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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Given how lame Rise, Salvation and Genesys turned out, Terminator head honcho James Cameron gets the band back together to produce for Deadpool director Tim Miller’s re-boot, which, in these times of safe sequels is a do-over of Judgement Day. A watchable, more than competent, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin do-ver, but that’s pretty much it.

Abigail (2019)

The outstanding steampunk production design and Eastern European folk tale atmosphere can’t elevate Abigail into Fantastic Beasts’ league. The script might have Russian poetry in it’s soul but after translation and terrible overdubbing a la 1970’s Singing Ringing Tree, it makes Hallmark sound like Shakespeare.

As if Tinatin Dalakishvili attempting to play mid-teenage in her twenties wasn’t bad enough, the hair department gives Abigail the worst wig since Streep’s Lindy Chamberlain or Bardem’s No Country hitman.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

The triple-trilogy comes to an end after forty years with a low-budget, low-key bit of character drama. Not.

J.J. Abrams dials everything up to 12 for the epic-est space-opera finale, with thousands of space ships, a Sith temple, a cavalry charge across the deck of a star destroyer, daft plot, lame dialogue and the worst light sabre fight in history.

Just as well Daisy Ridley rescues the whole thing with some decent, sympathetic acting.

Freaks (2019)

This little indie gem almost got lost in the Autumn movie flood. An R-rated (sweary, splattery) piece that treads in the footprints of X-Men, Carrie, Let Me In, Midnight Special and any of Del Torro’s child-centred fantasies, Freaks takes it’s time, playing fast and loose with genre and perspective to reveal to it’s alternative super hero core. The indomitable Bruce Dern makes the most of grouchy ice cream vendor Mr Snowcone, but it’s debutant Lexy Kolker who holds the stage as the desperate and vulnerable ‘princess in the tower’ Chloe.