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Table Manners maketh.....'Separate Tables' makes for tense and torrid times for lovers and unlovely and unloved people amongst the regulars at a small hotel in post war Britain.

Love is in the air, as is petty personal politics, rivalries, personality clashes, hidden pasts and explosive histories.

The cast are given some work to do, most rise to the challenge: David Niven clearly enjoys the chance to play a twerp, Burt Lancaster gets to mooch and moan Wendy Hiller gets a lovely implied role to underplay and Rita Hayworth shows a nice touch.

That's my film review and my recommendation really: watch these four at work in 'Separate Tables', with particular emphasis on the two oscar winners Niven and Hiller.

Unhappy romances dominate, unfulfilled and unresolved romances, unlikely and unconventional romances. Lots and lots of romances.

The only happy characters seem to be resolutely single: bachelor's, spinsters, widows. Contented perhaps is a better word than happy. Completed even.

Those embroiled in romance are indeed unhappy, discontented and incomplete. Or incompetent. Or insincere. Etc etc etc.

'Separate Tables' has an easy, light directors touch, and is edited subtly: based on the pacing of the actors and the writing certainly, but it adds a bit more than just marking dramatic beats during a few moments of "action". The director and editor momentarily create a touch of cinematic elan rather than treading gently round their heavyweight cast and heavy set script.

The setting is physically believable, and suitably photographed with sympathetic lighting and set decoration. The arrangement of the tables in the dining room being the only vitally important point of note.

I rate at 5.5/10 and it's the heavyweight cast that earn my points and the heavy set script that deters me from going higher. Simply put, it wasn't a convincing drama for me. I enjoyed the form but not the function of 'Separate Tables'.

I recommend to fans of any of the main cast, and to fans of "unhappy romances" dramas and melodramas. Film buffs take note of two academy award winners and do consider checking them out: if you can get with the mood then you should enjoy the performances which are crafted to suit the tone of the piece.

Gareth Edwards struggles to direct humans but he has no such struggles directing dinosaurs. Obviously, the dinosaurs being computerised cartoons helps to get the exact performance required, and mitigates for limitations caused by poor or underwritten scripts more than most human actors and directors can.

This film has been poorly cast, most obviously Scarlett Johansson, who carries this film about as well as a sieve carries water. It's unusual to see such bad miscasting for a central role these days.

This really buried any chance this film had. The rest of the cast struggles too. Really badly, but the shade cast by Johansson's epic failure in the lead role obscures the lesser failures of her peers.

Unfortunately there are insufficient death scenes for a film where every character seems easily discarded from the script but not see easily disposed of from the action.

I'd say that most of the assembled actors can scream, shout, run, jump, crouch, roll and tumble. That's all most of them need to do for the script but it makes for an astonishingly slight film watching experience. That is when the viewer isn't being actively distracted by the awful lead.

Gareth Edwards does seem to achieve something quite enjoyable with the dinosaurs and somewhat with the mutos too. Oh, I mean, mutant dinosaurs.

Mutos or mutants. This brings me to the strange sensation that I've had since seeing the trailer for 'Jurassic World Rebirth' and which seeing the full film has done nothing to change. The 1998 'Godzilla' was something of a 'Jurassic Park' rip off with it's extra humongous T Rex and it's baby raptors - I mean, Godzilla and it's hatchlings. This 'Jurassic Park' film somewhat rips off the 'Monsterverse' Godzilla, and Kong Skull Island for that matter. The first installment of which was helmed by...... Gareth Edwards our director here. I think that the American Godzilla and Jurassic Park franchises have come full circle and they are eating each others tails now.

The technical credits are a mixed bag, a lot of post production work and editing mixed with some limited sets, stunts and props and practical effects. The physical stuff seems unconvincing and the post production is quite successfully done even if it strangles the life out of actors performances and directors mitres which it seems to do in almost every post production heavy film. I wonder if directors like Alfred Hitchcock where the entire film existed in his minds eye before he filmed a shot, and where little to no improvisation or invention happened after the cameras started to roll, are the only sort of directors who might be able to push through a post-production heavy film and not have it end up like a wibble, wobble, jelly on the plate.

The positives are really three or four dinosaur led sequences: marine, terrestrial, riverine and aerial. There's some enjoyable and memorable bits from these four dinosaur encounters. They are what the film hangs on and they are strong enough to make this watchable and worthwhile.

There is also a sense of renewed extinction, and species survival on equatorial isolated islands, which tidied up the reason why the film needed a tiny team to go to an abandoned dinosaur filled island again, again, again, again, and again with only a handful of people and hardly any backup......some science garbage about medicinal research added the crosses to the 'T's and eyes to the 'I's and then there was a 'Jurassic' movie made.

The sound design is basic, the score is an emotional and nostalgic based nonentity, there is some nice location cinematography, which I guess was all done by a large second unit mentioned in the credits, and some less impressive digital compositing and compositions.

I rate at 4/10 and that's a star each for the 4 fun dinosaur sequences where Gareth Edwards and the effects team put together some very watchable blockbuster stuff and the cast were on their firmest ground doing that running, jumping, rolling, sliding, hiding, shouting, screaming stuff.

I recommend to fans of dinosaur action. This film will test most people's patience I feel but if you want to watch dinosaurs putting people in peril or making them seem teeny tiny, then 'Jurassic World Rebirth' has some very good moments for you! Dinosaur fans, watch out for a snippet of Ray Harryhausen dinosaur action from 'One Million Years B. C.'

'Tron Legacy' is a candidate for the most boring film sequel, and one of the most boring films ever made in its own right. It's steeped in every mistake that could be made for a "legacy" sequel almost 30 years after it's progenitor was released.

The writing is a complete misfire and causes the viewer to wonder if anyone was involved in writing it or if the script was itself CGI.

The acting is manifestly bored and unmemorable. I think that the cast were struggling to remember their lines. Their minds must have been like a body rejecting an organ transplant. They give very boring performances as a result.

The direction is very limited and probably the producers should have clawed the directors fee back: he certainly didn't earn it.

The editing is lax and overwhelmed by the post production effects.

The visual design is a disappointment and as boring as the humans.

This film shouldn't have been made. It's disastrously boring and unbelievable. It's a complete failure at itself: literally, it's an abysmal legacy sequel. It suffers every conceivable malignancy that such an unlikely mass movie undertaking can suffer, and which can be asked from the off as a simple question, 'Why make a sequel, to that, now?'

I rate at 2/10 and I give no recommendations on this films behalf. The person I took to the cinema with me only said this as we walked away, "You can't pick the film again." I could only agree. I still do as far as 'Tron Legacy' is concerned. I have never picked it again from that day to this.