Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw review – falls flat fast

★ FAST & FURIOUS: HOBBS & SHAW Falls flat fast

Vanessa Kirby steals but can't save F&F spin-off starring The Rock and Jason Statham

“You know twinkle toes, in another life I bet me and you could’ve done some serious damage.” 

When Jason Statham’s bad guy turned good finally warmed to Dwayne Johnson’s cartoon-like lawman in Fast & Furious 8, it could well have been a cue for this spin-off focussed on the two bickering beefcakes.

Wild Bill, Episode 1, ITV review - an American in Lincolnshire

Rob Lowe plays top cop in goofy crime drama

All is not well in Boston, Lincolnshire. Unemployment, immigration concerns, Brexit frustration, and the highest murder rate in the country. How do you solve the problems of contemporary Britain? Send in an American. And not just that. Bill Hixon (Rob Lowe) is the best: educated to Doctorate level, with the accolade of being America’s top Metropolitan police chief three years running.

Cannes 2019: Too Old to Die Young - nightmarish LA noir

'Neon Demon' director Nicolas Winding Refn turns to TV with Miles Teller

This year, Cannes has been adamantly defending traditional cinema, with more than a few jibes at Netflix (who remain persona non grata at the festival), but that hasn’t stopped them screening two episodes of Nicolas Winding Refn’s new Amazon TV series, Too Old To Die Young. Refn has gone on record stating that his latest project is still cinema — a 13-hour film that shows all the verve and ambition you’d expect from the Danish auteur.

Line of Duty, BBC One, series 5 finale review - big highs and Biggeloe

★★★★ LINE OF DUTY, SERIES 5 FINALE, BBC ONE Big highs and Biggeloe

A thrilling joust between superintendents, but the reveals lacked oomph. CONTAINS SPOILERS

The porn was a bit disappointing, was it not? Dear old Ted, no longer romantically active, admitted to being a user. The Superintendent Hastings fanclub sighed for sorrow to witness him toss away his status as an essentially decent heartthrob for the Saga generation. Sorry for your loss, ladies. It was also disappointing because the high-risk act of wiping his laptop turned out to have such a bathetic explanation. The 50k lying around in a brown envelope he clearly deemed to have less pressing potential for embarrassment.

Line of Duty, Series 5, BBC One review - already it's dark, dirty and dangerous

★★★★ LINE OF DUTY, SERIES 5 Already it's dark, dirty and dangerous

Ted Hastings and his anti-corruption squad are back to sort the cops from the robbers

Congratulations to Stephen Graham, guest-starring in this fifth season of BBC One’s Line of Duty, for still being alive at the end of episode one, a favour not routinely granted to headline names in Jed Mercurio’s diabolical labyrinth of deception.

Border review - genre-defying Oscar-nominated Swedish film

★★★★★ BORDER Quasi-Gothic fairytale delivers many dark surprises

A quasi-Gothic fairytale which delivers many dark surprises

This might just be the most challenging film review I’ve had to write in decades. The best thing would be to go and see Border knowing nothing more than that it won the prize for most innovative film at Cannes. Don't watch the trailer, and definitely don’t read those lazy reviewers who complete their word count by writing a detailed synopsis ruining every reveal and plot twist.

DVD: The Guilty

★★★★★ DVD: THE GUILTY Thrillingly tense police procedural that never leaves its one location

Thrillingly tense police procedural that never leaves its one location

It’s another night in an emergency services dispatch room in Copenhagen. Policeman Asger Holm has been taken off active patrol pending a conduct investigation and is stuck on the phones. Drunks, druggies, posh blokes complaining of being mugged in the red light district, he’s pretty brutal with these time-wasters. Then a call comes in from a desperate woman.

Crackdown 3 review - spectacular super-powered action that was great fun many years ago

Nearly a decade has passed since the last incarnation but little has changed in this stagnant shooter

Did you play videogames back in 2010? If you did, there’s a reasonable chance you played Crackdown 2. Only a reasonable chance as the game was just on Xbox 360 – this was back in the days when there was a lot more console-exclusive titles. But if you did play, you would know just how much fun this sprawling open world run, gun and mega jump game could be.