The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh, 2019)

A precis of the Panama papers money-laundering and fraud scandal that came to light in 2016, The Laundromat comes armed with a galaxy of stars, led by Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas, and a declaration of intent to lay bare the nebulous mechanism of the global financial opacity facilitated by intentionally sloppy laws that allows tax evasion on a massive scale.
Streep plays a widow determined to get full compensation from the boating company involved following her husband's death, finding just layers of shell companies behind the insurance, while Oldman and Banderas play the real-life crook lawyers Mossack and Fonseca who were behind setting up thousands of shells with no questions asked regarding what they'd be used for, of course. The duo play their roles as if they were Vegas showmen, starting with a comically-toned global finance 101 about the elusive nature of money, and so we have a serious subject turned into entertainment right from the outset lest the subject prove too dry to hold the audience's attention.
Interspersed with this main thread, there are sub-stories which have a rather too tenuous connection to the theme, particularly the protracted episode where Nonso Anozie's philandering African millionaire gets his comeuppance from his family. It does serve as an eyeopener on the dire state of things in the scarcely regulated financial market, but really only for those who haven't ever been exposed at all to its realities. And the fact that it moves from shoehorning in laughs to an earnest final polemic about what lies ahead from Streep, now no longer in character, makes for an uneven experience altogether.

5/10

Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019)

In the vein of Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian and Arrival, Ad Astra represents another opportunity taken by the school of higher-brow Hollywood filmmakers to use the medium of hard sci-fi as a vehicle to explore human relationships, fears and hopes while knowing that the trappings of the genre will guarantee bums on seats for the space thrills. In many ways, they are all aspiring to match the impact of 2001 in both spheres and all fail in one way or another, though some do better than others. Ad Astra, which sees Brad Pitt as an astronaut struggling to come to terms with his repressed anger at the father who disappeared years before while on an obsessive quest to search for intelligent life, and is then detailed to find him, falls on the right side of the balance of striving for emotional content and gratuitous action. However, the key word here is 'striving' and this means that it's as stifled as Pitt until the last phases of his quest. Hence when he does finally reach the goal, it doesn't feel as if effort has really been made to take the viewer there with him. Sincere and ambitious, but ultimately liable to engender indifference.

6/10 

Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts, 2019)

In this round, teenage Spider-Man and his high-school chums go on the kind of whistle-stop tour so beloved of Americans who can tick off Paris, Venice, Prague and London after a day spent in each and assert that they have 'done' Europe. Bless. Anyway, since this is also ostensibly a superhero film, different varieties of giant elemental monster turn up at each location to wreak havoc, always fought off by a new hero dubbed Mysterio. And of course all is not what it first seems and Peter has to grab his suit again to hop around a lot.
If this summary sounds too churlish, it's hard to dish out praise on it apart from that young kids will probably love it, and there are more onerous way of passing two hours with a likable lead and some innocent humour. Let's just hope that with the next sequel they'll have added a bit more depth to the mix, though.   

5/10

Avant l'hiver (Philippe Claudel, 2013)

Before the Winter Chill stars those trusty warhorses of French drama, Daniel Auteuil and Kristin Scott Thomas, as a well-to-do couple (of course) whose marriage is stuck in neutral after years of drifting along. He's a truculent brain surgeon and she is a bored stay-at-home wife, and their fragile stability is rocked when he starts seeing a damaged young woman, a former patient of his.
The veteran leads are as solid as ever, but the whole set-up of an outwardly comfortable middle-class couple with repressed dissatisfaction, inevitably heading towards affairs, is just too much of a trope of genteel French cinema to engage the emotions deeply, unless something more raw is added to the mix, and this is yet another piece which is just too bloodless to be able to do that.

5/10

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (Simon Kinberg, 2019)

Ironically for something that promises an event in the X-Men universe of such monumental, shattering import, what we get here is the franchise effectively expiring not with a bang but with a whimper. Doubtless, considering the pig's ear that X-Men: The Last Stand was generally held to have made of the story of Jean Grey becoming nearly omnipotent and murderous at the same time, the studio execs probably thought there would be sufficient good will for yet another reboot. Should have made a better film than what you're rebooting then, shouldn't you?  It's not that the action or performances let it down so much, although when Jean gets into full apeshit mode, the pyrotechnics and targets for her mayhem are rather underwhelming, and Sophie Turner has little to do in the role apart from look stern lest she look just wet. It's just that it's so illogical, even for the genre (just to provide an example right at the start, some people seem to be able to breathe in space and others die instantly, with nary an explanation for the difference) and above all pointless. There's never any real sense of menace and most of the numerous characters crammed in serve as little more than scenery. Hugh Jackman was so right to sign out with the superlative Logan: this is a cash cow which yields less and less.

4/10

360 (Fernando Meirelles, 2011)

Meirelles really made his mark on the international stage with 2002's City of God, which managed the juggling act of being both politically excoriating and riveting as a thriller at the same time without compromising either element. Since then, however, it has not been plain sailing and 360 illustrates quite succinctly what happens when a director gets too much adulation: a host of stars from Law to Hopkins come in to prop up a story that doesn't quite deserve it.
Modishly, we're in globe-trotting  territory from the outset, with the action jumping between disparate characters and cities, whose paths cross from time to time but who are all related by one theme: awkward relationships. So, there's the pragmatic Slovakian prostitute, the businessman with the faltering marriage, a dentist infatuated with his assistant, a father refusing to accept the disappearance of his daughter decades earlier and a sex offender trying hard to stay on the straight and narrow after being released from prison. All of these vignettes promise, and occasional also deliver, something of substance. But a lot of what is produced by the characters' interactions is smothered in platitudes and it's perhaps quite indicative of the grasp of a director, now distanced from his roots, on what really matters or what happens in the real world that so much of it takes place in the vacuum of airports and hotels.

5/10 

El Camino (Vince Gilligan, 2019)

It may not be as much a standalone film as a drawn-out episode to bring dramatic closure to Breaking Bad with a conclusion to Jesse's story, and it could easily be argued that finishing off the series with Walter dead and Jesse fleeing, out of his mind, was a completely satisfactory ending. Nevertheless, when you've got such strong material to build on, it's hard to resist a viewing.
It starts with a brief flashback to months before, and then moves to Jesse in the moments after the final carnage that ended the series, and subsequently being constantly on the run and trying to get far away with an altogether new identity. The story is punctuated by flashbacks all the way through, but these are fairly clearly signposted by either Jesse having a beard or no beard, or someone appearing who we know is dead. In the present, the character has altered: his harrowing experiences have made him far more determined and focused, to the point of ruthlessness where necessary, but unlike the progression of Walter, Jesse retains a fundamental code of ethics and it comes as a welcome surprise that a succession of tense confrontations leads to none of the gratuitous bloodletting that characterised the last seasons of the series. And the dialogue and tension are as sharp as ever too. Of course, it is a final milking of the cash cow, and will not make any sense to anyone who hasn't watched all of the series, but for those who have, it's really quite gratifying, without ever descending to mere recycling. Now we just have to wait for the next season of Better Call Saul to bring Jimmy's story to a close too...

7/10