Debra Granik directs Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes and Dale Dickey in this hillbilly noir where a teenage daughter risks losing her own home unless she can find her fugitive father.

The movie that gifted us Jennifer Lawrence. Here she is all pinchable cheeks and steely determination as she faces off against a community that would rather beat her and leave her siblings homeless than let her find her ne’er do well daddy. The crime story runs itself in circles, but you (as always) care so much for Lawrence’s vulnerable yet unstoppable protagonist that even when the plot runs out of juice our attention never wavers. Granik captures the breadline politics and harsh living of the Ozark subculture with ease, it is a film where the biting cold spills through the frame. Also of note is John Hawkes (another favourite) who plays against type as a threatening uncle.

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Vicky Jewson directs Noomi Rapace, Sophie Nélisse and Indira Varma in this action thriller where a female bodyguard finds herself on the run in North Africa with a teenage energy heiress.

There’s a lot holding Close back. A horrid support performance by Sophie Nélisse, as the ward we are supposed to care for. A low budget that limits the scale and means certain locations are revisited for little narrative purpose. A childishly neat wrapping up of the problems and perils put in the protagonists way. A distasteful approach to foreigners where nearly every brown skinned man met is a psychotic betrayer. But there are glimmers of a better movie. Jewson is adept at taking the limitations of her set pieces and relying on logical tension rather than overblown action. One battle see Rapace artfully navigating a much bigger man and a shoal of fish and it is bizarre, effective and artfully memorable. Our faith in Rapace as a movie star helps. Nearly every face-off Rapace has to contend with is threat filled, yet solved with guile rather than brute force. You believe in her training and her superior skillset. She is too good an actress, to unique a cinematic presence, to be relegated to these small minded, poor man cash-in thrillers just yet. It is too early in her career. Get her back in Hollywood… she is great.

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Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck direct Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn in this superhero origins story set in space and 1990s Earth where a former airforce test pilot discovers truths about herself while on an intergalactic mission.

Captain Marvel is a perfectly acceptable one-watcher. Bright, silly, star driven. The good stuff is at the forefront. Brie Larson has a laconic dry wit in the exposition scenes and a heroic relaxed manner during the action. There was a moment early on, during a spaceship escape, where a close-up of Brie blowing her hair out of her face reminded me of the “another day at the office” cool Harrison Ford brought to his set pieces in his Lucasfilm franchises while all hell broke loose around him. That’s a nice movie star achievement to unlock. She also has wonderful chemistry with Samuel L Jackson (their one-on-one scenes are the highlight of the blockbuster). 95% percent of this has the pre-programmed look and plotting of a Marvel factory line hit, depressing but it works. There are flashback moments that are unusually explored. Memories are fast-forwarded through, skipped past, rewinded and changed angles on in a dazzling bit of storytelling early on. Giving us the audience glimpses of character building blocks while allowing the filmmakers to not just go through the motions establishing the backstory. It might be too experimental a sequence for a lightweight family film, but the playfulness is noted. There are fine laughs made out of the 1990s period setting plus a good soundtrack too, going for less obvious indie sounds of the decade. What stops Captain Marvel from matching Wonder Woman or Spider-Man: Homecoming as a superior origins flick is the action is unambitious and/or low level. A quickie subway train brawl, an elongated lurk around an installation basement, interstellar shoot-outs where the actors and creatives clearly clock out for the day and the effects boys take over. It is all kinda meh. We want to see Captain Marvel save the universe, best her opressers and betrayers… the second unit approach these sequences with all enthusiasm of a pantomime dame in late January. “Panto season is over, are we still making this, darling?!” Shame, as this lazy roteness holds back an otherwise solid entertainment.

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Dan Gilroy directs Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo and Zawe Ashton in this horror comedy that satirises the conceptual art world.

Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler and Roman J Israel locked into unhinged characters whose outsider status was exacerbated by capitalist greed to criminal ends. They were superior cinematic character studies; gifting their respective movie star leads the chance to explore dark shadows in their range without going full “comic book villain”. One would have hoped Velvet Buzzsaw would have seen Gilroy and Gyllenhaal reunite to recreate that old Nightcrawler magic in the pretentious and mercenary art world. And while Gyllenhaal is fantastic as the bisexual taste gatekeeper ‘Morf’ and Gilroy does essay the corrupt ways this industry generates profit over preservation… it just is too unfocused. Not enough Morf, not enough comedy, and biteless horror. The scares, as gallery works come to life to kill, often feel like messy first draft afterthoughts. They lack irony and happen to characters who are so one-note awful you cannot care for them. Essentially you have a lot of talented people making a film that might have gone direct-to-video in the 1990s. It went straight to Netflix this year but I’m assuming all involved thought they were making a prestige project for the streaming service, not Wishmaster: The Jackson Pollock Years.

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Hong Sang-soo directs Isabelle Huppert, Kim Min-hee and Chang Mi-hee in this romantic comedy where a French tourist at Cannes interacts with and befriends the various separate sides of a Korean film industry love triangle.

I think its fair to say Hong Sang-soo isn’t my cup of tea. His paper thin confections are either too slight or too esoteric for me to be entertained by. This film has Isabelle Huppert stroking a big dog and lots of beautiful Korean people having a drink. That’s my take home from it, it isn’t what I personally need from cinema. Sorry.

3

Justin Kurzel directs Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard and Sean Harris in this Shakespeare tragedy where prophecy leads a medieval thane down a dark path.

God! This looks incredible. All hazy oranges, like blood is being carried on smoke, and lived in fabrics ready to be splattered in battle and misery. And this is a cast I can get behind. Considine, Thewlis, whispering Sean Harris and those achingly beautiful power couple leads. So why couldn’t I concentrate on it when the screaming stopped and the talking began? The language (as delivered) and the chosen pace of the plotting are flat. It trudges from top setting violence to blankness with stumbling bumbling. When the carnage returns you are long lost, it is lost. A great cast, amazing visuals, yet somehow one of literature’s greatest stories is poorly told. A palpable disappointment.

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My Top 10 Marion Cotillard Movies

1. Inception (2010)

2. A Very Long Engagement (2004)

3. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

4. Allied (2016)

5. Two Days, One Night (2014)

6. Love Me if You Dare (2003)

7. Midnight in Paris (2011)

8. Contagion (2011)

9. La Vie En Rose (2007)

10. Taxi (1998)

Andrea Arnold directs Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender and Kierston Wareing in this British drama about a council estate girl’s last teenage summer.

This takes lurches that are bleak and triumphant in equal measure while admirably avoiding dribbling away into misery poverty porn for Guardian readers to feel self-satisfied about. Katie Jarvis is captivating in the lead, while Fassbender has a raw energy that seduces. A strong film that doesn’t offer easy protagonists or obvious escapes yet feels respectful and non-exploitatative in its exploration of the modern British underclass.

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Lukas Moodysson directs Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin and Liv LeMoyne in the Swedish teen comedy about three pubescent teen girls who form a punk band about two years too late.

Really good fun. Moodysson catches the rush and comraderie of starting a band with no talent, and being part of a scene to define yourself. He also lightly hits on what it feels like when your friends temporarily betray you, young love and misguided ambitions don’t go your way. Naturally accurate. Like Dazed and Confused or I Wanna Hold Your Hand this recreates a period and place and emotion in time that probably means more to most people than historical epics of important milestones. “Hate the Sport!”

8

Hans Petter Moland directs Liam Neeson, Emmy Rossum and Tom Bateman in this crime comedy where the Colorado mob find themselves being picked off by a vengeful snow plough driver.

Diverting if unmemorable. Works better as a black comedy than an action thriller. Neeson’s vigilante gets lost in his own movie by the final third (but you’ve seen that part of the movie a fair few times before) while Tom Bateman impresses as a vainglorious mob boss. It unspools into ever weakening punchlines and an overly busy ensemble, but it never bores. Equally, it never even threatens to reach the highs of the Fargo TV show, which you could be watching instead and getting a similar, far stronger fix from.

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Robert Wise directs James Olson, Arthur Hill and Kate Reid in this sci-fi thriller where a group of scientists in an underground lab try to isolate and investigate an alien virus before it wipes out humanity, based on a Michael Crichton book.

First things first; The Andromeda Strain is a very dry film. Sensationalist in its apocalyptic subject matter, bland and level headed in its delivery. The fascination here is with the documentation and procedure around experimenting with a deadly intergalactic spore. If it were made in this century it would no doubt be a found footage movie. Like nearly all of Crichton’s airport novels, his hook is taking a technological advance into nightmarish realms. Jurassic Park took DNA breakthroughs and created a dinosaur theme park disaster, Discolsure explored the tattered privacy of the corporate world where tiny mobile phones and VR shared networks would be the norm. He tugs at the near future and spins a gripping yarn from its potential. Most of the excitement from The Andromeda Strain isn’t from it ho-hum set-pieces or its one dimensional characters (Kate Reid’s dumpy pessimist excepted), it is from watching elaborately imagined technology be believably utilised against the ticking clock. The hive lab, the robot arms, laser security system… it all has an eyecatching sheen, yet isn’t a million miles from where manmade inventions in reality have taken us. Not the most fun slice of doomsday prevention, but a solid, often prescient, one.

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