The King's Man (2021)

Are there people in the world, really, who weren't immediately repelled by this series' titles' shifting, changing spacing and punctuation, who in fact watched and so enjoyed the tiresome teenage-boysy action of the first two cartoons they thought what was needed, yawn, was a wartime period backstory that awkwardly combines Saving Private Ryan-style solemn battlefield war history with high-camp devil-may-care superhero derringdo?

★★☆☆☆

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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

The adventures of Katniss Everdeen continue in this, for readers of the book, perfectly watchable but for all others, slightly mystifying sequel that sees the heroine propelled to celebrity status, on tour by high-speed train across 'the districts', involved in backstage image management and audience manipulation, becoming the reluctant figurehead of a rebel movement, then thrown into the death arena that now features mandrills, oh, and poison mist, oh, and lightning, oh, and tidal waves, oh, and mockingbirds, oh, and wait, it's a clock...?

★★☆☆☆

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The Hunger Games (2012)

If in your mind Big Brother evictions and "rose ceremonies" lack a little bloodspill and need, say, a few more snapped necks and some more arrows to the contestants' eye sockets, you'll enjoy this movie based on the first of Suzanne Collins' books about young Katniss Everdeen selected to participate in a televised fight to the death, but personally I fail to see why this series is so popular given its charmless and unnecessary extrapolation of the tenets of reality tv to their most violent extreme.

★★☆☆☆

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Margin Call (2011)

Like the 2007-2008 financial crisis that is this movie's context, the problem that befalls Jeremy Irons' investment banking megacorporation cannot be easily explained (something about a flawed equation and always out-of-frame data and graphs that herald tremendous financial loss) so it is hard to care much about this corporate thriller which has its ensemble cast spout platitudes every time the crux of the problem needs elucidation - plus, the people you might actually feel sympathy for, not smug suits staring out of their skyscrapers or weeping in sleek toilet cubicles but the hardworking public who you know ultimately lose out, are kept out of the picture.

★★☆☆☆

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Spotlight (2015)

On 6 January 2002, a team of Boston Globe journalists published a Pulitzer Prize-winning story which brought to the world's attention the behaviour of the Catholic Church in relation to innumerous Boston child sex abuse cases perpetrated by the church's priests, and this movie details the hard investigative work that went into the story, raises the powerful idea that "if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse them," and shows the impact the story had around the world.

★★★★☆

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The Lovely Bones (2009)

Like Patrick Swayze's Sam in Ghost, the girl in this movie moves into a limbo state after her murder, but unlike Sam in Ghost, her limbo (a dreamlike state like in The Cell) has no narrative purpose: while her presence is felt by her family members, it does nothing to help their investigation into her disappearance, and with no real connection to the events of the film, her limbo and her particularly daft Oda Mae Brown moment towards the movie's end are meaningless gimmicks in a long mystery-free drama about an absurd trap-building serial killer.

★☆☆☆☆

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Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)

The Giant Slayer story I remember was about a false hero talking about flies, not giants, when he boasted he'd downed six, and the Beanstalk story was a fairytale involving a cow sale and just one giant with a keen sense of smell, but this movie's hybrid Beanstalk/Slayer story — too gory for kids, only mildly entertaining for adults — mixes Giant Slayer mythology with modern flourishes and features myriad giants - cartoony Fraggle Rock ogre-ones, not real people-split-camera ones, for some reason.

★★★☆☆

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Daytrippers (1997)

A woman embarks on a journey to New York City to investigate an apparent love letter written to her husband, and she is joined in the car by her bumbling, bickering, caring extended family who make a daytrip of proceedings.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS