Black Panther (2018)

In the real world, this Marvel superhero origin story, at least you hope, marks an important cultural turning point for Hollywood away from white-male-heroes-only or whitewashed or only-white cinema releases and in this respect is a joy to behold, but in the fictional world of Wakanda, this superhero's Themyscira, the fractious politics of various tribes who scene-by-scene vacillate between steadfastly, angrily standing against Wakanda's king and a moment later fervently aligning themselves with him, or vice versa or etcetra etcetra, is boring; the movie's tonal shifts - looking and feeling at times like Wonder Woman, James Bond, Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, and Shakespeare - work against your engagement; and you are ultimately left feeling less impressed with Black Panther, the vibranium-enhanced catsuit-wearing king of Wakanda, and more interested in the kick-ass General Okoye whose movie this really is.

★★★☆☆

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Taken 3 (2014)

The dopiest moments in this appalling third movie of the Taken series include a scene in which a peach yoghurt drink plays a dubious role in ex-government operative Bryan Mills' intricate plot to reunite with his daughter; a scene involving a Russian gang leader who makes a money-exchange appointment, barking down a phone, "Meet me in an hour," and is then in the very next scene seen raunching it up in a spa with two bikini-clad women - you can imagine him hissing, "We need to be quick!" (and watch as the women vanish without trace when the appointment starts and guns start blazing); and any scene involving Forest Whitaker's helpful-unhelpful-helpful-unhelpful investigator who in place of purpose and personality sports a chess piece and an elastic band.

★☆☆☆☆

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Panic Room (2002)

This thriller opens on Jodie Foster's Meg Altman inspecting a big empty shell of a NY brownstone which she promptly buys and discovers has a panic room just in time for three thieves to break in, and from there, this big empty shell of a movie with a neat concept boxed up deep inside becomes a long stalemate with Meg and her daughter inside the panic room, the thieves at a loss outside, and no amount of tricksy camera work sweeping in and out of keyholes, through walls or meaninglessly zooming in on torch bulbs and gas pipes can raise the tension to anything close to panic-levels given the whole situation is a mess no-one is in control of.

★★☆☆☆

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Arrival (2016)

Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi about a linguistics expert enlisted by the US Government to help communicate with snuffleupagus aliens using their wineglass-stain language is for most of its runtime an intriguing mystery but it turns out to be a mystery only on account of its central idea being excessively withheld from viewers and, when the big reveal finally comes, the movie's hypnotic pace underwhelms the moment.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Species (1995)

A group of way too laidback misfit investigators (including Forest Whitaker as celluloid's least insightful psychic ever), chase after - no, stroll around after -- a scantily clad Natasha Henstridge who plays an escaped and rapidly evolving half-human, half-alien science experiment and temptress killing machine, in this police procedural "sci-fi" that spawned a number of unwarranted sequels.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW