Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)

The inferior sequel to Knives Out tries to repeat the same tricks, cutting back and forwards in time to interject scenes that upend what we thought we knew of the developing mystery (this time set on a tech billionaire's hi-tech Greek island where guests have gathered for a murder mystery weekend) but like that murder mystery weekend, which Daniel Craig's nondescript Benoit Blanc abruptly ends by prematurely solving it, so too is the movie's main mystery - the murder of one of the guests - abruptly over, solved within an hour of starting, and all the jumping back and forth between past and present, the crowdpleasing techpreneur teardown, and jarring celebrity cameos can't disguise how brief and empty it is.

★★☆☆☆

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

The appeal of Wes Anderson movies continues to elude me even now I've watched Moonrise Kingdom, his 2012 - what? Adventure? Children's book come to life? - about a New England island community searching for a pair of child runaways, a story the director again presents in his trademark fastidious style with those elaborate, unwarranted visuals that stifle all else including the performances of innumerable Hollywood stars who are all forced to act like simpletons.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Primal Fear (1996)

No, not a Jurassic Park sequel or a Saw episode but a courtroom drama based on a William Diehl book with a title that bears little relevance to its story of a lawyer who represents an altarboy accused of the stabbing murder of a priest.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Sausage Party (2016)

Food fetishists and stoners will enjoy the antics of this brazen exercise in bad taste, an adult-themed animation about supermarket produce items searching for the meaning of shelf-life, while everyone else can marvel at how such a temporally weak premise is so creatively stretched to full movie feature length.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Birdman (2014)

What we tell ourselves and what our critics tell us, what the truth is and whether or not we or them or anyone else really gives a sh*t are the ideas tossed around in this "talky, depressing, philosophical bullsh*t" about a superhero movie celebrity trying to open a Broadway production, anxious about how it will be received.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Illusionist (2006)

Childhood sweethearts are reunited in adulthood when she, now fiance to the Austrian Crown Prince Leopold, is called up on stage to participate in his David Copperfield-style magic show, in this very romantic mystery that slightly frustrates with its NQR historical context too blurry to justify the morally ambiguous implications of the movie's twist.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Fight Club (1999)

This is a subversive drama about a lot more than just a club of men that secretly meets in a basement so that members can beat each other senseless.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS