Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth in Avengers: Age of UltronAVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

Whatever your feelings about Avengers: Age of Ultron, even if your feelings can be summed up in a succinct "Meh," you can't say that writer/director Joss Whedon is merely giving audiences an exact replica of 2012's comic-book behemoth The Avengers. There's some romance here, for one thing. There's also a lot more plot, now that we're spared its predecessor's hour-plus of super-team origin story. And rather than being granted all of his film's best, most thrillingly unexpected moments, that rampaging mass of CGI id known as the Hulk is instead stuck with the worst scene in the movie - which, unfortunately, also happens to be its most prototypical one.

GodzillaGODZILLA

To get the inarguable out of the way, director Gareth Edwards' new take on Godzilla is an incalculably stronger piece of work than Roland Emmerich's woebegone 1998 version. Its visual effects are superb, and occasionally stunning. Its supporting cast boasts some obscenely gifted actors. It has been crafted with professionalism, confidence, seriousness of purpose, and obvious respect for its cinematic forebears. And taken overall, I found the experience so deathly boring that in the midst of its incredibly loud, debris-strewn action finale, I actually fell asleep. On two separate occasions.

Catherine Zeta-Jones and Gerard Butler in Playing for KeepsPLAYING FOR KEEPS

In director Gabriele Muccino's dramatic comedy Playing for Keeps, Gerard Butler portrays a former star athlete who hopes to reconnect with his ex-wife and son by coaching the kid's pee-wee soccer team, and who is consequently forced to (try to) resist the advances of a trio of beautiful, aggressive, lascivious soccer moms who can't keep their hands off him. This, in the language of Hollywood screenwriters, is what is known as "a problem."