The Fall Guy (2024)

As battle-scarred stuntman Col Seavers, Ryan Gosling does his gormless The Nice Guys schtick that he is so good at, and with terrific chemistry between him and Emily Blunt's Jody Moreno - she's the lead actress of a film-in-production that Seavers is working on - this romantic comedy action blockbuster overcomes its middle-stretch of ennui (during a stunt sequence set in Sydney, Australia, the film starts to feel like it has no place to go) and becomes, ultimately, utterly charming.

★★★★☆ 

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The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)

The fact that the ensemble of characters in this romantic comedy (based on a Karen Joy Fowler bestseller) spend each month reading a Jane Austen novel and meeting to discuss it simply means that they are forever comparing Austen's troubled marriages, burgeoning romances, and complicated love triangles to their own: these parallels come thick and fast but are superficial, meaning you can smile - very gently - at this romcom even if you've never read a word of Austen yourself.

★★★☆☆

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The Girl On The Train (2016)

A daily commute on a train allows a woman, not a girl, to observe the lives of two couples who seem to pop out and share intimate moments on their balconies with the regularity of cuckoo birds marking the time and the commuter gets mixed up in a murder case when one of the observed disappears, in this adaptation of the popular - but judging by this movie - ridiculously plotted Paula Hawkins book, a perfect movie for anyone who likes their mystery thrillers to unfold surprise-free, in an incoherent monotone, mostly in the dark and out of chronological order to disguise how unremarkable it is, with only personality-free characters, several of them indistinguishable from each other, behaving in only completely cracked ways.

★☆☆☆☆

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Into the Woods (2014)

If you can look past the fact this whole elaborate tangle of fairytales could have been avoided if the characters stopped their incessant singing and just sat down and calmly talked to one another, and if you are not repelled by the movie's several unpleasant adult-child relationships, you might enjoy this star-studded film version of the long-running Broadway musical featuring Meryl Streep doing her best Witchy Poo.

★★☆☆☆

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The Wolfman (2010)

It won an Academy Award for best makeup and is star-studded but this 2010 werewolf story, a remake of a camp 1940s horror of the same name, seems to want to be an epic Hollywood blockbuster AND a camp 1940s horror remake at the same time and ends up being neither; instead, it is an elaborately staged and handsomely made-up "nothing" that should have more wholeheartedly embraced its camp 1940s horror roots and taken itself far less seriously.

★☆☆☆☆

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The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Anne Hathaway is Andrea, the skeptical fashion magazine employee not fulfilling her role as assistant to Meryl Streep's editor Miranda Priestley, a monstrous, hilarious melding of Anna Wintour and Cruella de Vil, but after some soul searching and styling by Stanley Tucci, Andrea steps up, work life changes for the better, the way she walks improves - she starts strutting - but on the other hand her relationships suffer.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW

Sicario (2015)

The covert black ops mission that sweeps up Emily Blunt's FBI agent is a shadowy, violent, and lawless battle against a powerful drug cartel, and the more she sees the more conflicted she becomes about the ethics of the mission, in Denis Villeneuve's brutal thriller and must-see travel guide for anyone contemplating a holiday to Juarez, Mexico.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

The repetitive Groundhog Day nature of this sci-fi action, about a man who lives and relives the same day of an alien invasion on the beaches of France, is like watching a friend grapple repeatedly with a difficult boss encounter, but the live-die-repeat loop is made fairly interesting with some dry humour, good performances by the leads, and impressive cgi detail.

★★★★☆

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