Agatha Christie "Marple": The Sittaford Mystery (2006)

Despite not really fitting the image I have in my head of the character, Geraldine McEwan is a good Miss Marple - shrew and mischevious, her eyes positively twinkle as she contemplates twisted human psychology and murder, so much that you can forgive her spritely frame and impish energy - and even though she has been thrust into this adaptation of a book she didn't even appear in, she adds good value to the story, quietly solving a murder that takes place in a snowed-in inn populated with a star-studded array of likely suspects (Carey Mulligan, Timothy Dalton, Mel Smith, James Murray, and more, in a scenario very reminiscent to the one in The Mousetrap).

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Flash Gordon (1980)

Oh how I adored this as a kid when I went to the local twinplex to see it, to my mind then a simple comicbook space adventure about an American football star tasked with saving Earth from an evil intergalactic Emperor Ming...and, well, I still love it having watched it again as an adult but now recognise a strong subtext in what is a kitsch sci-fi full of drag outfits, butch winged S&M costumes, leather underpants, and bizarre rituals involving hands plunging into muddy holes.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS