Midnight Special (2016)

Solid story-telling in a solid sci-fi genre chase movie from Jeff Nichols sees government agents and a religious cult in pursuit of ordinary Roy (Michael Shannon) and his extraordinary son with special powers, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher).

Plunged straight into a gritty, tense, road-trip thriller with no exposition, Nichols trusts in the intelligence of his audience to pick up the threads of what becomes a bit Starman, a bit Escape from Witch Mountain and a bit Close Encounters. Well, a lot of all of all those; throw in some X-files and a ladle-full of Stranger Things and you’re about all there.

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Life Itself (2018)

A stellar cast struggles to make anything of this pretentious art-school claptrap as TV writer/director Dan “This is us” Fogelman turns auteur with a multi-generational, multi-threaded pile of mawkish, sentimental navel-gazing.

Wrapped up in terminal illness, suicide, repressed childhood trauma, molestation, and multiple fatal vehicle accidents, Fogelman’s lit-crit treatise has a Big Theme which is underlined in capital letters in the dialogue, just in case you don’t get it: “life is the ultimate unreliable narrator.”

I’m not sure I can go on…

Jonathan (2018)

Serious, buttoned-down, career-minded Jonathan has a problem; he shares a body with the free-spirited, outgoing Jon. Splitting their time into day and night ‘shifts’ the two ‘brothers’ communicate via daily video diaries; but it’s clear the needs of the two are very different, and their medically-managed condition starts to de-stabilise.

This Twilight Zone inflected drama elegantly showcases the talents of Ansel Elgort as Jon and Jonathan. Sci-fi with very little ‘sci’, this is Jekyl and Hyde writ small; so small, it’s difficult to know which is which…

Blue My Mind (2018)

“One morning Gregor Samsa awoke to find himself transformed into an enormous beetle.” Taking its’ cue from Franz Kafka and classical mythology, actor/writer/director Lisa Brühlmann’s debut feature starts as a typical teen coming-of age drama and skews left into a fantasy of animal transformation.

New girl Mia (Luna Wedler) attempts to join the clique of wild-child Gianna (Zoë Pastelle Holthuizen), and the oafish pretty boys from school. There’s a rapid descent into sex, drink and drugs and a sudden craving for raw tropical fish…

The Girl in the Spider’s Web (2018)

The English language reboot of Steig Larson’s Dragon Tattoo thrillers see The Crown’s Claire Foy step up as bisexual vigilante Goth hacker Lisbeth Salander. What started as a low-key Scandi-noir mystery gets over-cranked as a full-on International espionage actioner with Lisbeth made-over somewhere between Lara Croft and Jason Bourne. With attitude.

Robin Hood (2018)

Lashed together from seventeen other B-movies, a bit of manga, a bit of cod-historical-heist-caper-fantasy, and a large slice of turkey, this is Robin Hood for the X-Box generation. As if they’re stupid enough to buy this steaming pile of CGI.

A Simple Favour (2018)

Sandwiched between Gone Girl and Desperate Housewives, Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively sparkle in a post-modern, suburban-noir thriller that twists and turns with flashbacks and unreliable narrators. Black comedy mixes with Internet memes and sharp satire on small-town America; quick, stylish and inventive, but still not quite the sum of its’ admirable parts.