Elle (2018)

Paul Verhoeven, a director often accused of objectifying women in his movies, opens this gripping thriller with a violent home assault and rape of a woman - Isabelle Huppert, brilliant as Michèle, the founder of a video game development company - and from there weaves a twisty plot of dark humour and chilling suspense against the backdrop of Michèle's company men designing video games featuring violence against women for fun.

★★★★☆

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Hollow Man (2000)

The special effects are so good in this Paul Verhoeven scifi thriller, they still hold up today 16 years after the film's release and it's clear the time, trouble and money spent on them was at the cost of all else - the Jekyll-and-Hyde story of a mad scientist is essentially a comic book superhero tale without a superhero - inert, rudderless and with nowhere to go - and it has the diabolical invisible madman villain tipped over the deep end not by his brilliance but by a petty love triangle...all that sfx invisibility simply becomes the means he uses to exact his tired horror movie revenge.

★★☆☆☆

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