Gunpowder Milkshake

 A reasonable action idea elevated by the female cast and by the intensity of some of the action. Still familiar stuff

Old

 M.Night's latest suspense film feels very much like he realised the plot holes as he was writing it but as he'd already cashed the cheque to make it he threw in some bonus lines where characters admit a particular behaviour was dumb but keep right on doing it. It's full of messy jargon dumps to try to sell the premise and low on interesting variations on the premise to keep the audience interested. It's shot quite nicely, including some great use of subjective camera, but that's not enough to save it

Shiva Baby

 An entertaining comedy of extreme embarassment as a young college student goes to a shiva with her Jewish family only to encounter her current lover (complete with wife and child) and an ex-partner. The music gives this a mild horror tinge as the horrendous things pile up for our heroine, and it is very much a "thank goodness it's not you" kind of film.

Nine Days

 This has striking visuals but is a bit rambling on its way through to a powerful final scene. The performers are solid but this does meander a little on the way through. This does have a striking visual sense and an understanding of how to communicate emotionally but I do wish the narrative itself was stronger.

Werewolves within

This is a charming little oddity as a small town ranger is confronted by a possible werewolf and ends up shuttered in with the various weird townspeople. Sam Richardson is a lovely lead with goofy charm and there's a couple of good moments with the quirky townspeople (though there's also a lot of yelling going on). It's a little too in love with goofy twists and there isn't a lot of visible werewolf, but there's a reasonably satisfying ending.

Black Widow

 A clever way of doing an origin story without doing an origin story, by instead doing a "dealing with unfinished business from the origin story" tale, this is entertainment in the marvel manner, meaning that the villainous plot will not make a whole lotta sense while being suitably world endangering, there will be frequent injokes for those who remember the previous films, and it will somehow still be baseline pretty enjoyable anyway. The relationship dynamics between Johannsen, Pugh, Harbour and Weitz are damn entertaining, and as a launching point for Pugh for a wider audience this is pretty damn good. There are undoubtedly quibbles to have here and there, but at this point in my viewing I'm not really up for quibbling, I'm just enjoying the ride.

The Sparks Brothers

 This is a thoroughly entertaining dive into the musical biography genre - Wright has a good visual ability to work his way through the usual mix of clips and interviews with a wide range of admirers and observers to talk about the band in question. There's clever visual choices to bust open the narrative a bit more, and while, yes, it does get a little relentlessly gaggy in the beginning with underlined visual puns, it mostly moves fairly straightforwardly through 50-odd years of musical history with a band that never quite lives in the zeitgeist of their time - they're always either too many steps ahead or, occasionally, just a little too early to start hitting a nostalgia button. It does feel a little overextended at the end rather than hitting a good leaving point and then stopping, but that's a minor complaint on a film that's so damn entertaining to watch.

Escape Room: Tournement of Champions

 This reprise largely picks up the interesting ideas of the previous (an evil conspiracy sets up a number of death traps for various people to compete in), without doing a lot new and interesting with the idea but still playing it very much as well as possible - the various rooms are again the highlights with complicated mechanisms requiring our characters to think their way through the various problems, though I do find this time round the various new characters receive fairly light characterisations, and the ending does feel like the kind of ending that falls apart the closer you look at it. Still, it's a better Saw movie than the last three saw movies, so that's something, with a definite focus on the innocents brought into the traps rather than the trapmakers.

Little Joe

 This is an interesting twist on a somewhat familiar story that I can think of at least three prior official versions of, dealing with a plant with depression-treating properties and the mechanic of getting it to market. It is presented in an interestingly styalised way that does unfortunately tend to flatten a few of the performances (only Kerry Fox as a particularly cantankerous co-worker really stands out), and it builds in an interesting way, even if it's often pretty clear how things are going to work out.