Parker isn’t entertainingly bad like Crank or The Transporter 1 through 3. It’s just bad. Bad acting, bad plot, bad villains, bad heroes, and a bad-ass car.

Jason Statham is made of rage and speaks like he’s reading the instruction manual for setting up a Freeview box. Naturally neither of these things elevate Parker to the lofty heights of, say, The Mechanic; and make for the most mind-numbing 118 minutes of your life that you will never get back.

With the Oscars almost upon us once again, we at Best For Film thought that we might profit from a review of some of the highlights said gushing award ceremony has provided us with over the years. For the sake of variety, this laudable list shall include both the famous and the infamous, the highs and the lows, the sugar and the bitters. Such a cocktail should be swirled in the mouth like the metaphorical marbles of Sir Laurence Olivier’s plumy tones, or alternatively expelled in disgust like a Michael Moore acceptance speech. The choice, our BFF Academy, is yours.

Gangster Squad is based on the true tale of a group of LAPD officers and detectives in the late 1940s who used, shall we say, extra-judicial methods to smash the operations that allowed gangster Micky Cohen to control the underworld of the US west coast. The film is directed by Ruben Fleischer, who has mainly worked in the worlds of advertising and music-video production, but has two previous films (Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less) to his credit. An ensemble cast including Josh Brolin, Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte and Emma Stone play out a plot we get the feeling we have already seen before.

Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling are part of a squad. A Gangster Squad.

Gosling, gangsters and Tommy guns. We’re sold.

THEY’RE HERE! The nominations for the 84th Academy Awards have been released, and as we predicted The Artist has basically bagsied all the categories like a fat greedy child in a tuckshop. Standard.

It’s summer, the kids are bored and the grown-ups are too warm for Twister – it’s time for family cinema gold. Why not bring out yet another movie in which animals can talk, couple it with a lack-lustre storyline, and a mish-mash of actors. Cook it for about a year, let it cool for a month and what are we left with? Zookeeper.

Oh, Russell. You’re very lovely, we’ve known that for many years, but when will you stop playing the embarrassingly over-privileged cheeky chappy with a history of raucous and debauched behaviour – all pretty method – and actually do something worth watching? Arthur is elaborate, sparkly, charming and ultimately pointless, like an ornamental unicorn goad carved from a huge rock crystal by blind nuns. Exactly like that.