Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)

A string of five or six encounters with dinosaurs - one encounter at sea, one on a cliff, another in some sort of tunnel, many involving water - with very little effort made to link these encounters with a sensible story or populate the episodes with characters you care less about and want not to get chomped or stomped.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Leave The World Behind (2023)

A family's vacation is interrupted when the man who owns their holiday rental shows up with his daughter in the middle of the night and asks to stay, the set-up of this very M. Night Shyamalan-style slow-burn thriller in which characters are cut-off from the world and from information and left with only their imaginations to grapple with a seemingly absurd new reality, and it is just a shame the solid and intriguing drama concludes with a distinctly American notion that zoning-out in front of the telly beats wrestling critically with world news.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Green Book (2018)

The movie opens in a Chicago club, the Copa, in 1962 with a big band number playing that will have you tapping your foot and wishing you were there in your tuxedo with a cocktail in your hand and despite the depressing ever-present racism of the era and suggestions the movie presents a far from factual account of the duo's time together, that energy continues throughout the upbeat, incredibly feel-good story of real-life concert pianist Dr Shirley and his driver, real-life Tony Lip and their cross-country concert tour through America's Deep South, destination: lifelong friendship.

★★★★★

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Hidden Figures (2016)

The moving moments in this crowdpleaser about three women who performed important work for NASA in the 50s and 60s are when someone offers a piece of chalk to a 'computer' or grants permission for a gifted student to study further - moments that should be unremarkable but sadly aren't; the lunacy of segregation is nicely countered with scenes of joyous family- and love lives.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Moonlight (2017)

This heart-rending drama traces the formative years of Chiron, a boy in so much pain you yearn for life to show him a little kindness as it moulds him into a man not strictly of his own choosing.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS