Carry-on (2024)

It's set in an airport at Christmas time and features a pre-male pattern baldness blue-uniformed everyman (Taron Egerton) who in the course of his usual work as an airport luggage checker suddenly finds himself the sole hope in a battle against terrorists, so Die Hard comparisons have to be made and this one, in comparison, is a stinker, really - perfectly watchable but absurd, with the convoluted terrorist plot undone from the outset and everything else that follows just a ludicrous, well, carry-on.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Horrible Bosses (2011)

Three employees plot to do away with their horrible bosses, a plan that sees them, respectable men leading regular suburban lives, venturing clumsily into an underworld of crime, which is the premise of this shrieky, snide, sneery and unpleasant comedy of minimal laughs featuring Hollywood's most smug performers.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Office Christmas Party (2016)

After a really strong set-up and first half, this comedy about the Zenotech corporation's efforts to throw a Christmas party descends, like the party itself, into chaos, abandoning narrative sense, moving the action away from the titular party, and ending on the idea that financial, medical, emotional and organisational woes are best dealt with with a sex and drug orgy, as if the writers themselves lost interest in the film's second half when one of them gave the signal for the others to join him outside for another toke/smoke/chuff/shot/snort/job.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Couples Retreat (2009)

Several couples go to an exclusive island retreat for marriage counselling, is the context of this romantic vom-edy, actually a long series of unfunny, uncharming sex, masturbation, and penis jokes featuring the most unattractive array of petulant manchildren you will ever see in a movie - far from wishing them all a speedy relationship recovery, you want to tell the women to run for the departing boats and never look back.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Zootopia (2016)

Real-world issues like racial stereotyping, our conscious and unconscious biases, and politics are cleverly packed into this entertaining Disney cartoon mystery about Judy the rabbit who wants to become a police officer, not a carrot farmer — a movie with such an important message you feel it should be mandatory viewing for all children.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Gift (2015)

This slow burn psychological thriller about two men linked by a secret past threatens to derail on two or three occasions - into melodrama, into bad taste, into meaninglessness - but the ultimate gift of The Gift, written and directed by Australian wonder Joel Edgerton, is that it always knows exactly what it is doing, in the end delivering a profound reckoning for a deeply flawed bad guy.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW