The Rhythm Section movie review: out of tune
Poor Blake Lively does her de-glammed best in this poor Xerox of much better Turn The Urchin Into A Spy thrillers. But there isn’t a single human interaction in this hamfisted movie that rings true.
MI6
Atomic Blonde movie review: bland ambition
The living, breathing, bleeding life of the breathtaking fight scenes cannot overcome confusingly twisty spy intrigue and multiple male gazes on the story.
Inferno movie review: let’s run through the museum!
Completely absurd, ultimately pointless, but also gloriously goofy: a Nancy Drew mystery with Scooby-Doo overtones and a thin veneer of bookishness.
Our Kind of Traitor movie review: ordinary everyday spies
Smartly elegant; the fantastic cast makes it worth your time. But it does feel as if it belongs on the small screen spread across six or eight hours.
Grimsby (aka The Brothers Grimsby) movie review: grim indeed
A soul-crushing experience: lazy, cheap, lurid, and stupid. Painfully unfunny and pointless. Sacha Baron Cohen now panders to those he once rightly mocked.
London Has Fallen movie review: agitprop security theater
A Nuremberg rally for 21st-century America. Pure terror porn: racist, jingoistic, thoroughly obnoxious. Donald Trump voters will love it. *sob*
Rosewater movie review (London Film Festival)
Jon Stewart’s first film is passionate and principled, as I expected, but also hopeful, almost serene, and even gently amusing, which I did not.
Closed Circuit review: cheating in the War on Terror
Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall are as engaging as ever, and the film raises intriguing issues concerning the “War on Terror”; pity the plot descends into the ridiculous.
Red 2 review: global positioning
Smart, breezy spy action, with an of-the-moment vibe that takes it post-post-9/11 and into the Wikileaks era of global politics.
Skyfall (review)
This is the sneaky cleverness of Skyfall: it is, at last, going to tell us why Bond still matters. It is not going to make it easy on itself, though, nosiree.
