Girls Trip

(MA15+) ★★★½Director: Malcolm D. Lee.Cast: Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith, Larenz Tate, Mike Colter, Kate Walsh.Dutch ovens can be hilarious.IF you missed the girls-gone-bad comedy of Rough Night earlier this year, don't worry. Go and see Girls Trip instead.This film about women cutting loose, working out their issues, and getting "white-girl drunk" is a far superior comedy because it does many of the things...

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American Made

(MA15+) ★★★½Director: Doug Liman.Cast: Tom Cruise, Sarah Wright, Domhnall Gleeson, Alejandro Edda, Caleb Landry Jones.Cocaine's a hell of a drug.THE post-Mission: Impossible career of Tom Cruise can be split into two categories.On one side are the Action Man films, starring Tom "I Do All My Own Stunts" Cruise. On the other side are the Acting Man films, starring Tom "Nominated For Three Oscars" Cruise.It's rare these two categories meet (Collateral...

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Logan Lucky

(M) ★★★★Director: Steven Soderbergh.Cast:  Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Riley Keough, Daniel Craig, Brian Gleeson, Jack Quaid, Seth MacFarlane, Katie Holmes, Hilary Swank, Katherine Waterston, Sebastian Stan."The name's Bang. Joe Bang."NO one ever really retires these days.Every retirement is followed by the inevitable comeback, whether it be a one-off thing or a fully-fledged return that retroactively morphs the "retirement" into...

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Valerian & The City Of A Thousand Planets

(M) ★★Director: Luc Besson.Cast: Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Sam Spruell, Kris Wu."Are you sure we didn't mix up our uniforms?""Pretty sure."WIKIPEDIA tells us that early in Luc Besson's career, he was part of movement critics dubbed cinéma du look, which was a classy way of saying Besson and his fellow French directors à la mode favoured "style over substance, spectacle over narrative".More...

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REWIND REVIEW: Cloud Atlas

(MA15+) ★★★Director: Tom Tykwer & The Wachowskis.Cast: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, James D'Arcy.This picture encapsulates why I don't go to pubs anymore.Are you ready for my most self-indulgent blog to date?Here goes.One of the trickiest aspects of film reviewing is trying to get it right after just one viewing of a film. My theory has always been 'once...

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The Big Sick

(M) ★★★★Director: Michael Showalter.Cast: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Adeel Akhtar, Zenobia Shroff, Anupam Kher, Bo Burnham, Aidy Bryant."I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the cuteness."If you're getting tired of the typical rom-com fare Hollywood has been serving up in recent years, grab a seat at the table for The Big Sick.This rom-com is utterly refreshing, like a big bowl of ice cream after a serving of...

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Christopher Nolan - From Best To Worst

From 2000 until 2010, there were few directors who could rival Christopher Nolan. He had a Pixar-like strike rate of awesomeness. Across six films - from Memento (2000) to Inception (2010) - he did incredible things. He made us think backwards, rebirthed an iconic character, made the greatest superhero movie of all time, gave us remarkable performances from the likes of Robin Williams and Heath Ledger, and took us into a dream inside a dream inside...

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