The Old Guard (2020)

Netflix’ latest mashes up The A-Team meets Highlander in Charlize Theron‘s latest kick-ass chick, immortal, action heroine vehicle. With a bit of obligatory John Wick beat-em up, shoot ’em up. And some proper actors. Maybe Chewetel Ejiorfor and Matthias Schoenarts took a wrong turn out of the rehearsal rooms of a Lyn Ramsay drama? All this is adapted from a graphic novel.

Tenet (2020)

What can Christopher Nolan possibly do to top this impossibly twisty, timey-wimey, too-clever-by-half, labyrinthine, high-concept, sci-fi-espionage-heist-action thriller? A movie so dense, one of the characters has to give us instructions at the start: ‘don’t think it, feel it.’ I’m feeling they should have called it Inversion. But that’s not a palindrome.

Midsommar (2019)

After long consideration, the verdict on Midsommar is… meh.

Ari Aster’s quietly bonkers, absurd and absurdist daylight horror is a culture-clash of Swedish detachment versus self-absorbed Americans at the sort of festival that only exists in Monty Python‘s most twisted sketches. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise – this is the Swedish Wicker Man.

My Cousin Rachel (2017)

Never a fan of Du Maurier’s sub-Bronte shananigans, but desperate to like this one, Robert Michell’s costume psycho-drama proves the existence of LAS – Literary Adaptation Syndrome.

The necessary over-compression of a long novel beats all the mystery out of Du Maurier’s ‘did-she-didn’t-she’ plot, reducing it to Fatal Attraction in Crinolines, with all the subtlety of a bulldozer crashing through your window.

X-Men Dark Phoenix (2019)

The final instalment of the X-Men reboot is an unruly tangle of belonging, family and identity with plenty of CGI mayhem and big action set-pieces. Stuck with the mis-casting of Fassbender and MacAvoy, it relies on Sophie ‘Mahogony’ Turner stepping up as the empathetic core and she’s just not that kind of actress. Blown away by Jessica Chastain’s icy villain and Jennifer Lawrence’s too-short stint as Mystique, Turner is the weak nail in the wall from which the whole thing hangs.

Where Eagles Dare (1968)

The top box office movie of 1968, this Boy’s Own Adventure, behind-enemy-lines, WWII jaunt has Richard Burton slumming it alongside Clint Eastwood in an original script by novelist Alistair Maclean.

The Unwatchables

Thankfully, reviewing is not my paid job. It’s just as well. The list of movies I am prepared to sit through is ever-shrinking, thanks to an in-built content filter that flashes red at the very casting of certain actors. Their very names on a poster has become a guaranteed indicator of cinematic sewage not worth my time. Life is simply too short and getting shorter by the day. It’s becoming quite a list.

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Kong meets Apocalypse Now in a 70’s re-boot with all the logic of a Japanese ’60’s kaiju movie. Go to Vietnam; leave Vietnam; go to island; meet Kong, fight giant cave lizards, do not leave island, do not go to New York, do not kill the ape. At least Kong is a ‘real’ ape with proper fur – cast of Cats take note.

Cats (2019)

You like musical theatre or you don’t. You like screen musicals or you don’t. You like Andrew Llyod-Webber or you don’t. But the uncanny valley of these weirdly sexed-up felines with CGI fur and human faces… that’s one kink too many.

Eliot’s Book of Practical Cats was ersatz English whismy, and as the source for a two hour musical, the material’s decidedly flimsy. Okay, I won’t do the whole review in verse.

Emma (2020)

This witty and understated Austen adaptation is a sparkling team effort that gives the original text space to breathe in a sumptuous (when else do you get to use that adjective?) production where every frame is a tribute to the costume department. ‘Period drama’ doesn’t get any more period than this.