It is time for my monthly round up of new films seen on streaming services other than Netflix, this month.

Starting with Amazon Prime:

Tyler Perry’s Duplicity
High-powered attorney Marley (Kat Graham) faces a very personal case when she is tasked with uncovering the truth behind the shooting of her best friend Fela’s (Meagan Tandy) husband. Perry regularly cranks out two or three films a year, but really ought to concentrate more on quality than quantity. He manages to make the potentially incendiary issue of the police shooting an innocent black man desperately dull, thanks to a ham-fisted script and acting straight out of a bad soap opera.
Rating: 2 out of 10

Here
Robert Zemeckis’ ambitious drama received mostly poor reviews when it opened in America last year. He attempts to show the events of a single spot of land and its inhabitants, spanning from the distant past to the 21st century. It stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, and Kelly Reilly, with digital de-aging being used on much of the cast to have them portray their characters over the course of the different time periods. With its static camera and constant switching of time periods, it feels more like an experiment than a coherent film. Despite the on screen talent, it is a complete bore.
Rating: 2 out of 10

Over on Sky

Sky Movies subscribers can see Fight or Flight starring Josh Hartnett who had dropped off my radar for some time. But after his starring role in the successful Trap last year, here he headlines as Lucas Reyes, a washed-up mercenary who is assigned a job to escort someone valuable on a flight from Bangkok to San Francisco, making sure they get there safely. He is unaware, though, that a number of assassins are also on board.

It is obvious that writers Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrons were influenced by the similarly plotted Bullet Train but did not have the same budget. However, they come up very inventive ways for Lucas to kill the assassins and all the fight sequences on the plane are extremely well staged by director James Madigan. Hartnett seems to be having a ball and Charithra Chandran is terrific as the passenger in peril. Unfortunately, the scenes on the ground of the people employing Lucas are really clunky.
Rating: 7 out of 10

The following can be bought or rented on the usual services:

Fabulous Four
Kitty (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and Alice (Megan Mullally) receive invitations to their lifelong friend Marilyn’s (Bette Midler) wedding. Hoping to reunite their gang, Kitty and Alice trick Marilyn’s old friend Lou (Susan Sarandon) to attend. That was needed because she had a dramatic falling-out with Marilyn after she stole Lou’s boyfriend and eloped with him. Comedies involving four older actresses going on some sort of journey seems to have become a genre of its own in recent years, with the biggest surprise being that Diane Keaton is not in this one! It is predictable and Midler overacts but Mullaly has some decent gags and Sarandon brings more emotional depth than the film deserves. I could have done without the musical number at the end or the embarrassing appearance of what seems to be the mummified corpse of Michael Bolton, though.
Rating: 6 out of 10

American Dreamer
Three years after it was first shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, Paul Dektor’s American Dreamer finally gets a UK release. Peter Dinklage stars as a professor who tries to buy the estate of a lonely widow played by Shirley MacLaine. She offers to sell her $5 million dollar home for $240,000 cash provided that she be allowed to live the rest of her days there. This is amiable stuff that has probably found its rightful home on streaming. Dinklage’s cynical, often self-hating, character is a bit hard to warm to, but the actor’s natural charm is still there. There are a few chuckles along the way and the issues facing the non-rich in the US are spelt out well.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Finally, over on Paramount Plus:

The Image of You
This thriller is based on the bestselling novel by Adele Parks and stars Sasha Pieterse in a dual role as twins. Prim Anna gets engaged to Nick (Parker Young) but her glamorous sister Zoe does not trust the man and resolves to find out the truth about him. The whole story is dependant of a major twist, but you would have to be pretty dumb not to work it out within the first 15 minutes or so. With that out of the way, it leaves a glossy but empty movie that is full of plot holes, but with the saving grace of Mira Sorvino as the girls’ unhinged mother.
Rating: 5 out of 10

The Killer Inside: The Ruth Finley Story
This is based on the true story of Ruth Finley in Kansas in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Teri Hatcher stars as the titular character who reports to the police that she is being stalked. They are concerned because the MTK serial killer is at large, but her tormenter is closer to home. Hatcher does a decent job but this is a sad story of a woman unable to deal with a past trauma, and I am not sure there is much point to a film like this.
Rating: 4 out of 10