28 Weeks Later (2007)

Flaunting rules during COVID - maybe that I can kind of understand, but in the face of apocalyptic evidence post-the-virus in this sequel to 28 Days Later, it is hard to believe anyone, even kids, would "sneak out", but they do, and that lapse in credibility becomes the film's defining weakness as, repeatedly, family reunions defy apocalyptic chaos, characters display magical virus expertise, and John Woo-style theatrics push the story towards spectacle and away from the unsettling plausibility that made the original so engrossing.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

I Am Mother (2019)

A girl (Clara Rugaard-Larsen) raised by a robot in a Human Re-population Facility has her solitary life of dance and psychometric testing interrupted by the arrival from outside the facility of a woman (Hilary Swank) who suggests the girl's robot 'mother' is incapable of feelings for the girl, is lying when it says the air outside the facility is toxic, and is a droid just like the ones outside who have decimated the Earth, in this better than usual Netflix original movie, a scifi thriller that really only errs in how quickly the girl proves willing to question everything she has ever known.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Get Him To The Greek (2010)

The plot of this follow-up to the 2008 Forgetting Sarah Marshall (a music industry intern escorts an irreverent, drug-addled rockstar across America to revive his career in a big-deal comeback concert) calls for real chaos but chaos never really comes - instead we get an unfunny half hour in Las Vegas that is more farcical than chaotic and needs simply to be cut out of the overlong movie - but Russell Brand's Aldous Snow, the rockstar - essentially Brand playing himself - is a fun creation worthy of this second (and even a future third) movie and the comedy for the most part (minus that woeful Las Vegas sequence) is really funny.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Insidious Chapter 2 (2013)

Don't expect to be a Rhodes Scholar in the ways of the Further after watching this - just how people pass into and through director James Wan's evil limbo, the Further, introduced in the original Insidious but further elaborated upon in this sequel, seems to no longer depend upon a character being dead - alive or injured or even merely remembered people can hang out there now, so more than before it resembles something like a train station, but still it is never satisfactorily explained - and there are other areas lacking elucidation: scene by scene you'll have trouble keeping track of whose house everyone is in - the Lamberts' or Elise's? - and you'll become dizzy trying to keep track of all the versions of Patrick Wilson's character, Josh, who appears simultaneously as a kid, as an adult, as an adult in memories, as an adult in the Further, as an imposter in each of those places, in flashback sequences as each of those incarnations; and would someone please pick up that baby walker because I don't want to watch a fourth and fifth adult come down those stairs to investigate the piano only to get a jump when the baby walker comes alive with noise and light, again.

★★☆☆☆

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Bad Neighbors (aka Neighbors) (2014)

New parents endeavour to shut down a riotous frathouse that keeps them and their baby awake at night, in this crude but often funny comedy that smashes together the world of the young, wild and wilful with the world of the middle-aged and totes-uncool, but the movie squanders the most interesting aspect of its story: Zac Efron's fratboy's inability to look beyond fraternity life, an idea with darkly humorous potential, introduced then abandoned..

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW

Insidious (2010)

A dopey demon possession story that has nowhere to go except to get increasingly silly, with Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson playing parents of an incessantly crying infant and a possessed boy, all of them helpless in a whirlwind of opening and closing doors, banging furniture, and the most insidious thing, boredom.

★★☆☆☆

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X-men: First Class (2011)

This episode of the X-men franchise goes back to 1962 to explain Professor Xavier's love-hate relationship with Magneto (they used to be buddies) and calms down the fever-pitch energy attained over the course of the original three X-men movies while still delivering the themes and set-pieces expected of the series.

★★★★☆

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Bridesmaids (2011)

A bridesmaid's problem-filled life isn't going to let up for the impeding nuptials of her best friend and her problems are compounded by the presence of a rival overachieving maid of honour in this extremely funny if slightly unevenly paced comedy depicting a faaaar from perfect lead up to a wedding.

★★★★★

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW