Master of self-conscious satire Todd Solondz is back to make that same film he always makes, except this time round there’s more hepatitis and even less to enjoy. Dark Horse has the usual complement of awkward jokes and improbable characters, but is the celebrated director of Happiness just going through the motions?

In 1986, one of the reactors at the Soviet nuclear power station near Chernobyl failed, resulting in the worst nuclear disaster of all time. In 2012, a director so phenomenally irrelevant he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page made a film which not only trivialised the Chernobyl catastrophe but also had the gall to be trite, poorly made and awe-inspiringly boring. By the end of Chernobyl Diaries you will be begging for the sweet, scabby embrace of a radioactive mutant Ukrainian. And it’s not often we say that.

The director and star of Forgetting Sarah Marshall reunite for another offbeat romantic comedy designed to tug on your heartstrings, elbow your tearducts and rabbit-punch your laughter glands in equal measure. The Five-Year Engagement is perfectly watchable, but should rom-coms really be this bloody miserable?

You might think that a thriller featuring big names like Robert De Niro, Sigourney Weaver and Cillian Murphy – alongside brand-new hot property Elizabeth Olsen – would at the very least be a slickly filmed, if creatively hollow, venture. Sure, Robert De Niro was in New Year’s Eve and thus has obviously lost his marbles. But Cillian Murphy wouldn’t be in a film that didn’t make sense, would he? You’d think that wouldn’t you? But no. Nope. You won’t find anything plausible here; only a collection of dodgy, derivative, poorly-acted strands mashed together like a jigsaw done by a drunk toddler. And not as fun to watch.

The omnitalented Ben Drew (aka Plan B) adds directing and screenwriting to his CV with a searing debut set in the crime-ridden streets where he grew up. As insightful as Kidulthood, as brutal as Harry Brown and as intrinsically moral as one of Aesop’s Fables, this East End thrillride is the real deal.

Think you’ve seen whimsy? Man, you do not know whimsy until you’ve seen The Soul Of Flies, a no-budget crowd pleaser which seeks not only to whimsy your pants off, but to convince you life is one long crazy road trip full of wonder and enchantment, and not basically rubbish – until the film ends and you suddenly remember that it is.

What happens when you mix a trio of international film makers with magic realism, Le Havre, and seaweed bikini dance numbers? You get something like The Fairy, an artsy ditty of a meditation on love, life and happiness.

If you love your girls fast, your changing room scenes frequent, your motivational talks incessant and plenty of sporting montages, then you’re definitely going to love Fast Girls. This big hunk o’ sports cheese drama is hitting our screens just in time for the London Olympics 2012, meaning that we can get our fix of competitive athletes without ever setting foot into the big city. Huzzah!

Top Cat: The Movie should have been like going to have dinner with an old friend and finding out they were happily married, working away at their dream job and as pleasant and courteous as you’d always remembered them. Instead, it was like bumping into an old friend in a darkened alleyway and finding out that they’re now a crack-addled prostitute with no qualms about eating people’s faces. Seriously.

Ten years on from Men in Black II and an astonishing 15 years after the original film (are we all really that old?), Agents K. J and, err, K again are back onscreen for a third and possibly last outing. It may be a poor imitation of the genre-defining original, but fans will find plenty to enjoy in this inoffensive threequel.