Black Bag (2025)

Don't think too hard about the plot, which is full of outlandish extraneous details and relies on an impossible amount of inter-agent bedhopping (some of it blurring professional boundaries in very unlikely ways) and just enjoy the sleek, sexy spy thrills as Michael Fassbender's mild-mannered spy, George Wodehouse, learns his wife's name is on a list of five potential traitor agents.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Thor Ragnarok (2017)

As a standalone superhero movie, this third Thor outing, a distinct departure from the previous two, doesn't really hold together - it is a messy, sprawling space adventure a bit like Flash Gordon with lots of 80s synthesizer but at times goes a bit The Fifth Element with Jeff Goldblum playing a flamboyant leader of a colourful planet of haves and havenots but at other times again transforms into Spaceballs with a new (to the Thor series) 'anything goes' hammy comedy that grows steadily more tired as the movie goes on and on - but as a series segue between Marvel's Avenger blockbusters and the space adventure Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor Ragnarok is a clever exercise that serves to bridge disparate Marvel franchises ahead of the Infinity War movie that brings them all together.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Harrison Ford's performance is laboured and it is like no-one dares let him utter more than three consecutive words for fear he'll betray his inability to reprise his famous role, but with Cate Blanchett hamming it up as a Soviet agent villain and with a globe-trotting plot involving the usual maps and clues and quicksand and temples, this fourth Indy movie is enjoyable nostalgia albeit a cheesy, slow-witted adventure.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)

Despite the anticlimax of its fudged final scene, this is a terrific adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 book that succeeds as a classy thriller, a glamorous European travelogue, and a deeply disturbing psychological character study of a young chameleon whose talents as a voice artist and tendency to be in the right place at the right time assist him in keeping up a series of wickedly simple but deadly deceptions.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Carol (2015)

Patricia Highsmith fans will be more interested than most in this inoffensive, rather pretty but pretty boring drama about two women in New York who embark on a romance at a time when such things were frowned upon.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Blue Jasmine (2013)

Like many recent Woody Allen films, this is a story based around a flip state of its main character's situation, with Cate Blanchett playing the southern Tennessee Williams-esque Jasmine (or Janet), a woman who has had it all but is now facing tougher times, and the movie is very good except that it ends feeling unfinished.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Babel (2006)

With a change of tone from moribund to comical, this well-intentioned miserable load of nonsense could easily have been a sequel to Lemony Snickett's Series of Unfortunate Events, presenting a ridiculous account of a day Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett really shouldn't have gotten out of bed.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Hanna (2011)

A girl is raised by Eric Bana to be an assassin but ham-fisted fairytale themes dog the girl at every turn of her story, making what could have been a Euro-cool spy thriller a strange farce.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS