Mission: Impossible Fallout (2018)

About the only area that could be improved is the likeability of the central characters but otherwise action doesn't get much better than this two-and-a-half-hour string of foot, motorbike, car and helicopter chases filmed so spectacularly every microfacial expression on Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt's face is crystal clear as he careens cars through city streets, dogfights over Kashmir, sprints glamorous European city blocks at roof level and, as is known very well right from the start, saves the world from the dastardly plot of a bamboozling number of counter- and counter-counter-spies in what is essentially the same plot as Rogue Nation.

★★★★☆

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The Snowman (2017)

Ice-cold and grisly Norwegian thrillers are popular among readers but this Jo Nesbø adaptation plays out on screen like it has been hacked to pieces and put back together again by a crazed killer with a piano wire, with scenes appearing out-of-order and side storylines, particularly the ones involving Chloë Sevigny as identical twins, Val Kilmer as a drunk detective, and J K Simmons as the leader of a Winter Olympics Host City bid, built-up elaborately like the serial killer's snowmen only to melt away without consequence.

★☆☆☆☆

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Life (2017)

About as rewarding as watching a "system failure" warning light blink at you for 90 minutes, this misfire hoped to meld the breathless rollercoaster action of Gravity, the profundity of 2001, and the horror of Alien, but fails on all accounts with key action scenes so chaotic they're nonsensical, all emotion demanded rather than earned by a script and score that doesn't just hand-hold but latches on and constricts the life out of you like a parasitic lifeform, and a really daft and totally unaffecting nonsense ending delivered with embarassing fervour!

★☆☆☆☆

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