These Conjuring-universe movies are getting shoddier and shoddier. Here are 5 things that made me giggle when I should've been terrified instead:
1. La Llorona in the prologue, drowning her two kids in a shallow stream (she holds them down, and holds their heads under water) - then so overcome with remorse when she realises what she's done that "she threw herself into the same waters". Really, threw herself in that same shallow stream? Hope she didn't bump her forehead.…

Held me spellbound for three hours, if nothing else (extended cut, fwiw). 25th HOUR-ish - New York movie, moral drama about Doing the Right Thing, symphonic score over jagged rhythms - also Desplechin-ish for the sweep and scale, but more ambitious than either: an epic of human disconnection, based around the fact that language is such an imperfect way of trying to connect - emotion is easier, but we lose it as we grow older ("It is Margaret you mourn…

File with James L. Brooks' How Do You Know as a late-period rom-com that may seem inept because it dispenses with the usual pretence of realism (the magical setting helps, like it did, in a different way, in Almost Famous; maybe Crowe's peculiar sensibility needs the licence of an anything-goes milieu to really take flight). Myths and omens appear prominently. There's an emphasis on the touchy-feely - Danny McBride as Colonel "Fingers"; Bill Murray giving an impromptu massage - over…