The Jane Austen Book Club (2007)

The fact that the ensemble of characters in this romantic comedy (based on a Karen Joy Fowler bestseller) spend each month reading a Jane Austen novel and meeting to discuss it simply means that they are forever comparing Austen's troubled marriages, burgeoning romances, and complicated love triangles to their own: these parallels come thick and fast but are superficial, meaning you can smile - very gently - at this romcom even if you've never read a word of Austen yourself.

★★★☆☆

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The Fog (2005)

I think John Carpenter's The Fog, the 1979 horror film with its solid performance by 70s horror queen Jamie Lee Curtis and effective creepy effects deserves sequels and prequels, spin-offs and origin stories but then along came this vapid teeny-bopper remake: the imbecilic plot is front and centre right from the first scene - blah blah blah founding fathers blah blah blah contracts - and because the plot is so silly, other desperate things are thrown in: stupid how-does-The-Fog-do-that death scenes; a show-stopping we-are-being-hunted-down-by-fog-but-excuse-us-we-are-horny-teens shower sex scene; horror sequences conceived free from concerns for the plot that see a young boy give barely a minute of his attention to a man drowning at sea or that see an almost comatose, insensible murder suspect next spotted running around with a healthy complexion (presumably exonerated by an off-camera court case - "It was The Fog, Your Honour - my client is innocent!"); and repetitive dream sequences to really unnecesarily hammer home that silly plot...

★★☆☆☆

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Taken 3 (2014)

The dopiest moments in this appalling third movie of the Taken series include a scene in which a peach yoghurt drink plays a dubious role in ex-government operative Bryan Mills' intricate plot to reunite with his daughter; a scene involving a Russian gang leader who makes a money-exchange appointment, barking down a phone, "Meet me in an hour," and is then in the very next scene seen raunching it up in a spa with two bikini-clad women - you can imagine him hissing, "We need to be quick!" (and watch as the women vanish without trace when the appointment starts and guns start blazing); and any scene involving Forest Whitaker's helpful-unhelpful-helpful-unhelpful investigator who in place of purpose and personality sports a chess piece and an elastic band.

★☆☆☆☆

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