I planned to do two posts this month on movies I’ve watched, but due to illness I’ve had more time in front of the TV than I expected and so here’s the second of three posts I’ll do this month. This one is dedicated to titles available on Netflix in the UK at the moment as I have been making a concerted effort to get my watchlist reduced, and I’ll add that I watched Poor Things again, this time with Siggy, before all this.

Interceptor (2022) is the weakest title on this post with some TV quality SFX, poor scripting and predictable storytelling. Army captain J. J. Collins (Elsa Pataky) must use her close combat training and military expertise when a terrorist attack threatens the remote missile interceptor station she is stationed at.

Pataky certainly has the physique to be the centre of attention in this corny action flick, but is unfortunately surrounded by laughably bad performances including a cameo by Chris Hemsworth which adds absolutely nothing to the film. If you don’t know his connection to the film I’ll let you Google it. I guess he thought his appearance might help. It doesn’t.

Spiderhead (2022) sees the aforementioned Thor actor trying to break his action stereotype by playing an egotistical scientist testing mood altering pharmaceuticals on criminal volunteers in a remote island prison. The ethics of human drug trials are explored in a rather shallow fashion and the movie rather hinges on themes of love, trust and forgiveness.

The film is directed by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick, Tron: Legacy) and based on The New Yorker short story ‘Escape From Spiderhead’ by George Saunders. There are some good performances most notably from Hemsworth and Miles Teller who worked with Kosinski on the Top Gun film. The film kind of loses its way a little in the third act and makes me wonder how close to the original text it was.

The Pale Blue Eye (2022) tells the story of a jaded detective Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) who is hired to investigate the gruesome murder of an army cadet at the West Point training facility in 1830. Landor asks one of the cadets – aspiring poet Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling) – to help him solve the case. As you might imagine the story has an immersive atmosphere attuned to the gothic horror elements of Poe’s dark fiction.

The investigation revolves around the idea that some of the cadets might be dabbling in the occult and contains a couple of intriguing sub plots exploring Poe’s love for the sister of one of the other cadets and the fate of Landor’s missing daughter. Clues and red herrings are doled out thoughtfully with Poe himself coming under suspicion at one point. Bale is as usual captivating inside the skin of his character and carries the weight of the outlandish story (and it’s flaws) on broad shoulders. Definitely one to watch if you’re a fan of Bale, as is the next film.

Ford v. Ferrari (2019) also known as Le Mans ’66 in some regions, tells the true story of American car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and opinionated English race driver Ken Miles (Bale) teaming up to build and fine-tune a revolutionary Ford race car to compete nose-to-nose with the hugely dominant Ferrari team at the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans race in 1966.

The cinematography and SFX are great, and while it helps to be into cars it’s not essential to enjoy the story as it is more about the men in the machines and their relationships with family and corporate yes-men than it is about the actual machines themselves. Bale and Damon have a great chemistry on screen and I really bought into the idea that these guys were old friends both with big egos. There’s a lot of heart and no small amount of humour in the story and I enjoyed every minute of the two-and-a-half hour run time. It’s my top recommendation from this list of six.

Page Eight (2011) feels a lot like the Slow Horses series on Apple TV. Johnny Worricker (Bill Nighy) is an aged MI5 agent with keen observational skills. When a top secret document containing damaging revelations about compromises made by the UK government is put on his desk by his boss, who then unexpectedly dies of a heart attack, Worricker has to figure out what precisely is going on.

For a jaded agent turned desk jockey Worricker is surprisingly trusting of his next door neighbour (Rachel Weisz) who has links to the Middle East. He runs background checks and while they do potentially raise some red flags he has to get her to help him. The film, which is essentially a well-made TV movie, part of a spy-story trilogy, never theatrically released, mixes the story of Worricker’s relationship with the intriguing younger woman with his quest to get to the bottom of why MI5 colleagues want to bury the report.

Bigbug (2022) is a film from French writer-director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie, Micmacs) which lacks much of the charm of his previous movies. Although not unused to sci-fi – he did direct Alien: Resurrection after all – this time the movie revolves around satirising aspects of AI and automation current prevalent in people’s homelives by trapping a bunch of bickering characters (including several robots) inside an automated house in a future city.

The humour is on a completely different wavelength compared to what makes me laugh and I didn’t enjoy this film half as much as I expected. Frankly a lot of the supposed jokes fell completely flat and a lot of the imagined tech didn’t really stand up to even rudimentary analysis. Not the point I know, but I was bored of the story and so started picking things apart much to the detriment of the viewing experience. Perhaps watching this while I was ill was a bad move. It probably would’ve helped if I’d necked a few beers or something.