Monsterfest 2020

 This is my second go at seeing a film festival after Fantastic Fest, and it's difficult for anything to quite live up to Fantastic Fest's mix of access, variety, planning and programming - certainly in these COVID times, a couple of rejiggles of the programming meaning I wasn't seeing it in Melbourne, as planned, but in Sydney, and ending up booking for five films over a weekend rather than, as originally expected, a week and a half of around a dozen slots. 

Still, this wasn't a bad mix of films, though I did get a little annoyed that things ended up split over two weekends, only one of which I could schedule - meaning I did miss a couple of films I would have liked to have caught. Still, of the five, there was only one disappointment (Violent Fun, a generic 80s slasher throwback), two stone-cold classics (Possessor and Psycho Goreman, both excelent examples of their type), and two cases of middling fare (the doco Leap of Faith is a bit more bundle-of-anecdotes rather than deeply probing documentary, and Breeder is brutally direct in telling a grotesque story unrelentingly -it's well done but too grim for easy viewing). I'd definately go again but my expectations have been brought down a tad.  

The Craft Legacy

 This is a middle of the road Blumhouse joint, one of those movies clearly made by a producer who thinks texting during the movie is a good idea (yes, Jason, I carry a grudge). It's more a remake than a sequel, and only really gives one of the girls a plot and a personality. Also you can figure out a lot of the plot in advance just from the characters names. But it does have a few moments here and there for nostalgic new age 90s goth girls

Baby Done

 This is a film that gets away with a lot due to gentle charm - it really doesn't have enough substance, and never really pushes the edgier sides of its topic harder, but it is a pleasant way to spend an hour and a bit. Matafeo has charm for days which makes her pricklier characeristics pretty easy to take and means you don't object to the almost-too-neat ending

Kajillionaire

 This is very much Evan Rachel Wood in her "beautiful weirdo" phase, but also a cleverly told story of socialization, family, rebellion and escape in the backstreets of LA

Corpus Christi

 This is a fairly compelling story about faith, forgiveness and the gap between piousness and piety, with a great central performance and an intense final shot. I will say some of the plot setup is a little odd (as the criminal on work release manages to be confused for a priest), and it perhaps keeps the ending a little more ambiguous than it needs to be, but I was still pretty enthralled.

Hope gap

Very much your standard British divorce film, with Bening the emotional one whose needs drive the reticent Nighy away, and Josh O'Connor as the similarly who mediates between them. It kinda peaks early with the separation and never really gets very far out of the three of them in a tight emotional circle devouring one another. For all that, the scenery is nice and there's nice literary stuff with Napoleonic history and poetry as therapy

Dirt Music

 This is a case of a good looking but empty package - Kelly McDonald and Garret Hedlund do a pretty reasonable attempt at Australian accents, unfortunately the chemistry between them is largely of the "informed" variety, where they're both physically attractive and in an early sex scene can apparently get each other off before the clothes come off. The plot is the standard guff of "damaged men and the women who have to hang around and cure them". WA sure does look pretty and we do get to see a lot of it, but never in service of an interesting narrative.

Lucky Grandma

 A sweet and funny piece about an old Chinese lady living in Chinatown who's sudden piece of good fortune endangers her and her family... it's a slow build but it goes very satisfying places

The Last Black Man in San Francisco

A beautiful elegy of passing history as two young black men look after the house that used to be the family home - gorgeous imagery, great needledrops (yay, Michael Nyman is back) and emotional charactterwork compensate for a narrative that is a little vague

The Trial of the Chicago 7

 An engrossing look at history through the lens of the internal battles of the left, Eddie Redmayne was apparently born to play the wavering, respectability hunting Tom Hayden, with Baron Cohen and Jeremy Strong stealing scenes wholesale as the similarly scene stealing Hoffman and Rubin. It is an Aaron Sorkin down to a climactic scene hinging on grammar and men mutually admiring each other's writing, though it's careful never to throw in a gratuitous woman to have things explained to. It's still an invigorating experience

On the Rocks

 Very much coasting on Bill Murray's charm, luckily he has immense amounts. The rich person angst about whether Rashida Jones' husband is cheating on her never matters as much as whether Murray can spend more time with his daughter. And he's damn fine company

Sputnik

 A clever variation on familiarish alien tropes as a cosmonaut returns to earth with an extra passenger on board. It's a slow build but has some fun bits of gratuitous violence and a reasonable monster design plus some clever concepts going on in there.

Antebellum

 There is a problem with films with a twist, and that is that they are pretty difficult to review beyond the twist without annoying people. So all I can say is that this is pretty clunky about the twist, it's obvious and it plays out in a drawn out way that never feels as thrillingly visceral as this kinda genre movie should do. There are some reasonable performances here and a few good set pieces but it's mostly a bit of a slog.