A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

Given the first and second movie told us everything we needed to know about the marauding monsters with hypersonic hearing - from their arrival on earth (via comets, I think) to their being bested by high-pitched sound - an additional entry into the series like this - this is number three, a prequel - serves no real purpose except to extrapolate, for fanboys maybe, on established themes, so we see more heel-to-toe quiet walking, more alien stampedes, more held breath and bridges taken out by fighter jets; an impossibly well-behaved service cat doesn't mix things up very much in this dutiful extra ninety minutes.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Us (2019)

The fact the aggressors are doppelgangers does not make Jordan Peele's home invasion thriller any more interesting than, say, The Strangers, (another home invasion thriller with a bemusing preface note) and in fact simply ends up quadrupling the number of wearying "must try to reach the scissors" scenes of violence that viewers need to wait through before the thriller's US sociopolitical analogy is elucidated, but by the time that rush of exposition comes, your other self, not the mindless zombie tethered in the dark forced to dumbly contemplate rabbits and impossibly weighted coffee tables but your more intelligent, educated equal, will be other places, in the privileged position of making shopping lists and the like.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Black Panther (2018)

In the real world, this Marvel superhero origin story, at least you hope, marks an important cultural turning point for Hollywood away from white-male-heroes-only or whitewashed or only-white cinema releases and in this respect is a joy to behold, but in the fictional world of Wakanda, this superhero's Themyscira, the fractious politics of various tribes who scene-by-scene vacillate between steadfastly, angrily standing against Wakanda's king and a moment later fervently aligning themselves with him, or vice versa or etcetra etcetra, is boring; the movie's tonal shifts - looking and feeling at times like Wonder Woman, James Bond, Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, and Shakespeare - work against your engagement; and you are ultimately left feeling less impressed with Black Panther, the vibranium-enhanced catsuit-wearing king of Wakanda, and more interested in the kick-ass General Okoye whose movie this really is.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

12 Years A Slave (2013)

This is gruelling viewing based upon the memoir of Solomon Northup, an African American of New York State who really was kidnapped in 1841 and enslaved on Louisiana cotton plantations for 12 years, and his story, presented with rich period detail, will make you shake your head in dismay.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS