Uncharted (2022):

It's the perfect recipe for a rollicking good time at the movies in this Mark Wahlberg/Tom Holland action-adventure thriller. Take a little bit of Indiana Jones, a pinch of The Davinci Code, mix in some Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, add elements from a good, old-fashioned pirate swashbuckler, and finish up with a rasher of Spider-Man-type action. Pick your favourite heist movie, and shake these ingredients together with a good, plausible story that hangs together no matter how you look at it, and we are left with a movie that never drags and that is over far too soon. Based on the 2007 video game of the same name, this film, rife with excellent special effects and enough action scenes to leave you breathless, is actually a prequel to the existing game. Wahlberg is Victor Sullivan, an adventurer and something of a con-man, looking for the lost treasure of Ferdinand Magellan, whose crew was the first to circumnavigate the earth in the 16th century. A reputed $5 billion in gold was hidden somewhere, and Sully has been after it for years. Added to the mix is Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) whose backstory includes life in an orphanage with his older brother Sam. Their late parents told the boys repeatedly, before dying and leaving them adrift, that they were descended from Sir Francis Drake. The boys were always in trouble, and in their early teens were separated when Sam became a three-time offender. Drake is tending bar and working various pickpocket scams when he runs into Sully who knows all about him, and needs his help to recover the vast fortune that is out there somewhere, and that brother Sam knew all about. The chase is on, following up clues, dodging a bad bunch headed by a billionaire (Anthony Banderas) and travelling the world following up leads. Great dialogue, fabulous action, and a story begging for a sequel. Be sure to stay seated when the credits start to roll, because there is another major scene that finishes off the story. Rated 14A, but minimal language and comic-book violence make this one work for anyone about 10 years of age and up.

Dog (2022):

This buddy film about a brain-damaged soldier suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and a Belgian Malinois service dog that served in Afghanistan for eight years, is billed as a comedy, but it is definitely not funny. On the contrary, it's tragic on a number of counts. Channing Tatum is the lead character here, a former U.S. Army Ranger, special forces, many times wounded in action, and now back home, mustered out because of his head trauma. His name is Briggs, and he isn't functioning well at any level. He is estranged from his wife and young daughter. He wants to get back into the service, but has been told that he is not stable enough yet ... and may never be. On one of his near-daily calls to his former commanding officer trying to find a way to get back, he is asked to come to the base. The officer infers that he has an assignment and Briggs is ecstatic. When he arrives, he learns that he has been had. A former army confrere has died. The man was a dog handler and worked with the service dogs in desert warfare. Lulu, the badly damaged service dog, is going to be put down by the military, but first, they want Briggs to take the dog to the funeral as this will be very important to the surviving family members, so it's a road trip with the dog, now quite vicious, and Briggs, not much better, making their way in his 1986 Ford Bronco from the Seattle area to Arizona. If he gets the dog to the funeral on time and doesn't screw up, the army may take this as an indication that he is on the mend and consider reinstating him. It's Thursday, and he has to be there Monday morning and away they go ... of course everything from car break-ins to drug dealers get in his way, not to mention car trouble, and a dog who is so unruly as to be completely unmanageable. There are some scenes, particularly one in which he meets up with a couple of women who are sex therapists, that are pretty dodgy ... a mom with her eight- or nine-year-old scooped up the child and left the theatre when this business started. This is a sad movie, one about loss and about the challenges faced by damaged service people who can't get back on their feet, so don't go expecting a comedy, and don't take the kids. Other than that, not too bad. Rated 14A.

The Cursed (2021):

Writer/Director Sean Ellis, whose resume is short with just a handful of projects in his native Britain, has done a masterful job here with a completely different spin on the Gothic horror and werewolf genre. It is difficult, I think, to reinvent a genre that has been around since the 10th century, and which has been the subject of many books, novels, and later movies beginning in the 1930s with "the Werewolf of London." Shot in Cognac, France, and set in that region, this story opens in the trenches at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 during WWI when British and French forces led an offensive against the German Army. The camera takes us into a field operating room where a young soldier is having his egregious wounds attended to, with bullets picked out and dropped with a clank into the surgeon's pan ... a pause, and words from the doctor as he holds up an unusually shaped projectile: "That is not a German bullet." At this word, we go back 35 years to a manor house in the French countryside where Gypsies (Roma People) have camped on the land and say they have claim to it. Seamus Laurent (British actor Alistair Petrie) owns the property, and gets a posse together to send a message to the Gypsies, where they are attacked by dozens of men on horseback, and men, women and children are slaughtered. The Gypsie matriarch is buried alive, and one of the men has his hands and feet severed, and is raised on a cross as a scarecrow where he dies. Laurent's wife and his children, as well as all the villagers who participated, begin to have graphic dreams where the scarecrow comes down off his perch and accosts them. When a doctor arrives in the village (Dr. John McBride played by American Boyd Holbrook) with reason to be following the happenings, it becomes clear that it isn't only nightmares that are afoot. Something is attacking the family members of those who participated in the massacre leading the doctor to believe it is a werewolf. To say more, as the creature is hunted, would result in major spoilers as the twists of the dark story here are ingenious. The setting and the mood is superb and the horror is as much of the mind as it is of the physical realm. A very, very good thriller. Rated 14A.

The Lincoln Lawyer (TV Series) (2022):

11 years ago, the feature film with Matthew McConaughey served up author Michael Connolly's character, Mickey Haller, a one-time down on his luck lawyer now serving his clients out of the back seat of a Lincoln Town Car. Now the story gets the series treatment with Manual Garcia Rulfo in the title role, and with Canadian Neve Campbell playing Maggie McPherson, his ex-wife. The first season of this crime thriller consists of 10 episodes and has Haller taking on the case of a Hollywood executive accused of murdering his wife and her lover. Haller inherited the case when entertainment lawyer Jerry Vincent was murdered, and now, as he prepares to defend Walter Elliott, the studio big-wig, it looks as though Vincent's killer may now have Mickey Haller in his sights. Based on the Connolly book "The Brass Verdict," Haller is back in the courtroom where he feels he belongs. Rated 14A.

Operation Mincemeat (2021):

This film, based on actual events in WWII, was released by Warner Bros in the UK theatrically, and is being released by Netflix in North America. Colin Firth stars in this ingenious story of an espionage operation in 1943 that turned the tide of the war when a pair of British operatives used a combination of a corpse and false identity documents to deceive the Germans at a critical point when a huge build-up of troops was set to quash the allies. It tells the story of those who fight in the shadows, and whose true exploits are sometimes unknown and lost in the fog of war and the mirage of history. Rated 14A.