On Amazon Prime is a grim Scottish crime drama, My Son. It is directed by Christian Carion who also made the French original of the same name, as well as one of the most underrated films of the 2000s, Farewell. James McAvoy is the best I have seen him in a while as a man searching for his kidnapped son, though Claire Foy as his ex-wife has little to play with. Atmospheric and quite intense.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Also on Amazon Prime, Time is Up, a romantic drama starring Bella Thorne who provides a voice over sounding even more bored than I was watching it. Full of dull people and looking like a bad music video a lot of the time.
Rating: 3 out of 10
Finally on Amazon Prime, The Hating Game is a by-the-numbers romcom. When two publishing companies merge, Lucy and Joshua, two very different people are forced to work together. They start out hating each other but end up…well, you know the rest! Despite the familiarity of the set up, the cast that includes Lucy Hale as Lucy, Austin Howell as Joshua and Corbin Bernsen as their creepy boss and some decent dialogue provided by Christina Mengert keep things fresh.
In fact, this would probably would have scored higher with me if the film did not follow a recent trend of a woman choosing an unpleasant but handsome guy over a normal but nice one. In fact, she becomes so enamoured of him, that she states she admires that he was able to lay off a lot of her friends from the company as part of a cost cutting exercise!
Rating: 5.5 out of 10
Over on Sky, we have the inconsequential The Tiger Rising. A young boy in Florida befriends a new girl at school and discovers a tiger in a cage in the woods. Top billed in the cast are Dennis Quaid and the always great Queen Latifah but they both have pretty small roles, with the kids taking centre stage. It has some charm but ultimately fizzles out.
Rating: 5 out of 10
Also on Sky is a low budget actioner, One Shot. It is so called not only because the group of Navy Seals have one shot at saving themselves when they are attacked by a group trying to free a prisoner, but also because it appears that director James Nunn has filmed it in one take. This is better than the standard straight to streaming movie of this type, with a neat premise and well staged action scenes. It does run out of puff in latter stages though.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10