Old (2021)

No, director M. Night Shyamalan doesn't have an excuse for yet another lame ending because although this time his movie, a beach-based Picnic At Hanging Rock (a group of people lug picnic baskets to a beach only to discover they are trapped and inexplicably ageing there) is based on Sandcastle, a graphic novel by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters, Shyamalan actually changes the ending of the kooky Lost-like events, so the lame ending is his again, but up to that late point when the story turns rusty, he delivers a captivating fantasy horror thriller full of great acting, weird and wonderful ideas, a beautiful confined location like the stage of a theatre production, and of course his trademark cameo and camerawork, sweeping and overhead and long-take.

★★★☆☆

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Baywatch (2017)

22 Jump Street showed it is possible to simultaneously send up and update a 90s tv show on the big screen, but the promise of this big screen update of David Hasselhoff's unashamedly dopey 90s tv soap lasts just ten minutes before an erection joke plunges the tone into a deep skull-against-a-rock dive off a jetty from which it can't be revived; two loooong hours later, all that has been achieved is an overlong episode of the tv show with the attempt to justify the big screen treatment consisting of waves of adolescent humour that really could have seen the movie more successfully released as Police Academy 8: Officers on Beach Patrol.

★★☆☆☆

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