Best In Show (Amazon Prime, 12) Verdict: Barking parody Rating: A Mighty Wind (Amazon Prime, 12) Verdict: A hurricane of silliness Rating: Waiting For Guffman (Amazon Prime, 12) Verdict: Small-town spoof Rating: Over in that parallel universe without Covid-19, the 73rd Cannes Film Festival would be drawing to a close this weekend and I would … Read more
Extraction (Netflix, 15) Verdict: Violent and derivative Rating: Extraction. It seems fitting that a film that sounds like a dental training video should set your teeth on edge. It stars Chris Hemsworth as that staple character of modern action movies, the former ‘special ops’ soldier, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, now working as … Read more
Bacurau (Amazon Prime, 18) Verdict: Genre-defying but terrific Rating: Who You Think I Am (Curzon Home Cinema, 15) Verdict: Sexy and beguiling Rating: The Host (various streaming platforms, 15) Verdict: Psycho rip-off Rating: The pick of this week’s homestreaming options is a pair of foreign-language films. The strange but compelling Bacurau, plunging us into the … Read more
Trolls World Tour (Rakuten TV, U) Verdict: Inventive and fun Rating: The Iron Mask (various streaming platforms, 12A) Verdict: A spectacular mess Rating: There’s no snobbery quite like music snobbery. Dare to profess an admiration for the work of Phil Collins or Bono, let alone Justin Bieber, and in some circles you will be treated … Read more
Four Kids And It (PG, Sky Cinema) Verdict: Forced whimsy Rating: Elephant (PG, Disney +) Verdict: One shade of grey Rating: A new film that families can enjoy together is a precious commodity at the moment, rather like a bumper pack of loo rolls. Moreover, Four Kids And It (on Sky Cinema) combines the storytelling … Read more
We keep hearing that the nation is facing its biggest crisis since World War II, yet one of the things the British do during challenging times is go to the pictures. Cinema attendance rocketed during the war, and the war years yielded some wonderful films such as Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and David Lean’s Brief … Read more
Onward (U) Verdict: Another Pixar triumph Rating: Worryingly for those of us who remember it like it was yesterday, or at any rate the day before yesterday, this year marks a quarter of a century since Pixar burst into cinema-goers’ consciousness with the sublime Toy Story. Since 1995, those supremely gifted animators, writers and directors … Read more
Dark Waters (12A) Rating: Verdict: Quietly impressive Downhill (15) Rating: Verdict: Funny and thought-provoking Not many actors have played crusaders against villainy in quite as many guises as Mark Ruffalo. He is the mighty Hulk in the Avengers movies, turning his superhuman strength against the forces of evil. In the Oscar-winning Spotlight (2016), he was one … Read more