The Mole Agent

 Suffers slightly from being an investigative documentary that never quite pulls out a particularly big surprise during the investigation - the main attraction is the charm of the main investigator, who's pretty darn charming, though, while I don't necessarily want to watch a lot of elder abuse, it's still a bit disappointing that there's nothing really here after the setup.

The Unholy

 This is familiar material lifted by being acted and played out really well - Jeffrey Dean Morgan in particular is a great sleazy journalist protagonist dealing with demonic forces in the face of potential miracles in a small Massachusetts town. Also strong support from William Sadler, although there is also the prospect of Cary Elwes playing a catholic priest with a Boston accent - I'm not sure he should ever be given an accent apart from british

Land

 It's a beautiful looking film and Wright is surprisingly good at directing a film where for a lot of the length she's the only actor on screen, but it does suffer a bit from leaving the backstory to the last five minutes. But the relationship that forms between Wright and Bichar is the heart and soul of the film and Bichar definitely sells his material.

Every Breath You Take

 This is a weird relic of a film, sorta feeling like it would fit in better with that block of 90s thrillers where a "normal" family gets involved with an outsider who trys to destroy them - in this case, the revenge is on a pretty awful psychiatrist (Affleck) by a relative of one of his patients who's just committed suicide. Of course, the revenge goes through both his wife and his daughter, who both fall for Sam Claiflin's ridiculously transparent performance - I remember that Michelle Monaghan used to be in good movies, but it seems like she's aged out of casting agent's attention. Claiflin has never really impressed me very much and in this he's one of the more boring cinematic psychos of all time. In general this is really kinda dull and pointless.

Raya and the Last Dragon

 This is kinda like watching an entire season of Avatar the Last Airbender in one hit, albiet one that's more Thai inspired than most, For me, that's kinda a good thing because I like this big scale adventure movie, very much female led (there's no substantial love story in here distracting things, and the male roles are all relatively minor). It's a generous, open exciting story with many different environments to explore and an entertaining heart and soul to it.

Ascendant

 This is the definition of deeply middling. It's a reasonable idea - a thriller in a lift as a girl is isolated, tortured by regular descents and mocked on a videoscreen by the dubious Russian bad guy who's kidnapped her dad. Except this keeps on ducking out for overly-expisitory flashbacks and doesn't quite have the confidence to stick to its simple setup - meaning that there's a lot of dangling threads left when the film is finished - I must admit I'm getting annoyed with films that seem to leave key exposition out and claiming it's setup for an unlikely-to-happen sequel. Still, it's got a couple of decent visuals, some reasonable performances here and there and hey, it's Australian, so I'm very slightly proud of it anyway?

Creation Stories

A bit of a shambles, this feels like the bad version of 24 Hour Party People - it's not quite got as interesting a protagonist as PArty People, and it never really finds an interesting structure to hang on to - there's interesting underlying material about material success versus integrity in the music industry, and how it can drip away as power is apparently closer, but it never quite rounds up. There's also imagery from a bunch of different films (DAnny Boyle seems to be a producer largely so he can't sue for ripping off Trainspotting), and it never really finds a reason to make Alan McGee interesting, despite trying to throw in Alistair Crowley and Malcolm McClaren as side characters, it doesn't find a reason for them to really be there

Supernova

 A touching story of two long-term lovers who are being torn apart by the encroaching dementia of one of them. Firth and Tucci have a lived-in-relationship feel of people who have an easiness between them, and their journey as they travel through the lakes district of England to catch up with family on the way to a concert by Firth is full of affection, confrontation and ultimate heartbreak - the last line of dialogue in the film lugged tears out of me. Also looks gorgeous - there's a shot of the English countryside that looks painted.

Collective

A really solid narrative documentary that follows the story of what happens after a fire into a complete indictment of corruption, cronyism and disaster within the Romanian hospital system. There's great unrolling of the story, including a mid-film twist from outside the system into the centre of the system, and shows what the struggles are in a country trying to deal with visceral ugly politics and corruption, and how such things stay enshrined for so long.

Nobody

 Bob Odenkirk's turn at being Liam Neeson in another "old white guy" action movie - this time, a suburban husband who's secretbadassness emerges after a house robbery - the film does a few swerves, bringing in an entire side-set of Russian douchebags for Odenkirk to smash through when it becomes clear the original house robbers aren't going to be able to sustain the length - and this does play more as a mid-life-crisis fantasy played out, down to and including the surprise emergence of Christopher Lloyd as his dad and another secretbadass. It still suffers slightly from Connie Neilsen's wife character being a cipher (indeed, the entire family, in particular the douchey son, are pretty much ciphers), the Russians being a tad too goofy to function as real threats, and some self-indulgence, but it's still pretty solid largely due to Odenkirk's ability to play exhausted irritation.