28 Weeks Later (2007)

Flaunting rules during COVID - maybe that I can kind of understand, but in the face of apocalyptic evidence post-the-virus in this sequel to 28 Days Later, it is hard to believe anyone, even kids, would "sneak out", but they do, and that lapse in credibility becomes the film's defining weakness as, repeatedly, family reunions defy apocalyptic chaos, characters display magical virus expertise, and John Woo-style theatrics push the story towards spectacle and away from the unsettling plausibility that made the original so engrossing.

★★★☆☆

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Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025)

Number 2 left me cold, but this third Knives Out mystery is a return to form with another star-studded cast populating a twisty-turny mystery full of surprises as a priest is murdered in his church and suspicion falls on the newest assistant pastor, the fantastically likeable and wonderfully emotive (and really, I think, a big reason why this is so good even though the plot is a bit overcooked) Josh O'Connor.

★★★★☆

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Wind River (2017)

Don't be turned off by the utter bleakness of the two previous Taylor Sheridan-penned movies (Sicario and Hell Or High Water, both also set on the American frontier) because this third suspense thriller of the loosely held together trilogy while bleak has a heart and a social conscience, telling a mystery of a woman's body found in the snow on a Native American reserve, and the only dissatisfaction you'll have as you come out of the cinema is that the suspense and the social commentary isn't sustained for longer beyond a ludicrous Reservoir Dogs finale that surely doesn't solve anyone's problems.

★★★★☆

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American Hustle (2013)

This lively comic "who's grifting who" crime caper with a warm heart opens with Christian Bale's conman carefully constructing a combover to hide an unfortunate male pattern baldness and from there introduces con artists, FBI agents, politicians and mobsters who are all similarly doing what they have to do to survive - not just the high tension/high risk sting at the movie's centre (based on the FBIs actual ABSCAM operation in the 70s and 80s) but their very human frailties, dysfunctional marriages, tricky affairs, dicky tickers and office politics.

★★★★☆

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Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

Years after its release in 2013, this M:I entry - the better-than-usual fourth in the series - happened to come on TV while I was sitting with the person I'd gone to see it with in the cinema, and neither of us could recall a single plot detail - only that Simon Pegg returns as Benji, that seemingly constipated comic-relief tech guy who bungles every part of the mission (Ethan, does Benji need to be trained up before going into the field?), that Ethan Hunt suction-cups up a Dubai skyscraper, races through a sandstorm, and that there is a stunt in a hotel involving diamonds and Mission: Impossible's clunkiest spy tool yet - a fake arm on a white man in a Chinese waiter uniform (guess who) - which all just goes to show how little bearing plot has on how enjoyable an M:I episode is.

★★★★☆

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Arrival (2016)

Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi about a linguistics expert enlisted by the US Government to help communicate with snuffleupagus aliens using their wineglass-stain language is for most of its runtime an intriguing mystery but it turns out to be a mystery only on account of its central idea being excessively withheld from viewers and, when the big reveal finally comes, the movie's hypnotic pace underwhelms the moment.

★★★☆☆

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Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

The worst line in this, the most incessant and most implausible M:I movie yet, is, "Ethan Hunt is the epitomy of destiny," (thanks, Alec Baldwin, the new secretary of the IMF), a line as overwrought as the whole of this fifth outing that goes on and on, never letting up, with the most bombastic and ridiculous set-pieces ever, making me wonder if it is me that is too old for this, not Cruise. 

★★★☆☆

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