IT’S a bumper week at the box office. No Time To Die might have ruled the roost for an impressive fortnight now but hello alternatives.

First up, for families, is Ron’s Gone Wrong. An animation born of Arthur Christmas creators Sarah Smith and Peter Baynham, this is a tale of friendship, outsiders and malfunctioning machines.

The film is set in a near future in which robots are prolific and the play things of kids. Shazam star Jack Dylan Grazer voices socially awkward middle schooler Barney Pudowski. Envious of his wealthier friends and their shiny robot companions, Barney is thrilled when he finally gets his hands on a B-bot of his own. He’s less impressed when he learns that the bot in question is riddled with defects.

Boasting the vocal talents of Zach Galifianakis, Olivia Colman and Ed Helms, Ron’s Gone Wrong offers a whirlwind of pleasing values, laugh out loud humour and surprisingly high stakes. A Disney release, it’s in cinemas now but you can bet it’ll be streaming by Christmas.

Definitely not for younger viewers, this week also sees the return of sticky Spider-Man antagonist Venom in Let there be Carnage.

In spite of innumerable faults, Venom was a huge hit for Sony back in 2018. A bonkers turn from Tom Hardy certainly helped, while audiences warmed to the film’s comic flair and jet black tone.

Part two finds Eddie Brook (Hardy) more at ease with Venom, the alien symbiote that has possessed him, than last time around. In the face of adversity - here it’s Woody Harelson’s Carnage - director Andy Serkis has fun with the odd couple rhythms of man and monster. As does Hardy himself.

If the comedy hits the mark, it’s let down by the overblown and CGI dominated plot around it. Even at only an hour and 40 minutes, Venom drags.

One more sequel sees yet another return for masked serial killer Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode, the Scream Queen who has devoted the best part of the last four decades to fighting him.

A direct follow up to 2018’s Halloween, Halloween Kills sees writer-director David Gordon Green pursue a more of the same philosophy. The cast are uniformly great and the kills impressive in their inventive pizazz but it’s hard to be truly afraid when you’ve seen it all before.