See How They Run (2022)

Occasionally, watching this comedy mystery, you'll think, "I think that was supposed to be funny," as the dialogue between Saoirse Ronan's police officer and Sam Rockwell's inspector - clearly meant to crackle and zing - falls and clangs like a dropped murder weapon, which is a shame because setting a murder mystery around the staging in London of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap is interesting, especially given in the very beginning of the play's record-length run Richard Attenborough played the role of Sergeant Trotter and the grisly real-life case of the Rillington Place serial murders were being investigated, both details that feature in the clever historical context of this otherwise laugh-free, leaden, and, for a long middle stretch, chaotic film.

★★☆☆☆ (almost one star)

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Jacket (2005)

There are delicious moments of time travel madness early on as returned soldier, asylum inmate and murder suspect Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) richochets between a romantic future and a miserable asylum incarceration in the present, but this isn't Twelve Monkeys (Jennifer Jason Leigh is the psychiatric doctor tagging along but just stares and mumbles no matter what happens - she's no Madeleine Stowe) and the thriller elements fail to survive to an ending that, after so much dark potential, collapses into something with a corny The Lake House vibe.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Manhattan Nocturne (2016)

"Manhattan Nocturne", based on a book by Colin someone-needs-to-examine-his-head Harrison, is bonkers but because this is Manhattan where Leonardo Di Caprio rides the elevator and Jessica Chastain eats across from you in a restaurant, and because everyone is filthy rich and mad as hatters, the noir mystery about a modern-day gumshoe reporter investigating the death of a sadistic game-playing film director, works just enough to be an enjoyable, ludicrous, pulpy ride.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

InAPPropriate Comedy (2013)

This dire comedy skit compilation features some surprisingly big name stars (Adrien Brody, Lindsay Lohan, Rob Schneider) delivering zero laughs in skits called "Flirty Harry", "Blackass", "Sperm Lake" and the especially unfunny "The Amazing Racist".

☆☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Splice (2009)

The Frankenstein monster creation story, embellished with DNA science-lite, is kept fairly interesting here with the continual evolution of the creature from its initial rodent-like form to something more like a chicken and then childlike, and finally, once the movie has reached its dead end and has nowhere further to go except over-the-top Hollywood schlock, let loose is a fully-formed winged female creature desirous of disturbing interspecies sex!

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL : ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Wrecked (2010)

Adrien Brody wakes up badly injured in a smashed-to-pieces wreck of a car that appears to have careened off a height, his only company a dead somebody, and from there this film goes on to become equal parts creepy mystery and quite-painful-to-watch survival story.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS