Madame Web (2024)

This much maligned Marvel superhero flick isn't so bad if you are not fussed by its relatively small (for superhero movies) budget or by its lack of male muscle and brawn (instead we have female teamwork and clairvoyance), and you need to be able to look past some weird dubbed voice acting that is never explained, but Dakota Johnson, a presence as light as a feather (like her mum in Working Girl, you feel she might blow away in a wind) is captivating as Cassandra Webb, a paramedic experiencing strange things in the lead up to her discovering by movie's end that she is a spider-enhanced superhero. 

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

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.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

The fact he's an oft-photographed billionaire is irrelevant - no-one acknowledges him, not even in elevators in his own skyscraper - which is just one of the many ways this untitillating sex drama floats free from reality; in fact, Christian Grey and doey womanchild Anastasia's unlikely sex contract negotiations (he tries for two hours to involve her in his sado-lite world of slaps-on-the-backside and silk tie shackles) raise just one question in bored viewers' minds: in what world are Christian Grey and Anastasia that they haven't seen Sex And The City?

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS