Big Momma's House (2000)

"Honky Grandma Be Trippin'" for realsies has Martin Lawrence playing the undercover cop who thinks the best way to inveigle his way into a wanted criminal's circle is to use a leftover The Klumps bodysuit to disguise himself as a large Southern grandmother, which seems a lot more work than simply developing the chemistry he finds he has as himself with the gangster's girlfriend.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

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.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Illusionist (2006)

Childhood sweethearts are reunited in adulthood when she, now fiance to the Austrian Crown Prince Leopold, is called up on stage to participate in his David Copperfield-style magic show, in this very romantic mystery that slightly frustrates with its NQR historical context too blurry to justify the morally ambiguous implications of the movie's twist.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Hangover 2 (2011)

Las Vegas was a better setting for these amnesiac partiers; their all-too-similar antics in this sequel's Bangkok brings to mind badly behaved football teams on season end breaks to Thailand, all obsessed with semen, erections, and homosexual intercourse, and the monkey isn't as good as the tiger, and the tattoo isn't as good as the dentist's knocked out teeth, the missing brother not as good as the missing groom, etc..

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Lady in the Water (2006)

Awful to the point of being unwatchable is this self-indulgent movie from M Night Shyamalan based on a bedtime story he told his kids, apparently, featuring only completely cracked characters, residents of an apartment complex with a swimming pool that is home to a mermaid-like creature. 

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS