Alita (2019)

Depending on your point of view, Alita is either a fine addition to an established live-action Manga genre, or James Cameron blatantly ripping off Pinochio in the Shell with added Rollerball. Either way it’s a large slice of metal-fetishist robo-porn from Cameron and Robert Rodriguez, saved by a superb motion-capture by Rosa Salazar as the amnesiac cyborg killing machine.

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The Lego Movie (2014)

Catching up with the first of the franchise: the remarkably simple character animation contrasts wildly with the over-cranked, bonkers action sequences to create a family adventure that is everything Ready Player One should have been. With a non-stop conveyor of genre-subverting satire, one-liners, sight-gags and pop-culture riffs, everything is indeed awesome.

The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)

Writer/director Joe Cornish delivers a proper junior adventure – a modern-day Sword in the Stone that is part Famous Five, part Sarah-jane Adventures (©Dr Who), part BBC Sunday serial, part Children’s Film Foundation nostalgia trip from the 1970’s.

Quintessentially British to it’s core, the slightly ramshackle, not-quite-Harry-Potter-ness of it is entirely elevated by the junior cast abetted by Patrick Stewart and Rebecca Fergusson.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019)

Dreamworks rounds off it’s animated Dragon trilogy with a superlative coming-of-age adventure. It’s a charmingly bonkers fantasy world of goofy dragons, Scottish vikings, American teens, F. Murray Abraham voicing a Max Von Sudow villain; this time injected with some properly Y-A themes of taking on adult responsibility. And if that sounds all too grown up, just sit back and enjoy the flying sequences.

Romancing the Sword

The final release poster for Alita: Battle Angel is out and she’s holding some weirdly unidentifiable, but cool-looking sword. A 26th-century cyborg still needs a sword.

Cue Hellboy reboot and in the poster, the guy who carries an unfeasibly large calibre revolver is holding… a sword. As is… Transformer‘s own Optimus Primus Stove, a thirty-foot alien robot from another planet last seen wielding a dirty great sword, which presumably transforms into, I dunno, a roofer’s scaffold tower?

A Star is Born (2018)

This fourth version of a classic tale sees troubled country music veteran Jackson Maine spot talented torch-singer Ally; the touching and intimate portrait of their relationship tracks her rise to stardom as his star fades in self-destructive excess.

Bradley Cooper makes an assured directorial debut as well as starring as Jackson. We know Lady Gaga can sing anything, and does a unique but effective acting turn as aspiring hopeful Ally. Sam Elliott does some of his best work in years as Jackson’s brother-mentor Bobby.

Mary Queen of Scots (2019)

Josie Rourke’s unashamed feminist re-focusing of sixteenth century history sees Protestant Elizabeth Tudor and Catholic Mary Stewart duel across the England-Scotland border in the face of not only the patriarchy of the time, but armed rebellion and religious fundamentalism.

Siaorse Ronan again dazzles as Mary, with Margot Robbie de-glam’ed for awards season under false nose and smallpox scars, as the two queens maneuver and struggle to preserve their reigns.