Cinema round-up

Just quickly :o)

• Inside Out 2 - Not quite as good as the first, but still a brillantly funny and insightful study of teenagehood.


• Midsommar (Director's Cut) - Didn't see this the first time around. Good sense of growing menace. Very Wicker Man.


• A Quiet Place: Day One - Decent prequel with a different cast. Amazing the lengths people will go to for pizza. Or a cat.


• The Bikeriders - This was definitely a film in which some things happened. It was fine, but didn't grab me.


• Despicable Me 4 - More of the same. Gru goes into hiding. The minions get superpowers. What could go wrong?


• Twisters - Does for the original what Jurassic World did for Jurassic Park: reboots it with a new cast an a whole load of gung-ho cowboyism.


• Deadpool & Wolverine - Twisted and funny, with some moments of brilliance. But I struggle to get past Deadpool being an annoying jerk.


• Longlegs - Deeply weird horror film, not even redeemed by a deeply weird Nicholas Cage. Avoid.


• Borderlands - About what I expected: big, loud, dumb, redeemed slightly by Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis.


• Trap - M. Night Shyamalan continues his recent return to form with a tense thriller about a serial killer cornered by the FBI at a rock concert.


• Alien: Romulus - Best Alien film since 1986! Yes, there's a lot of rehashing, but it's genuinely scary and gets back to the franchise's roots. Strong characters too.


• Blink Twice - Psychological thriller in which gaslighting and sinister goings-on abound on a tech billionaire's luxury island.


• Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice - Fan-pleasing sequel that hits most of the right notes. Let down very slightly by its threats being too easily disposed of.


• Speak No Evil - James MacAvoy is scary. So is the commentary on societal expectations. The standard horror tropes of the last reel, less so, but it's still very good.


• Lee - Kate Winslet in a biopic about WW2 photographer Lee Miller. A great performance lifts an average film.


• The Critic - Ian McKellen fights dirty as an ascerbic 1930s theatre critic at risk of losing his job. Delightfully wicked.


• Prima Facie - Jodie Comer puts in an astounding performance in a one-woman theatre show about how the legal system treats rape cases.


• The Empire Strikes Back - They made a sequel to Star Wars. Who knew? Good to see it on the big screen again.


• Megalopolis - Francis Ford Coppola does the fall of Rome in modern New York with magic. A completely incoherent mess, but an interesting one at least.