The Housemaid (2025)

A plot synopsis of this "thriller" on Wikipedia would reveal the twists just as artfully and thrillingly as director Paul Feig's movie - an adaptation of the hit book by Freida McFadden and hark-back to the throwaway domestic thrillers of the 90s - a monotonous, personality-free drear with no redeemable characters and nothing to care about, and when I genuinely ask family and friends who profess to have loved it what exactly they liked, the answer is frequently Sydney Sweeney's boobs.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

While We're Young (2014)

Husband and wife forty-somethings find themselves caught between two worlds — that of their procreating couple-friends, and the hipster orbit of a couple of twenty-somethings whose grooviness reinvigorates them — in this really very funny comedy with witty things to say about Gen Xers getting old and having to "hurry up because they've changed the rules, honey."

★★★★★

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Things Seen And Heard (2021)

One eye is sufficient for this long and tedious supernatural thriller set in "Headless Horseman" country where husband George, an academic, and wife Catherine Clare, an art restorer, move into a haunted fixer-upper, but the presence of ghosts, the ghosts' supernatural connection to these living counterparts, and local legends about the house's murderous past do not seem to impact very importantly on the things happening in the real world between George and Catherine and in fact just seem to obfuscate, like so many other horror movies do, the reprehensible behaviour of men.

★★☆☆☆

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Jennifer’s Body (2009)

Buffy was interesting because her demon-slaying was analogous to the trials and tribulations of high school - and she lost more sleep over the latter than the former - but this horror comedy, obviously geared at Buffy audiences with its combination of demon-slaying, indie rock soundtrack, and high school drama, is a less sensible, less compelling concoction about two female students: one who has meaningful, consensual sex with her boyfriend, and one who honeytraps horny males and feeds on their dead bodies; the fact the latter, played by Megan Fox, was kidnapped and slaughtered by a four-strong gang of males is treated as a trivial detail - the important thing, apparently, is there is a right way to use your body, and Jennifer is an evil slut who deserves death, ok?

★☆☆☆☆

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Ted 2 (2015)

We know from Ted (the original) that Seth MacFarlane's brand of humour - crude - isn't any funnier from the mouth of a teddy bear, even one with such carefully constructed hair, and this amusing bemusing sequel, which is all about Ted going to the Supreme Court to win the right to be considered human (and so have the right to marry the wife he mistreats), leaves you wondering why he isn't just that - a person - and why not Seth MacFarlane with his carefully constructed hair?

★☆☆☆☆

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Gone (2012)

Gone is one of those "no-one believes her" thrillers like The Lady Vanishes but unlike that masterpiece, Gone squanders its most interesting ideas and has a ludicrous ending that gives no consideration to the ramifications of its heroine's actions, meaning the movie fails even at being a satisfying b-grade thriller.

★☆☆☆☆

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