Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

Enjoyable but shallow, this uses some of the style of "Suicide Squad" in a far more coherent manner. While it's got the standard shopping bag of requirements most superhero movies seem to have (further adventures of one antihero, introducing three more new heroes, a sidekick and two villains), this pulls it off reasonably well. While a lot of the early-movie adventures do slightly lack an individual style (only the nightclub scenes really get a decent set, and everything else feels a little like it's on a generic street scene backlot), the last act finds an enjoyable way to stage action scenes (with fights that actually feel weighty and violent, rather than the usual airless scrapping and posing). Robbie's very much at the centre and manages to keep Harley on the right side of manic pixie psychotic, with Rosie Perez getting most of the serious plotting, Ewan McGregor getting to be a sleazy bad guy and Mary Elizabeth Winstead largely being enigmatic for most of the movie before being hilariously straightfaced to the rest of the nutso shenanigans. This isn't top flight stuff, and it probably is going to suffer from being a little too violent for family audiences, but for those of you who want a female led action movie, this does pretty darn well.

The Peanut Butter Falcon

A gentle piece, this has a little bit of a 90s-Sundance-Movie feeling, a story of three people on a road trip - in this case, led by a 22 year old with Downs syndrome determined to escape from the nursing home he's been stuck in since he has no other family - meeting up along the way with a lonely seafood thief and the carer who's meant to bring him back. There's a very sweet nature to this one - while it's a little unlikely in some places, and the ending is, to say the least, abrupt (the climax reaches the right heights, but the following scene-and-a bit leave us a bit "that's it"?) the journey along the way pays off. Including a very strong cast (La Boef proves to be quite a resoanable actor when not having to talk to giant robots exclusively, Zack Gottsagen is a great presence, and such performers as Bruce Dern and John Hawkes are, frankly, slightly overqualified for what the film needs from them but nevertheless give solid background - Dakota Johnston is the one member of the lead trio who feels underwritten). So it's a reasonably enjoyable flick

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.