#FF19 Shazam is decent fun and reasonably made.

I laughed in places, I didn't care about some of the barely explained elements, it was mindless, but enjoyable.

Definitely a bit long, but not an awful way to spend an afternoon.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) April 8, 2019

#FF19 The Highwaymen is a decent mid-budget drama, taking the other side of Bonnie & Clyde’s crime spree.

Well shot, with sparse dialogue, but just a little long. Costner and Harrelson both make the picture work.

Definitely worth a watch.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) April 14, 2019

#FF19 Unicorn Store is Brie Larson’s directorial debut, about a girl who believes she’s about to get a unicorn.

It’s a little twee, but the messages work well, the pacing keeps up, and the visuals remind me of Michel Gondry.

Well done.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) April 14, 2019

#FF19 The Silence is the 3rd film (and the 2nd Netflix original) in the last year or so to stumble into the idea of monsters attracted to noise.

It doesn’t do well by comparison, being elevated by its cast but dragged down by its cliches (the religious cult).

Decidely so-so.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) April 14, 2019

#FF19 The Ruthless is a fairly average and pretty generic Italian ganster film.

Set in Milan in the the 80s and 90s, we follow one gangster as he sets up his organisation. It's light on details, focussing instead on his wife and mistress.

Fairly forgettable but okay.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) April 24, 2019

#FF19 The Sisters Brothers is a solid Western with a great cast. Phoenix and Reilly work well as the titular brothers, forming the backbone relationship of the cast.

Some excellent action, but mostly focussed on little conversations. Very good.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) April 24, 2019

#FF19 Eighth Grade does a masterful job of recreating the anxiety of finding your place in the world.

The camera work embeds you in the main character's POV, the lighting works subtlely, and the pacing is well managed.

A must-see film.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) May 1, 2019

#FF19 Avengers: Endgame is the climax the MCU films to date needed.

At three hours, there's definitely some flab that can be trimmed, but there are plenty of good sequences to watch when it's not doing too much fan service.

Good, not great. Fun, not fantastic.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) May 1, 2019

#FF19 Captain Marvel is a good, mid-tier superhero movie.

Brie Larson is great, as always, but doesn’t have much character to work with until the 2nd half.

The second act is a little slow, and some of the music choices are painfully on the nose.

Still, a good, fun movie.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) March 10, 2019

#FF19 The Kindergarten Teacher follows Maggie Gyllenhaal as the titular character who discovers a child prodigy.

The film is a beautiful reflection on her own life, with a relatively light touch.

The ending isn’t quite earned for me, but still very good.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) March 26, 2019

#FF19 Paddleton is a look at friendship between two slightly odd men, faced with cancer.

It’s funny, touching, and a pleasant little indie film. The ending, in particular, is beautiful and devastating. Well worth seeing.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) March 26, 2019

#FF19 Triple Frontier has a pretty solid cast, but squanders them in a so-so action film.

There are moments of tension, but they’re mired in clunky dialogue and plotting. Some of the action sequences, particularly towards the end, play fairly flat too. Not awful, but forgettable

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) March 26, 2019

#FF19 Mirage has a decent, if done before, premise; where intervening in the past causes problematic ripples.

The twists are somewhat predictable and the lack of consistency is annoying.

Moments work well, but it feels overlong. Okay.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) March 26, 2019

#FF19 Us is an interesting horror film. Odd, tense, lightly funny, and at other times brutal.

Its message, and metaphor, are handled with enough fuzziness to make them malleable.

A tiny bit long in places.

It’s hard to discuss without spoiling, so I’ll simply say: watch it.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) March 26, 2019

#FF19 Can You Ever Forgive Me? Is the story of a desperate literary forger.

Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant both have strong performances that keep things interesting, but the pacing is quite slow. The story never quite hits the peak you might be waiting for.

Decent.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) February 4, 2019

#FF19 Io is the kind of indie sci-fi that has a decent central premise, but fails to deliver.

From expositional dialogue to constant narration, it fails at the basics of storytelling.

The leads don’t work together, even given what little plot they have.

Skip.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) February 4, 2019

#FF19 Velvet Buzzsaw feels like a continuation of Dan Gilroy’s critique of media consumption form Nightcrawler, with a focus on art.

Well cast and well shot, a bit weird, but no more than the subject it captures (well, maybe a bit).

A fascinating film and well worth watching.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) February 11, 2019

#FF19 Green Book is good if a little… unoriginal. You’ve seen versions of this odd couple movie before but perhaps not one that flits between broad humour (that works), and some fairly serious subject.

Tonally, it doesn’t land. It lacks weight. It’s well-acted, and entertaining

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) February 11, 2019

#FF19 If Beale Street Could Talk… is beautiful and tragic. It delivers its story with honesty and humanity, while examining a wonderful relationship torn apart by a putrid society.

Non-linear storytelling and dreamy shots pull back the story perfectly. An excellent film.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) February 11, 2019

#FF19 The Last Laugh was not good. A dull premise, executed in a lacklustre way, with tropes that need to die out. Very little of this film worked. A good cast squandered on a mediocre movie.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) February 11, 2019

#FF19 High Flying Bird is the story of an agent determined to end an NBA lockout.

It’s well-paced, doesn’t dumb anything down, and the cast is tight.

Shooting on iPhones with a lot of natural light certainly gives it a distinctive look. It’s distracting, but interesting. Good.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) February 15, 2019

#FF19 The Breaker Upperers is a good film, from its premise through its execution.

The cast of weird characters are interesting and fun; the two leads work well; and the script delivers some good laughs.

There are a few pacing issues towards the end, but nothing overwhelming.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) March 3, 2019

#FF19 Three Identical Strangers has most of what a good documentary needs: a good central idea to get you watching, then a whole bunch of unexpected turns.

I don’t want to say much, but I had at least one jaw-drop moment. Very watchable.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) March 3, 2019

#FF19 The Favourite follows a power struggle in the court of Queen Anne.

The three leads are excellent, with Colman in particular delivering a brilliant performance.

The moments that use wide-angle lenses and odd rotations felt a bit off, but that’s the point.

Very good.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) January 2, 2019

#FF19 Stan & Ollie is a sweet, but somewhat lightweight look at professional respect turning to a kind of friendship.

Both lead performances are great, and the film captures the comedy of Laurel & Hardy well.

It does, however, feel fairly sanitised and safe. It has no teeth. Ok

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) January 20, 2019

#FF19 Glass is bad. From the mess of a plot, to the bad dialogue, to the generally terrible delivery, basically nothing works.

Shyamalan’s usual flair for visuals are constrained by an obviously low budget and short shooting time.

Heavy handed, dreary, and unimpressive. Avoid.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) January 20, 2019

#FF19 Fyre is a decent look at hubris. Reasonably put together in a talking-head/oral history format, it tells the story of how a musical festival for the rich turned into an epic meltdown.

As well as insights into fraud, it also tells us about the nature of compliance. Good

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) January 24, 2019

#FF19 Close is a fairly generic action film about a kidnapping, with some dumb thriller beats attached.

Noomi Rapace does her best, but the rest of the cast really don’t do much.

The action is fairly flat, the dialogue trite, and the direction stock. Avoid.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) January 28, 2019

#FF19 Mary, Queen of Scots is the story of how the titular queen became exiled… or not, it’s quite inaccurate. That’d be fine if it made the plot more interesting, but it’s fairly slow.

The two leads are the saving factor: fantastic performances from each.

An average drama.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) January 28, 2019

#FF19 Polar desperately wants to be John Wick, but doesn’t on any front: visuals, action, pacing, or setting.

Polar has long, dull stretches of comic book bright visuals; fairly meh action; and some of the most needlessly gratuitous scenes I’ve seen in years. Avoid.

— Gary Fleming (@garyfleming) February 4, 2019