(with some not so well thought out impressions)
Wicked: I've not seen the stage show and not really that into musicals generally. Thought it was OK. Well acted, high production values, well structured story but didn't really speak to me.
Kill: Hindi film about two military commando bros who take on a gang of murderous thieves. A lot of satisfying gory violence. Decent one time watch.
Babygirl: It works but the ending was anticlimactic. Nice build up but they should have really pushed the envelope. In the end it kind of neatly wraps up with no loose ends. The story itself is pretty bare bones but very nicely shot and well acted. tldr: Story is very basic but is carried along with good acting, onscreen chemistry and direction.
Malcolm X: Not sure why I hadn't seen this sooner. Tbh, have some major gaps in my film viewing history... Decent watch but tonally incoherent. Denzel Washington's performance was masterful from X's early criminal phase to his later evolution into a firebrand speaker for the Nation of Islam. I appreciated Spike Lee's stylistic flourishes although I don't think it added much. Maybe it was worth leaning more into the conceptual to convey the psychological aspects of X's life. Also, the ending with contemporary black voices seemed a bit half-baked.
Past Lives: The best film I've seen this year. A romantic drama set in Korea and New York. The story presented a genuinely unique take on romantic fulfilment/unfulfilment, how small moments of the past can cling to us and colour how we come to evaluate life in unpredictable and tragic ways. Well paced, well shot, well acted. You'll feel some shit.
Maria: Saw this today and honestly the first thought when watching the first sequence of the film was this reminds me of a perfume ad with a model doing random shit in a baroque French mansion. I don't know anything about Opera and Maria Callas. The film was/is my main source of information on her. The film depicts Maria in her final days. She just comes across as quite unlikeable and self-absorbed. I get it, you were a GOAT of opera, you're a perfectionist, people love you, you had a hard life, but ultimately she just comes across as a very uncompelling and weak person who just wanted to be adored.
The Second Act: A meta take on film making, AI, and human creativity. Depicts actors working on a film written by an artificial intelligence. 90% was made up of tracking shots and conversation. I probably wasn't paying enough attention to catch the clever bits of subtextual commentary but it was still an engaging and fun watch. The actors were pretty masterful in the way they were in and out of character.
Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris: A short film with interviews between the English filmmakers and Baldwin, and a conversation between Baldwin and some black American students in Paris. Not of much note other than Baldwin being extremely prickly with the English guy trying to interview him. Tbf to Baldwin, the questions were quite uninspired and the interviewer didn't really have an ability to establish rapport and get on the same wavelength as Baldwin.
Probably will update these little impressions into something more coherent.