The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

SPOILERS BELOW

As someone who wasn't a huge fan of the original trilogy (lots of cool stuff going on, but the first film was all world-building and set-up with no narrative drive, and the sequels were a mess), but loved Cloud Atlas and Sense8, I was hoping that this would be a Matrix film that I could love. The first half got my hopes up, the second half dashed them.
It starts off very fun, very 'a sequel about sequels and itself' meta, and confusing in a good way. But one you figure out the general deal - Neo got resurrected and put in another Matrix where the events of the preceding films have been framed as a fiction of his own invention, but now he's created a Morpheus-Smith amalgam AI who, along with some real-world peeps, has broken him out again. It's at this point that it needed to quickly and cleanly cover the events between this and Revolutions then set up a goal and the stakes, and then throw in a bunch of trademark Matrix impressive, impeccably-framed action sequences. Unfortunately, it failed at all of this and instead switched to confusing in a bad way.
It looked lovely, had a bunch of good performances and lots of Sense8 cast members, and had fun playing with the iconography (breaking the trope of woman-trains-less-skilled-but-chosen-man by making Trinity the hero was particularly nice), and doing endless callbacks and character returns in a way that somehow never got annoying (although Smith was a bit crap) but it ended up as a muddled re-run with bafflingly lacklustre and muddy action scenes.

Rating: Disappointing.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

SPOILERS BELOW

As someone who wasn't a big fan of any of the Maguire Spideys (3 was my favourite, with a heavy head-edit to get rid of Venom), disliked the Garfield Spideys, and only mildly enjoyed the first two Hollands, I didn't have high hopes for this. Turns out, this is by far my favourite of them all, second only to Into The Spiderverse.
It does all the good stuff from the MCU Spidey - the fun characters, comedy and crossovers, including an inventive fight with another hero that's up there with the Thor vs Cap vs Tony fight from Avengers - without the dips in energy or outstaying of welcomes, and it improves on many of the alt-verse baddies it brings back. Sandman is fine, Doc Ock and The Lizard get a little added humour, Green Goblin gets a better costume and is both much scarier and more sympathetic, and Electro is totally retooled into something decent. I'm not always the biggest fan of the MCU, but it really is impressive how they have consistently shown a better instinct for this stuff than Sony. Plus seeing the single-universe groups interact with each other lends them a little MCU persistence, and it's a really nice Days Of Future Past style touch to give everyone a happy ending.
The extra Spideys work well too - they're differentiated enough not to feel redundant, but the similarities are plumbed for thematic and emotional resonance, they work well together and they even get a small bump to their own arcs (enough for me to well up at a couple of points on Garfield's, which was bloody impressive considering how little I gave a shit about his Peter previously).
The only real weak points are some of the storytelling logic - the cause of the whole multiverse opening thing is pretty sweaty (Dr Strange decides to do an incredibly dangerous spell to fix Peter's small-fry issues then messes it up because Peter keeps asking him to add stuff on mid-cast and he just... does. Oof.) and there's no attention paid to how all these characters returning to their own universes, possibly at different points in time to each other, will work. But the action's consistently good, the music's good, it looks good, and when it threatens to hit a lull or a logic bump the sheer amount of conceptual stuff going on carries it along. 

Rating: Very Good.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)

SPOILERS BELOW

Very disappointing. It starts off pretty well - okay, it's very heavy on the exposition, but then it calms down a bit, it's pretty charming, and the fight scenes are actually well choreographed and directed! But then the usual Marvel problems show up. CG immediately starts creeping in, sucking the weight and peril out of everything. The movie continues to do exposition and set-up for the first 90 minutes, not taking a moment to breathe as it crams in all of the designated Feige Masterplan elements. It takes about five minutes to try to give the lead a personality, dish out a couple of character arcs, and train everyone up to the required skill levels, then moves into the climactic battle which feels like a Bay Transformers movie - human characters getting flung around a scene as big CG things hit each other. Nothing is earned, not the victories or the reconciliations or the noble sacrifices or the character developments.

One of those movies you fan-edit in your head as you go - this should have started with Shang-Chi's regular life, had the surprise bus fight, done a very streamlined version of alllll the flashbacks, then moved forward into a lean Big Trouble In Little China style romp with Awkwafina, Terry Slattery and a lead character with a personality making their way through weird locales.

Rating: Kinda Bad.

Ready Or Not (2019)

This is a film that needed to be incredibly tight to succeed, but instead it's sloppy in every area. None of the character decisions or rules make sense, the comedy is broad and artless, the structure is flat, and the desperate, transparent, cynical attempt to create a cult favourite protagonist fails because there's nothing to her except screaming, swearing, the occasional under-reaction and a Funko Pop-ready outfit.

Rating: Bad.

Final Girls (2015)

Like Scream but not clever or funny or scary, and done with a needlessly convoluted and inconsistent Last Action Hero premise. Possibly could have worked if they'd just done it as an actual post-modern Jason Voorhees movie, and been a bit less Scary Movie about it.

Rating: Very bad.

The Vast of Night (2019)

This is pretty much a half hour radio play interspersed with long empty tracking shots and jarring formal allusions to The Twilight Zone, a 60 year old show which regularly packed more ideas and visual oomph into a single episode than this film has in its entire runtime. The two leads are, respectively, as boring as the story and as irritatingly smug as the exhibitionist film-making. I gave up about halfway through and skipped to the end.

Rating: Very bad.

Don't Breathe (2016)

An effective, tight little grindhouse thriller than revels in pointing out all the Chekov's Guns to you up front then letting loose, while also regularly throwing in surprise devlopments as it goes.

Rating: Very Good.

Balle Perdue (2020)

A taut thriller with great car, shootout and melee action sequences, and a simple story with just enough meat on it. Like a less silly, more French, The Transporter (this could easily have been rejigged into a Universal Soldier style rejuvenation of that franchise, in fact).

Rating: Very good.

An American Pickle (2020)

Reminded me a bit of Cable Guy in that it's a fun premise, well made, with lots of fun moments, but the tone is uneven and the story is very slight. It's not surprising that this was adapted from a short story, as it often feels more like a sketch stretched out to 90 minutes. Rogen gives two strong performances, and the film is generally good at whatever it's trying its hand at - spoofy comedy, light satire, gentle drama - even if it never manages to settle on one or meld them successfully together.

Rating: Okay.

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

SPOILERS BELOW

Godzilla Vs Kong has a bunch of cool fights, visuals and concepts, and some smart tying together of various lore strands. (The decision to make the hollow earth a huge, gravity-churning version of Skull Island where Kong is more like King Conan works especially well, allowing for some classic Kong action while adding some twists.)

The problem is, this movie functions purely as a delivery system for those cool elements. The small amounts of narrative and human elements that do exist are contrived and illogical. Meanwhile, the titans have changed from inscrutable living natural megadisasters to superheroes. This would be fine - they are essentially gods, after all, so why not hew a little closer to Greek myth? - except they can't talk, so there's no dressing up just how rote the use of the standard team-up/face-off beats is here. (Frustratingly, they  actually introduce a smart way to allow Kong to communicate, but then barely use it!)

When your title characters can't talk and your supporting cast are almost completely disposable, then you're not going to end up with a very satisfying movie, no matter how good your choreography and design are.

Rating: Okay.

EDIT: on a second watch I'd knock this down to Bad if not Terrible. The hollow earth King Conan stuff is utterly wasted and the fights are all cartoonish, stripped off all weight and awe. The whole thing feels like an episode of WWE with some Marvel gooped all over it.

The Suicide Squad (2021)

Funny, surprising, exciting. It gets everything right that the first Suicide Squad movie got wrong - I loved and hated all the characters I was supposed to, the villain is cool, the music is deployed with finesse (to the point where it feels like a conscious jab at the first film), the action is mostly really well choreographed and shot, the character arcs and tragic backstories work and don't feel forced.

It drags occasionally, and definitely should have been 20 minutes shorter, but it's great fun and a huge breath of fresh air after most of the DCEU and, honestly, most of the MCU as well.

Rating: Really good.

Old (2021)

If you've heard the elevator pitch, you've pretty much seen the movie. There are some fun ideas, but overall it feels careless: the two leads (such as they are) give terrible performances, the pacing is mostly languorous, the characters are too slow to catch on to anything (including some everyday common sense stuff), and the effects on the characters seem to come in fits and starts and at varying time rates. Sad to say, this very much feels like a mid-COVID production.

Rating: Meh.

Free Guy (2021)

Ideally, this movie would have understood video game mechanics, culture and development, and cleverly  skewered (or at least poked fun at) them all. Unfortunately, it's more of a "tighten up the graphics on level 3" type deal. Nothing makes sense judged by real world logic, and there's no internal logic to speak of either. It panders to the more obnoxious and ignorant subsections of gamers - making the villain someone who is in favour of *gasp!* IPs and sequels, and hazily referring to his purchase of the hero coders' work then not making the game they would have with it as theft - but simultaneously makes tired jokes about gamers all being virgins in their twenties who live with their parents and wank into socks. The lead character has no personality outside of being the literal personification of a coder's creepy secret crush, brought to life by seeing her bum in tight leather trousers. Ryan Reynolds is on autopilot, Taika Waititi has somehow been turned into an off-brand Jim Carrey, and everyone else is a cipher or a greek chorus of painfully unconvincing YouTubers. There is no dramatic impetus or structure.

I gave up with half an hour left to go. 

Rating: Very bad.

The Peanuts Movie (2015)

Having never really read Peanuts or watched the previous movies, and so only picked up on the key elements and tone of it via cultural osmosis, I enjoyed this adaptation. They use a bunch of clever tricks to retain the 2D imagery (having characters always standing 3/4 on to the camera in the classic Peanuts pose, flipping their noses to match the camera angle, low animation rates etc), and they don't have the town invaded by aliens or anything awful like that. It's just a gentle slice-of-life comedy-drama, with some sitcom tropes (crush on the new girl, misunderstanding leads to high social standing), light slapstick and fantasy sequences thrown in.
It's not quite as melancholy as it could be, and you could ask why the need to go 3D at all if they're going to put so much work into making it feel 2D, of course, but assuming that these were unavoidable decisions for a big Western theatrical release animated movie in this day and age, this is the best adaptation you could hope for.

Rating: Good.

Pete's Dragon (2016)

Surprisingly restrained and tasteful, this is a very gentle, sweet movie with lots of touching, underplayed performances. It reminded me of E.T., not least in how successful it is in creating emotional scenes between a child actor and a CG creature. The only possible criticism really is that there's not a lot to it - it eventually gets into the Harry And The Hendersons type 'misguided hunter' territory, but most of the focus is on Pete's emotional journey when he rediscovers the wider world. If you're looking for a family movie that is the second half of Cast Away with some ET sprinkled in, this is it.

Rating: Good.

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

SPOILERS BELOW

Effective low-key look into the mindset of someone who gets drawn into a cult and then escapes, especially the paranoia and the inability to discuss it with those around you despite that making things worse. It doesn't have much of an ending, but I guess that's the point - she's going to feel the sword of Damocles hanging over her for the rest of her life now.

Rating: Good.

Black Widow (2021)

SPOILERS BELOW

The Ohio opening was fantastic, thrilling and emotionally affecting. Then the movie basically spends the rest of its time getting stuff in place for the climax. The action isn't awful, but the use of Flubbering CG doubles and choppy editing make it feel cartoonish and unsatisfying. The comedy banter falls flat consistently. The villain is crap (wish they'd got Julie Delpy back).

Taskmaster was kind of cool, I guess, and it was a clever Bourne-y idea to have this interquel (or whatever) based around Natasha dealing with her red ledger, so even though we know what's going to happen to her after the events of this story it doesn't cause that common prequel issue of no dramatic tension. Also, that post-credits scene got me more excited for Hawkeye (which I'm already looking forward to because it seems like they're going to take a lot of influence from the Matt Fraction run, which I loved), so well done there.

Rating: Meh.

Guns Akimbo (2019)

Utterly charmless, wholly derivative, and smugly self-satisfied at how distanced and post-modern it's being as if Fight Club, The Running Man and Death Race 2000 to name but a few didn't do all this decades ago. It's not even effective on the genre level, with no one acting remotely like human beings, super-fighters suddenly losing the ability to aim straight and the wimpy dweeb thrown into a world of violence able to survive back-alley surgery, gunshots and car crashes without missing a step. It also attempts to offer a treatise on humanity's relationship with violence, but can't even decide whether it's really bad or really cool.

Rating: Awful.

(Addendum: having now read about the director harassing a couple of critics, both women of colour, by falsely accusing them of bullying, it makes a lot of sense that this movie feigns condemnation of the fetishisation of violence while simultaneously enacting it.)

C.H.U.D. (1984)

Surprisingly good creature and gore effects, and solid acting (not so surprising considering the amazing list of big names in the cast, even if most of them are pre-fame and only get a 2 minute scene). But this is incredibly slow and sloppy, and clearly only had the budget for one take per shot.

Rating: Bad.

Army Of The Dead (2021)

SPOILERS BELOW

Has some interesting ideas and wastes them all, instead ending up as an overlong, dull cliché-fest. The entire 'smart zombies' thing pretty much made zero difference to the story - you could pretty easily replace them with lots of regular zombies and everything would work the same. The characters had potential but in two and a half hours there's barely any character development. Some of the alpha zombies having blue shiny stuff (I thought I saw some actual metallic endoskeleton stuff but that may have been a trick of the light [EDIT: turns out there are robot zombies , and they were put in there to set up prequel expanded lore stuff - ugggh]) - pointless. The guy getting out at the end - pointless. The heist itself is underwhelming. The action is solid but bland.

The title sequence is at least pretty good, though as with Watchmen the song choice is painfully on the nose (at least this one is narratively clearer); Bautista gives a solid performance, the first of his I've seen that hasn't been (purposefully and successfully) over- or under-played; there's a strong sequence where one character has to fight their way through a bunch of classic zombies at close quarters; otherwise this fails at every point.

Rating: Bad.

The Mitchells Vs the Machines (2021)

SPOILERS BELOW

I abandoned it 45 mins in. It feels like those adverts that steal internet memes ten years after everyone got sick of them, and I'm not finding it funny at all. Also lots of little gripes like pointless 'two days earlier' beginning, the kid brother with a voice actor who sounds 50, the dad isn't just a bit out of touch or whatever, he's a dick, 'dinosaurs' isn't a weird interest for a kid to be into, kids would love her home-made movies not ostracise her for them, it was unclear for a while whether Pal turned in that moment when she was rejected at the presentation or she'd been planning this for a while, and also they stole calling a robot companion PAL from hit game Time Gentlemen, Please!. I do like the shaders or whatever, though, it's a nice blend of 3D and 2D, like everything's a pastel painting or something. (Not as fond of the character design style, but at least it's slightly different from the Pixar standard.

Basically, not as good as A Goofy Movie.

Rating: Bad.

The Witches (2020)

SPOILERS BELOW

I have only vague memories of the novel (I started reading it as a child and had to give up as it was too scary) and the Roeg film, but I do remember that the book had a creepy, documentative feel and Roeg's adaptation captured this effectively for the most part. Zemeckis' does not. It is, in fact, a loud, overcooked eyesore.

The Chris Rock narration is unnecessary and jarring. The witches not only have the Dahl-prescribed bald heads, claws and square feet, they also have giant CG mouths, silly voices, and CG pets (the head witch throws even more on the pile, with a comedy accent, super-strength and stretchy arms). The lead child actor is fine, but the one playing Bruno is dreadful. The third child-turned-mouse is played by Kristen Chenowith, which is jarring for most of the film until you find out that children-turned-mice only live for about ten years and age into adults within that time and so maybe her sounding in her 50s this soon makes sense. Regardless, the physical acting of the three CG mice is, somehow, dreadful and their voices all irritating. The CG throughout is unconvincing and cartoonish. Silvestri's score is overbearing. They follow the story of the book pretty closely, but the structure feels off-balance: once the witches finally show up, the film rushes to the finish line.

Instead of a creepy scientific introduction to witches, there's Chris Rock's voice blaring like a foghorn over some crappy illustrations. Instead of the chilling segment about the girl trapped in a painting, there's a segment about a girl getting turned into a buffoonish CG chicken. Instead of the downbeat ending there's three CG mice dancing to Sister Sledge and riding a toy rollercoaster like something out of Stuart Little. Pretty much every single element of this film is misjudged.

Rating: Awful.

The Walk (2015)

Has that 'trying to stay historically accurate and therefore using every trick in the book to wring drama out of the actual events' feel. Charming, and certainly got my palms sweating at the right moments, but it feels a little lightweight. 

I watched this in 2D at home. Might have been more effective in 3D at the cinema...

Also, those blue eyes on JGL are weird.

Rating: Fine.

Palm Springs (2020)

BIG SPOILERS BELOW

BIG SPOILERS BELOW

BIG SPOILERS BELOW

Unfortunately I knew the basic hyphenated two word concept going in, but thankfully it gets revealed 12 or so minutes in, so it wasn't too big a loss. It's a clever way to introduce the concept, which I don't think I've ever seen before, and indeed the treatment of it for the rest of the movie feels mostly unique. Sure it's got the standards - casual suicide, detailed routine learning - but having multiple characters in the loop (which is what I'd hoped a certain slasher time-loop comedy sequel was going to do) and then making it mostly about how they all individually react to this nightmarish situation as well as their relationship gives an extra depth to the sub-genre's various tropes. It reminded me of Colossal.

As well as knowing when to reveal things, it also knows what not to reveal or explain. In particular, I'm enjoyably intrigued by the mystery "wake up" whisper. Is it God? The last second of a looped dream? A quantum overlap of Sarah saying it on their first morning out of the loop, perhaps explaining the vision of the goat at the start of the movie? I expected a neat reveal, I didn't get one, and I'm glad.

All the actors are great, but Samberg and Milioti give gorgeous, fun yet vulnerable performances. It looks and sounds great, too.

Rating: Very Good.

Paper Girls posters and volume covers

Along with my compilations of the Paper Girls single issue covers, I had hoped to put together all the 4-part posters. Unfortunately, the digital versions were missing a couple of pieces:

I didn't want to spend money on physical copies just for this, and couldn't find anyone online willing or able to scan them in. However, just a few days ago, someone on Reddit posted their complete version. Like me, they had started with the digital versions; they found a physical copy to scan in for one missing piece and "redrew the other based on a blurry photo of a printout". It looks really good!

In the comments, someone also links to this photo of the six volume covers, which also link together.

I love how many different little puzzles this series provided for the reader!

Batman V Superman Dawn Of Justice Ultimate Edition (2016)

SPOILERS BELOW

This is like an even worse version of Captain America: Civil War: it's just moving chess-pieces, but here the chess-pieces are all vaguely-drawn psychos; it's a Superman movie that wants to be a Justice League movie. Much like Civil War or the Hobbit movies, this needed to be pared down to a single point of view. It's simply too early in this cinematic universe to be doing a movie like this. Wonder Woman does not need to be in this movie, and neither do the glimpses of the other meta-humans. We're still no closer to knowing anything about Clark as a person, we don't get to see him actually be day-to-day Superman, and I don't give a shit when he dies. We're supposed to like Batman but despite his large amounts of screentime he only exists in relation to Superman (plus he's a hair-trigger, pill-popping, boozing, cave-dwelling, murderous vigilante). Meanwhile, Lex Luthor is an obnoxious Evil Rain Man with zero motivation. 

Never mind characterisation, it's incredible how Snyder can make these 3 hour movies and not find time for any fun. With all the dull, shallow political machinations and evil schemes, there's no room for more than one short Batman-Superman fight, the raison d'etre of this movie! Freddy Vs Jason managed more than that in 98 minutes. The story is as much of a grey sludge as most of the movie is visually.

On the plus side, the fight-scenes are better directed (Snyder seems most at home with melee combat).

Rating: Very Bad.

I Care A Lot (2020)

SPOILERS BELOW 

For most of its runtime, this jet-black comedy expertly walks a tonal tightrope and plays games with audience sympathies, hopping between headline-of-the-week, heist and screwball crime to get the viewer rooting for some truly horrendous people. Pike, Dinklage and Wiest are all fantastic and surrounded by great supporting players.
Sadly, it falters at the end, taking one of the two obvious endings for a movie that is, essentially, Sociopath Vs Psychopath (either they both lose or they both win) and finishing off with a jarring switch from a story supported by capitalism satire to one that blasts you in the face with it, before nicking the ending from Layer Cake.
There are also some slightly weird moments regarding feminism, where the sociopath protagonist seems to co-opt its language, and the one character who throws gendered slurs and sexual threats at her is the one who stops her evil rise to power. Also, this is another queer sociopath for the list.

Rating: Pretty Good.

After The Sun Fell (2016)

(aka The Morning the Sun Fell Down)

A strong ensemble cast give great performances, and the movie convincingly unfurls a family's history. Unfortunately, there's not that much to unfurl and the indie movie pacing combined with the theatrical origin makes this feel like a farce or melodrama played at half-speed.

Rating: Fine.

Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)

Doesn't stand up as either a zombie movie or a musical. The songs are mostly post-Frozen hollow warbling, the zombie rules are inconsistent and lazy, the direction is sloppy, the characters are barely existent, there's no story to speak of (outside of 'zombies arrive, Anna wants to get to her dad, everyone makes stupid decisions constantly') and the dialogue is irritating sub-Shaun Of The Dead banter.

Rating: Bad.

Coming 2 America (2021)

SPOILERS BELOW

It's cool to see a bunch of actors come back, and it's nice that no one's phoning this in - there's lots of energy, Snipes is great, it feels sincere.

However, this movie is a mess. I did not expect it to make the original seem classy, restrained and well-considered in comparison. There's so much going on, so many musical numbers and action scenes and characters learning lessons, and yet not many laughs. Even though it's got more modern CG effects and whatnot, it still feels a bit cheaper than the original with smaller sets, fewer extras, and scenes that feel like they got less shooting time.
And it's kind of staggering that this is more offensive than an Eddie Murphy movie from 30 years ago: Akeem is now a domineering misogynist arsehole, under his and Lisa's rule women aren't allowed to own businesses, turns out during the events of the first movie he was raped by Mary, there's an implication that Lavelle isn't even his son anyway because Mary was "a ho" back then, and a big part of the happy ending is Akeem making a political alliance with a war lord. Oh, and they even reveal that the barking hopping fiancée from the first movie has been doing that non-stop for 30 years because Akeem has refused to tell her to stop.

Rating: Bad.

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

Shot and edited nicely, with some solid performances, but after a lot of slow-boil build-up there's not very much to this. All the narrative overlapping and flashback revelations don't furnish any big surprises or have any effect on the story, it's overlong with a weak climax, and it all ends up feeling rather like watered-down Tarantino.

Rating: Meh.

Underworld franchise (2003 - 2016)

Underworld (2003)

A mess of under-written characters making nonsensical decisions, convoluted lore and badly directed action, garnished with shameless The Matrix and Cube thievery. Bill Nighy as a petulant Elder is the film's one saving grace.

Rating: Very Bad

Underworld Evolution (2006)

Has most of the first film's issues. Convoluted lore is a little more understandable from a sequel, but by making everything inter-related, it introduces some holes (if the necklace is the key to William's cage, and Selena's father made it - which must have occurred after Sonya's death - then how is that Lucian has had it since Sonya's death? Also, can't remember which one this was in, but apparently Viktor has been lying about how he's the first vampire, but if Marcus was going to be woken up before him, how was he planning to maintain that lie?).
At least there's a proper lead villain, and there are a couple of decent action scenes (the 'winged master vampire vs truck' scene, and the castle ruins finale).

Rating: Bad

Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans (2009)

This one finally has protagonists with a quantum of depth, and the action is fine though it compensates for its weaknesses with choppy editing and shakycam. However, it falls into a couple of common prequel traps: there are no stakes as we know what happens to all these characters past the events of this film, and it mostly feels like a wiki filling in continuity gaps. Even so, it doesn't explain the plothole from the previous movie and even introduces some odd inconsistencies of its own (re-casting and vampire hair colour rules).

Rating: Meh.

Underworld: Awakening (2012)

The action in this one is dull, leans even more on CG, and reaches new heights of silliness when it comes to characters missing their shots - vamps empty whole clips into blank walls and at one point Selena fails to hit a lycan from six feet away, duel wielding full-auto handguns, while they're both in an air-vent.
The story meanwhile is a shambles. It bins the promising set-up from the end of the previous film, starting after some time has passed and the world has completely changed, then takes a main character out of play, and then does a time-jump! A big problem with this franchise is that it's always starting with a change to the status quo without ever showing us the status quo, and it does it twice in the first ten minutes here! Plus it's full of new, paper-thin characters with weak motivations speaking in accents and styles that don't make sense. These movies always had weak characterisation and lots of plotholes, but for a franchise so focused on continuity this feels like a rush-job (especially as it's around 80 minutes long before credits).
Side-note: it's pleasing to see the movies' amusing habit of casting skinny, pointy-faced British character actors as sexy super-strong monsters expand out to wobbly-faced British character actors, with Stephen Rea.

Rating: Very Bad

Underworld: Blood Wars (2016)

Another rush-job. Again, previous set-ups are either immediately binned or forgotten about (Michael is killed off and Eve is put in hiding, both offscreen, and the humans seem to have given up on their war against vamps and lycans). Weapons, weaknesses and powers are shown once and never used before or after, or even mentioned and then immediately disproved. Most hilariously, the Scandinavian vamp coven declare they are safe from lycan attacks because of the extreme cold, a problem the lycans solve by wearing warm coats. Incidentally, the writers of these films seem to think you can get from the US to Scandinavia by train or to Russia by car.
The story is a slight mix of previous plots. By the end of it the franchise has for some reason fully switched sympathies from the lycans to the vamps, though it doesn't really matter as they're all now varying shades of 'scheming arsehole'. The assumption seems to be that the only reason the audience might care about a character is whether the actor continued to sign up - those whose don't are binned unceremoniously, those who do aren't given any actual depth outside of 'you know, the one you saw in the other films'.
The action has one or two nice moments but is mostly at the bland aimless level of a network tv show.

Rating: Very Bad

Girls Trip (2017)

 Not only is this a collection of tropes from 'friends on a wild weekend' movies like Hangover or Bridesmaids - the boring domestic friend, the crazy friend who spikes everyone's drinks, the public incontinence, etc - it's also unfunny, toothless and boring. It feels like someone went through and edited out the punchlines from every scene and line in this movie.

Rating: Bad.

Red Sparrow (2018)

I spent the whole time trying to figure out if I had watched this before - I think I had, but either way it's a sign that it's a rather unmemorable film. Very dour, no flair, slow-moving.

Rating: Bad.

Snatched (2017)

Mediocre at best. Predictable, unfunny, and the two leads don't get much to do.

Rating: Bad.

The Lovebirds (2020)

 A relatively standard Man Who Knew Too Much story, elevated by the great central performances, banter and convincingly drawn relationship - the nominal couple are at once sweet and charming while also having well-observed and believable bickering matches. The only issues are that the crime story is rather slight, and the movie deflates about twenty minutes from the end, exactly when it should start escalating exponentially.

Rating: Very Good.

Mindhorn (2016)

 So gentle as to feel more like a tv episode than a movie, this is pleasant and charming enough but doesn't hold any surprises or belly laughs either.

Rating: Fine.

Cop Car (2015)

A tense, pared-down thriller directed with impressive restraint of pacing and plotting, with four very good performances, two child and two adult.

Rating: Very good.

V/H/S (2012)

This anthology found-footage horror movie has a few major problems:
the seeming lack of an overseeing creative hand, leading to far too much overall running time spent on 'mundane goings on' build-up, and a lot of repetition between segments
the stories are all centred around jock arseholes of varying levels of rapeyness, and women who take their clothes off
the typical found footage horror issues of bad improv acting and unbelievable reactions (even if we suspend disbelief as to continued filming and unexplained editing)

Overall, this is not a very reassuring calling card for the up and coming horror directors of 2012...

Rating: Awful

Ride Along (2014)

Unfunny, predictable, dull. Kevin Hart is okay if a little muted, but Ice Cube gives a one-note snarl of a performance with not even an attempt at comedy. A poor man's The Hard Way. 

Rating: Bad.

Mandy (2018)

What could have been a fun throwback to 80s fantasy horror (if rather tired at this point - surely it's time to move past neon and synth and onto pastiching post-modern 90s horror by now?) is ruined by that strain of pretension in 2010s horror that leads to incredibly slow, boring movies. Much like Hereditary or The VVitch, this film is at least half an hour too long and stretches the first act of any regular horror out for almost the entire film. To be fair to Mandy, it does get moving in the last 40 minutes or so, but even then what could be a fun Evil Dead 2 (or at least Kung Fury) style action horror, with Cage descending into madness as he slashes his way through Lovecraftian fishmen in Clive Barker get-ups, drowns under the film's constant need to say 'look at me, I'm so weird! All the performances and lighting and camera moves and processing and soundscape is so weird, and the narrative is so disjointed and meandering and hollow, and the action scenes are so difficult to follow!'

This would probably have made a very cool fake grindhouse trailer.

Rating: Bad.

The Brave One (2007)

 A dull, cheesy vigilante flick with pretensions to poetry. It wants to be a rumination on grief but the dialogue is straight out of Die Hard (but not as good) and the plot contrivances are sillier than Falling Down's (but without that movie's handle on tone).

Rating: Bad.

Happy Death Day 2U (2019)

This is so nearly an excellent sequel. It has great fun extrapolating, explaining and reshuffling elements of the original, and adds a new device to stop it getting stale. Unfortunately, that new device eventually overcomplicates the story and leads to plotholes and unexplained contrivances. One of the first movie's main strengths was how tight it was; the sequel spins out of control in the second half. Fun, but frustrating.

Rating: Pretty good.

Extract (2009)

 Lots of great scenes, great ensemble cast, and Judge as always is great at nailing the workplace and the social cruft of low-key weirdoes and irritants that one gathers over their lifetime. The music is a little overbearing, though, and more importantly the film becomes rudderless in the last third - it feels like it's building to a climactic third act then not much happens and everything just solves itself.

Rating: Pretty good.