True Story (2015)

Even a cursory knowledge of the true story of Christian Longo and his murdered wife and children is enough to know this bad taste exercise is the fruit of Truman Capote-wannabe Michael Finkel's wish to write his own In Cold Blood, but this nebulous "true crime" thriller about Finkel's friendship with Longo, adapted here for the screen with stretched-beyond-their-dramatic-acting-limits Jonah "punch a wall to show you are angry" Hill and James "just try to look enigmatic" Franco, ends at the conclusion of the opening scene depicting Longo's arrest in Mexico - the rest (shared handwriting, winks, feigned internal turmoil, double negatives and passionate jailhouse speeches) reeks of two self-interested men, both not very good at their jobs, trying to spin the four murders into positive personal outcomes.

★★☆☆☆

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Moneyball (2011)

Brad Pitt continues his best Robert Redford impression since being schooled by him in Spy Games, here playing a distinctly Redfordesque Billy Beane, a real-life sabermetrician whose unconventional drafting process (based on research and analysis, not whether a player's girlfriend is hot or not) led his Oakland Athletics major league baseball team to a record-breaking winning streak in 2002.

★★★★☆

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Get Him To The Greek (2010)

The plot of this follow-up to the 2008 Forgetting Sarah Marshall (a music industry intern escorts an irreverent, drug-addled rockstar across America to revive his career in a big-deal comeback concert) calls for real chaos but chaos never really comes - instead we get an unfunny half hour in Las Vegas that is more farcical than chaotic and needs simply to be cut out of the overlong movie - but Russell Brand's Aldous Snow, the rockstar - essentially Brand playing himself - is a fun creation worthy of this second (and even a future third) movie and the comedy for the most part (minus that woeful Las Vegas sequence) is really funny.

★★★☆☆

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Sausage Party (2016)

Food fetishists and stoners will enjoy the antics of this brazen exercise in bad taste, an adult-themed animation about supermarket produce items searching for the meaning of shelf-life, while everyone else can marvel at how such a temporally weak premise is so creatively stretched to full movie feature length.

★★☆☆☆

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Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Joel and Ethan Coen's movie about a 1950s Hollywood film studio is full of near versions of real Hollywood personalities from that era - Carmen Miranda, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, Lash LaRue - embroiled in a plot ripped from 1950s celebrity tabloids and while it is certainly exuberantly acted and full of elaborate period detail, the movie's biggest problem is that it distances viewers looking for meaning - it's neither a light, frothy comedy spoof nor a biting political religious satire, but probably just a largely point-free Coen brothers indulgence - them revelling in the things they love.

★★★☆☆

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22 Jump Street (2014)

The undercover cops again head to college to investigate a drug ring and achieve that rare thing, a sequel funnier than - in fact, all-round better than - the original, particularly with its self-referential humour and the hilarious way it embroils its heroes despite themselves - clearly adults and clearly not brothers - in the popularity contests, cliques and dramas of high school.

★★★★☆

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This Is The End (2013)

Some of Hollywood's most obnoxious personalities gather at James Franco's house for a party, and pretty soon the world decides to end rather than put up with another minute of their incessant shouting about drugs, semen, masturbation, and rape.

★★☆☆☆

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The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

I read Jordan Belfort's revolting book at the insistence of an enthusiastic friend; watching this Scorsese adaptation was my own decision to see if the appeal of the book that eluded me was something discernable in the film and it turns out the extravagant rise and fall of the Wolf ("Wolfie"), a small-time Bernie Madoff, makes for a loud, looong, obnoxious film, all kinds of non-PC and hard-to-believe, but minus the book's self-adulating tone and despite the pitiful man on display and the devastating crimes just out of sight, the movie, particularly the last half, is engaging and often very funny.

★★★☆☆

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21 Jump Street (2012)

Fans of the hit 80s tv show about cops undercover in American high schools (which took itself quite seriously) will be curious to see this movie-length comedy version, most amusing when it plays on the idiocy of obvious adults trying to pass themselves off as schoolkids, and maybe those besotted by Channing will enjoy it too.

★★☆☆☆

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