Hector and the Search For Happiness (2014)

Things momentarily improve when Toni Collette turns up in the last third and shines brightly as the only genuine thing on the screen, but otherwise this is a nauseating affair about a psychiatrist (Simon Pegg) - a sometimes accident-prone Mr Bean, a sometimes naive trenchcoated Monsieur Hulot, an occasionally slapstick Charlie Chaplin, once a midair doctor, and at other times a wide-eyed Walter Mitty fantasist - who zips around the world like that Eat Pray Love person, searching for happiness, which he finds and packages up in fifteen one-line platitudes that appear on the screen occasionally throughout the movie like patronising summary statements of all the nonsense that has come before - cartoon sequences, a brutal kidnapping, mawkish travelogues, cloying romance, slapstick - a series of events seemingly intended as a "wondrous kaleidoscope" of the human condition but just irritating.  

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE  REVIEWS

Alex Cross (2012)

The villain in this third movie based on the James Patterson series of Alex Cross books starts off as a skilled cage fighter, spends some time as a nasty home-invading torturer of women, is revealed to be a meticulous drawer of charcoal crime scene pictures, an accomplished portrait artist and a proficient in composing abstracts, morphs for the middle stretch of the film into a sniper assassin, then turns out to be a technical wizard who can manipulate the electrics of a city train, and on and on and on it goes, with Tyler Perry - not the first two movies' Morgan Freeman - playing the title character who uses clichėd psychology to solve the mess of a mystery and catch the utrerly implausible chameleon crim.

★☆☆☆☆

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

The Pink Panther (2006)

Steve Martin steps into the role that Peter Sellers made his own over seven of nine previous Pink Panther instalments and he is not any more or less funny - the entire series is a bit wet - but despite yourself you'll laugh at the daggy dad-jokes as the bungling Inspector Clouseau somehow manages to track down a murderer and the legendary jewel, The Pink Panther.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Professional (Leon) (1994)

The 12-year-old orphan girl of a family shot to pieces by bad cops seeks refuge with a man from a neighbouring apartment, a hitman who makes the questionable decision of teaching her his trade, in this engaging action thriller that is part American (NY setting, Portman in her Hollywood debut, Oldman, English language), part French (Jean Reno, traditional French accordian music, Luc Besson French cool).

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW