New Year's Eve (2011)

On a New Year's Eve, the Times Square Ball gets stuck, neither up nor down, and this same inert state befalls a veritable Love, Actually ensemble of New Yorkers whose lives grind to a stop in deeply uninteresting, go-nowhere situations like the nurse (Halle Berry) who tends bedside to a dying man in hospital (Robert De Niro) - that's everything - or the man in pyjamas (Ashton Kutcher) who gets stuck in an elevator with a singer (that woman from Glee) - the end - or the pregnant couple who are, well, pregnant - and still pregnant each time the movie unnecessarily returns to them - or, in the most peculiar of the go-nowhere vignettes, a delivery guy (Zac Efron) escorts a woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) around NYC on a scooter skimping on her bucket list that she has no reason to rush through before midnight when, spoiler alert, the Times Square Ball drops and this dull romcom ends and life starts moving again.

★★☆☆☆

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Striking Distance (1993)

With 25 minutes to go, Bruce Willis' Detective Tom Hardy casually drops that he was closely connected with each of the three female victims of the serial killer he is hunting, a detail you'd think even the most dejected, alcoholic cop traumatised by his partner's and his father's deaths might have mentioned sooner (and even if he suspects the killer of all these people is someone on the force), but this wooden police procedural, almost so bad it's good, is more about cramming in the clichés, not about clever plotting, so Tommy's new partner, a woman he remains unkind to until she offers sex, is the next to be kidnapped, and a distinctly uninteresting denouement ensues that suggests ultimately that the connection Hardy had with the victims was a passing coincidence afterall.

★★☆☆☆

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Flight of the Navigator (1978)

A boy's eight year disappearance turns out to have been spent flying around space in a silver almond talking to a goofy Paul Reubens-voiced spaghetti strainer, in this kids sci-fi from Disney, the third act of which plays out just a smidge too much like a geography lesson.

★★☆☆☆

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Sex and the City 2 (2010)

A lot of criticism is levelled at this - for its racism, lack of plot, and for Carrie's doe-eyed girly girl act more irritating than ever now that she is forty-something - but it is a suitably mellow swansong for the beloved series, not without laughs as the women head to Abu Dhabi for no good reason, and while undeniably tired and now much more forced in tone compared with previous instalments, it is pleasant enough, undemanding viewing.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS