Alita: Battle Angel (Robert Rodriguez, 2019) - 4/10
I did read Gunnm (as it's called here, I guess it's called Alita in the US) back in middle school and remembered it somewhat fondly, but I didn't remember the main characters having those freaky eyes. Well, not in-universe anyway (all manga heroines have big eyes obviously), so that was very disconcerting, unnerving even, especially juxtaposed with Rosa Salazar's performance, which is all about teenage energy and charm... on an uncanny valley body. This could make for a very interesting film about identity, humanity etc. but that's not what Rodriguez is here for. Instead, we get some decent action, a watered-down dystopia which seems really not that terrible to live in, and an awful love interest. Oh, and Christoph Waltz, who's fine in the early parts, but looks ridiculous as a fighter and his character seems to lose all consistency by the end, completely abandoning what seemed to define him for no particular reason.
Une intime conviction / Conviction (Antoine Raimbault, 2019) - 7/10
Courtroom drama featuring the generally-excellent Olivier Gourmet as Eric Dupont-Moretti (basically the most famous lawyer since Vergès in France) and the even-more-consistent Marina Foïs as a fictional character inserted into the real life case of a woman disappearing and literally everyone in the country thinking her husband killed her. It's shaped like a judicial thriller, but ends up being both a two-hander character study (Foïs's character's obsession is very clearly unhealthy) and a 12 Angry Men-like plea for reasonable doubt ("une intime conviction" being the loosely equivalent term in French law, from another angle but same basic idea). Quite effective, mostly because of the two central performances, though I wish it delved a little more into what brings her to the (relative) extremes she goes to.
Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman, 1971) - 6/10
There's a lot to like here, especially in Warren Oates's performance and character, but the generational divide is not very fairly explored here, with this playing more like a boomer fantasy of Kerouac-like road tripping, with the young characters basically being right and superior to Oates in every conceivable way, which also makes them tremendously boring.
Le chant du loup / The Wolf's Call (Abel Lanzac, 2019) - 6/10
This starts off so well, with one of the best thriller sequences I can think of in mainstream French cinema opening the film... and then we have to get an actual story and things start to fall down, in no small part because of the protagonist, who's played by one of those inexplicable white guys popping into every film suddenly despite having seemingly no talent (François Civil), who can't help but bring the film way down despite the quite strong cast surrounding him (Omar Sy, Mathieu Kassovitz, Reda Kateb), all doing pretty good work here. I have a lot of goodwill towards that film, because "big" genre movies such as this are so rare in France, but it ultimately has the same issues these films often have when Hollywood makes them.
Paddington 2 (Paul King, 2017) - 6/10
Why this gets praised to the heavens compared to its predecessor is absolutely beyond me. It retains some of the charm and energy of the first one, but adds nothing to them and loses a lot of the joy there is in discovering, sidelining the family for a pretty uninspired Brendan Gleeson turn as a gentle giant type. It's still fun and all, but a disappointment for me.
Mandariinid / Tangerines (Zaza Urushadze) - 7/10
A pretty simplistic war drama, which works much better than it should because of two very strong performances. I might be overrating that one a bit, but, well, quiet humanism is my weak spot.
Love Steams (John Cassavetes, 1984) - 7/10
This played as more as a comedy to me (and most of the people in the theater it seemed) that it seems to for most people, looking at reviews here and there. This was my first Cassavetes, and if this is representative of his style I'm quite curious to see more, especially A Woman under the Influence, since I liked what I saw here from Gena Rowlands a lot, and it seems like this would be much more of that.
First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017) - 7/10
I started off loving this, but it lost me as it took a turn to the Taxi Driver end of things... everyone praises Hawke's performance, but I think it's actually the problem with the film: I don't think the turn his character takes is there in the performance at all, or at least I didn't see it. So I'm left with gorgeous shot compositions and three-quarters of a film I loved, and a conclusion that - though I wasn't "with it" - was still interesting. Not quite the masterpiece I'd heard of, but still very much worth seeing.
Game Night (John Francis Daley & Jonathan M. Goldstein, 2018) - 7/10
Very fun, with some of the funniest scenes of the year (certainly a worthy Filmspot nomination for that bullet removal one, not sure what I'm going to vote for there) and a very game cast - Rachel McAdams especially. Of course it lays it on a little thick at times (towards the end especially), but it's all a fun time... though as an avid boardgamer, I must object to the idea that people this into games would still be into charades (fine but there are better options) and Risk (way too long), let alone Life (unplayable).