Black Bag (2025)

Don't think too hard about the plot, which is full of outlandish extraneous details and relies on an impossible amount of inter-agent bedhopping (some of it blurring professional boundaries in very unlikely ways) and just enjoy the sleek, sexy spy thrills as Michael Fassbender's mild-mannered spy, George Wodehouse, learns his wife's name is on a list of five potential traitor agents.

★★★★☆

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Jane Eyre (2011)

Comparison is more than fair: this 2011 adaptation is filmed in the same location (and often in the very same rooms), is based on the same screenplay, and is frequently a scene-by-scene copy of the BBC four-episode TV series of 2009, so the question is why this Cary Joji Fukunaga-directed adaptation, which gives painstaking attention to realising the look and feel of Charlotte Bronte's novel, chops the story to pieces, starting in the middle, unnecessarily, and lurching unevenly through the events of Eyre's life, either glossing over or entirely deleting key moments from the book AND the BBC TV series with the end result a visually-, aurally-pleasing video clip zapped of most of the story's romance and emotion.

★★★☆☆

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Dark Phoenix (2019)

All we want from these X-men movies are some scenes in which the mutants pool their resources and unleash their powers in imaginative combination and this 2019 episode, one of the "Muppet babies" ones of late, delivers lots of that - we especially liked the  train carriage scene - and we also get some more of poor Jean Grey's backstory, though after some new details about how she came into Professior Xavier's care as a child, her story becomes the same old same old one about her reckoning with her awesome powers - it seems the only new thing that can be done with this character is adding different adjectives to her name.

★★★☆☆

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The Snowman (2017)

Ice-cold and grisly Norwegian thrillers are popular among readers but this Jo Nesbø adaptation plays out on screen like it has been hacked to pieces and put back together again by a crazed killer with a piano wire, with scenes appearing out-of-order and side storylines, particularly the ones involving Chloë Sevigny as identical twins, Val Kilmer as a drunk detective, and J K Simmons as the leader of a Winter Olympics Host City bid, built-up elaborately like the serial killer's snowmen only to melt away without consequence.

★☆☆☆☆

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Alien Covenant (2017)

The series risks becoming the same Alien movie over and over, just cushioned in more and more austere, go-nowhere mythology about mothers, progenies, and all that jazz (and Brahms and Shelley, here, too, with Michael Fassbender's robot steadily morphing into Hannibal Lecter) but in the meantime, this is a solid Alien episode - thankfully not as overcooked as Prometheus - and a hell of a lot better than that Life nonsense rushed to cinemas earlier this year to preempt the same plot...I just wish there wasn't the unfortunate Land of the Lost crossover - is there a rule the shaggy, straw-hatted character of Tennessee has to appear in every sci-fi?

★★★★☆

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A Dangerous Method (2011)

This drama depicts the professional relationship of Jung and Freud in the early 1900s, raises fascinating ideas regarding their psychoanalytical methods, and features a terrific performance from Keira Knightley as real life patient and mistress of Jung, Sabina Spielrien, but the movie remains as clinical, as austere and removed as the psychoanalysts themselves.

★★★☆☆

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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.

★★★★☆

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X-men: Apocalypse (2016)

Nothing will ever compare to the school invasion scene in X2: X-men United in which audiences are treated to a fast-paced showcase of weird and wonderful mutant powers — here, in X-men number 9 (counting Deadpool), things are decidedly less artful: the mutant "gifts" are presented mostly in slow-mo and further laboured by exposition of the sort, "You're in my head!? How are you doing that!?" "It's my gift..." (an exchange between students at a mutant school), and in fact, aside from a strong whiff of a political agenda (there is a near decapitation performed by the villain whose prisoner is on his knees on a sandy desert floor) nothing actually happens — for inordinate amounts of time, the mutants pose smugly, chests out, arms akimbo against cgi backgrounds, frequently not doing anything at all while the villain, a hideous, mouldy Marlon Brando-lookalike with displeased downturned lips, grumbles and performs haircuts.

★★☆☆☆

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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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X-men: First Class (2011)

This episode of the X-men franchise goes back to 1962 to explain Professor Xavier's love-hate relationship with Magneto (they used to be buddies) and calms down the fever-pitch energy attained over the course of the original three X-men movies while still delivering the themes and set-pieces expected of the series.

★★★★☆

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