Angel Has Fallen (2019)

All you need to know is that this Part Three of the ...Has Fallen action-thriller series is the one where the President's star security agent, hero Mike Banning (an almost too-old-for-this Gerard Butler) becomes the hunted, like Ethan Hunt and Jason Bourne before him, on the run from his own agency, with the by-the-numbers action taking place on highways, at gas stations, on logging roads and at a hideaway in the woods - oh, and Dad turns up - rather than in the series' usual Die Hard-esque besieged fortress, and it is mindless, adequate but hardly excites for the future of the series where Bourne, I mean Banning, starts to recover lost memories of adamantium implant operations or finds himself having to reconnect with his estranged son and fellow agent played by Jai Courtney.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

The horribly wronged Count of Monte Cristo has you on side all the way through his revenge plot in Dumas' thousand-odd pages, but after his wife and child are brutally killed by home invaders in this film's opening scenes, Gerard Butler's horribly wronged Law Abiding Citizen only momentarily has your sympathy when suddenly the movie pulls the revenge-thriller rug out from under you and makes him the Batman technology-enhanced, street-smart Jason Bournish villain of the film and it is up to Jamie Foxx's prosecutor Nick Rice to stop him enacting his cold dish of extremely gruesome revenge on everyone that failed him.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Ugly Truth (2009)

Katherine Heigl is a morning news show producer with integrity but low ratings and Gerard Butler is a crude, politically incorrect sharer of 'hard truths' who attracts huge numbers of viewers (basically he says that women are to blame for their own lovelessness; that they need to try harder to appeal to men), and of course these two opposites butt heads but pretty soon he's got her trying harder to appeal to men, having public orgasms, becoming willing to be scrutinized and groped and dressed in lingerie that men want to put in their mouths and swearing like a trooper, so a romance becomes possible between the two.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Nim's Island (2008)

Perhaps if you've read Wendy Orr's children's book this kids movie about an island-dwelling girl, her father missing at sea, and a San Franciscan author of adventure novels who overcomes neuroses to come to the girl's rescue, doesn't seem so inane, but if you haven't, the movie is a not very interesting jumble of disparate details including a volcano, Doctor Doolittle animals that all but talk, Australian tourists, fantasy muses, and caricatures, not characters, with Jodie Foster's Alexandra Rover, for one, stumbling about in a mackintosh hat like Paddington Bear.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Butterfly on a Wheel (US: Shattered / EU: Desperate Hours) (2007)

When their daughter is abducted, a devastated couple is coerced into performing tasks that further undo their perfect lives by a man who remains their constant companion for 24 hours, in this unlikely crime thriller with a twist at the end that is not as interesting as it would be if it were to be discussed by lawyers in a Butterfly on a Wheel 2.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life (2003)

Nods to the Lara Croft series of computer games — shark punches, motorbike rides along the Great Wall of China, and skimpy silver and gold tomb-raiding outfits — keep this sequel a fanboy's fantasy rather than the female-helmed Indiana Jones-style adventure of wider appeal that the movie could have been, with Lara Croft hunting an orb belonging to Alexander the Great.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW

Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

The US President is held hostage in a White House overtaken by North Korean terrorists and only John McClane -- I mean, only Gerard Butler's Mike Banning -- can save the day, in this oh-so-lame Die Hard ripoff that steals entire scenes but lacks the humour, charisma, sense, and suspense of the action movie classic.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW