The Thursday Murder Club (Chris Columbus, 2025)

Given the enormous success of Richard Osman's debt novel and the current vogue for murder mysteries with comical overtones, it was inevitable that it would be adapted onto the big screen. So, the unfeasibly plush retirement home (basically an even more palatial Downton Abbey) under siege from an unscrupulous property developer (David Tennant doing one of his evil turns quite convincingly), is the setting, and its residents are pretty much every big-name actor over 70 from the British Isles, led by Mirren, Kingsley and Brosnan. The plot of course involves a murder, namely that of one of the co-owners of the retirement home, and the trio of pensioners get to sleuthing. This is pretty formulaic, so you're really just watching it for the stars and the cosy comic interplay between them.

For once, it's not that lkely that all four of Osman's sequels (to date) will be adapted for the creen, since they involve the same lead characters and it's doubtful whether the actors even want to commit to such an extended series on the same theme at this advanced stage in their careers.

6/10

Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023)

After the convoluted sci-fi concoction Tenet, which strove so hard to wow and lost track of its own logic in the process, Nolan returns to safer shores with a real-life story with actual science that's more awe-inspiring and terrifying than anything that he's devised as fiction. Hence, the creation of the first atomic bomb by J. Robert Oppenheimer, both the fruit of his labours, the means to end WWII with the click of a switch and something that comes to torment him when the dust clouds have cleared and he finally realises what he's done, up to that point lost in the fog of  his creative frenzy: enabled the amoral U.S. Government to not only kill multitudes of civilians clinically but to start yet another war immediately after that.

Cillian Murphy is perfect in the role, consistently opaque, intellectually supercilious and racked with visions of what has been and what might come. Yes, the science has to be patiently explained to the lay audience and the visionary protagonist, while not openly ostracised or quite autistic,  is still detached from the mass of humanity (see A Beautiful Mind, The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game) and the determination to go through every step of the process with all the players involved, particularly the kangaroo court the authorities set up against to discredit him once he's outlived his usefulness, leads to an unwieldy 3-hour running time. But even after that wait, the bomb comes with shocking dramatic force. Some critics have, of course, complained about the effects at ground zero in Japan not being shown, but that is quite irrelevant. We already know everything, and this is a film for adults.

8/10

Venom: The Last Dance (Kelly Marcel, 2024)

The last dance, eh? If wishes were horses...still, surely an actor of Tom Hardy's calibre must have made enough sponds from this by now to return to proper acting. As it is, instalment three of the franchise continues with more of the same, the human stuck with an alien symbiote inside him trying to evade both the U.S. military and also a host of monsters sent by an imprisoned evil deity to get a key to his prison from inside the protagonist. So, this means numerous chases and messy CGI fight after fight, and would be utterly joyless if it wasn't for the leavening effect of the continuous squabbling and banter between the tired human host and his hedonistic, casually brutal and foul-mouthed symbiote. It's enough to get you through, but only just.

5/10

Thunderbolts* (Jake Schreier, 2025)

Film number 36, and if it isn't stopped, the size of the MCU will eventually overtake that of the real universe. Taking a cue from the overall failure of Eternals, a team composed only of ridiculously superpowered individuals, Thunderbolts* instead serves up a bunch of bickering misfits with virtually no powers at all. The villain is also not powered, but the scheming director of the CIA, seeking to weaponise a mentally unstable man her researchers have imbued with godlike abilities so that he can serve both as a PR figurehead and a one-man replacement for the now defunct Avengers as Earth's protector. This also means doing away with the titular crew since they know all about her self-serving schemes.

Naturally a torrent of chases and blurry fight sequences must fill the bulk of the running time, but there is also plenty of humour deprecating genre cliches, a reasonable stab at drawing parallels between the villain's motives and Trump's world of toxic propraganda, and Florence Pugh, flavour of the month though she might be, again producing a commanding performance as the conflicted de facto leader of the protagonists.

Still a bit of a mess, but a step in the right direction at least.

5/10

Barbie (Greta Gerwig, 2023)

All the various models of Barbie and Ken dolls live in a pink, sterile fantasy world or relentless cheer and inanity, until the 'sterotypical Barbie' suffers an existential crisis and has to enter the real world to try to fix herself. Naturally, this proves to be a jarring experience and produces some decent scenes of culture-clash comedy, akin to that seen in some time-travel films, which are a very welcome break from the endless hyper-choreographed musical numbers in Barbieland.

The executives of Mattel of course do not like their commercial property being compromised, to they try to put her back into the box. The fact that the film was authorised by Mattel really sums it up in a nutshell: it both satirises and promotes the company and the product. So everyone's content, while no one can be fully satisfied, including any segment of the audience. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as the primary Barbie and Ken do clearly have a blast, at least.

6/10

Black Adam (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2022)

Still the people behind the DCEU persist in trying to compete with Marvel, when all they have as interesting and well-known characters is Superman (potentially) and Batman (always). Wonder Woman doesn't cut the mustard, as even just the painfully reductionist name will tell you. So, unable to fall back on any of these, they have to go with crappy variations on the omnipotent being theme, this time with 5,000-year-old demigod Black Adam, brought back from eternal imprisonment to combat returned forces of evil in yet another made up country, basically a generic mishmash of various Middle Eastern ones.

Marvel have made some absolute disasters along the way, most notoriously Madame Web, but this has a good go at being just as bad. Normally The Rock, as the titular antihero,  is decent value for money when playing with his meat-mountain image for comic effect, but any attempt to do so is hopelessly drowned under a two-hour-torrent of extremely boring CGI fight after fight. Nor can Pierce Brosnan, as a wise old magician, save the affair from utter pointlessness.

3/10

Spectral (Nic Mathieu, 2016)

The bravest feat this action film achieves is choosing to wreck an Eastern European city in a battle against supernatural enemies rather than the usual L.A. So, the capital of Moldova (played by Budapest) gets it, with an impending civil war exarcerbated by hordes of ghosts that kill on contact. Naturally it's left to the U.S. army to sort things out, represented by a scientist, who sees the ghosts for what they really are, tagging along with a bunch of rent-a-grunts. Basically Aliens, but with considerably less plot logic, despite bunging in lots of pseudoscience. Ho hum.

4/10