Murder Mystery 2 (2022)

Not as sophisticated a mystery as the plot of a Murder, She Wrote episode, this sequel to Netflix's 2019 Murder Mystery at least improves on that original, generating a few laughs and keeping the pace brisk and the length blessedly short as Nick and Audrey Spitz end up on a tropical island for a wedding where a murderer strikes.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

The Sitter (1991)

Despite its oh-so-laboured set-up and oh-so-laboured dialogue, this uncinematic 90-minute flick is good movie-night-in fun for psycho thriller fans, featuring a babysitter who reveals, on her first night on the job minding a kid in a swanky hotel, that she is a rank nutter prepared to cosh any number of hotel guests over the head to continue revelling in her delusions!

★★★☆☆

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Fear (1997)

Sarah McLachlan's "Wild Horses" plays whenever Nicole (Reese Witherspoon) believes things are good between her and David (Mark Wahlberg), like during rollercoaster sex, but at other times angry thrash metal plays and David doles out a black eye to Nicole, drives like a maniac, cheats, engages in grimy partner-swap sex, and in a laughable homage to "Cape Fear" meant to confirm David a right looney tune, he self-tattoos "NICOLE 4 EVA" across his torso with black biro ink as dissonate chords crescendo, but the genuinely tense abusive relationship that develops between the teens is muddied in the last half of this psycho thriller with David turning out to be as much a lawless gangbanging squatter with daddy issues as he is obsessive about Nicole.

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS