Old (2021)

No, director M. Night Shyamalan doesn't have an excuse for yet another lame ending because although this time his movie, a beach-based Picnic At Hanging Rock (a group of people lug picnic baskets to a beach only to discover they are trapped and inexplicably ageing there) is based on Sandcastle, a graphic novel by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, Shyamalan actually changes the ending of the kooky Lost-like events, so the lame ending is his again, but up to that late point when the story turns rusty, he delivers a captivating fantasy horror thriller full of great acting, weird and wonderful ideas, a beautiful confined location like the stage of a theatre production, and of course his trademark cameo and camerawork, sweeping and overhead and long-take.

★★★☆☆

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The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

You'll yearn for your own adventures watching this account of Che Guevara's formative motorbike ride around South America with his friend, Alberto Granado, but you'll also wonder at the characteristics of the 23-year-old Argentinian medical student that see him so politicised by his adventure that - in events beyond the scope of this travelogue - he goes on to become leader of the Cuban Revolution, then a reviled mass-murdering terrorist killed by a CIA-supported Bolivian military, then a contemporary hipster icon.

★★★★☆

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