Venom (15)
Having been given a bum steer in the disappointing mess that was 2007’s Spider-man 3, Venom branches out into his own solo flick.
Though Marvel does have some involvement, this spin-off is being led by Sony whose Amazing Spider-man series lasted only two movies before the webslinger swung over to the MCU.
Tom Hardy stars as investigative reporter Eddie Brock who turns into the titular anti-hero after acquiring the powers of an alien symbiote.
You could be forgiven for wondering if the Mcu-led last decade of comic book films actually took place as Venom is a throwback to the simpler era of genre entries where superior efforts like Batman Begins, Spider-man 2 and X2 were overpowered by duds including Catwoman, Jonah Hex and Ghost Rider.
While not quite as bad as that latter trio, Venom is an uneven, tonally-uncertain oddity that brought back unwanted memories of 2015’s Fantastic Four reboot.
The film’s shining light is Hardy, no stranger to comic book roles after his seminal turn as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.
The Londoner gives an enormously committed performance as he battles with the voices in his head in a neat modern take on Jekyll and Hyde.
You ride along with his not always convincing accent and while not everything he does works