James Mangold directs Christian Bale, Matt Damon and Jon Bernthal in this sporty retelling of Ford Motors attempt to design and race a winning car at Le Mans, using non-corporate mavericks rather than suits.

A solid bit of Dad Entertainment. Maybe it lacks the emotional pull of Mangold’s best mainstream work. There isn’t the unforced gruff sensitivity and throbbing dedication here that elevated Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma or Logan… even if it is told in the same sweaty, dusty, scrubby accent. Yet the racing flick is a well constructed piece of adult fluff, macho melodrama. I had three problems that left me personally outside the film.

1. Bale’s performance is cranked up to 11 and not always consistent… he enters into Nicolas Cage levels of intensity and gurning without any of that naive charm. He certainly doesn’t gel with Damon’s more robust genial turn. He took me out of the story often… that laboured accent and face contortions…UGH! A fine actor, trying something that didn’t land with the ensemble or me.

2. You get the feeling the real life character with most agency and allure is actually risk taking Ford executive Lee Iacocca (played by a warm and stout Bernthal). To use the perfect film Moneyball as an apt comparison: he is the Billy Beane of the piece, and he kinda sinks into the background once he gambles and puts his team of wildcards in place.

3. I’m not a petrolhead.

Hey-Ho! It is still probably the most well crafted, assured crowdpleaser on at your local multiplex currently. So give it your money.

6

Brian Kirk directs Chadwick Boseman, Sienna Miller and J.K. Simmons in this police thriller where a trigger happy detective closes down Manhattan to catch a pair of cop killers… but what is the bigger picture?

I guess there is a whole generation to whom the words Serpico or Prince Of The City mean nothing. Will they be surprised by twists and turns this takes? Anyone with wrinkles knows the route this narrative flows along, recognises the scenery and the landmarks. This is Lumet-lite though, smoothed and gritless. Soft play urban corruption, set in a world that achingly does not exist outside each individual camera set-up. It is flat, it is slick, it is perfectly lit. As uninteresting as it’s lead actor, 21 Bridges is a film where characters literally idle in the foreground waiting for their line of exposition to click around, where stand-offs feel so preordained that we might as well just skip a chapter to the next location. There’s just no excitement or love or verisimilitude to this. A fine support cast and couple of thumpingly kinetic moments aside and you have baby food rather than spicy junk.

4

Ching Sui-Tung directs Leslie Cheung, Joey Wong and Wu Ma in this horror romantic comedy where a sexy ghost who entraps wandering men falls for a hapless tax collector.

Loads of bonkers madness. Claymation zombies, tongue demons and a limbo otherworld full of demons surround a sweet slapstick romance featuring political satire and rapping killer monks. The central pair are delightful, the tone utterly random. If you like The Evil Dead or A Touch of Zen or Splash then you’ll find something to absolutely adore here. How do you say BeetleJuice in Cantonese?

8

François Ozon directs Bernard Giraudeu, Malik Zidi and Ludivine Sagnier is this toxic sex farce based on a play by notorious German cokehole director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Léopold is a middle aged man with a knack for seducing people, controlling them, sissyfying them and eventually pimping them out. A young soon-to-be-wed lad falls under his dark spell. Gets bummed. A lot. It is a pretty blunt, unsophisticated play with not a lot going for it apart from some retro wallpaper and a talismanic use of overcoats. I’d write this off as a complete waste of time if Ludivine Sagnier didn’t rock up in the second half and spend nearly all her screentime either in the nude or pale blue lingerie. I’m a man of simple pleasures, and even that doesn’t save this naff film.

3

Martin Scorsese and Michael Henry Wilson direct Martin Scorsese as he talks us through and presents scenes from the American movies that formed his sensibilities as a filmmaker.

Essentially a three hour clip show of stuff you’d struggle to access today in the age of limited libraries of digital streaming. Spoiler filled too. Marty is an erudite and passionate guide and just listening to him playfully espouse about the movies that made him is a joy.

9

Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck direct Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell and Josh Gadd in this animated sequel to the Ice Queen sisterhood adventure comedy.

Fails to recapture the magic and, going by how restless the theatre full of kids were in our showing, the joy. It is actually quite galling in its OK-ishness. Technically the same stellar effort has been put in, what is up there on screen looks and sounds wonderful. There’s just no sense of urgency, care or essentiality to the cash-in. Fan service aside, …Kristoff and Sven get a power ballad, everyone from the original gets a cameo… the banger Into the Unknown is the only artistic reason for this to exist.

5

Joanna Hogg directs Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke and Tilda Swinton in this semi-autobiographical period romance where a Sloaney film student enters a toxic relationship with a mysterious, aloof older man.

This is the film that is topping the critics’ 2019 “best of” lists that you hadn’t really even heard of. I expected to hate it. Posho problems, arty dandyishness. Yet I was gripped and seduced for a lot of it. The London of my youth is evoked in cleverly framed shots and nicely populated scenes. The slow drip reveal of the darkness inherent in the elusive, scarred Anthony is expertly deployed. Honor Swinton Byrne puts in a fine shift – conveying that horrible but all too universal sensation of falling for someone who is bad for you but you love anyway. It is a film of half glimpsed moments, an emotional puzzle and I recommend you give it a chance.

7

Bill Condon directs Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren and Russell Tovey in this thriller where an ageing conman targets a widow who might just be his equal.

For the first hour this is a spritely if unspectacular entertainer. McKellen relishes playing the untrustworthy gent with a barely suppressed nasty side. You eagerly anticipate the moment where Mirren gets wise and turns the tables on him. Then the source material overpowers the adaptation. Flashbacks and long forgotten history are revealed in detail and while you never might guess the whys and hows of our rogue’s downfall, you do find yourself not really caring. An unguessable rug pull laboured over just when swords should be crossed and comeuppances delivered kind of sucks the fun out a previously light-footed film. The Good Liar ends on a heavy handed clunk that’s might work in a novel but struggles to gel with the film we were casually enjoying.

5

Michael Haneke directs Arno Frisch, Ulrich Mühe and Angela Winkler in this arthouse nasty where a teenage boy likes to document and watch acts of violence.

Haneke’s bleakest and that’s saying something. But I’m not sure it has much more going for it beyond it’s cold hard shock and a silent scream for authenticity. Strange that Funny Games is equally as brutal, didactic and unsensational – yet I love that film?

5

Alejandros Landes directs Moisés Arias, Julianne Nicholson and Sofie Buenaventura in this teen war movie where a unit of unstable child soldiers hold an American hostage on a misty mountain top.

Dirty gorgeous, intimate epic. My affection and attention to this swung about a bit. There are bursts of great filmmaking… in its best moments Monos evokes Apocalypse Now, Lord of the Flies, City of God, Sicario and The Emerald Forest. Yet I often felt like I was watching little more than a well studied exercise, cribbed from the best in Werner Herzog’s handwriting. Monos so rarely puts a foot wrong it gives off an unintentional air of roteness and predictability. Which is frustrating as the intention is clearly here to make an ambitious, unique film and the moments of burgeoning sexuality and action explode with a surge of risk that you kinda wish fuelled the bulk of the film. Oppressive score by Mica Levi, downloaded onto my Spotify.

6