Poor Things (2023)

The saddest thing about Yorgos Lanthimos's icky Poor Things, a title that I think refers to audiences after two long hours, is that it takes an elaborate steampunk alternate fairytale-reality full of wonky actors playing wonky characters - including a Frankenstein sex doll-come-to-life with, perhaps don't think about it too hard, a child's brain - for the director  to elucidate so very little about the plight of women in today's world (or to be precise, the plight of women in fantasy realities of an alternate past) and there isn't much said of interest about sex or old-school gendered-rules about social propriety, either.

★☆☆☆☆

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In The Cut (2003)

I love Meg Ryan as a non-comedic actress and I love Jane Campion's intelligent films, and I love Mark Ruffalo and mysteries and thrillers, which is why it pains me to say I don't very much love this ambitious Jane Campion mystery thriller starring a deadly serious Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo because while the movie is a clever feminist text with its message written into every line of dialogue and squeezed eloquently into the title and palpable in every scene (all of them, but consider for example Ryan and Ruffalo's first love scene which starts as a reenactment of an assault, or Ryan's self-conscious out-loud articulation of public transport poetry), In The Cut, about a serial killer who disarticulates women, doesn't work as a mystery thriller because everyone in the movie's claustrophobic circle of action is a disgusting misogynistic objectifier of women and long before the film ends it ceases to matter who among the lunatics - the really obvious culprit or one of the others on the periphery - is the killer, and unfortunately endscenes set in what is an absurd symbolic dreamscape do a disservice to the strong feminist text AND the mystery thriller.

★★★☆☆

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Now You See Me 2 (2016)

That huge ensemble of characters from number one, all deeply earnest about their craft - magic - which unites them in a fraternity as boysy, ridiculous and self-important as the Illuminati, reunites for this preposterous sequel that pits the Four Horsemen in a magic war with a tech wizard, except this is cinema magic, not magic magic, so there is no 'reveal' to justify the movie's long tangled string of events and you can't possibly care about what happens given the "anything goes" nature of the plot and the fact it all goes on in a one-note bombastic patter and that everything, even years in jail, might simply, quite ridiculously, be part of the slow burn.

★★☆☆☆

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Thor Ragnarok (2017)

As a standalone superhero movie, this third Thor outing, a distinct departure from the previous two, doesn't really hold together - it is a messy, sprawling space adventure a bit like Flash Gordon with lots of 80s synthesizer but at times goes a bit The Fifth Element with Jeff Goldblum playing a flamboyant leader of a colourful planet of haves and havenots but at other times again transforms into Spaceballs with a new (to the Thor series) 'anything goes' hammy comedy that grows steadily more tired as the movie goes on and on - but as a series segue between Marvel's Avenger blockbusters and the space adventure Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor Ragnarok is a clever exercise that serves to bridge disparate Marvel franchises ahead of the Infinity War movie that brings them all together.

★★☆☆☆

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Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Every scene involves an orchestral fanfare as another superhero steps forth from behind something and is introduced to a troupe of other superheroes with whom he or she has an interrelationship that you, the viewer, may know something about if you've pledged allegiance to the Marvel Universe and have studied the myriad releases in the series - if you get off on discovering the minutae of these relationships (like the fact Thor's new eyeball came from Guardians of the Galaxy or that Steve Roger's new uniform makes him more 'Nomad'-like, etc., etc.) then this mega event ten years in the making is just for you, but if Avengers: Infinity War feels to you like a dizzying three-hour fight scene and scene to scene you can't remember who is where or why, then like me you probably want to snap your fingers and have the whole marketing exercise simply stop for a while.

★★★☆☆

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Foxcatcher (2014)

Behind the Candelabra was also a true story about a dysfunctional relationship that develops between a man of great wealth and his young impressionable charge upon whom he has an unhealthy psychological effect, but here the context is Olympic wrestling and medals, not showbiz and glamour, and where Candelabra tapped into the black humour of its situation, Foxcatcher is a far more grim work about low-affect characters moving inexorably towards a tragic, senseless crime.

★★★★☆

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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

You'll need a degree in Marvel to follow exactly the whos and whys and whats of this busy sequel which has enhanced twins - a freakishly fast moving boy and a mindwarping witch girl, both boring - wreaking havoc with the Avengers, causing each of the umpteen of them to experience worrying visions including of the world destroyed by an artificial intelligence; the answer, unbelievably, is for the Avengers to increase their number even though there are already too many of them to really be able to care much about their burgeoning romances (wooden), family lives (corny), backstories (meaningless) and idiosyncracies (no longer funny).

★★☆☆☆

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Spotlight (2015)

On 6 January 2002, a team of Boston Globe journalists published a Pulitzer Prize-winning story which brought to the world's attention the behaviour of the Catholic Church in relation to innumerous Boston child sex abuse cases perpetrated by the church's priests, and this movie details the hard investigative work that went into the story, raises the powerful idea that "if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse them," and shows the impact the story had around the world.

★★★★☆

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Just Like Heaven (2005)

Sandwiched by a terrible first and really terrible last fifteen minutes is a likeable romcom, a role-reversed The Ghost and Mrs Muir, which teams up a ghost with the man now living in her apartment - they bicker at first but eventually work together to find out who she is (was) and why she isn't outright dead as a doornail.

★★★☆☆

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Now You See Me (2013)

David Copperfield-esque magicians perform an Oceans Eleven style grift and arouse the interest of police and from there, over a series of subsequent grifts, this entertaining romp escalates the stakes to preposterous levels, particularly when real danger arrives in the form of car chases and carelessly fired guns, surely not in balance with the magicians' endgame, you'll think, even before you know what that is...

★★★☆☆

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Zodiac (2007)

David Fincher gives the real-life Son of Sam killings the Bong Joon-Ho Memories of Murder treatment, creating an intriguing police procedural about a cartoonist whose life becomes consumed by the investigation that spanned parts of the 60s, the 70s and 80s but remains unsolved today.

★★★★☆

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The Avengers (2012)

See Marvel's The Avengers and marvel at how a superbudget superhero movie with not one but six superheroes manages to fit in all the requisite superhero movie things (mega set pieces, backstories, thrills, bad guys, humour, sass) into one coherent, fun, funny, not-to-be-missed mega movie event.

★★★★☆

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You Can Count On Me (2000)

This is a heartwarming drama about a brother and sister reunited in adulthood after the deaths of their parents in childhood, starring next gen Marlon Brando and future Bruce Banner, Mark Ruffalo, and Matthew Broderick, a Culkin, and the always enchanting Laura Linney. 

★★★★☆

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