LOGAN (15, 137 mins) Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Stephen Merchant, Boyd Holbrook, Richard E Grant, Elizabeth Rodriguez. Director: James Mangold.

Time waits for no mutant in Hugh Jackman's grim and explosively violent swansong as one of the most iconic characters in the X-Men universe. Set in the year 2029, Logan paints a bleak portrait of super-powered beings on the verge of extinction in a brutal, intolerant world that destroys what it cannot understand.

Director James Mangold turbocharges the muscular action sequences including several bruising skirmishes between the lead character and his pursuers that invariably end with those razor-sharp claws slicing through flesh like a hot knife through butter.

There is plenty of spectacle here, punctuating a moving story of unconventional families in crisis, exemplified by the touching relationship between the title character and his 90-year-old surrogate father, Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart).

KONG: SKULL ISLAND (12A, 118 mins) Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, Corey Hawkins, Tian Jing, John Goodman, John C Reilly. Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts.

Mankind tumbles several links down the food chain in Kong: Skull Island, a rollicking 1970s-set action adventure directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, which revives one of cinema's iconic monsters.

Unfolding predominately on a Pacific island where "God did not finish creation", the picture unleashes a menagerie of hulking beasts as well as the titular ape and contrives a series of digitally rendered showdowns between these leviathans of a lost world.

Kong's briskly edited ding-dongs ping-pong between the spectacular and the dizzying, choreographed to the relentless beat of Henry Jackman's bombastic orchestral score.

There are fleeting moments of humour to punctuate the carnage, like when a shadowy US official arrives by car in his nation's political capital, which is swarming with Vietnam protesters, and deadpans: "Mark my words, there will never be a more screwed-up time in Washington."

CATFIGHT (15, 96 mins) Sandra Oh, Anne Heche, Alicia Silverstone Director: Onur Tuke, Glasgow Film Theatre, until Tuesday 14

The gloves are off in this outrageous, no holds barred black comedy, charting the latest bruising rounds in a bitter rivalry. Affluent Veronica (Sandra Oh) lives a life of carefree luxury funded by her husband’s dubious business interests. She hasn’t spared a thought for struggling schoolmate Ashley (Anne Heche) in years. They meet at a party and old wounds are quickly ripped open resulting in an undignified and vicious brawl. That’s just the start of a war of attrition that we follow over five years, through countless reversals of fortune and some vicious fights. Is there a doctor in the house?

VICEROY'S HOUSE (12A, 106 mins) Hugh Bonneville, Gillian Anderson, Manish Dayal, Huma Qureshi, Michael Gambon, Simon Callow, David Hayman, Lily Travers, Tanveer Ghani, Denzil Smith, Neeraj Gabi, Simon Williams. Director: Gurinder Chadha.

British Punjabi director Gurinder Chadha explores the 1947 partition of India from myriad perspectives in the lustrous period drama Viceroy's House.

This chocolate box of historical fact and forbidden romance, a la Romeo And Juliet, aims for a similar collision of upstairs downstairs affairs of the heart as Robert Altman's film Gosford Park and ITV costume drama Downton Abbey.

The script's frothy rendering of a dark, blood-soaked episode on the subcontinent, which resulted in the mass migration of 14 million people, is epitomised by one emotionally charged scene.

Hindu and Muslim servants at the eponymous residence come to blows over their beliefs and the viceroy's dour, Scottish head of household (David Hayman) is knocked to the floor in the commotion.

"It's worse than Glasgow on a Saturday night!" he deadpans, dusting himself off.

Chadha and co-writers Paul Mayeda Berges and Moira Buffini distil complex political wrangling into a glossy soap opera, replete with an implausibly tidy and emotionally manipulative final act that shamelessly tugs heartstrings in time with A.R. Rahman's orchestral score.

TRAINSPOTTING T2 (18, 117 mins)

Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Kelly Macdonald. Director: Danny Boyle. Cameo, Edinburgh, and others

Two decades after director Danny Boyle’s groundbreaking drama set in Edinburgh’s dark, druggy underbelly, the four friends drawn from Irvine Welsh’s novel return to make amends… or seek revenge. Begbie (Carlyle) has just been released from jail, Renton (McGregor) is making an emotional homecoming, and Sick Boy (Miller) and Spud (Bremner) are awaiting them both with very mixed feelings. Based on Welsh’s follow-up novel Porno, and again scripted by John Hodge, Boyle’s film has all the grit and casual pathos of the original while acknowledging that the main characters, including Kelly Macdonald’s Diane, have grown up over the past 20 years… or have they?

TRESPASS AGAINST US (15, 100 mins) Michael Fassbender, Brendan Gleeson, Lyndsey Marshal, Sean Harris, Rory Kinnear, Georgie Smith, Kacie Anderson, Killian Scott, Tony Way, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Gerard Kearns. Director: Adam Smith. The sins of a hard-nosed, bullying father are compounded by a proud and reckless son in Trespass Against Us, the feature film debut of music videos director Adam Smith.

Shot on location in sun-dappled Gloucester, this study of a close-knit community of thieving travellers is a clutter of half-formed themes and plot strands.

Scriptwriter Alastair Siddons invents a stylized vernacular for his vagabonds - "Hell hath no fury like a locked-up super-goat!" - and flings the ensemble cast into a hard-fought wrestling match with west country accents as thick as clotted cream.

Formidable leading men Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson admit defeat on several occasions, slipping into their lilting Irish brogues during heated exchanges while co-stars gamely persist.

Jarring tonal shifts between melodrama, offbeat comedy and heart-warming sentiment do little to dispel the nagging feeling that Smith's picture, for all its fleeting pleasures, is as scrappy and roughly hewn as the illiterate, feuding characters it portrays.

FIST FIGHT (15, 91 mins) Ice Cube, Charlie Day, Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, JoAnna Garcia, Alexa Nisenson, Austin Najur. Director: Richie Keen.

A good teacher kindles sparks of curiosity in fertile minds. A great teacher stokes those embers of creativity and sets imaginations ablaze by rewarding hard work, independent thought and invention.

Alas, there are no brilliant educational minds just knuckleheads in Fist Fight, a misfiring comedy of pointless macho posturing about two high school teachers who agree to settle their differences with a brawl in the playground surrounded by cheering students.

Richie Keen's film is as much fun as repeated swift kicks to the nether portions, bludgeoning us into stupefied submission with scenes of toe-curling toilet humour (some of it literally in cubicles) and bad taste buffoonery.

Screenwriters Van Robichaux and Evan Susser achieve epic fail grades for effort and achievement, defying logic and comprehension with their unsympathetic, two-dimensional characters' antics.

Laughter is absent without a doctor's note and the film's underlying life lesson seems to be that a 21st century family man earns the love and respect of his wife and child by lying, swearing, brawling and blackmailing.

If you can't succeed with integrity, cheat.

CERTAIN WOMEN (12A, 107 mins)

Released: March 3 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas including Glasgow Film Theatre and Cameo, Edinburgh)

Adapted from the short story collection Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want by Maile Meloy, Certain Women is a sensitively handled portrait of womanhood, which cuts back and forth between the lives of four women in Montana, whose futures gradually become entangled. Small-town lawyer Laura Wells (Laura Dern) is at the end of her tether, dealing with a client, Fuller (Jared Harris), who refuses to heed her advice about the pointlessness of suing his former employers over a workplace accident. She receives a telephone call from local police to tell her that Fuller has returned to his old workplace and taken a security guard hostage. At the behest of the authorities, Laura agrees to enter the building to try to talk Fuller into downing his weapon and ending the siege. Meanwhile, ranch hand Jamie (Lily Gladstone) absent-mindedly follows other drivers to a local school where a young lawyer, Beth Travis (Kristen Stewart), is teaching night classes. Jamie becomes fixated on Beth, who has a four-hour drive each way from her home in Livingston. An awkward friendship blossoms. Elsewhere in the state, Ryan Lewis (James LeGros) and his wife Gina (Michelle Williams) are at odds about how to raise their teenage daughter. Their argument simmers as they plough all of their time and money into building a new home, which would be made easier if a local man, Albert (Rene Auberjonois), would sell them his leftover pile of sandstone for a fair price.

ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS (PG, 88 mins)

Released: March 7 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

As part of worldwide celebrations of the life and music of David Bowie, cinemas around Europe will screen director D.A. Pennebaker's celebrated concert film for one night only. On July 3, 1973, Bowie took to the stage of the Hammersmith Odeon in London in the guise of his extrovert alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, with his band The Spiders From Mars. They performed an electrifying set list including All The Young Dudes, Changes, Let's Spend The Night Together, Oh! You Pretty Things and Space Oddity. During the performance, Bowie stunned the audience by announcing, "It's the last show we'll ever do", referring to the retirement of his colourful stage persona. Pennebaker's picture captures this iconic show in its entirety followed by an exclusive short film produced by Mojo magazine in which editor-in-chief Phil Alexander relives that memorable 1973 night in the company of The Spiders From Mars drummer Woody Woodmansey.