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.