The Brothers Grimsby (2016)

A scene involving an elephant's uterus is clearly an attempt at the sort of scandalous, much-talked-about comedy that fans of Sacha Baron Cohen have come to expect of his movies but in this terribly tired story that throws mismatched brothers together in a spy caper, the elephant scene comes after so much other not-very-funny dross that it just reeks of last-ditch desperation and Sacha Baron Cohen who is normally so hilarious when his fictional characters spear social issues in real world situations, here flounders in an entire fiction.

★☆☆☆☆

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Now You See Me (2013)

David Copperfield-esque magicians perform an Oceans Eleven style grift and arouse the interest of police and from there, over a series of subsequent grifts, this entertaining romp escalates the stakes to preposterous levels, particularly when real danger arrives in the form of car chases and carelessly fired guns, surely not in balance with the magicians' endgame, you'll think, even before you know what that is...

★★★☆☆

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The Great Gatsby (2013)

The camera sweeps around, never stopping for longer than two seconds, in Baz Luhrmann's overwrought, overthought adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, with the heart of the novel buried in too much of Bazzle's razzle-dazzle and, with the exception of Leonardo DiCaprio, the cast lacks gravitas, coming across like high school kids playing dress-ups.

★★☆☆☆

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