Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

The uprising that takes place in this third Ant-Man movie against new villain Kang, an uprising that starts with the Ant-Man family suddenly being sucked into Kang's subatomic-sized Quantum universe, spans the family's meeting the tiny world's inhabitants and choosing to side with them in a long-running conflict, and an uprising that ends with the family's takedown of Kang in a dizzying film-final cgi battle, all seems to happen in a narrative time of about twenty minutes, which isn't to say the movie is exciting - it is written so that everything happens in the time it takes to shrug your shoulders and is in fact the least interesting of the three movies of the series.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

New Year's Eve (2011)

On a New Year's Eve, the Times Square Ball gets stuck, neither up nor down, and this same inert state befalls a veritable Love, Actually ensemble of New Yorkers whose lives grind to a stop in deeply uninteresting, go-nowhere situations like the nurse (Halle Berry) who tends bedside to a dying man in hospital (Robert De Niro) - that's everything - or the man in pyjamas (Ashton Kutcher) who gets stuck in an elevator with a singer (that woman from Glee) - the end - or the pregnant couple who are, well, pregnant - and still pregnant each time the movie unnecessarily returns to them - or, in the most peculiar of the go-nowhere vignettes, a delivery guy (Zac Efron) escorts a woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) around NYC on a scooter skimping on her bucket list that she has no reason to rush through before midnight when, spoiler alert, the Times Square Ball drops and this dull romcom ends and life starts moving again.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

What Lies Beneath (2000)

In director Robert Zemeckis' supernatural mystery, a wife comes to believe her renovated lakehouse is haunted by the ghost of a blonde, green-eyed female, probably a former locksmith given the incredible number of times we see doors swing open by paranormal force, and it is all dopey fun that doesn't warrant too much thought except when all is said and done and the protracted denouement is over (having made very elaborate use of only momentarily spotted paralysed laboratory mice and a bridge in a mobile reception blackspot), viewers who do stop to think twice about what has occurred will recognise the irrelevance of the first hour of the movie, the sheer number of unnecessary characters, and an ennui that pervades the performances, probably a result of the actors being involved in so much redundant nonsense.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

The antics of Marvel's goofiest, most family-friendly superhero continue in this not-as-good sequel of Ant-Man chronicling Ant-Man's encounters with a mysterious time- and space-shifting "Baba Yaga", and while most of the humour falls flat this time around (except for one "previously on..." sequence narrated by Ant-Man's sidekick and tech-guy, Luis) this is easy, undemanding and family-friendly superhero action enlivened by a couple of great action sequences and by Evangeline Lilly's appearance as Wasp, a wing- and blast-gun-enhanced hero who fights alongside Ant-Man but who could easily do it on her own.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Batman Returns (1992)

Michael Keaton has settled into his role as Batman and is steelier, less neurotic, less Mr Mom and more able to move and flex in his batsuit than he was in the 1989 Tim Burton movie and instead of the uninvolving battle he had with the Joker in the original (a remote battle - were they ever in the same shot together?) he gets to be really up close and personal with his terrifically creepy foes in this sequel - Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman is split, damaged and slinky and Danny DeVito's the Penguin is a hideous, bloated monster.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Scarface (1983)

In this Oliver Stone-penned, Brian De Palma-directed ugly 1983 update of a 1932 Howard Hughes crime thriller, a Cuban refugee, Tony Montana, trades hitman services for a Green Card then ruthlessly works his way to the top of Miami's drug world, a world of violence so unrestrained it can seem ludicrous, but it is only a matter of time before Montana becomes a victim of his own lawless excess and he and all his little friends come plummeting back down with a splash.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

The Orient Express is snowed in but Kenneth Branagh's movie, so fussily presented it looks more like the Polar than the Orient Express, is a runaway train ripping through the details of Agatha Christie's book at breakneck speed so that there is no weight to any of it, and at this pace no number of sweeping camera shots back and forth over the enormous cast helps commit any of the individuals to memory - they are all far less important than Branagh's overthought, spectacularly odd moustaches - and in the end it is left to an overbearing soundtrack to insist, ridiculously, on the profundity of end scenes.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Mother! (2017)

A fleeting shot at the start hints very strongly at Darren Aronofsky's movie's whole but even so the movie goes on to tell its story three times; the first iteration, in which a young homemaker is too polite to ask two unwanted visitors to leave her house, is the most restrained, gleefully sinister and enjoyable, with the subsequent retellings just becoming noisier, more extreme, more crowded, and more unnecessary, not adding much to the parable that has already been determined by that opening moment.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Dangerous Minds (1995)

I love movies about high school - comedies (Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Jump Street), dramas (Donnie Darko, To Sir With Love) - but the naievity displayed here by Michelle Pfeiffer's LouAnne Johnson, an ex-marine English teacher who applies a likely saviour complex to the task of educating a classroom of underprivileged American students, choosing to visit their homes, choosing to take them on dates, choosing to loan them money and choosing to invite them into her home for sleepovers - actions breezily dismissed as "choosing to care" and leading to immediate unlikely transformative outcomes - earns this a fail grade as a high school experience.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Dark Shadows (2012)

For those like me who watch this unaware of the gothic tv soap opera "Dark Shadows" that was popular in the 70s, Tim Burton's big screen adaptation with Johnny Depp yet again sporting a deathly pallor as vampire Barnaby Collins is an elaborately produced, occasionally funny but ultimately bemusing oddity; and now, having googled and read up about the tv series "Dark Shadows", I can in full knowledge confirm this tribute is an elaborately produced, occasionally funny but ultimately bemusing oddity.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

A trio of women, Jane, Sukie and Alexandra (Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Cher, redheaded, blonde and brunette) conjure up a dark, mysterious stranger using their collective feminine powers of creation, bringing havoc to their conservative New England town, in this riotous, star-studded film version of John Updike's distinctly feminist novel looking at gender politics, standards of social propriety (old-fashioned versus new) and good old good and evil, creation and destruction.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS