The Little Things (2021)

It is wrong to say this is a thriller about the serial murders of six or five women because in fact it is an unpleasant drama about three male caricatures, Rami Malek's incomprehensible suit-wearing detective, Denzel Washington's heavy-footed deputy sheriff, and Jared (if I limp I'm acting, right?) Leto's pot-bellied Charles Manson type, a trio whose characterisation ends with their outfits but whose interactions, you won't realise until the dismaying end, are the things you are being asked to care about - the women, all of them dead except for a door-opener, some out-of-focus swimmers in a pool, and one who actually speaks but only three or four lines and only to help facilitate the film's utter male-centredness, are, literally, just little things in the way.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Equalizer 2 (2018)

McCall is back dishing out vigilante justice in not one but five concurrent missions that so overfill this sequel there's no room for any plot details - the reason people are being killed in the main storyline is because their names are on a list (and that is literally all there is to learn about the matter), and similarly there's no time for elaboration in the "Not Without My Daughter" opening scenes nor any detail offered in the overly-ambitious Woman In Gold side story that keeps interrupting the action; there's nothing much to know in the Dangerous Minds character-building side story involving McCall keeping a young man from falling in with gangbangers, and no detail (nor sense) in the Twister denouement in which a storm event conveniently evacuates McCall's hometown just in time for a bad-guy showdown, and finally, don't expect any elaboration of any kind in yet another episode, a kind of Promising Young Woman sequence involving gang rapists.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Crimson Tide (1995)

As if the confined spaces, the machismo of the crew and the constant threat of being sunk were not enough to pressure-cook the environment on board the nuclear submarine the USS Alabama, director Tony Scott adds a cigar smoker and a Jack Russell to the mix and then has the Second-in-Command (Denzel Washington) and the Captain (Gene Hackman) disagree on the best way to proceed through a nuclear missile crisis once their craft's communications systems go down.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Out of Time (2003)

Imagine No Way Out - a man stays only a small step ahead of an investigation that threatens to identify him as the culprit in a crime - crossed with Wild Things - a twisty, turny thriller set against a sultry Florida backdrop - and you've got this entertaining and at times quite funny crime thriller with Denzel Washington as the police officer struggling to avoid an erroneous murder charge.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Magnificent Seven (2016)

"Staged" is one word that springs to mind watching this update of the updates of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, with sets and props so pristine and removed from the action that they look like cartoons and with costumes that look like dress-ups, close-ups of sweaty brows that look like Sergio Leone playacting, and scenes of men entering buildings via saloon doors and exiting seconds later via windows looking like comedic sore thumbs...and other words that spring to mind are "dreadfully boring", "horribly unengaging", "by the numbers" and "far from magnificent".

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS