Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023)

When mythological monsters run amok in Philadelphia and among them are angry unicorns only placated by handfuls of Skittles, things in this DC-related superhero movie start to teeter at my "switch off" point, especially given up to that point I'd already tired of a superhero movie that wants to champion a true mythological hero while also making him an annoying teen only as strong as each of his six team members, not to mention all those uncomfortable scenes showing teenaged boys holding hands and being romanced with 6000-year-old women. 

★★★☆☆

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Anna (2019)

I think what Luc Besson intended was another slick, smart, minimally-plotted sexy violent spy thriller like 'La Femme Nikita' and its American remake 'The Assassin' with Bridget Fonda, but 'Anna' is a far cry from those movies with its woeful acting, laughable casting, terrible editing that makes the fisticuff action look like tai chi. and a story told via choppy-changey timehops that you know are just an attempt to try to disguise how wafer-thin and ridiculous the story is (a globe-trotting supermodel-slash-spy brings the KGB and the CIA together with a kiss each).

★☆☆☆☆

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The Hawk (1993)

A few years after she starred as Jane Tennison in the original Prime Suspect mini-series, Helen Mirren starred in this not terribly interesting, nor very psychologically coherent, BBC flim playing an English housewife who starts to think her husband is The Hawk, a serial killer pecking women's insides out on rainy nights along the freeway.

The Pledge (2001)

The trouble with director Sean Penn's mostly-gripping The Pledge, about a cop who promises a grieving mother to find the killer of her child, is not Jack Nicholson's gnarlier-than-usual detective (compare him with the clean-cut Foyle-like turns of It Happened In Broad Daylight's Heinz Rührmann and Cold Light of Day's Richard E Grant) nor the story's movement from the Swiss Alps to Nevada, but Penn's muddling Dürrenmatt's screenplay - a jaunty mystery with a detective-novel ending - with the author's later book, "The Pledge - Requiem for the Detective Novel, which refashions that screenplay's plot into a much darker existential drama; Penn borrows scenes from the earlier 1958 adaptation and incorporates aspects of the screenplay (such as a sequence that demystifies the serial killer), and so detracts from the book's grim philosophy.

★★★☆☆

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Woman In Gold (2015)

A monumental Supreme Court decision proves not so monumental a cinema experience in Woman In Gold with the verdict in the case (one brought by Maria Altmann against the Austrian Government in an attempt to reclaim Klimt artworks lost to her family during Austria's Nazi occupation) padded out to movie-length by way of tired, "but we already know what happened" hurdles to her cause and, further padding, the irrelevant (to the law) and not very illuminating character foibles of Altmann and her lawyer Randy Schoenberg, played respectively by underoccupied Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds.

★★☆☆☆

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The Good Liar (2019)

It's not quite true to say you know exactly what is going to happen in this thriller based on Nicholas Searle's book because the movie withholds until the end some specifics that are impossible to foresee, but enough is known from the outset to make the broader arc of this crime thriller predictable and it is just thanks to the fine performances of British acting royalty Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren, playing conman Richard and the latest victim in his sights, the wealthy widow Betty, that the plot, largely without surprises, is still so entertaining.

★★★☆☆

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Winchester (2018)

The many nods to Hammer Film Productions - the lead named 'Dr Price' who looks like Vincent Price, the florrid red titlecard hanging over a gothic house - feel less like a homage to 70s horror than a pre-emptive plea for viewers not to take the daft Winchester Mystery House caper too seriously, which is wise, because the film is riddled with illogic: sealed rooms with secret entrances, thirteen nailed doors and thirteen hooked passages that fail as ghost repellents anyway; an anti-gun theme that ends up resolved with gunfire; and finally, the baffling suggestion the whole may result from an earthquake?!

★★★☆☆

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State of Play (2009)

A Washington Globe reporter, the friend of a US Congressman, investigates the murder of a petty thief, a pizza delivery guy and the woman the politician was having an affair with, and in doing so uncovers political shenanigans, in this ripping political mystery that holds together well except towards the end when there are revelations that would have 'out' earlier in the natural course of a story not so desperate to prolong its mystery.

★★★★☆

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Excalibur (1981)

This fantasy adventure tells the story of King Arthur (and Merlin, Camelot, the Lady of the Lake, Sir Gawain, Morgana, and the Knights of the Round Table...) and is much more captivating on its 1981 film budget than more recent sfx-driven Hollywood extravaganzas, helped enormously by its being studded with big-name British superstars-in-the-making like Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson, who all loan a Shakespearean weight to proceedings.

★★★★☆

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2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

This science fiction sequel is fascinating for having special effects that are worse in 1984 than the prequel in 1968 sixteen years earlier, and where that Kubrick film was philosophical, metered, balletic and profound, this is like a DLC expansion pack offering fans a quick add-on storyline that isn't terrible (Russian and American astronauts investigate the failed Discovery One mission to Jupiter) but is certainly, compared with the original, obvious, cursory, and fairly forgettable with a narrative driven by Captain Kirk-style diary logs. 

★★★☆☆

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Eye In The Sky (2015)

Depicting a situation rather than telling a story, this war room thriller purports to show a realistic lead-up to a fictional air strike and it is fascinating if only to wonder at the reality of the technology (not the hummingbird spycam - that's certainly not being used by British Intelligence) and to wonder at the likelihood of the discussions that take place between British and American military leaders and politicians who drink tea and weigh up potential collateral damage.

★★★★☆

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Hitchcock (2012)

I am a huge Hitchcock fan but found very little of interest in this wafer-thin movie-length impersonation and can only assume obsessed fanboys somewhere get off on the minutiae of the making of controversial Psycho which (*spoiler alert*) did end up getting made.

★★☆☆☆

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