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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Get Out (2017)

Meeting the parents of a partner for the first time is a situation fraught with tension; add issues of race, some sudden loud bangs and some kooky psychological thrills and you'd expect a movie not to be as boring in long stretches as this - part of the problem is it feels unfinished (there are images and scenes from the movie's promotional material which are entirely missing), and the movie's really clever ideas are either cut short too soon (you'll want more time with all of the characters, especially Catherine Keener's hypnotist) or let down with daft plotting (like candlebra in a surgery, or three cops who laugh off a ridiculous story ignoring the Googleable fact of a missing man, or antisocial track and field training in the middle of the night). 

★★★☆☆

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