3DD!3

My daughter recently told me she was absolutely pink with joy that I took her to the playground. That phrase kept coming back to me as I watched this film, because it is essentially about the loss of joy, but pretends to be about something else. It's not grim philosophy, but a terribly simple and basic petty battle of the sexes. The sequence of sketches and funny scenes works well, including the great cast. The finale, however, is all about the fact that from a certain point onwards, the pink joy disappears and I'll have to watch it live, unable to do anything about it.

On the one hand, I sometimes have peace and quiet thanks to Peppa, but on the other, the terrible animation and the whiny voices flatten my cerebral cortex. British English is better... I didn't expect to force my daughter to watch like 101 Dalmatians or Winnie the Pooh to get her away from this pig family where the father is the biggest dweeb. Thank you very much.

Terribly dark and hideously modern. Bringing politics and statistics into royal conversations, however well-intentioned, destroys the fairy-tale atmosphere. An unlikeable queen mother, a weird prince, too long. A creepy Sebastian whose eyes will haunt my dreams is the only blemish on an otherwise good visual rendition. Halle Bailey is quite nice and Javier Bardem is great, but I'd much rather watch the animated version.

A nostalgic ride into the past, when all this stuff still meant something. Marc Webb turns the tables skillfully and doesn't forget to add the bad to the good. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is excellent as the idealistic young man who one will day become a dad who will watch 500 Days of Summer on TV because Disney+ told him he might be interested.

Big bad. When Cavil isn't chopping monsters to pieces, it's either terribly confusing or boring, often both. I haven't read the source material, but blathering on and on about how important Ciri is and how she's going to change everything can't be enough of a carrying theme for the books, the talk of family is getting worse than in Fast and Furious. The acting isn't really great either, and apart from the main grouch, it's awful, though maybe that's down to the crappy dialogue. Considering how much potential has been drowned in uninteresting political lines after the first season, I'm almost sorry The Witcher wasn’t picked by HBO. Henry Cavil is leaving and I think I'll wrap it up with him.

The lapses in logic and the weird handling of the characters ruin the whole thing. What good is a great parallel with disgruntled migrants if it gets lost in the end? What's the point of perfectly timing the Russian border conflict with the war in Ukraine and planting the idea of Putin being a Skrull when whenever it could be potentially interesting everyone starts acting like idiots and knocking the whole thing down? And the CGI-packed finale is utterly pointless. It’s still watchable, but what a shame!

A focused Nolan, a perfect Cillian Murphy and a roaring Ludwig Göransson in a history lesson I've always wanted to see. The suffocating atmosphere, disturbed only by the celebration of the Trinity explosion, sticks to the palate, and at times you feel sick of what could have been. If Hitler hadn't shot himself, they would have dropped the nukes in Europe. Oppenheimer's life of communism, his wives, his nightmares, his friends and his enemies are all engulfing, and for three hours they don't let go, whether it's black and white conversations or the simulation of a nuclear explosion. The horrific ending with Einstein still resonates with me. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

An opulent fresco depicting the transformation of old Hollywood into new. I'm terribly sorry that I didn't catch it in the cinema, I wish I had when I think it was there for a measly week. Damien Chazelle pays deep tribute to what movies mean to people with a cynical comedy framed by weeping and mourning for the change that is the only certainty in the world. Margot Robbie is fantastic, she’s insufferable, but at the same time very genuine and worth of protection. The music is incredible, as only Chazelle and Hurwitz can deliver.

A suspenseful and quite grim Disney film where a little girl from an orphanage is forced to search for a large diamond in a narrow cave complex. A UN mouse intercepts a cry for help and sends a pair of volunteers on a mission to rescue her. I saw the sequel as a kid and had no idea about this one so I'm supplementing my education. The southern realism, the swamps and the psychotic bitch as the main villain are the best things about this variation on Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers.

Hunt vs Hall 9000 round one. Basically a tie between the sheer technical brilliance and perfection of each action sequence with a dated and clunky script that is perhaps supposed to be a homage to the old (Roger Moore) Bond films or something. The golden rule is, stick to what you know and what you're good at, and Christopher McQuarrie overestimated himself this time and showed that he doesn't understand computers at all, otherwise he wouldn't have written such a piece of garbage. I'm not saying it doesn't work for the average person, it's just that for IT people it will be like scraping your fingernails on a blackboard in places. He can still salvage a few things in a sequel, but no one can take away his English-speaking Russian submariners and theatrical speeches about deleting oneself in cyberspace. He can still move and offer an interesting twist, but it's as if he's started to care about the Tom crap instead of the story. Otherwise, everything we're used to works. The actresses are fine. Hayley Atwell clicked with Cruise whether she's stuck on him in Rome or when they're talking on the train. Beautiful locations and beautiful shots. Tom is starting to look old though. One more episode and then it would be nice to kick off the Extreme Old Man series.