The Menu (2022)

What a great idea to pit artist - those that serve up their creations - against art lovers - those that take this creativity, eat it up and either appreciate it or spit it out -- and how clever to do that in a kitchen where the artist, the chef, exerts tight artistic control (and so is particularly vulnerable to criticism) and where so much hyperbolic reality tv is set and where the discussion of food art has reached such a fever pitch that it simply begs to be lampooned, but the concept sags like a failed souffle at about the third course where a rush of ideas - the need to be not just clever about art but also woke about metoo and world finance - turns a sharp satirical observation about art into an uncentred all-out food fight.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW

Last Night in Soho (2021)

The life of 60s performer Sandie - think nightclubs, cocktails, Cilla Black-types, Dusty Springfield-lookalikes, and lots of leering, lecherous men - and that of fashion student Eloise in the present day - think peer pressure at college, bar-hopping, part-time beer-pulling and rental applications - supernaturally collide with the help of reflective surfaces, an impressive series of effects that is this psychological horror's pièce de résistance, but if there is anything to learn from Eloise's bunny hop into so elaborate a Swingin' 60s fandango, it seems just to be the idea that no matter how much women are used and abused over decades by lecherous men, in the end they'll always trump men with their own villainry.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Witch: A New England Folktale (2015)

** SPOILER VVARNING **

An early scene confirms a vvitch inhabits the vvoods on the edge of the farm of young Thomasin's Puritan family but the greater horror of this movie is having to spend ninety minutes in the family's company - like a Jerry Springer "Help! My Puritan family thinks I'm a vvitch!" episode, they stand around shrieking unproductively at each other and it is little vvonder the vvitch stays vvell avvay (almost 'not-in-the-movie' avvay), leaving it to a random, introduced-at-the-last-minute Black Phillip (no, I don't knovv vvho or vvhat he is either) to step in and violently bring some vvelcome quiet to proceedings, in time for the visually stunning but miserable movie to end on its self-congratulatory note: a titlecard assuring vievvers vvhat an authentic Nevv England horror exercise it has been. 

★★☆☆☆

CYNECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEVVS