A Bad Moms Christmas (2017)

"The relationship between a mother and a daughter is complex," says a character in one of this sequel's few scenes that isn't a not-very-funny penis-centric R'n'B music montage, and the best way to demonstrate this complexity is probably not by introducing into the Bad Moms mix three completely over-the-top mother caricatures - a Bree Van de Kamp controlling one, a co-dependent best friend one, and an unnreliable woman-child one - because not only do these cartoons not seem like real moms, they do not have complex relationships with their daughters and their presence all but eclipses the three perfectly imperfect original bad moms that were so endearing and funny in number one.

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Bad Times At The El Royale (2018)

This is The Hateful Eight transported to Richard Nixon- and Vietnam War-era Nevada slash California, except that Quentin Tarantino can sustain pulpy violent nonsense and this movie can't, as you'll see when the terrific slowburn set-up full of surprises ends up with nowhere to go and Chris Hemsworth's cult leader is left conducting protracted interrogations of characters he has no established reason to care about.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Bad Girl (2016)

When Chloe (Hugo Weaving's niece, Samsara Weaving) is first introduced, she is good - save-a-life angelic good - but the contrast between her and bad girl Amy (Sara West, not Hugo Weaving's niece), a juvenile delinquent causing her foster parents major headaches, is barely established when Chloe turns bad - Glenn-Close-in-Fatal-Attraction bad - and from the moment Amy discovers Chloe to be this rank nutter, the movie manages to protract to seventy more minutes (scream, scream, scream) a situation which Amy (scream scream scream) really should have been able to sort out in the first five. 

★★☆☆☆

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Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014)

On the very busy day of his older brother's prom, his sister's school theatre performance of Peter Pan, and his twelfth birthday, Alexander experiences an especially bad but very funny day, in this good-natured Disney family comedy based on Judith Viorst's book.

★★★☆☆

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Bad Company (2002)

Chris Rock is an uncharismatic good-for-nothing enlisted by Anthony Hopkins' Government spy boss to step into his dead twin brother's shoes in this romance-, drama-, and joke-free romantic action comedy which I suspect Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Schumacher chose in the end to self-title rather than use other equally apt titles, "Bad Acting", "Misguided Project" or "Pedestrian Plotting".

★☆☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Big Bad Wolves (2013)

This convoluted thriller from Israel is about a suspected serial killer of children being tortured in a basement by the father of one of the victims, which may not sound funny, but black humour and a constant witty 'turning of the tables' will keep you watching through grim torture until a final, sadly unrewarding, meaningless revelation.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Bad Moms (2016)

On the basis of other "Bad..." movies (Bad Grandpa, Bad Santa, Bad Teacher, Bad Teddybear (well, Ted)), you'd be excused for dismissing this as just the latest middling grossout comedy about responsibility-shirkers, but in fact this one is carried off by such a winning cast (Mila Kunis gives a career best performance, and Kristen Bell, Christina Applegate, and Kathryn Hahn in the Melissa McCarthy role are hilarious), and is overall such a warm and winning tribute (we discover that the bad moms of the title are mothers everywhere struggling to do their best) that you can forgive the sequences that fall flat and the comedy's frequent disingenuousness about single parents and in the way it presents Mila Kunis as a dag needing fashion and relationship help.

★★★★☆

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Bad Influence (1990)

This 80s Fight Club has a baby-faced Rob Lowe playing a wet sort of a Tyler Durden whose (not very convincing) bravura in a bar fight and way with women (doing 'out there' stuff like buying them drinks and dancing with them and stuff) works a Rasputin-like spell over James Spader's The Narrator, who ditches his corporate life of double-breasted suits, ProDOS computers, and suitcase mobile phones for an anarchic Clyde-and-Clyde lifestyle of grubby three-person sex, convenience-store theft....and murder! 

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Bad Neighbors (aka Neighbors) (2014)

New parents endeavour to shut down a riotous frathouse that keeps them and their baby awake at night, in this crude but often funny comedy that smashes together the world of the young, wild and wilful with the world of the middle-aged and totes-uncool, but the movie squanders the most interesting aspect of its story: Zac Efron's fratboy's inability to look beyond fraternity life, an idea with darkly humorous potential, introduced then abandoned..

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW