Christian Sharp

Perhaps the most dramatic examples of 'have you turned it off and on again?' I have ever seen. Jokes aside, this is a fascinating and very compelling documentary. I'd not come across saturation divers before, so to see what happens when thing go wrong at the bottom of the ocean, to real people, was quite amazing. The pacing is nail-biting, the people humane and it's nicely shot (admittedly a little low-fi sometimes). I'd add that I've seen a fair bit of criticism of David, the diver who was with Chris, but I think it's unfair. He was trying to distance himself from remembering that he was potentially carrying a dead body - otherwise he might have just broken down and lost it. That detachment saved the day.

Thankfully a return to form after the (sorry) car crash that was Fast 9. The cuts are still a bit janky and the lines a little wooden, but it's quickly back to F&F business as usual. Despite a bit of retconning the plot (again) Jason Momoa is absolutely fantastic as a captain jack sparrow style psychopath out for revenge, and the usual cast and crew are back in force. Ride or die, fans, ride or die.

Milla Jovovich raises some concerns about working in the army, whilst on an alien planet. I had a few doubts about the integrity of the food chain on the alien world but otherwise this is a greatly enjoyable film with stunning visuals, solid acting from Jovovich and Jaa, and despite a slightly messy last part, it's generally a pretty tight story. It's not an Oscar winning performance by any stretch but it's another decent movie working to dislodge the constant moaning that games can't be good films.

Masterpiece. If you think a film called The Hurricane Heist is going to be good, then you're darn right it is. It's got hurricanes, it's got heists, it's got villains and money and alabama drawl. It's like hard rain met die hard and had a baby, only slightly less good than either. Still a better use of one hour and thirty nine minutes than a lot of other things you could do.

I enjoyed Extraction, and am a big fan of John Wick and Mission Impossible-style action, but for some reason just didn't get on with this. It's oddly soulless: Chris Hemsworth's gruff grumpiness is suddenly stilted and contrived, the plot too stretched out (oh look, the operation failed and now you're being tracked by a warlord *again*), the character losses totally predictable and again, feel like they're 'by the book'. There's a load of little details that are jarring to any action fan - Hemsworth breaks into a prison and takes the longest rifle with him (presumably on the grounds that it's his signature weapon) but with all the tight corners, it's completely useless and I don't think he actually gets to fire it. Surely a trained mercenary with a stack of weapons would know this? There's also a moment where he runs through his extraction train, pausing to grab a machine gun - only to arrive at the back od the train where there's a mounted gun, which he ignores completely to fire *his* gun, rambo-style. The unlikely action sequences and feats of strength I can buy, the stupidity, not so much. I mean it's fine, but it was just weirdly jarring.

Sometimes it's just Tom Cruise running But that's OK. And this is one of the quickest long films I've seen since Mad Max Fury Road. It's over two and a half hours and not once did I look at my watch. It's an awesome film. One of the things I liked the most is sequences where there's an incredible amount communicated in the most miminalist way possible. It's the look that Cruise exchanges with Pegg. It's the tiny nods and expressions as much as the huge action sequences. It's Cruise's absolute dedication to making the film the best it can possibly be. It's the companionship that these guys have built up over the decades. It's that the plot actually does make sense and that the choices the characters make are sometimes just incredibly simple, but incredibly powerful. And sometimes it's just Tom Cruise running.