, a highly conventional one.

Terminator Genisys is filled with all sorts of references and knowing winks and expects the audience to know Sarah Connor, Terminator and Kyle Reese. The constant references make it next to impossible to discuss it on its own terms. They also do the film serious discredit because it only reiterates what made Cameron’s films so exciting, suspenseful and terrific.

Solidly forgettable as it is, San Andreas is not too long. For all its melodramatic flaws, it manages to avoid a few of the expected and dreaded clichés and the finale is satisfying. Thanks to the actors the film is not unwatchable and a few scenes work well, namely the suspenseful rescue of Blake from a trapped car and the later boat scene is one of the big “wow” moments that really work. Otherwise, this is a movie that is too trapped in the conventions of genre to effectively break free.

As a film of modest ambitions Hot Pursuit is surprisingly entertaining. Yes the jokes and gags get a little repetitive, the plot is pretty formulaic and there is very little action and most of it is uninspired. The same is true of most action films, most of whom lack the solid lead performance that is there in this film.

Ultron is a work of agile craftsmanship from the cast and crew. As a director, Whedon has a good ear for dialogue and timing, and the film is a competent work of entertainment that is as satisfying as any work in this genre can be.