Now You See Me 2 (2016)

That huge ensemble of characters from number one, all deeply earnest about their craft - magic - which unites them in a fraternity as boysy, ridiculous and self-important as the Illuminati, reunites for this preposterous sequel that pits the Four Horsemen in a magic war with a tech wizard, except this is cinema magic, not magic magic, so there is no 'reveal' to justify the movie's long tangled string of events and you can't possibly care about what happens given the "anything goes" nature of the plot and the fact it all goes on in a one-note bombastic patter and that everything, even years in jail, might simply, quite ridiculously, be part of the slow burn.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Café Society (2016)

Anyone wondering why Woody Allen's 2017 Wonder Wheel about a love triangle on Coney Island in the 1950s is so underwhelming should watch 2016s Café Society, the same film but set in 1930s Hollywood - a far more satisfying movie on account of its jaunty pace, occasional wry humour and its being held together by an engaging theme: the characters, either gritty realists or dreamers of the high life, each find themselves whimsically contemplating Life's other path, whereas Wonder Wheel's Ginny was trapped going round and round on the same thoroughly unglamorous amusement park ride.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Social Network (2010)

Today's movie-making machine churns out documentaries long before a controversy is over; movie-versions come out even before books drop off the bestseller list; celebrity biopics precede celebrity deaths; and, in the case of The Social Network, a current event is committed to celluloid history long before it can truly be called history, but against all odds and despite the prematurity of the story, director David Fincher turns his movie depicting the birth of social networking site Facebook into a rivetting drama - a zippy, talky story of three lawsuits that functions as a character study of an apparently deeply unlikeable young Mark Zuckerberg.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Zack Snyder opens this with the trauma of Bruce Wayne's childhood - a backstory no-one needs to see, not now, not again - and from this tired start it is clear he has approached his job of launching DC Comics' Justice League franchise like an overzealous fanboy wanting to include evvveeerything, mashing together Nolan's Dark Knight series with his own 2013 Henry Cavill Superman movie and ending up with a monstrous, laborious, not-fun-at-all Justice League origin story that briefly features a personality-free Wonder Woman and an overly familiar Lex LuHeathLedgZuckerbergJokethor...surely jumping straight into an already assembled Justice League-proper movie would have been more fun than this!?

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS