Seberg

This never quite finds its focus between a more general biopic of Jean Seberg and a more focussed look at the FBI surveilance program that acted to shame her for financially supporting the Black Panthers. Part of it is that the film keeps on going over to a fictional FBI agent (played by Jack O'Connell), who begins to feel conflicted about the FBI's treatment of Seberg (it's never a conflict we feel particularly compelled by). Part of it is that the acting side of Seberg's career keeps on being pushed off to the side (we're introduced to her about to make the utterly ridiculous film "Paint your Wagon", but we never get to see more than a little bit of an audition for the film, and while there's reference to her being in the cheesy disaster movie "Airport", again, we never get to see any of it). Kristen Stewart doesn't really get a character to play so much as a series of political attitudes and emotional breakdowns. The recreation of the late 60's looks pretty good, and there's moments with Anthony Mackie and Zazie Beets where the film looks like it might actually engage with the Black Panthers as an organisation, but they mostly feel like mild background to a story of an actress and a Fed. And it's a bit blah.

A Hidden Life

Terrence Malick's move from film-making recluse to suddenly becoming a dynamo of productivity has not been an unalloyed joy - much of his recent filmography has felt like self indulgences without much of a plot motivator. This one at least has a reasonable amount of story (although, yes, it is stretched across a three hour running time, and it's not exactly a speedy piece of storytelling). But at this point in his career, Malick is more interested in scenery than he is in people, and this tale of refusal to go along with the Nazis without actually actively taking action against them does feel a tad mild. It is gorgeously shot, and the Austrian scenery is wonderful to behold. And this is a film that manages to give a fair bit of space to the wife left behind once Franz is imprisoned, as she continues to try to maintain the farm with him gone in the face of a town that has turned its back on both of them. This isn't quite what I rush out to the cinema to see, but for what it is, it's pretty good at doing what it intends to do.

Underwater

This is kinda spectacularly dumb action/horror, but with a bit more to reward it than a lot of films dumped into a January slot. For starters, it doesn't mess around with exposition - the characters are under threat pretty much from minute two of the film, and it doesn't let up much until the finale. The action does occasionally get a bit incoherent, and there are one or two annoying or underwritten characters (TJ Miller, who seems to be in this movie largely because it was shot in 2017 and has been hanging around waiting for release, and people weren't completely sick of him back then), and a few too many excuses to get the cast into their underwear, but Kristen Stewart is pretty engrossing as a lead and there is a nice build to a suitably bonkers finale (plus Jessica Henwick gets a fair bit to do in support). So if you're looking for a reasonable monsterthon, this may tick a box or two.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood

A zen parable about finding emotional stability through the story of an investigative journalist assigned to write about a beloved children's entertainer, this uses the device to ensure anything that could possibly be irritating or feel disingenuous about Mr. Rogers is immediately disarmed by seeing him through the eyes of someone very disenchanted. There's a deliberate stylalisation all the way through that helps, and I do think Matthew Rhys leads the film quite solidly as the viewpoint character (Hanks uses his "everybody's dad" air to good effect in the role, though dammit I wish that the script had avoided him using the word "Toy" - it's so associated with Woody that it can't help throw me out for a coupla seconds). And Heller really knows how to connect with damaged broken protagonists. Well worth seeing.

Just Mercy

This is a bit "exactly what you expect it to be", down to the big speech to congress at the end, but as this sorta thing goes ("failed oscar bait", basically), it's not altogether a writeoff. Michael B. Jordan and Jaime Foxx are quite solid in the leads as crusading lawyer and death row inmate respectively, Brie Larson is underused as Jordan's paralegal (she's basically there so he can have someone to talk to outside of prison), and Tim Blake Nelson steals the couple of scenes he's in. The one execution sequence, though, is very effective. If it's seldom surprising, it's at least reasonably solid at being unsurprising.

Bombshell

This is reasonably acted, and has a couple of decently impactful scenes. However ... the three-headed protagonists never really feel more than three different movies going on in parallel (they never really interract as much as they feel like they should), there's some vague attempts at mixing narrative style towards the beginning (as Theron playing Kelly provides opening exposition in the style of a newspiece, walking and talking through the sets) which falls away pretty quickly, it doesn't quite find a central storytelling motor (Kelly feels like she's carrying most of it, except that her mid-film run of not being sure whether or not to speak up about it never feels particularly dynamic), and the gotcha-ending of the Kidman story feels a little cheaply unearned. Robbie's story as a sorta symbolic "every-victim" does have moments when it feels a little exploitative (I'm not entirely convinced we needed the lifted-skirt shot during her confrontation with Alles), more a collection of "traits this character needs to have" than an actual individual. And in a film with at least five Australian cast members, two of whom share a scene with him, Malcolm McDowell's Australian accent as Murdoch could be a whole lot better. There's an obvious reason why this story is being told now (it's topical and Alles is very happily dead and unable to sue), but this doesn't really feel like much depth has been applied.

The Biggest Little Farm

This is a nice piece, albeit something that does suffer a bit from clearly being a propoganda/promo piece for the filmmakers. Looking at a couple of years running a farm (by an ex-Animal-Planet cameraman and his food-blogger wife), as they commit to running a biodiverse operation in an attempt to renew the soil and stay running. And the footage of the animals, in particular, is great (as it should be, since, well, filming animals was the guy's job) - and it's good to get an understanding of the complexities of working in a biodiverse way, as getting the interconnections to work takes some doing - although we never really get a firm sense on where all the bonus helpers our two leads seem to have really come from (there's supposedly only two employees, but they seem to have a lot more people coming around - are they using volunteers, casual labour, how is this actually working?).

And due to the fact they haven't actually gone bankrupt at this point, our lead duo do tend to pat themselves on the back a bit for their various wise decisions - many of which do kinda look a bit like luck rather than good judgement. And some of the narration waxes a bit too philosophical, and I'm not a huge fan of the animated-exposition early on, which can come across as cutesy and a bit smug. But for all of those complaints, this pans out pretty reasonably, albeit inevitably self-promotingly.

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon

This is a nice return to form from Aardman - it's very silly but quite enjoyable - no dialogue, lots of entertaining silent gags, some playing with sci-fi tropes and a couple of fun injokes. No, it's not particularly deep, and Shaun as a hero is a bit of a douchebag occasionally (particularly to the long-suffering dog), but damnnit if this isn't charming.

1917

This manages to power through what is a fairly simple narrative (two guys are sent on a mission to get a message to the front line, and we follow them across various encounters on the way) with a lot of bravura filmmaking as it gives the impression of being shot in virtually real time with no apparent cuts.  And moment to moment it's pretty gripping (particularly the almost surreal-looking french town sequence) - though I don't think there's really a lot of depth to the characters, so much as just "people we just happen to follow" - even the various well known actors who show up to meet our heroes along the way don't really get a lot to do (the only one who, for me, really lands is Andrew Scott early on as a particularly disillusioned Lieutenant). It's a solid movie to experience in a theatre, I just don't know that it'll survive home viewing particularly.

The Gentlemen

Guy Ritchie comes back to the crime genre, a little older and a little rusty. There's a lot of familiar tics here, together with one or two decent performances (Hugh Grant has a lot of fun as a most unrelaible narrator, and Colin Farrell again shows he's always more interesting when he's Irish). But there's also somewhat stiff turns from McConneghey and Hunnam, and while the plot never really goes completely off the rails (although it gets pretty dicey both with some gratuitous racism and a not-particularly great role for Michelle Dockery) it's more a familiar bunch of genre exercises rather than anything particularly new or fresh.

Little Women

A rock solid interpretation of the classic novel, while at the same time interrogating a couple of the assumptions underneath it. It's funny, emotional and gorgeously constructed - the parallel timelines as it moves back in forth use some of the novel's repetitive nature to reflect on and parallel itself, as the four March sisters face up to the challenges of life during the Civil War and in the post war period, as their four different talents (writing, art, acting and piano) either find places of expression or become subsumed under other sides of life. Acting standouts from the always reliable Saroise Ronan and Florence Pugh plus a great introduction for me to Eliza Scanlan who, in one scene, brought me to tears. Major work from a major talent.