John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)

With a plot about as sophisticated as a Spy Kids movie, film-sets that resemble the painted polystyrene walls of a laser tag night-out, and role-playing action of the sort you might see offered up by overzealous bachelor party paintballers or DnDers running around in capes or three-piece suits and elocuting words like "Parabellum" (say it as you swirl wine in a chalice), this tiresome third in the John Wick series dares to be even worse than the previous two cartoons: a Fanta-grade (thanks, Laurence Fishburne, for that punctuation) string of gun- and knife-fantasists' wet dreams with lethargic fight-scene choreography (we all love Keanu Reeves but think of the flat-footedness of Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull..) and compound this lethargy with the nerdy flamboyance of cape-twirling and gunplay to classical music, plus insistent we-want-this-series-to-go-forever universe-building and a troubling unerring nonchalance from everyone in the face of, well, endless face-knivings, plus - the worse thing - a dismaying promise of even more prepostrousness to come.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Last of Sheila (1973)

This is one of those parlour game thrillers in which the characters run around playing macabre games involving murder, but it isn't one of the greats like Sleuth or Deathtrap, but rather more on the level of the very entertaining but imperfect Knives Out and reminscient of April Fool's Day with its dated look and not entirely satisfactory mystery involving, similar to April Fool's Day, a gathering on a yacht of a group of film industry associates whose host has organised an itinerary of games and puzzles designed to flush out a killer.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Case 39 (2009)

A bit like The Bad Seed crossed with The Omen only incredibly stupid, Case 39 stars Renee Zellweger as a child welfare worker who comes very quickly to the conclusion that the child murderers and abusers she encounters over the course of her job have good reason for wanting to stuff their devil's spawn into their gas ovens, and so she starts wanting to do the same.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Scoop (2006)

A journalist, a magician, and a ghost investigate the possibility a killer-on-the-loose is well-to-do man-about-town Peter Lyman in this very minor Woody Allen comedy mystery that gives the distinct impression of having too quickly made the transition from Allen's notebook to the screen because none of the elements of the story hold together very tightly (and you feel with a bit more trouble things like tarot cards, fortunes, magic, death and careers would) and everyone is ad-libbing really badly.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)

The Giant Slayer story I remember was about a false hero talking about flies, not giants, when he boasted he'd downed six, and the Beanstalk story was a fairytale involving a cow sale and just one giant with a keen sense of smell, but this movie's hybrid Beanstalk/Slayer story — too gory for kids, only mildly entertaining for adults — mixes Giant Slayer mythology with modern flourishes and features myriad giants - cartoony Fraggle Rock ogre-ones, not real people-split-camera ones, for some reason.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW