China Moon (1994)

The only thing missing from this unchallenging 93-minute neo-noir escapism about a cop (Ed Harris) who falls for a dame with a cheating husband and a gun (Madeleine Stowe) is the steam - cicadas chirp, fans whirr, and icecubes clink in homemade lemonade, but there isn't a sweaty underarm or beaded brow to be seen, making this more The Big Air-conditioned Studio Cool than The Big Heat.

★★★☆☆

The Abyss (1989)

Three years after his huge success sending a Sigourney Weaver-led crew of marines on a deep-space salvage mission in Aliens, James Cameron blasts a Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio-led crew of oil engineers on a deep-sea salvage mission where an Aliens' gun metal blue and grey colour-palette (cut across with bright yellow industrial pipes and machinery) is the setting for a convergence of underdeveloped plotlines (like one character's bad case of the bends, a volatile marriage, and political tensions between Russia and the USA), things all better explained in a later released extended version but here only very loosely held together by the presence in the movie's periphery of a species of, what, lost jellyfish Aliens?

★★★☆☆

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Mother! (2017)

A fleeting shot at the start hints very strongly at Darren Aronofsky's movie's whole but even so the movie goes on to tell its story three times; the first iteration, in which a young homemaker is too polite to ask two unwanted visitors to leave her house, is the most restrained, gleefully sinister and enjoyable, with the subsequent retellings just becoming noisier, more extreme, more crowded, and more unnecessary, not adding much to the parable that has already been determined by that opening moment.

★★★☆☆

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Snowpiercer (2013)

In Director Bong Joon-ho's first English language cinema release - a sci-fi action movie set entirely within the confines of a futuristic train - absurdity and solemnity, lofty pretentions and humour mix in a way only Bong Joon-ho can successfully manage; the result, a story of an uprising in segregated communities of haves and havenots, is a ridiculous and audacious, enthralling and hilarious political allegory.

★★★★☆

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