Office Christmas Party (2016)

After a really strong set-up and first half, this comedy about the Zenotech corporation's efforts to throw a Christmas party descends, like the party itself, into chaos, abandoning narrative sense, moving the action away from the titular party, and ending on the idea that financial, medical, emotional and organisational woes are best dealt with with a sex and drug orgy, as if the writers themselves lost interest in the film's second half when one of them gave the signal for the others to join him outside for another toke/smoke/chuff/shot/snort/job.

★★☆☆☆

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Dangerous Minds (1995)

I love movies about high school - comedies (Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Jump Street), dramas (Donnie Darko, To Sir With Love) - but the naievity displayed here by Michelle Pfeiffer's LouAnne Johnson, an ex-marine English teacher who applies a likely saviour complex to the task of educating a classroom of underprivileged American students, choosing to visit their homes, choosing to take them on dates, choosing to loan them money and choosing to invite them into her home for sleepovers - actions breezily dismissed as "choosing to care" and leading to immediate unlikely transformative outcomes - earns this a fail grade as a high school experience.

★☆☆☆☆

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