The Nest (2020)

The title, from the start, is a clever way to keep audiences guessing, hinting as it does at slimey masses of eggs of some sort of weird alien family, while the initial set-up is horror-home stuff - an entrepreneur moves his family from the US to London, into an old country manor a la Amityville Horror; halfway through, I stopped to google whether I was watching an adaptation of Agatha Christie's 'Endless Night', and along the way was reminded of 'Arbitrage', 'The Devil's Advocate', that awful 'Saltburn'...but this not knowing exactly what you are getting with 'The Nest' is what keeps the exceptionally well-acted, handsomely produced Canadian thriller razorwire sharp, taut.

★★★★☆

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The Holiday (2006)

Two separate movies spliced together, Nancy Meyers' loooong episode of Wife Swap (or Life Swap) tells the stories of two unlucky-in-love professional women who do a holiday switcheroo and finally meet the loves of their lives - Cameron Diaz's Amanda lands a handsome widower who fixes coffee machines, while Kate Winslett's Iris shows some affection towards a musician but falls head-over-heels in love with modern home interiors.

★★★★☆

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Contagion (2011)

In Deep Impact, another global panic disaster movie with an all-star cast, it is a meteor hurtling towards Earth that, threatening human extinction, leads the world's population to act in extraordinary ways (including holding a lottery for a limited number of life-preserving prizes), but here in Contagion, it is a new strain of virus - something like the coronavirus - that wipes out millions, starts a global panic, and launches the scientific race to find a vaccine, and even though we've seen it all before in Deep Impact and Outbreak and others, it is gripping stuff ripped from today's newspaper headlines.

★★★★☆

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Vox Lux (2019)

It is entirely possible the provocative scenes of terrorism and Willem Dafoe's voiceover (an omniscient fairytale narration which lapses occasionally into an uncertain subjunctive mood, as unnecessary as it is overwritten: sex is "nocturnal activities" and Stockholm a "far from exotic city in Europe", thank you very much) were tacked on in a last ditch effort to render different from A Star Is Born this dismaying snorefest, the abyssmal likes of which I haven't experienced since Winona Ryder and James Franco's The Letter.

★☆☆☆☆

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Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald (2018)

This Harry Potter universe expansion pack is about an older, constipated (?) Harry Potter/Doctor Who type who surrounds himself with only the most uninteresting of friends - are we really supposed to care about the irritating Queenie and her spellbound Poirot, or keep track of who is and who isn't a fullblood wizard? - and punctuating the "you can only possibly care less about all this if you've read the books" plot are belaboured cgi sequences - a Groot climbing in and out and in and out of Eddy Redmayne's pocket, a mole collecting coins, a bird, etc.. - that I presume are included as careful nods to the Potterverse or to remind you of characters who will become important again in number three, four, five -  and they are spectacular feats of animation - but here, in this decidedly unmagical, heavyhanded snorefest, these moments merely slow down an already tedious series of magic-school carry-on and pokemon creature reveals.

★☆☆☆☆

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Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Shot in a style that recalls cold war propaganda, graphic novels, and 50s science fiction, this odd movie, both grandly staged and obscure, tells of a pilot, Sky Captain, a kind of Biggles in a steam-punk alternate reality, and a reporter, Polly Perkins, who team up to investigate an intrigue involving miniature elephants, metal war birds, disappearing scientists, giant robots that descend upon the world in The Day The Earth Stood Still style, and an inexplicable The Wizard of Oz tie-in, and it is always visually arresting if not always such an interesting narrative.

★★★☆☆

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Hugo (2011)

Watch this, a precious, highly stylised and drama-free whimsy about an orphan boy who discovers the magic of cinema, or simply recall instead that part of each Oscar award ceremony where the presenters heavyhandedly expound film's curative properties. 

★★☆☆☆ 

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The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)

Despite the anticlimax of its fudged final scene, this is a terrific adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 book that succeeds as a classy thriller, a glamorous European travelogue, and a deeply disturbing psychological character study of a young chameleon whose talents as a voice artist and tendency to be in the right place at the right time assist him in keeping up a series of wickedly simple but deadly deceptions.

★★★★☆

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The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

The world revels in Wes Anderson movies and this was especially the case upon the release of this precious, childish, irritating, laboured pantomime about a hotel concierge involved in a theft and murder, a movie which plays out like all of Wes Anderson's movies, like a storyboard - stylised and empty.

☆☆☆☆☆

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Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (2011)

Robert Downey Jr mumbles incomprehensibly through most of it but this second instalment of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes series is great fun and with murderous Turkish cossacks, gypsies, and turn-of-the-century science and technology, it stays true to the core look, feel and themes of Arthur Conan Doyle's creation.

★★★☆☆

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Sleuth (2007)

An awful remake of the 1972 movie based on the Anthony Shaffer play, in which everything about the now classic original film has been changed for the worse, including the role played by Michael Caine (now the older of the two protagonists), the set (modern and ridiculous), and many elements of the original story, presumably to mark this as different to the original masterpiece and give the false impression there was a need to remake it.

★☆☆☆☆

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A.I. (2001)

A.I. is like two movies in one: the first half is like a Stanley Kubrick movie and is rich and thoughtful, cinematic, and cool in tone, about loss and maternal love, and the second half is like a Spielberg movie and is a sloppy childish mess with a disney-feel and with so many ideas in it none of them get any adequate consideration.

★★☆☆☆

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