Quick roundup: BlacKkKlansman King of Thieves A Star Is Born Venom First Man Bohemian Rhapsody Juliet, Naked Widows

BlacKkKlansman (2018) Not quite premium Spike Lee, but very close — his best after Clockers (1995) and Summer of Sam (1999) — and easily his funniest, even if he didn’t seem to be going for that until now. Paul Walter Hauser does the same turn as the fat, stupid redneck he perfected in I, Tonya, but is no less amusing for the lack of originality.

King of Thieves (2018) Desperately unamusing and uninspired.

A Star Is Born  (2018) Superfluous Nth iteration of the gravy train set in motion in 1937 — but it turns out Lady Gaga can really act, as well as sing*, and even outshine Bradley Cooper. *Previously I had assumed her vocal performances came by way of Vocoder and Autotune.

Venom (2018) Tom Hardy looks like the bloke who comes round to fix your roof, and is about as interesting to watch. I’m not saying he can’t act — but clearly star quality is no longer even a consideration in casting movies.

First Man (2018) Poorly dramatised and visualized — for an object lesson in how it should be done, see Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff (1983). How they managed to make the story of Man landing on the moon boring is anyone’s guess — but they did. It’s also strangely mean-spirited — Buzz Aldrin is portrayed as a self-serving bald man, though he is not completely bald even today, at the age of 88, and self-evidently has a lot of guts.

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) Superficial, if entertaining …and seriously under-dramatized. The actor playing Brian May is uncannily like him — everyone else looks like a cartoon version.

Juliet, Naked (2018) My only interest in this came from it being adapted from a Nick Hornby novel. Not that I’ve actually read any of his novels, but I enjoyed the film versions of Fever Pitch and About A Boy. So far as I managed to stay with it, it seemed without redeeming qualities — achingly right-on, unamusing, and filled, scene after scene, with this talentless, oafish Irishman from The IT Crowd. I may have left before the half-hour mark.

Widows (2018) Updating of the Lynda La Plante-scripted 1983 TV series, transposed to Chicago. The dialogue doesn’t have the edge I recall from the original — although that may potentially be nostalgia talking. You can’t fault the production values, but there’s a smoothness about it, and perhaps some lack of urgency to the narrative, that gives it a somewhat TV movie-ish blandness. In summary, not a patch on the original, and I am mystified by the overwhelmingly positive critical reception.