Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

Taika Waititi's Thor episode dresses up the same old same old 'superhero battles a supervillain' plot in an 80s rock opera skin and fills it with big-name cameos, Taika Waititi's trademark kooky humour, and schoolkid-pleasing nonsense, but it is like this particular Marvel franchise is a hammer of God and try as he might Taika Waititi simply isn't able to lift it.

★★☆☆☆

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The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

If an historically inaccurate detail like Eric Bana's black hair bothers you - King Henry VIII famously sported blonde-red locks - then this lavish book-adaptation, a period drama, is going to sorely test you, because although it is loosely based on the historical facts surrounding Anne Boleyn's marriage to Henry VIII, the story is injected with large amounts of historical supposition dismissed by historians as author Philippa Gregory's pure fantasy; nevertheless, it is thought-provoking and very entertaining, offering a vivid sense of Tudor court life (Melrose Place in lavish costumes) and cleverly weaving in the ideas that Anne Boleyn orchestrated Henry's usurpation of papal authority and that charges of incest against her were more than just wilful accusations of a king once again looking for a way out of a marriage.

★★★★☆

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Vox Lux (2019)

It is entirely possible the provocative scenes of terrorism and Willem Dafoe's voiceover (an omniscient fairytale narration which lapses occasionally into an uncertain subjunctive mood, as unnecessary as it is overwritten: sex is "nocturnal activities" and Stockholm a "far from exotic city in Europe", thank you very much) were tacked on in a last ditch effort to render different from A Star Is Born this dismaying snorefest, the abyssmal likes of which I haven't experienced since Winona Ryder and James Franco's The Letter.

★☆☆☆☆

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Annihilation (2018)

As in Arrival, another sci-fi with a one-word title starting with the letter 'A', a scientist sets out to investigate and explain an alien phenomenon, but where in Arrival Amy Adams' linguist is able to elucidate the profound mission statement of a startling pair of enormous black eggs hanging in the sky over Earth, Natalie Portman's military-trained molecular biologist in Annihilation investigates an alien 'shimmer' that is threatening some prime coastal real estate and in the end admits - after exploring the abandoned Teletubbieland within the 'shimmer' and engaging with a lifeform in what looks like Sia videoclip choreography - that the phenomenon is less interesting in itself than the potential it poses as a springboard for a future alien invasion movies.

★★★☆☆

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Thor (2011)

The Xanadu stylings of the Thor world - glittery rainbow-coloured rollerskating paths leading up to a gold fob watch hanging in space called Asgard - crossed with the horned helmets, Elvin beards, and male bawdiness of Norse mythology, do not appeal but I persisted with this Chris Hemsworth-helmed number one of the Marvel Thor series knowing one day I'd need to have watched it in order to grapple with the other two (read 'three', 'four', 'twelve'...) - 'Thor: The Dark World' and 'Thor: Ragnarok' - and apart from a Lord Of The BoRings taint to the all-male armies that are fighting to control 'the nine realms', this is very familiar in a just-like-all-other-superhero-movies kind of way (a blonde Wonder Woman from an alien Themyscira ends up among humans being aided by a female Steve Trevor who shows the sort of immediate devotion to the potential lunatic that those women do who, a couple of letter-exchanges in, chose to marry their confessed mass-murderer-in-jail penpals), and it is all fine if slightly boring...but at least I am ready now to equally reluctantly watch the endless other Thors (but, full disclosure, I still need to wiki some aspects of the plot I missed along the way like who Idris Elba is, what exactly he is doing just standing there in space, and what on earth the nine realms are.)

★★★☆☆

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Your Highness (2011)

Perhaps lured to work with the team behind the popular Pineapple Express, Natalie Portman deigns to appear in this only very occasionally amusing fantasy comedy adventure, but the biggest star by far is the penis, which features in every scene and is the punchline of every joke, either because it is flaccid, erect, severed, worn as jewellery, missing or, in some misguided scenes-played-for-laughs, used to sodomise, rape, and child abuse.

★☆☆☆☆

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The Professional (Leon) (1994)

The 12-year-old orphan girl of a family shot to pieces by bad cops seeks refuge with a man from a neighbouring apartment, a hitman who makes the questionable decision of teaching her his trade, in this engaging action thriller that is part American (NY setting, Portman in her Hollywood debut, Oldman, English language), part French (Jean Reno, traditional French accordian music, Luc Besson French cool).

★★★★☆

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Black Swan (2010)

The tone of this psychological thriller about a ballerina who is probably going crazy from the stress of being a ballerina stays relentlessly, relentlessly dark despite things getting quite ridiculous by three-quarters of the way through, leaving the audience no choice but to lighten matters themselves with laughter, at least in the screening I went to.

★★★☆☆

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