The Disaster Artist (2017)

Just like the mirthful viewers who still years after its release fill theatres for midnight screenings of Tommy Wiseau's The Room, director, producer and lead actor James Franco and his co-stars (his brother Dave and an enormous number of celebrities appearing in cameo) gather in this adaptation of Greg Sestero's making-of account to rejoice in The Room's utter awfulness and to revel in Wiseau's ineptitude as a filmmaker and actor.

★★★☆☆

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Bird Box (2018)

Sandra Bullock does her best with stupid material that tries to do A Quiet Place with sight-deprivation rather than voice-deprivation affecting the survivors of a never clearly elucidated apocalyptic event - these characters, either blindfolded or with eyes clenched tightly closed, are left unable to do anything (the most exciting thing that happens over the course of 48 hours blindfolded on a boat is one character falls overboard only to be plucked back out of the water a moment later) or the characters do manage to do things and it is ludicrous, like driving to the supermarket or running around a forest for the first time, blindfolded.

★★☆☆☆

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Reclaim (2014)

While in the Dominican Republic, an American couple - one of the pair, Ryan Phillipe in a defiantly white tee - falls victim to a human trafficking scam that proves so dull a badly animated and wholly unnecessary cgi car-dangling-from-a-cliff sequence is thrown in towards the movie's end in an effort to liven things up, but it doesn't and nor do the repetitive oh-no-the-bad-guy-(John-Cusack)-rises-again (and chases the couple through the forest again) endscenes.

★☆☆☆☆

Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

This is a breezy Woody Allen romantic comedy after Oscar Wilde about a cynical magician (Colin Firth) who, despite his scepticism about her claims, falls in love with a psychic (an always delightful Emma Stone).

★★★★☆

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Stoker (2013)

A pleasing thriller for fans of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, this story of mysterious Uncle Charlie's arrival into a schoolgirl's life has a distinctive arty, gothic style, stellar performances from its four main leads - Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode and Jackie Weaver - and is notable for being the first English-language production of director Park Chan-wook. 

★★★☆☆

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