Fast & Furious 7 (12A) ***

The Fast and the Furious series should have ran out of gas years ago but has only grown in popularity. 

That's because those involved make a good job of reinvigorating a jaded action franchise. Now they're more like a blend of the Mission: Impossible and Ocean's Eleven films which just happen to feature expensive cars. 

It worked. The last two films coined an incredible $1.5 BILLION at the international box office.

Now the series has lost one of its most charismatic stars with the death of Paul Walker in a motor accident towards the end of filming this movie. 

So this became all about paying tribute to Walker with a decent action film. 

Walker’s brothers, Caleb and Cody, were also used as stand-ins in an effort to complete his remaining scenes, while Peter Jackson's digital studio is also rumoured to have worked some CGI magic. 

After successfully taking on their foe Owen Shaw in the last film, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his gang lead by Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) can finally plan a return to the US to live the relatively normal lives they’ve all been hankering after. 

But they didn’t bank on the arrival of Owen’s tough older brother, Deckard Shaw (new cast member Jason Statham) who is hell-bent on avenging his brother’s death  -  and shows pretty quickly that he has the capacity to do just that.

There are difficulties with pacing. The extended final action sequence is way too CGI heavy and could have been a good 15 minutes shorter. Wan does a solid job, but there's a real case to make for the  return of Lin for the inevitable eighth movie. 

And when the tributes to Walker do come towards the end of the film, they are fitting, emotional and beautifully judged  -  a classy goodbye to a much-loved cast member. 

While We’re Young (15A) ****

Director Noah Baumbach has long revealed himself to be a dab hand at social satire. But he surpasses himself in this wonderfully funny and revealing film. 

On one level, While We’re Young centres on the reluctance of happily married couple Josh (Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) to leave behind the freedoms of their 20s as they approach middle age. But there’s much more going here. 

The real joy is in Josh’s ‘Bromance’ with a young hipster, Jamie (Adam Driver) who along with his wife Darby (Amanda Seyfried) befriends the older couple. 

The two couples become friends following a chance meeting and Jamie, an aspiring filmmaker, is charmed by the older man’s success on the big screen. But there's more going on in this relationship than meets the eye.

Baumbach’s portrayal of the twenty something hipsters as they strive to be outside the cultural norm in every way is the stuff of comic gold. But nobody comes out of this social satire particularly well.

It’s a brutally funny film about what it means to grow up and grow older, and a spot-on depiction of the way we live now.