The Batman (2022)

When the topic of The Batman came up, a teenager I tutor summed it up perfectly as a movie about a "miserable Batman with miserable friends fighting a miserable villain in a miserable city", and he wasn't wrong, because this brooding restyling of the franchise positions Robert Pattison's Batman as a sullen emo and has him, Zoe Kravitz's slinky Selena, the mobsters and Gotham street crims, the justice system, and in fact the entire city of Gotham sunk in a psychotic depression while The Riddler, a Heath Ledger-Joker-echo, murders public figures and taunts authorities with tightly scripted David Berkowitz-style codes - all of which oppressive heaviness is fine - it's Batman, afterall - until the final act reveals the supposed root of the city's decay and it feels, in comparison, almost trivial.

★★★☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Gemini (2017)

The mesmerising start in which we are introduced to the neo-noir world of movie star and tabloid-headliner Heather Anderson and her personal assistant Jill LeBeau is this 2017 movie's strength and then it shifts gear from atmospheric thriller to run-of-the-mill mystery as the personal assistant goes all Nancy Drew and starts an amateur murder investigation with goofy suspects, glaring red herrings and a not very satisfactory denouement.

★★★☆☆

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Rough Night (2017)

Created in the mould of box office successes The Hangover and Bridesmaids, but not as fresh, as outrageous, nor as unpredictable as those movies, this comedy has its pre-wedding partyers accidentally kill someone and because one of them is running for office and they've been doing a lot of drugs, they decide not to involve authorities and instead dispose of the body.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

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.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS