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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The Mountain Between Us (2017)

Like Cupid's bow, a plane crash, a broken leg, starvation, dehydration, and the smell that comes from not having washed for three weeks bring two strangers stranded in the mountains closer together in this woefully scripted but easy-to-watch romantic drama, the best thing of which, not counting smoking hot Idris Elba, is the title which much more succinctly than the movie encapsulates both the differences that separate the strangers and the shared traumatic experience that unites them.

★★☆☆☆

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Wonder Wheel (2017)

When a gangster's wife on the run seeks refuge in her estranged father's home overlooking Coney Island's theme park amusements, a Tennessee Williams-style love triangle develops between her, her father's wife, and a lifeguard (a conspicuous, heavily made-up and eager-to-impress Justin Timberlake who is given the job of providing the voiceover narration and direct-to-camera monologues that are so often a tired, unnecessary feature of recent Woody Allen movies).

★★★☆☆

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Titanic (1997)

The most irritating thing about this romance set aboard a painstakingly recreated-to-scale Titanic is that Leonardo's Jack and Kate's Rose are entirely fictitious, so at every minute of the three-plus hour epic, viewers are left discombobulated by what might be painstakingly recreated historical fact and what else is pure throwaway James Cameron fantasy.

★★☆☆☆

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Movie 43 (2013)

Perhaps compiled from footage recovered from the SNL cutting room floor, this laugh-free sketch comedy compilation is remarkable only for the incredible number of A-list Hollywood stars who were willing to appear in its appalling skits about excrement, sperm, grubby sex practices, incest...

☆☆☆☆☆

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Steve Jobs (2015)

Biopics often feel like narrative-free highlight reels but Danny Boyle's cleverly constructed one about the co-founder and CEO of Apple tells a fascinating story with great heart, humour, emotion, and is full of character, about the flawed genius, his vision for Apple, his family and key professional relationships.

★★★★★

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The Reader (2008)

*SPOILER ALERT*

Don't believe the poster: this is a very dreary drama, not a provocative thriller, that asks audiences to sympathise with a paedophile serving life in prison for war crimes she considers less abhorrent than illiteracy.

★★☆☆☆

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Carnage (2011)

Roman Polanski brings to the big screen God of Carnage, the successful stage play about two couples negotiating various differences of opinion, and while he manages to generate a few genuine laughs, it is all over before it begins and the impact of the satire is diminished by overtheatrics and moments of overacting.

★★☆☆☆

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