Cliff W

There's a standard formula for ghost hunting series. Begin with some atmospheric establishing shots of the location. Add some historical background and spooky anecdotes. Then watch our ghost hunters stumble around in the dark overreacting to every little sound. Daisy and Charlie's Nightwatch follows these familiar beats, but replaces most of the actual ghost hunting with sibling bickering. Whether you enjoy it or not depends entirely on how likeable you find its two stars. I personally found them starting to grate on me after a while, despite plenty of genuinely laugh-out-loud moments. There's some cursory use of ghost hunting equipment and occasional vague talk of 'energies'. But the paranormal plays strictly second fiddle to the personalities, and it all grows a tad self-indulgent. Noel Coward once quipped, "Television is for appearing on, not for looking at." I'm sure this series was a lot of fun to make. But as a viewer, I felt rather short-changed.

If you enjoy watching insufferable upper middle class white people bicker for 90 minutes, this is the film for you. If you don't, you're likely to feel frustrated that a potentially fascinating plot about alternate realities colliding doesn't feature a single reality where any of the characters are remotely likeable. Imagine opening Schrödinger's box to discover not only is the cat alive, but it's a supercilious jerk that won't stop yelling at you. That's what this film feels like.

Did you enjoy the Bourne films but find them too cerebral? Do you like watching frenetic fight scenes filmed so close-up that you're not even sure who's doing what to who? Or scenes where groups of henchmen randomly burst into buildings and manage to shoot everyone except the people they've actually come to shoot? Do you delight in men in suits saying things like "the package has been delivered?" Or in plot twists so predictable that they're barely twists at all? How about films that are half an hour longer than they need to be? Do those float your boat? If so, you might enjoy the sound and fury signifying nothing that is Safe House. Otherwise, you're just going to end up feeling you've spent two hours being hit over the head and shouted at by an incoherent buffoon.

At the heart of Infinity Pool lies an intriguing philosophical thought experiment. What if you could commit any crime and escape punishment, by paying for a perfect clone to be created and executed in your place? And how could you be certain that you yourself aren't the clone? In which case, the true perpetrator is the one who's been punished, while you can live on guilt free. Early in the film, we learn that protagonist James has published a critically slated novel called The Variable Sheath (which I misheard as The Variable Sheep😀.) I took this to be a sly nod towards Philip K Dick's Variable Man, and assumed Brandon Cronenberg's film would be full of Dickian twists and turns. But really, it delivers little more than a spot of the old ultra-violence and the joy of watching Mia Goth chew the scenery. By setting his turgid morality tale on an island resort for the super-rich, Cronenberg seems to be making some kind of point about how wealth inevitably corrupts. But there's no real depth or context to his unlikeable characters. They're essentially unknowable. As is the island itself and its population, who remain an undefined 'other' delineated only by racist tropes. Ultimately, Infinity Pool throws some fascinating premises at the audience then fails to develop them into anything coherent. It looks spectacular but remains shallow. Just as the title suggests.

I preferred this film when it was called Event Horizon. At least then it was entertaining, campy fun. And possessed some basic internal logic. In Sunshine, once again a ship is sent where no ship has gone before. And when it vanishes, a second ship is sent out to complete the mission. The two ships rendezvous, precipitating hallucinatory events that may or may not only occur within the traumatised minds of the diminishing crew. Sunshine aims at being a religious allegory, but the allegory is muddled. And worse, it feels bolted on just for the sake of giving Danny Boyle a shot at executing a 2001-style finale. Fans of Alien, Solaris, Dark Star, and Silent Running may enjoy discussing the obvious debts Sunshine owes to all those films and more. But for me, Boyle's space epic comes across like an unconvincing cover version. The best it can achieve is to make you want to revisit the original artists. Give me Sam Neill chewing the scenery in space any day over this glossy, portentous muddle.

Disappointingly, the shark only has one head. Life lessons this film taught me: 1: If you're going to venture into shark infested waters, don't do so in a kayak. You're going to need a bigger boat. 2: The safest islands are the ones that stay above water.

Johnny Depp was a rising star when Nick of Time bombed in 1995, but it's an over-the-top Christopher Walken who steals the show. Depp plays flummoxed everyman Gene Watson, whose daughter is kidnapped by the nefarious Mr Smith (Walken) and his ruthless henchwoman Ms Jones (Roma Maffia.) Mr Smith expects Watson to assassinate a governor on the campaign trail at a swanky hotel in return for his daughter's release. The kidnap setup is a rather tired Hollywood trope, and Depp blunders from one preposterous situation to another as the action unfolds in real time. But the economical script keeps events moving along at a cracking pace, and Walken is a joy to behold. He was clearly given free reign to indulge his characteristically syncopated delivery of dialogue, and fizzles with eccentric charisma. The action may be unbelievable, but there are few dull moments and the film revels in its own absurdity. Nick of Time may hardly be a classic, but it feels oddly refreshing in today's era of bloated and turgid franchise blockbusters.

John Cusack is waiting to catch a flight home when nearly everyone at the airport receives a mysterious phone call that turns them into hyperactive mime artists. Cell is one of those films that appears to have an elevator pitch and little else. The pitch is this: are smartphones turning us into zombies? They probably aren't. (If anything, they're turning us into preening narcissists.) Either way, even Samuel L Jackson can't save a film that seems to lose its way after the first ten minutes. then slowly limps to an unsatisfying denouement. Is this a dark comedy? Is it social commentary? Is it yet another by-the-numbers Stephen King adaptation that trots out his usual preoccupations with the shadow side of small town America? Cell attempts to be all these things, yet fails to convince at being any. All it has is a cute concept it doesnt know how to explore and some lacklustre performances from its leads. Everyone involved seems to be just phoning it in.