Don't Worry Darling, The Lost King and Halloween Ends are the three latest films to go under the microscope of our film guru.

A trio of films this week, as half term starts, and Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is set to be the big draw for families. DC also has high hopes for Black Adam, a virtually unknown Egyptian antihero played by Dwayne Johnson. It can't be any worse for them than Batgirl, which crashed and burned after test audience screenings produced such bad feedback it was deemed better to bin the £79 million film than even chuck it onto a streaming service.

I'll start with an unexpectedly excellent Don't Worry Darling. My friend Will really hated this one, and angrily told me all the gaping holes in the plot and implausabilites. To be honest, I accept that there may be a few inconsistencies, but I liked the central premise of the film. I also thought Harry Styles was way better than many reviews have suggested. Florence Pugh was unquestionably the highlight, and outacted everyone else.

Directed by Olivia Wilde, the story sees the men of Victory work for a mysterious guy called Frank (Chris Pine). They head off in their nice fancy cars every morning into the desert, whilst their women stay at home, doing the housework, preparing the dinner, and not asking questions. That's until Alice (Pugh) starts to ask some, as she becomes suspicious that their idyllic, romantic, steamy life of Martinis, plentiful sex and dinner parties may not be all it's cracked up to be. There was a feminist undercurrent to the story which built during the movie and, as I alluded to earlier, it wasn't perfect. In spite of that, I really enjoyed it.

Meanwhile, the search for King Richard III is the focus of The Lost King. Sally Hawkins plays Phillipa Langley, who in real life was relentless in her pursuit of the truth about where the King was buried. You'll remember he was dug up underneath a fairly unremarkable car park in Leicester, so there's no spoiler warning needed in telling you that. Langley's key role was overshadowed by Leicester University taking much of the credit, although the academics dispute the film's versions of events. Hawkins is exceptionally good, but the scenes where 'Richard' follows her around as a ghost / apparition / in her imagination are a little twee, and the whole thing is quite forgettable, to be blunt. Steve Coogan is pretty good as the on/off husband too.

Rounding up my viewing this week is Halloween Ends. Jamie Lee Curtis plays Laurie Strode supposedly for the final time. The first one is almost as old as me! I'm fairly convinced the unkillable Michael Myers won't be making another appearance in that mouldy old mask, but who knows. He's risen from the dead many times before! There were a few fairly obvious jump scares, but overall it wasn't hugely scary. In fact, Myers became a bit of a second tier character in this storyline, as a new evil emerges in Haddonfield. Love them or hate them, these are good old fashioned popcorn movies from an era of Blockbuster Video and VHS but it's time this franchise was given a decent burial now, I think.

Next up for me, it's Amsterdam and The Banshees Of Inishirin. Happy film watching!

You can listen to Alex every weekday from 7am to 11am and on the 'Super Scoreboard' show on Saturdays from 3pm to 7pm, on Tameside Radio 103.6FM. 

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