Harlan Coben's Shelter, Prime Video review - what the hell is going on in Kasselton, New Jersey?

★★★ HARLAN COBEN'S SHELTER, PRIME High school confidential with a supernatural twist

High school confidential with a supernatural twist

Netflix scooped up the rights to an armful of Harlan Coben’s standalone novels for a colossal sum, and now Amazon Prime has nipped in and signed up Coben’s series of Mickey Bolitar books, which fall under the “young adult” heading. Shelter is the first one off the blocks.

Blu-ray: Thieves Like Us

★★★★ BLU-RAY: THIEVES LIKE US Altman's elegy for the Great Depression

Altman's elegy for the Great Depression - a tale of hapless bank robbers set in the Deep South

Thieves Like Us, Robert Altman’s 1974 evocation of 1930s Mississippi, wasn’t a commercial hit on its original release, even though Pauline Kael called it a masterpiece.

Blue Beetle review - radical rehash

Threadbare DC super-heroics allow a loving, subversive look at Latino family life

Blue Beetle is DC’s first screen Latino superhero, a recent development in the history of a D-grade character summed up here in his own film as “like the Flash… or Superman… but not as good”. Scraping the character barrel and first meant for cable, his debut also resists the grim “adult” gravitas routinely borrowed from Alan Moore and Frank Miller’s Eighties comics, popping with bright colours and breezy, communal humanity.

Haunted Mansion review - corporate craft

★★★ HAUNTED MANSION Talent almost compensates for hard sell in kids' horror comedy

Committed, racially aware talent almost compensates for hard sell in kids' horror comedy

A Disney theme park ride adaptation remake is a challenging place to make your mark, and the dumping of Guillermo del Toro for promising real, supposedly child-freaking scares dampens hopes further. Replacement director Justin Simien (Dear White People) at least professes himself a fan of the titular attraction, and with screenwriter Katie Dippold (Parks and Recreation, Paul Feig’s female Ghostbusters) slips humanity into the corporate shilling.

Album: Rhiannon Giddens - You're the One

RHIANNON GIDDENS - YOU'RE THE ONE Giddens serves up a great gumbo

Giddens serves up a great gumbo

In late 2019, BC, another age, Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi stepped on to a Southbank Centre stage and gave one of those mesmerising performances that forever stays in the memory.

Alone at Night review - cam girl meets crowbar killer

Ashley Benson stars in a witless slasher flick set in the wilds

The vogue for star ratings fixed to film reviews arrived after the heyday of exploitation movies, which is perhaps just as well because the whole point of such films is that they’re good and terrible at the same time.

The Beanie Bubble review - an under-stuffed, misshapen product saga

This toy story's script is a waste of a good cast

Another week, another toy story, in the wake of Barbie. And another origin-of-hit-product story, too, after Air. The Beanie Bubble, though, has none of the surprisingly gripping appeal of Nike’s rise and rise via a single trainer design, nor the (sporadic) wit and bounce of Greta Gerwig’s mega-hit. It’s all corporate idiocy, shabby dealings, and misogyny. And failure is nowhere near as fascinating as success.