Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

James Franco is a bit self-consciously James Franco in this 2011 first of the rebooted Planet of the Apes series of movies but his inwardness doesn't stop this being a terrifically entertaining blockbuster about Caesar, an intelligent ape, who ends up leading as rousing an uprising as any you've seen before in cinema, with the movie playing a little like what it would have been like if Alfred Hitchcock had included a first act explaining the terrible battery farm treatment that first made the birds mad.

★★★★☆

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Paddington 2 (2017)

This time the Peruvian marmalade-loving bear gets himself in a tangle trying to make enough money to buy his aunt a book for her birthday, even ending up in prison charged with Hugh Grant's memorable villain's theft of said book, but because Paddington looks for the good in everyone, by the end of the movie he has enchanted the whole of Windsor Gardens, Notting Hill, a veritable Who's Who of the British screen playing among others Knuckles the prison cook and Dr Jafri and prison guards and inmates and newspaper stallholders and shut-ins - and of course the Brown family - who rally behind Paddington and help him with spectacularly animated, frequently hilarious, slightly overlong but ultimately extremely touching adventures.

★★★★☆

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The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Director Yorgis Lanthimos' fascinating, disturbing allegorical tale is about a cardiologist (a shaggy-bearded Colin Farrell looking like serial killer surgeon Harold Shipman) whose wife and children are made to bear the price of his sins, and it is so rhythmic, so hypnotic, by the end you will be able to predict next lines even while the point of the whole eludes you.

★★★★☆

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Paddington (2014)

The accident-prone marmalade-loving bear from darkest Peru is rendered in 3D in this big budget, entertaining and frequently very funny film adaptation of the beloved English children's books by Michael Bond.  

★★★★☆

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Stray Dog (野良犬) (1949)

A rookie cop in post-war Japan seeks to recover his stolen colt pistol and ends up involved in a manhunt for a murderer in this Akira Kurosawa police-procedural noir classic - said by some to be the first buddy cop movie - a richly detailed depiction of daily Japanese life but also revealing of the extent of Japanese society's code of individual responsibility, suggesting that when responsibility is left to slip, stray dogs turn rabid.

★★★★★

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Copycat (1995)

It tells a story of a serial killer with a completely implausible modus operandi - the copycat killer re-enacts to an impossible level of detail famous serial killer crimes of the past - but this effective thriller, one of the better ones released during the spate of hohum serial killer thrillers released after 1991s The Silence of the Lambs, stars Sigourney Weaver as an agoraphobic serial killer expert who finds herself both the hunter and the hunted as she reluctantly helps cop duo Holly Hunter and Dermot Mulroney on a difficult case.

★★★★☆

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The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

I read Jordan Belfort's revolting book at the insistence of an enthusiastic friend; watching this Scorsese adaptation was my own decision to see if the appeal of the book that eluded me was something discernable in the film and it turns out the extravagant rise and fall of the Wolf ("Wolfie"), a small-time Bernie Madoff, makes for a loud, looong, obnoxious film, all kinds of non-PC and hard-to-believe, but minus the book's self-adulating tone and despite the pitiful man on display and the devastating crimes just out of sight, the movie, particularly the last half, is engaging and often very funny.

★★★☆☆

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The Lobster (2015)

Several analogies about relationships and singledom, each of momentary interest, are thrown together into one excruciatingly long, incredibly boring mess of a movie about love in a rigidly dichotomous future world; it plays out like a five minute comedy skit stretched to two (or was it three?) hours and for all its effort, offers very little in the way of meaningful relationship insights.

★☆☆☆☆

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Catwoman (2004)

Badly influenced by the Batman movies that came before it, Catwoman is a camp and shallow origin story featuring an unfocused superhero - part apologetic cupcake-baking, coquettish Bree Van de Kamp and part computer-generated and personality-free Frank N Furter dominatrix - fighting a similarly unfocused villain, a barely featured Sharon Stone representing a vague Death Becomes Her evil vanity.

★★☆☆☆

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Big Ass Spider (aka Mega Spider) (2013)

This creature feature about a giant marauding spider revels in its low budget b-movie-ness in the way Snakes On A Plane and "Sharknado" did but unlike those tedious films, this one has enough - just enough - humour and reasonable sfx to sustain it even through its weakest moments when it tries to develop the romance and science of its barely-even-there story.

★★☆☆☆

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Red Dog (2011)

The inhabitants of Dampier gather and share stories about a red dog that has featured prominently in their lives in this gentle drama apparently based on a true story except - as is the irritating way of all mainstream Australian films - the eccentric townfolk have been exaggerated to all get out.

★★★☆☆

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Ant-Man (2015)

Marvel introduces to film the most unlikely among its stable of superheroes, Ant-Man, who can shrink in size and command ants to do his bidding (!), and succeed in striking the right tone between lighthearted and earnest with an action movie that paves the way for Ant-Man to join in in the next Avengers.

★★★☆☆

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The Silence of the Lambs

*SPOILER ALERT*

Rewatching this serial killer chiller is a sobering indication of how naive a filmgoing audience we once were but are no longer, for when Hannibal Lecter says very early on, "Why do you think he skins his victims, Clarice?" the obvious answer today in place of yesteryear's innocent bewilderment, is the quick, plain, "He is probably making a human suit."

★★★★☆

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Fantastic Mr Fox (2009)

Wes Anderson brings Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox to life in his usual self-consciously quirky way, occasionally amusing with his all-American The Honeymooners approach to the British text, but more occasionally irking.

★★★☆☆

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Spider-Man (2002)

Unusual casting choices (Tobey McGuire in the title role and Kirsten Dunst as his love interest) pay off in this hugely successful blockbuster treatment of the Marvel superhero comicbook character, one made before the incredible superhero glut of more recent times.

★★★★☆

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The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

The credits of the three Spiderman movies starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst had barely rolled when this unnecessary but thoroughly enjoyable reboot appeared with the perkier casting of Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone and a shinier, less thoughtful take on the awkward high schooler's first outing as a superhero.

★★★☆☆

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Twelve Monkeys (1995)

The joy of Terry Gillam's Twelve Monkeys, a thrilling drama that works with the Slaughterhouse Five themes of time, memory, and questions of what is real and what isn't, is watching the madness ebb and flow and transplant itself back and forth between the leads, so that first it is Willis, then Stowe, then Willis again, whose reality - with the help of unbalanced camera angles - teeters on collapse.

★★★★★

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Jackass: The Movie (2002)

The manchildren of Jackass look like they are having a riot performing the sorts of pranks most of us as children learn not to do when we lose a hand to a homemade firework or kill a friend pushing them in a trolley down a hill, and at least they are having a good time because most of this movie-length episode of badly behaved Jackass antics is dismaying for audiences over fifteen.

★☆☆☆☆

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Black Swan (2010)

The tone of this psychological thriller about a ballerina who is probably going crazy from the stress of being a ballerina stays relentlessly, relentlessly dark despite things getting quite ridiculous by three-quarters of the way through, leaving the audience no choice but to lighten matters themselves with laughter, at least in the screening I went to.

★★★☆☆

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Snakes on a Plane (2006)

The acronym of the film's title is SOAP, a fact my wandering brain found far more interesting than the entirety of this movie about badly drawn cartoon snakes on a plane full of idiots.

★☆☆☆☆

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