Suburbicon (2017)

The interesting part in George Clooney's sixth directorial effort, a black comedy based on a Coen Brothers' screenplay, is the desegregation happening in Suburbicon, a fictional suburb of the sort that popped up and spread, uniform and white, across the US in the 50s, but the moving in of the African-American Mayers family at the end of the decade and the ugly reaction of the locals (a situation apparently inspired by the experiences of a real-life 'Myers' family in Levittown, Pennsylvania) is just a broad context of questionable relevance to the Fargo nonsense of the plot - suburbanites get in over their heads in grubby crime - which reduces the more interesting context to just a hubbub that only serves to disguise a gunshot at one point late in the - yawn - story.

★★☆☆☆

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Tomorrowland (2015)

This is not so much a sci-fi adventure mystery for kids as a sci-fi adventure for kids that never gets to the point - or does, but only after more than two hours of slow-reveal youth-empowering positive psychology about Casey, a feisty science-loving teenager who discovers she is an all-important link between this doomed world and a handsomely-realised paradisiacal one called Tomorrowland where I think only a lucky few dreamers like her are permitted.

★★★☆☆

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Money Monster (2016)

A finance news presenter of the zany sort you might see on a morning talkshow is taken hostage live on television and saving him requires a producer to unravel the mystery of an overnight $800 million drop in shareholder value in the mega Ibis corporation; luckily for the hostage, solving the mystery is a brief matter of joining two enormous dots in a movie that eschews satire and its potential as a corporate thriller, opting instead for cartoony, highly unlikely drama.

★★☆☆☆

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From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

Director Robert Rodriguez and writer Quentin Tarantino display their penchant for talky, stylised violence and fun unconstrained by genre conventions with this road movie that halfway through suddenly changes into a vampire horror, a precursor to their later grindhouse collaborations.

★★★☆☆

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Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Joel and Ethan Coen's movie about a 1950s Hollywood film studio is full of near versions of real Hollywood personalities from that era - Carmen Miranda, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, Lash LaRue - embroiled in a plot ripped from 1950s celebrity tabloids and while it is certainly exuberantly acted and full of elaborate period detail, the movie's biggest problem is that it distances viewers looking for meaning - it's neither a light, frothy comedy spoof nor a biting political religious satire, but probably just a largely point-free Coen brothers indulgence - them revelling in the things they love.

★★★☆☆

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Solaris (2002)

This American remake of the 1972 Russian 'Solyaris', about a psychologist summoned to a space station-in-distress, starts well by adopting the original's mesmerising tone with a sleek, sexy new look, and it certainly doesn't hurt that George Clooney's, um, natural acting talents are on regular display, but too quickly the movie starts spelling everything out, characters hurry to articulate their emotional crises, and the profound philosophical puzzle that was the original movie ends up a fairly monotonous, superficial romantic space drama here.

★★☆☆☆

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Fantastic Mr Fox (2009)

Wes Anderson brings Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox to life in his usual self-consciously quirky way, occasionally amusing with his all-American The Honeymooners approach to the British text, but more occasionally irking.

★★★☆☆

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Michael Clayton (2007)

This legal suspense thriller similar to but more polished and intelligent than a John Grisham adaptation, has George Clooney playing Michael Clayton, a man deeply involved in a mega-corporation's dirty deals but exactly who he is and how he sleeps at night are the questions that keep the movie thrilling to its final scene.

★★★★☆

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The Descendants (2011)

This gentle family drama, not at all cloying or sentimental, has George Clooney playing a husband who finds himself rethinking his marriage and his responsibilities as a father and Hawaiian land title holder, during the final days of his wife's life after she is in a boating accident.

★★★☆☆

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Gravity (2013)

An exhausting ninety minute space shuttle rollercoaster ride.

★★★☆☆

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Inglourious Basterds (2009)

In making Inglourious Basterds, a movie about a troupe of Nazi scalp hunters, Quentin Tarantino has clearly had so much fun that not even Nazi history, film-making and story-telling conventions, or even the expectation that he'd correctly spell the title, has restrained him, and despite the film's grave subject matter, that fun translates to the audience.

★★★★★

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