Last Christmas (2019)

Kate, a Bridget Jones type - read, 'annoying' - portrayed by Emilia Clarke, makes a mess of everything - love, work, and relationships including the relationship she has with her boss (Michelle Yeoh in her now perpetual role as a cantankerous Asian Tiger mom), so it makes sense Kate falls for Henry Golding's character - he's a messily conceived part-Willy Wonka pixie-saviour, part-Mr Darcy romantic stalwart slogging-around-on-a-bicycle - who inspires Kate to fix up her messes before the movie reaches an unlikely Christmas magic fantasy ending - a bit like if Bridget Jones suddenly visited Santa's North Pole workshop - but it's an ending that somehow, through all the mess, manages to be touching.

★★☆☆☆

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A Haunting In Venice (2023)

With his third Agatha Christie adaptation (the first being Murder On The Orient Express; the second, Death On The Nile) director, lead actor, and likely infatuated-starer-at-self-in-mirrors Kenneth Brannagh delivers another big glossy star vehicle (this one has Tina Fey, terrific as Poirot's mystery novelist friend Ariadne Oliver, and Michelle Yeoh appears) but he again mishandles the all-important mystery, this time transforming Halloween Party into a supernatural horror, forgetting that to solve a mystery Hercule Poirot needs clues, not just to simply float around a crumbly Venetian mansion in extreme close-up; in the end, Brannagh's Poirot looks ridiculous presenting grand revelations magically-gleaned from two clues: flowers and a ringing phone. 

★★★☆☆

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Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

The irreverence of some of the universes in an infinite multiverse makes sense, but that doesn't mean literal sausage fingers, raccoon chefs, goggly-eyed rocks, and swirling black-hole bagels are any less irritating in this sci-fi adventure about a woman who learns a simple life lesson in the most repetitive, long-winded way imaginable - not from the first iteration of her multiverse, where the message was already crystal clear, but only after ad nauseam repetition of several of the silliest iterations - yes, literal sausage fingers again and again and again - over 139 minutes that feel longer than a zillion lifetimes strung together.

★★☆☆☆

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Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021)

The baffling appearance of Ben Kingsley - he turns up about halfway through playing a Shakespearean actor who believes real monkeys were cast in the Planet of the Apes - marks where this, until then by-the-numbers Marvel superhero movie, unravels, descending from that point into a Disney mess aimed at pre-teens involving a massive flying threadworm, ludicrous bow-and-arrow mastery, flip-flopping bad-no-good-no-bad-no-good guys, a headless turwomken (a turkey, wombat, chicken cross) and other cgi Star Wars-style creatures trying to make interesting a lengthy middle stretch of exposition, vague ten-ring powers, and a hero whose martial arts prowess goes viral (but whose friends don't seem to know) and whose early childhood years of training as a ruthless assassin are breezily referenced (but which have no obvious effect upon the present) - all up, a mess of too many hasty, childish ideas in a movie which, like Black Panther, ends without it having been firmly established why the superhero origin story is the lead character's movie and not the movie of one of the other more interesting, more impressive characters (but certainly not that embarrassing Ben Kingsley one).

★★☆☆☆

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Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

The first twenty minutes include quirky animated graphics and laugh-out-loud moments that suggest a zingy 60s-style Hollywood romantic-comedic good-time and one that is refreshingly populated with an entirely gorgeous, entirely Asian cast, but this energy dissipates as quickly as the fun graphics vanish without trace as, early on, the heroine reveals herself to be a pouty dolt I wouldn't want marrying into my family either, the drama proves non-existent (in fact, the barely-there story is two lines of dialogue (one line delivered at the top of a staircase and the other delivered over a mahjong table), a side storyline (the only one) stands out as being as superfluous and unrelated to the whole as it is boring and badly acted, and really, it is only thank goodness for Chinese versions of Coldplay's Yellow and Madonna's Material Girl - and that fun first twenty minutes - that this is the least bit those two title adjectives.

★★☆☆☆

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Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) (2000)

Some may believe Ang Lee's 2000 film represents a mere Hollywood bastardisation of wuxia but it introduced the genre to Western cinemas, heralded a string of terrific mainstream martial arts cinema releases like Hero and The House of Flying Daggers, and for me was an eye-popping, awe-inspiring introduction to wire fu with a ripping story of a sword thief, an arch criminal and a detective duo, all embroiled in multiple love stories.

★★★★★

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