Underwater (2020)

Don’t be deceived by the trailer that looks like Aquatic Aliens, Underwater is actually a sensitive documentary about the conservation of coral reefs in the pacific…

Of course it isn’t. At the bottom of the Mariannas Trench, a drilling rig suffers a catastrophic failure, leaving Kristen Stewart and a handful of survivors to escape the rig, the deep ocean, and an undiscovered race of ancient hungry nasties.

The Last Thing He Wanted (2020)

Netflix’ ‘fuzzy felt’ production line continues to throw content at the wall to see what sticks – and it’s not this. A poorly adapted, incoherent, journo-political thriller, despite Anne Hathaway acting her socks off, makes no sense whatsoever. Plenty of tension and skull-duggery during Reagan-era, Central American shenanigans, can’t reconcile Hathaway’s dedicated news hound to her run of catastrophic decisions.

NTLive: Cyrano de Bergerac (2020)

A movie that isn’t a movie; a play that isn’t a play. Live-streamed from the Playhouse Theatre in London’s ‘glittering West End’, the Rostand classic gets a modern, no set, no props, Brechtian makeover, complete with rap, beat-boxing and no end of swearing.

More than that, one of theatre’s famously ugly leads is played by a bona-fide movie star, James Macavoy, without a false nose. Then he takes his shirt off.

The Aeronauts (2019)

Reuniting after Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne’s maverick meteorologist (yes, really) and Felicity Jones’ daredevil balloonist would rather take on the weather in a perilous record-breaking flight than face the scorn and strictures of Victorian society, thereby proving what a pair of plucky underdogs can achieve with sufficient grit, persistence and determination. Yes it’s that kind of movie. And if you’re not good with heights, maybe give it a miss.

My Rules, My Red Crosses

If you look down my list of reviews, you’ll see I don’t do stars or ratings. That’s all very superficial and reductive. I just give opinions based on my own subjective experience. I’m not an influencer. I don’t suppose most of the time anyone cares what I think, but I’ll say it anyway. I watch a lot more than I ever write up. If I have an agenda it’s either to give praise where it’s due, abuse where it’s due, or to undercut the hype generated by marketing departments chasing a fast buck. Sometimes a movie is so egregiously bad, it gets a red cross.

Pretty Woman (1990)

Someone’s made a musical out of this misogynistic celluloid garbage and someone needs to put a stop to it. A high-gloss Hollywood rip-off of Pygmalion, this ‘classic modern fairy tale’ is one of the worst movies of the last forty years. Warning: rant ahead.

Birds of Prey (2020)

While I’m all in favour of equal opportunities, I’m not convinced that an R-rated, sweary, violent bid to outdo the testosterone-fulled action genre is quite the feminist triumph Birds of Prey was hoping for. For all that Margot Robbie turns in a scene-stealing performance as Harley Quinn, the whole movie plays like a teenage boys’ fantasy of a sweary, bloody and rather pointless graphic novel, built around a very small pair of hot pants.

Spiderman: Far From Home (2019)

Having missed the previous two instalments of this third Spiderman reboot in two decades, checked in on Far From Home to discover it’s National Lampoon’s European Vacation overloaded with smash-bash-and-crash, CGI-tastic, urban destruction and another terrible villain. However sparky and charming are it’s young leads, Jake Ghyllenhaal is more Mystery Men than Mysterio, in a paper thin plot that grumpy Nick Fury should have seen through in two minutes.

Fast Color (2019)

A heart-warming family drama with three strong female leads that is also a superhero movie without the bash, smash and crash. Part Midnight Special, part X-Men, but with a grittier edge than A Wrinkle in Time, Fast Color doesn’t need buckets of blood and blowing s* up every five minutes to tell a proper story. Mr Bay and Mr Snyder please take note…

Sucker Punch (2011)

At what point are we allowed to call out Zack ‘300’ Snyder’s multi-layered, teenaged boy’s masturbation fantasy that includes child abuse, strippers, gangsters, a mental hospital, four women in bondage outfits and one infantilised actress in a schoolgirl costume fighting giant samurai, zombies, knights, dragons and robots in a CGI-tastic gun-fest? Never mind ‘live-action manga’, this has the sexual politics of a 1960’s exploitation B-movie.