It would be silly to say that I’ve been feeling guilty about my last pathetically short movie roundup, but I did realise that I hadn’t watched many movies recently. So last week I resolved to put aside by YouTube viewing and watch a few films instead. This means that, left undocumented until 31 March, I’d have a long list and not be able to write fully about any of them. So here is ‘Part 1’ which features some quite recent releases.

Barbie (2023) was on offer as a rental title on Amazon Video last week so I watched it with Siggy. You’d have to have been living under a rock not to have heard about this film such was the marketing campaign and hype last year alongside Oppenheimer. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are great as Barbie and Ken, and the film is good fun while delivering a somewhat clumsy narrative on feminism. I perhaps enjoyed the set design and SFX more than anything, and I can understand why some people thought it was overhyped shit. i quite enjoyed it.

Spaceman (2024) on Netflix sounded curiously similar to the sci-fi novel Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and so I just had to see how alike the two stories might be. The first thing to note is that the film is based on Jaroslav Kalfar’s 2017 book Spaceman of Bohemia which came out after Weir’s book and is a slightly simpler story based around a lone cosmonaut coming to terms with his life choices and strained relationship with his pregnant wife back on Earth.

Whether the talking spider that Adam Sandler’s character meets aboard his deep-space vehicle is real or just a figment of his imagination is not particularly central to the story and rather a vehicle by which flashbacks and challenges to his prior behaviour can be observed. This alien mentor trope has been done a few times before but it’s still not stale yet, and despite (or maybe because of) the strong Hail Mary and 2001 vibes given off by this movie, I enjoyed it a lot. Sandler hasn’t got a huge acting range, but it’s enough to be convincing in the role, and it was nice to see him in something that didn’t contain any tit or fart jokes.

Underwater (2020) could easily have been pitched as Aliens but underwater by the filmmakers. The film follows a depleted team of underwater researchers who must escape from the seabed after a disaster devastates their deep-sea drilling installation. Kristen Stewart spends a lot of time running around in her pants and looking moody. She’s no Sigourney Weaver, but she does a good job of making you care about an otherwise rather unlikeable bunch of people. Interesting also to note that Jessica Henwick, the only good thing about Marvel’s Iron Fist TV show, is in this film but takes a back seat.

Character development is put to one side while the rest of the dispensable cast are built around familiar survivor story tropes complete with a soft toy that must be saved like the ship’s cat in the original Alien. The SFX and practical effects are tip-top and the ‘end boss’ creature is like something out of the Monarch files. However, most of the time I was questioning the science of rapid decompressions and PSI values and wondering if the script really did begin as an outer-space rather than underwater sci-fi story.

Reptile (2023) is a Netflix film based on a familiar theme of a hardened detective with a shady past investigating a mysterious murder that undercovers a wider web of crime. Benicio Del Toro, Justin Timberlake and Alicia Silverstone star, and it’s Del Toro that does most of the hard work. Domenick Lombardozzi, most recently seen by me in Amazon’s brilliant Reacher TV show, also has a supporting role which gives a nod to his work on The Wire, which is still one of my all-time favourite TV shows.

Timberlake plays a suspicious real estate agent whose fiancée is the one murdered early on. Del Toro’s character has to piece together the clues as to what is going on as he works his way through the suspects. The viewer is fed a few red herrings and there’s a bit of action along the way to keep you alert, but I’d describe it as a rather low key crime drama.

The Stranger (2022) also on Netflix tells the story of an undercover cop (Joel Edgerton) in Australia tasked with forming a close relationship with a murder suspect (Sean Harris) who has evaded conviction for eight years, to earn his trust and get a confession out of him. A team of undercover cops support by posing as a mysterious criminal network to catch a murderer in an ambitious plan of deceit.

If it wasn’t for Edgerton and Harris’s brilliant performances I’d be saying this film was a bit dull, but I thought it was great. There’s no shootouts or car chases but it’s certainly a captivating and edgy story.

Poor Things (2023) from writer director Yorgos Lanthimos is the stand-out movie in this list. I enjoyed his previous films such as Lobster and The Favourite, and with Poor Things it is the strength of the characters set in an interestingly alternate version of the world coupled with some brilliant comedic performances from Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo which makes it so sublime. The premise of the story is both simple and powerfully fertile territory for a ‘what if’ genre-straddling tale – what if a child’s brain was put into an adult woman’s body?

We follow the resurrected Bella Baxter’s (Stone) journey from stroppy toddler-nonsense talking plate-smashing woman-child to traumatised well-read sex-hungry adult who is taken advantage of and then stalked by a lovesick cad (Ruffalo) across an alternate steam-punk version of Europe. There’s such a mixture of influences evident in this film it’s glorious – costume, set and character design are excellent and if I was to lodge one criticism (toward what I think is undoubtedly going to be on my end of year Top 5) it would be that there is, dare I say it, too much nudity and sex in the film.

Methinks he does protest too much, and maybe you’re right. But I can’t in all good conscience recommend this film without applying the caveat that it’s certainly not one to watch with the family.