Ad Astra (2019)

Baby Astronaut goes to a great deal of trouble to reconnect with long-lost Papa Astronaut, not only embarking on an epic trip with multiple transfers, lengthy stopovers and terrible inflight service but also making the effort to narrate his tribulations apparently aware that an audience somewhere is watching him, and while it is all spectacularly filmed and suitably measured and mesmeric for a deep space film, a middle section features clunky, lurching plot progression and the emotion, when it comes, barely registers.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Fugitive (1993)

The 60s show, The Fugitive" stretched its story - Dr Richard Kimble flees from police after a one-armed man murders his wife - to 120 fifty-one minute tv episodes across four seasons screened between 1963 and 1967, whereas this 1993 movie adaptation compacts the story into just two hours and adds blockbuster flair in the form of a spectacular train crash, a river plunge, Tommy Lee Jones as the dogged but misguided detective, and everyone's favourite good-guy-in-distress, Harrison Ford as the fugitive.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Jason Bourne (2016)

The camera never stays still for more than a second so imagine watching an episode of The Amazing Race on The Zipper: the "contestants" are the most technologically-enabled but most bungling CIA team ever assembled for the franchise (and only them - there are zero outsiders in this world) and the "prize" they are vying for you might think is a personality because there isn't one between them nor one to be found at any of the "roadblocks" in Berlin, Greece, London or Las Vegas - now that Jason Bourne remembers everything, has his identity back and we all know his name, a personality seems to be the last missing thing.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

No Country For Old Men (2007)

Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem really act in this compelling but ultimately unnecessary neo-Western that tries to disguise its pointlessness with some lofty last minute dialogue.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS