Bumblebee (2018)

About a teen who befriends, educates and culturally integrates a refugee she discovers living, in fear of war aggressors, in a Californian scrapyard, this is a big dumb empty blockbuster and mildly entertaining entry in the Transformers series of movies based on the Hasbro toys, but it is hard not to also see it as a missed opportunity - what a watershed moment in cinema it would have been had it just been released as Short Circuit: Fully Loaded or, I think even better, Herbie: Dark Side of the Lovebug, a big cgi blockbuster reboot of one or the other of the two movies Bumblebee mashes together for its plot.

★★★☆☆

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American Assassin (2017)

This movie with a hate-fuelled lone wolf terrorist as its hero falls apart in its middle stretch - read, 'middle six-eighths' - and reveals itself to be just an incredibly dopey action movie sandwiched between a provocative opening scene (ripped from news headlines, designed to appeal to our outrage) and an extravagant last-ditch-effort-at-multiplex-credibility sfx finale that might only seem impressive after so much dull A-team TV episode-grade fisticuffs and gunplay.

★☆☆☆☆

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