What do you call a comedy without a single laugh? The answer is Year One, Harold Ramis’s ramshackle road movie through the Paleolithic era headlined by Jack Black and Michael Cera, two of the most gifted comic actors of their generations.

Black is an unstoppable force of nature, who brought his nervous energy to light up High Fidelity, The School of Rock and Kung Fu Panda. Cera adopts a more laidback, laconic delivery that perfectly suited Juno and Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

But put the actors side-by-side as hunter-gatherers with a nose for adventure, and the results are painful. “The upside-down prisoner has to pee,” whimpers Cera as warm urine trickles over his face, up his nose and into his mouth in a throwaway scene that perfectly encapsulates the sophistication and artistry of Ramis’s vision.

Pelt-clad primitives Zed (Black) and Oh (Cera) are incompetent and lazy, and don’t pull their weight like the other men in their village. Zed cannot master his bow and arrow, and is a woeful hunter. “I’ll be back, unless something goes horribly right,” he tells Oh before his latest disastrous attempt to woo alpha-female Maya (June Raphael). Likewise, Oh fails in his duties as a gatherer. Nor can he turn the head of the object of his affections, Zed’s sister Eema (Juno Temple).

Inevitably, the friends are banished from the tribe and embark on a quest of self-discovery through an ancient world riddled with danger. En route, the misfits encounter wondrous creations such as the wheel, and colourful characters including feuding brothers Cain (David Cross) and Abel (Paul Rudd), and circumcision-obsessed father Abraham (Hank Azaria) and his son Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).

Zed and Oh unexpectedly find courage and determination in the face of adversity, arriving in Sodom where the flamboyant high priest (Oliver Platt) threatens to sacrifice Maya and Eema to the gods. Thankfully, the buddies orchestrate a rescue mission, but first they must outwit the captain of the guards (Vinnie Jones).

Producer extraordinaire Judd Apatow’s recent winning streak, which includes The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, comes to an inglorious end with Year One. Foolishly, the script begins at the dawn of mankind and merrily incorporates biblical references, which beg unfavourable comparisons with Life of Brian. Monty Python’s film may be 30 years old, but it boasts more chuckles and guffaws in the opening five minutes than Year One can muster in its lifeless entirety.

A selection of out-takes, which play out over the end credits, should have remained on the cutting-room floor. Banter between Black and Cera fails to spark. “You’re going to be my right hand,” enthuses Zed. “I’ve seen what you do with your right hand, so no thank you,” replies Oh glumly. We’re just as enthused about Ramis’s film.

Adapted from Jodi Picoult's heartbreaking bestseller, My Sister’s Keeper is an emotionally wrought and morally complex story of one family's extraordinary fight to save their own flesh and blood from terrible suffering. Brian Fitzgerald (Jason Patric) and his wife Sara (Cameron Diaz) are blissfully happy with their son Jesse (Evan Ellingson) and two-year-old daughter Kate. Their lives change forever when they discover that Kate has leukaemia, and they make a controversial decision: to conceive another child, a genetic match, in order to save Kate's life.

Sara gives up her job as a high-powered attorney to preside over the family, and she watches in awe as youngest child Anna (Abigail Breslin) forms a close bond with Kate (Sofia Vassilieva). Visits to hospital for various procedures become a normal part of the girls’ childhood until Anna reaches the age of 11 and announces that she no longer wants to be a guinea pig. So she hires lawyer Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin) to plead her case before Judge De Salvo (Joan Cusack) and perhaps tear the family apart.

The live action, English-language version of Hiroyuki Kitakubo's revered animated film Blood: The Last Vampire centres on beautiful 17-year-old Saya (Gianna Jun), who conceals a terrible secret. She is a halfling, the product of a marriage between a human father and vampire mother, doomed to suffer the same bloodlust as the creatures of the night she detests. Armed with her samurai swords, Saya now works for an organisation, eradicating the world of the fanged fiends in the hope that one day she will be granted a showdown with the vampire matriarch, Onigen (Koyuki). For her latest mission, the teenager is dispatched to an US military base in Japan to clear up an infestation. In the process, Saya strikes up an unlikely friendship with Alice (Allison Miller), the daughter of the base’s CO (Larry Lamb).