Molly's Game (2017)

This film adaptation of Molly's Game, author Molly Bloom's autobiographical account of her rise to fame as a high-stakes poker-game madam, is Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut and is a fast-paced, funny and interesting character study featuring Jessica Chastain in the title role, Idris Elba as her reluctant lawyer, and a whole lot of fast prattle just like in that other Jessica Chastain movie, Ms Sloane.

★★★★☆

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Dark Phoenix (2019)

All we want from these X-men movies are some scenes in which the mutants pool their resources and unleash their powers in imaginative combination and this 2019 episode, one of the "Muppet babies" ones of late, delivers lots of that - we especially liked the  train carriage scene - and we also get some more of poor Jean Grey's backstory, though after some new details about how she came into Professior Xavier's care as a child, her story becomes the same old same old one about her reckoning with her awesome powers - it seems the only new thing that can be done with this character is adding different adjectives to her name.

★★★☆☆

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Take Shelter (2011)

In this tense but ultimately dissatisfying thriller, kind of like a movielength episode of TV's Doomsday Bunkers, a man presees disaster and despite the disbelief, concern and ridicule he experiences from all sides, not to mention the potential financial ruin he faces, he persists in constructing a stocked and comfortable underground shelter, the sort that would help at ground zero of a nuclear event.

★★★☆☆

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Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

This is an undeniably rivetting account of the hunt and execution of Osama Bin Laden, but it is also chilling in its depiction of war games in which the cost of a life is rationalised.

★★★★☆

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