Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald (2018)

This Harry Potter universe expansion pack is about an older, constipated (?) Harry Potter/Doctor Who type who surrounds himself with only the most uninteresting of friends - are we really supposed to care about the irritating Queenie and her spellbound Poirot, or keep track of who is and who isn't a fullblood wizard? - and punctuating the "you can only possibly care less about all this if you've read the books" plot are belaboured cgi sequences - a Groot climbing in and out and in and out of Eddy Redmayne's pocket, a mole collecting coins, a bird, etc.. - that I presume are included as careful nods to the Potterverse or to remind you of characters who will become important again in number three, four, five -  and they are spectacular feats of animation - but here, in this decidedly unmagical, heavyhanded snorefest, these moments merely slow down an already tedious series of magic-school carry-on and pokemon creature reveals.

★☆☆☆☆

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Mission: Impossible Fallout (2018)

About the only area that could be improved is the likeability of the central characters but otherwise action doesn't get much better than this two-and-a-half-hour string of foot, motorbike, car and helicopter chases filmed so spectacularly every microfacial expression on Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt's face is crystal clear as he careens cars through city streets, dogfights over Kashmir, sprints glamorous European city blocks at roof level and, as is known very well right from the start, saves the world from the dastardly plot of a bamboozling number of counter- and counter-counter-spies in what is essentially the same plot as Rogue Nation.

★★★★☆

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Hereditary (2018)

Obviously influenced by last year's mother!, this horror misfire establishes from its very first frame that nothing that happens - not a Donnie Darko high school fantasy nor an Evil Dead gorefest nor a United States of Tara family drama - is going to mean anything more than, say, a Madame Tussaud's display of French Revolution grotesquery or a Wes Andersen theatre model box, and indeed what plays out - a personality-free, uneven, charmless series of make-it-up-as-we-go decapitations, seances, Amityville Horror bug infestations, etc.. - is equal parts gruelling, boring, and laughable.

★☆☆☆☆

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Loveless (Нелюбовь) (2017)

'Loveless' doesn't even begin to describe the war zone that is the home of supervillains Boris and Zhenya's broken marriage, and the collateral damage in this conflict is their poor twelve-year-old son, Alyosha, whose silent scream behind a door as his parents fight over who gets lumped with him post-conflict is an image that will haunt you forever, or until your phone beeps and furry kitten pics take you to some more self-serving place.

★★★★★

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Gurrumul (2018)

Firstly, this is a celebration of a remarkable life - interesting, funny, but also tinged with sadness given such a remarkable vocal talent was discovered so late and lost so soon - but it also serves as a reminder that "the tiles are falling off a national treasure," and it is well-constructed documentaries like this one that might help spread such an important message.

★★★★★

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Love, Simon (2018)

If you don't have time to watch Love, Simon, a high school comedy drama about a student's largely trouble-free coming-out to his only beautiful, articulate and supportive family members and friends, a scroll through the United Colours of Benetton website will suffice, but if you do have time, it is a manufactured, sanitised, suicide-free, family violence-free, largely schoolyard bullying-free and a wonderfully - perhaps not impossibly - feel-good hoot.

★★★★☆

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