Widows (2018)

Lynda La Plante's crime soap, a book previously made into a British tv series and now, here, a star-studded American blockbuster, ends up feeling like its story of gangster wives, forced to do a 'job' after the death of their husbands, overreaches in its attempts to be a sprawling epic because while its flourishes - race and gender politics, personal trauma, relationship angst - are interesting, none seems warranted given the heist at the core of the movie ends up being a home robbery requiring the widows to climb some stairs and make sure first that no-one is home.

★★★☆☆

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Bad Times At The El Royale (2018)

This is The Hateful Eight transported to Richard Nixon- and Vietnam War-era Nevada slash California, except that Quentin Tarantino can sustain pulpy violent nonsense and this movie can't, as you'll see when the terrific slowburn set-up full of surprises ends up with nowhere to go and Chris Hemsworth's cult leader is left conducting protracted interrogations of characters he has no established reason to care about.

★★☆☆☆

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