Avril et le Monde Truqué (Christian Desmares & Franck Ekinci, 2015)

April and the Extraordinary World takes its cue from the copious and varied French comic book/graphic novel culture, in which science fiction is a large component. The genre has not had a great history of translating successfully to the big screen, as evidenced by the recent Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, but the decision here to stick to animation rather than live action proves a judicious one, allowing a cavalcade of sumptuous backdrops of a sooty steampunk Paris.
The scenario begins with an interesting premise; a 1940s still stuck with coal and steam instead of oil and electricity, as well as perpetual war between a repressive imperial France and the United States, and follows its set-up through quite conscientiously with abundant incidental detail. Less interesting is the adventure plot, with a plucky young heroine seeking her parents and a solution to her grandfather's great and secret experiment, accompanied by her talking cat. It all goes completely bonkers along the way, but at least it stays well away from cuteness; one can only imagine how unwatchable an end product would have resulted if this outline had been handed over to an anime studio.

6/10

The Party (Sally Potter, 2017)

The intermittently-directing Sally Potter, still best remembered for Orlando 25 years earlier, brings together a bunch of veteran thesp chums for a concise affair involving a ton of secrets emerging at a party to celebrate Kristin Scott Thomas's ascension to a shadow-ministerial position. It's fundamentally a black comedy, with strong echoes of Abigail's Party except without a single dominating socially paranoid monster, more a collection of navel-gazing middle-aged middle-class individuals with more subtle flaws. At an hour and ten minutes, it can hardly be said to overstay its welcome, but aside from the divertingly fine cast which also includes the likes of Timothy Spall and Bruno Ganz and some choice lines given to them, neither does it leave much to digest besides an overall air of social unease.

6/10

En man som heter Ove (Hannes Holm, 2015)

A Man Called Ove centres around a recently widowed man who's also then forced into early retirement, and sets about trying to join his departed wife. He then fails at every varied suicide attempt, in a manner strongly echoing Jean-Pierre Leaud in Kaurismäki's I Hired a Contract Killer. So, this is a black comedy in the Scandinavian mould, but since it's also primarily in the rapidly-growing genre of fiction to do with the elderly not being allowed to go out quietly, from The Bucket List onwards, positivity creeps in very soon through his persistently cheery neighbours and his rather amusingly misanthropic and curmudgeonly ways are blunted. Thankfully, this wasn't Hollywood, since he's still allowed to retain some of his grumpy essence and hence the conclusion never becomes too cloyingly sentimental, so it remains a pleasant, unpatronising experience as a whole. That said, apparently it is being remade with Tom Hanks in the role. God help us.

6/10

Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018)

On to movie 18 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and after going for the female empowerment angle with Wonder Woman, it's time for the black vote. This proved very successful at the box office and with critics too, but once the novelty of a hero from an African kingdom more technologically advanced than any other on Earth and an almost all-black cast wears off, the plot is strictly off the shelf and the themes - a hero who must prove himself worthy and cast aside self-doubt, and a villain with a semi-justified chip on his shoulder (who, in the style of all unimaginative superhero match-ups, has exactly the same powers as the hero for their final showdown) - so tired they're threadbare. As for the Africa aspect, the kingdom of Wakanda is a mish-mash of anything vaguely African enough to satisfy a Western audience as bona fide, with tribal dancing and rhinos, and the principal cast is actually mostly composed of American and English actors competing for the title of least embarrassing generic accent. It's got the FX and pacy action of course, but that really is a given for the MCU series. Bah.

5/10