Widows
Director: Steve McQueen
Stars: Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Daniel Kaluuya

This is not remotely Ocean's Eight, so if that fun caper flick had you preparing for this you should set it aside. This is a patient, slow-burn thriller that requires attention. Directed by Steve McQueen (Twelve Years a Slave, Shame) there are some scenes of cruel and vicious violence, along with plenty of psychological and emotional cruelty.
An incredibly strong cast is the real feature here. Viola Davis continues her strong run and rising Australian star Elizabeth Debicki (Jacki Weaver plays her mum) has critics raving, while Michelle Rodriguez rounds out the widows. Cynthia Erivo, who we just saw as Darlene in Bad Times at the El Royale, also gets roped in to the gang a little later and now has two solid roles at the start of her feature film resume. The men are all suitably pricks with special mentions going to a now 87 years old Robert Duvall, and a thoroughly malevolent Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out). There is that sweet ensemble feeling of actors demonstrating they are better than most of the pap in which they appear and showing they can mix it with more established talent.
Plot wise this is not bad, but not really living up to the critical hype, and I suspect many will not find the reward for their patience they were hoping for. There are certainly several powerful scenes, but it is mostly predictable. On the other hand, this deserves a wider audience than it will get, partly for its Camille Paglia-like spit-in-your-eye school of feminism, based as it is in female strength and resilience.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
Director: David Yates
Stars: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Johnny Depp

More from JK Rowling’s fantastic money-printing, employment-generating machine. First up, this is not the sort of sequel you should bother with without having seen the first film - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - as it just proceeds directly, without a hint of reintroduction to characters or plot. If you have seen that, well, you already know whether you want more of the same or not.
If you did get into Hogwarts and Harry Potter but FBWTFT slipped under the radar for you then there is the question of whether you should quickly catch Fantastic Beasts via DVD or stream. It’s possible, at the end of FBWTFT, to bail out from the FB line, but if you then see Crimes to get up to speed with the wizarding world, know you are buying into another long multi-part series.
Johnny Depp as Grindelwald, Jude Law as Dumbledore, Eddy Redmayne, Ezra Miller, Katherine Waterston, and more. Actors fall over themselves to get into JK Rowling’s world. Add that to the best effects money can buy, since these films are certified bank, and that inherently a world with “magic” lets you get away with just about anything you can think of, and you have a sure formula. The only trick is to avoid it becoming a schlock-fest, as Disney did to Star Wars. Inspiring? Hardly. A successful blend of the familiar, with a touch of novelty, at a guaranteed minimum standard? Yes, this franchise is the McDonalds or Woolworths of big screen light entertainment. Sometimes that’s all you want.

Robin Hood
Director: Otto Bathurst
Stars: Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx, Ben Mendelsohn

Do yourself a favour, especially if you were thinking of taking impressionable children to this, and stream Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves instead. For starters, Morgan Freeman is a better Morgan Freeman than Jamie Foxx can ever be, and even Kevin bloody Costner with an irrepressible American accent is a better Robin Hood than Taron Egerton. More than anything though, this latest Hood lacks a performance within cooee of Alan Rickman's brilliant turn as The Sheriff of Nottingham. Sorry Ben (Mendelsohn). Tim Minchin’s Friar Tuck is one of the few bright spots here.
I am mentioning Prince of Thieves ahead of the 2010 Russell Crowe telling of Robin Hood because the latter went the historicity route, and this current Hood is an utterly ahistorical farce - with an exception in the use of "draw hand" archery techniques. It is a fairy story, and if it had just set itself up as a new story it might be okay - but even then, I'm not sure. It would, I suspect, still be irredeemably stupid. The worst conceit of this schlock is that it has the gall to set up for the sequel in the last few minutes. Good luck with that!

Mortal Engines
Director: Peter Jackson
Stars: Hugo Weaving, Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan

I went reluctantly to this, but it won me over.
Director Peter Jackson (LOTR, The Hobbit) brings his magic to what is quite a ridiculous teen-fiction premise and makes it work. A post-apocalyptic steam-punk future Earth where cities run around as massive tracked vehicles attempting to catch and consume other cities serves as the setting for a hero’s journey, a reluctant romance, an obsessed terminator like cyborg, a malevolent conspiracy, and a kick-ass, yet fabulously dressed, bad bitch.
Jackson is a “world maker”, and he succeeds again here in his usual confidence trickster ways. Provide copious detail, endless small touches of minutiae in the foreground, with a sentimental sound track, and the audience can put aside their disbelief of the ridiculous bigger picture. If, however, you are not the type to get past the sheer impossibility of a scenario (I.E. You do not “get” fantasy or sci-fi) then this will not work for you at all. Possibly also annoying for some are the socio-political metaphors. For that reason, take the low IMDB rating with a grain of salt as ratings will be bi-modal, and the average not useful.
Find a pre or early teen to take as your cover and catch this on the big screen - it is far better than the current Robin Hood.

The Children Act
Director: Richard Eyre
Stars: Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci

TLDR: People keep making Ian McEwan books into films. Perhaps they shouldn't.
Long form: If you want to see an Ian McEwan novel in film then see Atonement. At least in that film, nominated for Best Picture and six other Oscars, you have a plot that can be somewhat translated to film, and some very fine performances including Saoirse Ronan's first nod from the Academy at only 13.
McEwan deals in uncertainties, moral choices and paradoxes that are difficult to bring to film. One can see the attraction in this instance, a judge deciding about enforcing a blood transfusion for a child against the family’s religious beliefs, since court room scenes are a staple of the medium, and these are the better scenes. However, there are good reasons why the success of his books has not translated well to films based on them, bar Atonement. It is only natural people want to bring his successful books to film, but perhaps they should look more closely at those that have already been made and rethink the investment.
Emma Thompson is good as the Judge facing typically McEwan-ish decisions, and she and Stanley Tucci are why I wanted to see this – for their depiction of a marriage in crisis. Tucci delivers some strong lines well, but there are not nearly enough of them, and he is let down by the script in the last third of the film. Fionn Whitehead plays the "boy" whose parents do not want to him to have a blood transfusion, and he makes a solid go of it, but the character himself is pathetic, and that is the problem.
There is something of Joyce's The Dead from Dubliners here, and Whitehead's Adam Henry (the “boy”) has a touch of Michael Furey about him - subverted since it's Thompson's "M'Lady" who sings to him. That I am prompted to this thought, among many others, suggest that perhaps the film is a success as a literary film of a literary book heading down rabbit holes of literary reference. One can certainly make as much as one wants out of the themes present here – life, dignity, meaning, religion being poor justice, justice being a poor divinity, and plenty more you can force out of it. As a film though, unless McEwan's observations on the nature of moral decisions and their perverse outcomes are what you are looking for, take a pass on this box office bomb.

Juddy keeps busy consuming cultural media thus shirking real work while posing as a student at a major Sydney university. He hosts pub trivia, and tutors at said university, for beer and book money.