All these can be found on the usual rental services unless otherwise indicated.

Flag Day (Sky Movies)
A turgid drama about a criminal providing for his daughter. A sleepy Sean Penn as the conman does not liven things up.
Rating: 3 out of 10

How to Please a Woman (Sky Movies)
Sally Phillips stars as Gina. When she is made redundant she buys a failing removal business and offers-up male employees to provide cleaning and sex to busy or lonely women. Despite the racy synopsis this is quite sweet stuff, with Phillips her usual charming self.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Sundown (Sky Movies)
Whilst on holiday in Mexico with his sister and her kids, Neil Bennett gets a call to tell him that his Mum has died. The rest of the family go home but Neil pretends he has lost his passport and needs time to sort it out. Instead, he books into another hotel and carries on with his holiday. You will need some patience to stick with this as a lot of the running time consists of Neil going about his day and meeting a local shop vendor who he starts a relationship with. Fortunately, Neil is played by the brilliant Tim Roth who makes things pretty compelling. There are eventually a couple of twists that feel like one too many.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Dual (Sky Movies)
In the near future, a woman, given a terminal diagnosis, has a clone made of herself. When she unexpectedly recovers she tries to get rid of the clone. Karen Gillan in the lead role is the only reason to watch this tonally uneven sci-fi.
Rating: 4 out of 10

Last Seen Alive (Sky Movies)
A gritty low-budget thriller that wrings enough tension out of a familiar premise of a man’s wife disappearing when they stop in a small town. Gerard Butler gets to show his acting chops as well as performing well in the action scenes.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Dashcam
This road movie horror is routinely bad as it is, but one of the worst performances I can recall seeing by Annie Hardy in the lead role ensures that it descends to being entirely unwatchable. Anyone who can sit through 80 minutes of Ms Hardy’s ‘acting’ is a better person than me.
Rating: 1 out of 10

True Things
The excellent Ruth Wilson stars as Kate. An aimless woman working in a job centre who meets ex-con Blond played by Tom Burke and starts a destructive relationship with him. This is a film that has garnered a lot of praise, but as good as Wilson is, I failed to connect with her and was not convinced that she would ruin her life for the charmless and dangerous man.
Rating: 4.5 out of 10

Cha Cha Real Smooth (Apple TV Plus)
Cooper Raiff is considered somewhat of a boy wonder. Although only just turned 25, this is the second feature that he has written, directed, and starred in. Here he plays an aimless young man who finds he has a talent for being a party starter and also falls for an older woman, played by Dakota Johnson, who has an autistic child. Raiff certainly has talent when it comes to writing, as the script has both some funny and perceptive dialogue and his direction is workmanlike enough. However, he is not much of an actor and is outshone by Johnson who has never been better,
Rating: 5.5 out of 10

I am ending with a bunch of films free to Amazon Prime subscribers. That company appears to be following the Netflix model of flooding the marketplace with a large amount of cheaply made, mostly substandard movies. They also seem to have the same obsession with cliched teen dramas, such as This is the Year where we can, once again, see the nerdy guy make a play for the hot girl at school. Like it would ever end well in real life!

Imagine how bad a film with the title My Fake Boyfriend would be. Well it has been made, and it is as expected. In Anything’s Possible, credit has to be given for not only having the female lead of a high school romance movie a transgender character but also played by a trans actor. However, Eva Reign is too old for the part, the film has a dreaded voice over and it is otherwise unremarkable. A father/daughter road trip is the subject of Don’t Make Me Go. As the Dad has a terminal illness, there are lots of lessons to be learnt and also too many cringeworthy moments. Incarnation is an amateurishly-made, badly-acted, haunted house horror that has unlikeable characters in non-scary peril.

The true story of 18th century British pugilist Jim Belcher is told in Prizefighter. Matt Hookings plays the boxer, and, being the son of boxing champion, he looks the part in the ring. His script, though, is weak. Jodhi May does her best in a thankless role of his disapproving mother but the rest of the starry supporting cast that includes Russell Crowe, Ray Winston, Steven Berkoff and Julian Glover are strictly going through the motions.

The best two in this bunch are Vengeance is Mine, a British revenge thriller that I found overly and self consciously stylised. It does, though have a good lead performance by Con O’Neill and makes the most of a tiny budget. Finally, Press Play is a weepie about a woman who finds she can go back in time to see her dead boyfriend. The couples shared love of music and a mix tape being the method of time travel lifts this above the run of the mill.

This is the Year: 3 out of 10
My Fake Boyfriend: 2 out of 10
Anything’s Possible: 4 out of 10
Don’t Make Me Go: 2.5 out of 10
Incarnation: 3 out of 10
Prizefighter: 3.5 out of 10
Vengeance is Mine: 4.5 out of 10
Press Play: 4.5 out of 10