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.