A British re-make of a black French comedy, Wild Target is a film that, sadly, never quite hits the bullseye. Bill Nighy, Rupert Grint, Rupert Everett, Martin Freeman and Emily Blunt all lent their hands to this crime caper, with a script never quite lives up to the talent around it. Despite its stellar cast and romping pace, the team are let down by bad jokes, sloppy storytelling and cliche characters.

If Robert Luketic’s action-packed romantic comedy is to be believed – and it is an almighty stretch – men are capable of hiding everything from their nearest and dearest. In the case of the film’s charming hero, he manages to meet, woo and marry the woman of his dreams without revealing a vital part of his genetic make-up. His unsuspecting wife will definitely regret her wedding vows to love him ’til death us do part, and to be honest, we regret paying the ticket price.

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the flickering of Gary Winick’s winsome romantic comedy about one young woman’s quest for everlasting love in sun-dappled Verona, the setting for Shakespeare’s Romeo And Juliet. Screenwriters Jose Rivera and Tim Sullivan serve up a steaming spaghetti of cliches, cultural stereotypes and unintentional laughs, garnished with a light classical and pop soundtrack.

Jim Field Smith’s effervescent romantic comedy strikes a chord with insecure types everywhere, centring on a lovable airport security guard, whose low self-esteem almost wrecks the best relationship he might ever have. It’s a shame that this formula has been done to death by Judd Apatow and crew, as this is a comedy that has great potential, but is let down by the plot-by-numbers.

Astro Boy is the classic tale of a young boy trying to get along with the cards life gives him. Making friends, getting by and generally having a good old time, he’s just like you and me. The only difference is that this kid is a robot. And some people want to kill the death out of him. It’s a futuristic Pinnocchio-inspired CGI romp, and whilst it has a lot to recommend it, ultimately there’s not a lot of human heart beating behind it.

Remakes have become the scourge of a Hollywood system starved of creativity and imagination. No sooner has a subtitled film won critical plaudits than there are whispers of an English language retread. A reinterpretation of the Swedish coming of age story Let The Right One In, directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) and re-titled Let Me In, opens in multiplexes this Halloween. Now it seems that British films simply aren’t good enough for audiences across the Atlantic because director Neil LaBute has remade the 2007 comedy of errors, Death At A Funeral, transplanting the action to a middle-class suburb of Los Angeles

Sex And The City 2 has been lauded as a slight on feminism, a betrayal of a TV series that inspired a generation of women, and a diamond-encrusted step backwards for independent ladies everywhere. But it seems that the negative press has failed to affect box office power. What’s the story here, then?

Enter Up in the Air, the latest romance-comedy-drama from Juno director Jason Reitman, and starring perhaps the most universally idolised and desired movie star of our generation, George ‘Smooth As Silk’ Clooney. The prospect of such a dream team was always going to be a hotly anticipated one, and we’re pleased to report that this is one of those few wondrous instances of a film living up to its press.

In these troubling times of global warming, financial crises and that nice Tiger Woods cheating on his wife, it’s comforting to know that one man alone remains staid and unchangeable: Hugh Grant. Yes, he’s pretty much played the same character for the past 20 years, but goddammit, the man does it well. His latest frothy outing with toast-of-New-York Sarah Jessica Parker is no exception – this time, a posh man is heading into the wilds of the American midwest after he and his estranged wife witness a murder.

After the surprising success of the first St. Trinian’s reboot in 2007, a sequel was always a risky proposition: it would either surpass the original and cement the franchise as a bona fide modern classic or sully the occasional chuckles of the original and sink the whole thing. We’d like to hope that that seldom-seen beast – the British comedy – isn’t quite dead at the box offices, with only rare examples like Shaun of the Dead hitting the big time. Can St. Trinian’s 2: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold reach the heights of its 1950’s predecessors?