Roma

This beautifully shot film tells three intertwining stories in a Mexican household in the early 70s – the breakdown of the parent’s marriage, the pregnancy of one of the maids, and the increasing political unrest in the streets. Full of lush visuals and crowd scenes, in gorgeous black and white, the more personal stories are told with delicacy and care (albeit neither are exactly presented with a lot of urgency). The more political story, though, tends to be only touched on when spectacle is needed (as with a sudden uprising near the end) rather than presented with any coherent information about its causes and rationales – telling the story though the viewpoint of the pregnant maid means that, given she’s not particularly politically active, we can only be nearby observers rather than getting any understanding of why there’s unrest, what it’s coming from and why it’s slipping out of control.

And yes, a film is under no responsibility to particularly represent any individual political point of view – but in this case, presenting the politics as spectacle without actually trying to understand them means we get a fairly shallow view of what could be a complex and intriguing element of the film. It turns what could have been an incisive film into something more sentimental and fuzzy. And as a sentimental and fuzzy presentation of personal history, it’s quite a gorgeous looking film. I just wish the ideas underneath the beauty meant a bit more.

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

We’ve seen an even half-dozen Spiderman movies with three different young men playing Spiderman. But it’s always the same Peter Parker, with the same origin story … until now. Using a distinctly modern art style, this film tells of Miles Morales, an African-American-Latino, whose life gets complicated by the inevitable radioactive spider, plus one very complicated cross-dimensional engine that drags in multiple other Spider-people from other universes. In cutting edge animation that gives the screen a comic-book quality, we get everything from sound-effects to voice-over panels. This level of styalisation has proved a mess in things like Ang Lee’s “Hulk” but here, it works.

If I don’t completely lose my mind over this, it might be that … this isn’t quite the Miles Morales that the comics have given me. He’s a little more urban, a little more street-wise, a little more keen on graffiti and stickers than the more mild-mannered character from the comics. And it’s not necessarily a bad change, and it’s a compelling kaleidoscope of comics pleasure all around, and there’s some really clever choices in there with the supporting cast – but it’s just not quite the Miles that I loved. He’s not a bad character, but he’s just not quite mine any more. And that’s my own baggage to bear.

Peppermint

This is a fairly rote revenge thriller, with Jennifer Garner playing the woman whose family is gunned down in front of her, whose attempts within the system to get justice lead to naught, and who finds herself gunning down vast amounts of Latino gang members. There’s some nice ludicrousness in the setup (her preparation involves disappearing for five years after robbing a bank for $55,000 – that seems an incredibly low budget to be come, basically, Batman), and a few reasonable twists and turns, but this is pretty conventional by the numbers stuff that just doesn’t have a lot of fun with what it’s doing, and doesn’t really provide any new ideas or deep insight beyond the obvious that Jennifer Garner really does deserve to be in more action movies, although probably better ones than this. It’s difficult to argue with the rote racism or vengeance prone politics because the film doesn’t particularly seem to have very much invested in its ideas or in its execution - it’s just going through the motions.

The Mortal Engines

This big-scale young-adult fantasy epic feels a little squished at a little over two hours, but it does the job in combining a distinctly odd premise (a post apocalyptic future where cities-on-wheels roam the land devouring other cities) with a familiar personal story of one girl’s quest for revenge on the man who killed her mother. If this suffers a little from lore-overload (the characters have a tendency to recite backstory if even slightly prodded), there are a couple of subplots and minor characters where it feels like a larger subplot has been chopped down to meet running times (a couple of characters seem to exist largely to get plot from A to B rather than really getting much time of their own to develop), it’s still an intriguing examination of a rich fantasy world. The relationship between the two leads does smack a little of “well, our two leads are opposite genders, so therefore there’s going to be a love plot here regardless of chemistry”, and only Hugo Weaving and Stephen Lang as two of the villains really get much to sink their teeth into acting wise, but the storytelling is constantly propulsive as the leads are constantly on the run and in jeopardy, either chasing or being chased. The distinctly steampunk aesthetic means that there’s always a lot to look at, even if the overall arc is somewhat familiar.

Sorry To Bother You

This modern satire of corporate culture, 21^st century capitalism and the state of interracial America is a winner. Cassius Greene (Lakieth Stanfield) is our bemused hero as he starts working for a call-centre, struggling to make a connection to people across the nation to sell some useless product or other. But when he’s told of the secret power of using his “white voice”, opportunities open up to him – and expose him to more surreptitious ways that corporate America plans to use him and his friends.

Director Boots Riley has a sure visual style here – this is, in some ways, Michel Gondry crossed with Karl Marx, as he captures complex issues in a few deft images and unusual sights. The cast is all-round strong – whether it be Stanfield’s bemused protagonist, Tessa Thompson back again as the artistically inclined girlfriend of the lead (it’s unfortunate in a way that this film has been held back long enough in Australia that it looks like Thompson’s stereotype next to her appearance in “Creed II”, but she’s got enough other things coming that hopefully she’ll be a lead before too long), or Armie Hammer carelessly embodying the don’t-give-a-shit nature of the wealthy as a careless corporate mogul. The satire only gets more extreme as the film goes on yet it’s never enough to break the immersion, for me – it’s a finely provocative look at the modern American landscape.

Can you ever forgive me?

Lee Israel is a biography writer who’s finding it harder and harder to get published. Her distaste for modern writing trends, together with a disposition that sees her liking cats more than people and generally isolating herself sees her running broke in early 90’s Manhattan. But on finding a letter while researching a Fanny Brice biography, she gets involved with the world of collectible memorabilia. And soon it becomes easier to manufacture her own fake memorabilia for the various literary snobs, and with the assistance of her drinking buddy, the vain but impoverished Jack Hock, she starts to pull off a scam that can only end in disaster.

Melissa McCarthy is a bit of an odd case of superstardom – coming reasonably late to the job (while she’s been a working actress for over 20 years, her big break in “Bridesmaids” was only 7 years ago, after the age of 40). And it’s true that some of her recent star vehicles have been less than impressive – such middling nonsense as “Identify Thief”, “Life of the Party” and “The Boss” are less the work of a comedic powerhouse than a hack milking her moment in the sun (It doesn’t help that her husband, Ben Falcone, has been the deeply middling director behind some of these duds). But underneath all that there is a deeply impressive actress who should not be underestimated – when given the right meat to chew on. And this is exactly the right meat – Lee is a fully rounded, complicated human being whose frustration verges but never tips over completely into self-pity. Her erudition, pride and disappointment with the rest of the world gives us a smart heroine whose adaptation to circumstances sees her finding a perverse kinda pride in capturing the voices of her beloved literary celebrities. Richard E. Grant is a worthy companion – the relationship remains spiky and ever-close to dissolving into complete disaster, and Hock’s independent pride that can never quite communicate how desperate his circumstances really are makes him a fascinating figure who keeps his dignity no matter how bad things get. This knows how to choose the “true story” elements and play them so that nothing feels thrown in just because it’s an interesting anecdote – everything contributes to the core portrayal of this character and how she finds herself in these circumstances. It's pretty standard for awards season to offer mildly contrived biographical arcs that feel twisted into fake inspiration – but this feels genuine and immersive and with a smart literary heart to it.

Climax

Gaspar Noe is one of cinema’s great provocateurs. Experimental in form and in content, he delivers films that are unlike anything else – extreme and astounding and with strange moments of beauty bashing up against intense and disturbing material. And this is him delivering a short, sharp shock to the senses as he examines a dance troupe assembled in the French countryside whose meet-up party spirals out of control when the sangria is tainted by LSD. Noe does things that simply shouldn’t work – putting the credits in at a random point, shooting entire sequences from odd angles (there’s a dance sequence shot entirely from overhead that enthrals, and later another scene is shot upside down), with a mulit-racial, muitl-sexuality troupe of some 25-odd characters each with their own moods, opinions and agendas. It’s a letting go of all inhibitions yet despite that, it’s also a controlled, clever, emotional and intense masterwork – able to be at any moment joyous, horrific, romantic, brutal, political, abstract and precise. Absolutely worth indulging in.