Cold Pursuit
Director: Hans Petter Moland
Stars: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Tom Bateman
Liam Neeson in a noir-like revenge-porn remake of a Norwegian film, both directed by Hans Petter Moland. Sub-par really, but if you appreciate the genre that will not concern you.
A few interesting quirks including the snow-bound setting, a few cool twists, and a couple of eye catching performances are the positives. On the other hand some of the gaps in plausible motivation are suspension-of-belief breaking, and the comedic moments veer between too subtle and too ridiculous.
If you are okay with the genre and there is nothing else on that appeals, maybe.

The Mule
Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Dianne Wiest
Clint Eastwood stars and directs in this story of an elderly man who drifts into making a tidy living as a drug courier. It is more than loosely based on an actual person.
There is a lot being shown here, but at the heart of it is a story of a man, like a large percentage of WW2 and Korean War era men, vets or not, who has shallow emotional depth and unable to really understand or enjoy his role as husband and father seeks fulfilment in his work and the associated shallow and superficial relationships that attend it. The film picks up his story as his business is folding.
His arc is well paced, replete with many observations of American society and institutions, perhaps not least being that the dehumanising practices of the cartel have their equivalent in civil society, and its own institutions. The story develops well as the stakes rise, and while hardly a big screen film if you have enjoyed Eastwood’s 21st century films in the past you will not be disappointed here.

Mary Queen of Scots
Director: Josie Rourke
Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie
The major draw here is watching Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie in the same film. Probably just enough from them both to justify this if you have a taste for costume/period dramas.
Do not be heading along for the history, though I suppose it is better than complete ignorance. Rather, this is just an historical setting for some diverting drama. This is director Josie Rourke’s feature film debut, and in line with the previous sentiment she has a history of directing Shakespeare in stage productions.

On the Basis of Sex
Director: Mimi Leder
Stars: Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justin Theroux
Mimi Leder (Pay it Forward, Deep Impact) directs this bio drama of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Felicity Jones), currently a liberal Justice of the Supreme Court.
The film starts with RGB arriving for class at Harvard Law School, and proceeds to show the trials and tribulations she confronts as wife, mother, student, lecturer and her first cases as a lawyer with the ACLU.
Likeable Armie Hammer plays husband Martin, and Cailee Spaeny overplays a little as feisty teenage daughter Jane. Sam Waterston (Law & Order) plays Erwin Griswold as a deeply sexist Harvard Dean and Solicitor General - which seems a little harsh given his own historical civil rights contributions and later support for Ginsburg. Justin Theroux is convincing as an ACLU leading light.
This was intended as “an important film” and it might be if you don’t get to the movies very often. Unfortunately it falls into that category of films that might be somewhat enlightening to the utterly uninformed, but somewhat disappointing and lacking in genuine insight to those expecting a little more. Perhaps there is a Meta to the movie about the difficulty of being a career woman, lover and mother by not quite coming to grips with any of those aspects. You can safely let this one through to the small screen.

The Front Runner
Director:  Jason Reitman
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, JK Simmons
American politics. Hugh Jackman plays Gary Hart who, for a moment, appeared destined to be the Democratic Party nominee for the 1988 US Presidential election and likely victor over George Bush.
This gets stronger as it goes along, but unfortunately there is no denying that the first half hour is flat-out boring. There seems to be an effort to demonstrate just how different things were in the 1980s - particularly in the worlds of the press and political organisations, with both serving as proxies for wider society.
Eventually the film settles into the story of Hart, having lost to Mondale in 1983, becoming the favourite for 1987, and then having it all fall apart over something that Jackman's Hart believes is an irrelevancy compared to the important work of political leadership. Of my responses to recent films this reminded me most of The Children Act - there is a lot you can read into this but the burden is far too much on the viewer. Which is to say the "showing" is not good enough. Too subtle to be sure it is deliberate much of the time and then occasionally over the top.
One of the better points is the presentation of the reality of many marriages, modern and otherwise, as "arrangements of convenience to facilitate the productivity of two people", to quote a shrink from my local cafe. Vera Farmiga is perfect then as Hart's wife Lee, with echoes of her Oscar nominated performance in Up in the Air despite the character flip. Molly Ephraim's scenes with Sara Paxton, as campaign worker and Donna Rice respectively, were the most evocative.
Is there some deep lesson here about the shifting of social and professional mores? Hardly; four years later the people elected Slick Willy. No, more a poor Greek tragedy - a touch of hubris, a mere possibility of Eros, and an arrogant failure to grasp the importance of managing perceptions lead to a humdrum downfall. Viewing advice: only if you are really keen on Hugh, Vera, or you are a US political junkie.

Glass
Director:  M. Night Shyalaman
Stars: James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paulson, Bruce Willis
For those unaware this is the third instalment of stories set in a Philadelphia where three men have developed comic-book style super-powers. The first movie, Unbreakable (2000), was director M. Night Shyamalan's moderately successful follow-up to world-wide hit The Sixth Sense, and the second was the well-received Split, from 2016. The first question then is "do you need to be familiar with the other films?" Possibly not, but having seen at least one would be quite helpful, and this is more directly an immediate follow on to Split, currently available on Netflix (at least in Australia). Against that is that Unbreakable is the most coherent of the three films.
The Glass of the title is Samuel L Jackson's "Mister Glass" a self-described mastermind with a terrible condition that sees his bones break under small stresses. We met him as a comic-book store proprietor in Unbreakable, with a strange connection to Bruce Willis' David Dunn, a security guard in a tired marriage, who is the sole survivor of a terrible train wreck. In Unbreakable Dunn slowly discovers he has remarkable strength and endurance along with other powers. The third is James McAvoy's Horde - a collection of split personalities that started doing terrible things in Split. However it is Sarah Paulson, whose Dr Ellie Staple is the main protagonist here, and previous victim Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch), providing the standout performances here.
This is engaging, well-paced, reaches a preliminary climax in admirable fashion and appears set to be a very good film, but the ending stalls and is ultimately unsatisfying. If you were a fan of either or both of the previous films then it would be hard to deny yourself this film. If not then you might find the effort a little much given the reward.

Green Book
Director: Josie Rourke
Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini
A gem of a film. Thoroughly deserving of the accolades, nominations and awards it has won, as well as a brilliant box office/budget multiple, pleasing critics and audiences alike. It is important to understand that it was released in the US two months before Australia, and so much of the discussion has already taken place.
Viggo Mortensen plays Tony Lip, who would become a bit-part actor himself, an Italian-American bouncer in need of a temporary job in 1962. He takes a job driving an African-American pianist, Dr Don Shirley, played by Mahershala Ali, on an eight week concert tour, much of which will be in the South. Both have been nominated for Oscars, and the film for Best Picture for its presentation of this odd-couple road-trip.
There is a tremendous amount of 1962 America on display here, and like all good cinema it shows rather than tells. It is not just limited to racism, it is also a film of the Italian-American working class, family, marriage, education, erudition, music, violence and other class distinctions.
There are two very good actors here, a deft director playing across the full gamut of emotion, and a highly watchable film so be sure to see it. The limited screen times in Australia are typically infuriating - especially as I must have seen the previews for this film a dozen times over the last three months.

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