28 Weeks Later (2007)

Flaunting rules during COVID - maybe that I can kind of understand, but in the face of apocalyptic evidence post-the-virus in this sequel to 28 Days Later, it is hard to believe anyone, even kids, would "sneak out", but they do, and that lapse in credibility becomes the film's defining weakness as, repeatedly, family reunions defy apocalyptic chaos, characters display magical virus expertise, and John Woo-style theatrics push the story towards spectacle and away from the unsettling plausibility that made the original so engrossing.

★★★☆☆

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21 Bridges (aka Manhattan Lockdown) (2019)

The fact Chadwick Boseman's NYPD police detective locks down Manhattan Island as a means of hunting down two police killers is just a passing detail, really, but so little else of note happens in this police procedural - just several moments of clunky editing and a completely from-the-start predictable plot - it is the closure of the twenty-one exit points from Manhattan Island that gives this ho-hum crime drama its title!

★★☆☆☆

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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Based on an Arthur C Clarke story, Stanley Kubrick's unhurried sci-fi masterpiece and auto sensory meridian response tapping exercise starts with a group of apes in prehistoric times discovering a sheer, smooth monolith and ends millions of years later with an astronaut and a sinister sentient computer program called HAL 9000 on a mission to investigate a similar structure that has turned up in space.

★★★★★

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22 Jump Street (2014)

The undercover cops again head to college to investigate a drug ring and achieve that rare thing, a sequel funnier than - in fact, all-round better than - the original, particularly with its self-referential humour and the hilarious way it embroils its heroes despite themselves - clearly adults and clearly not brothers - in the popularity contests, cliques and dramas of high school.

★★★★☆

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21 Jump Street (2012)

Fans of the hit 80s tv show about cops undercover in American high schools (which took itself quite seriously) will be curious to see this movie-length comedy version, most amusing when it plays on the idiocy of obvious adults trying to pass themselves off as schoolkids, and maybe those besotted by Channing will enjoy it too.

★★☆☆☆

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