Happy New Year. As always, my first post of the month is the movie of the month for the previous month, here are the contenders:
Good Time: Robert Pattinson continues to take interesting roles. This time working with the Safdie Brothers after approaching the pair. Shot on a low budget in New York, many of the street scenes were shot guerrilla style. A gritty and visceral character driven story. 
The Man Who Invented Christmas: The story of Charles Dickens struggling with writer’s block following a series of flops. He comes up with the idea for a Christmas story but only has three weeks to finish it. Lightweight but enjoyable. 
Blade of the Immortal: Takashi Miike’s 100th film is a stylish ultra-violent action samurai movie. Samurai in the 70’s B movie sense, not the Kurosawa. Fantastic violent fun as you would expect from Miike.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Rian Johnson picks up the rein on the Star Wars juggernaut and makes some bold choices that are dividing opinions. I loved it.
The Disaster Artist: James Franco’s passion project tells the true story of Tommy Wiseau and the making of “the worst film ever made”, The Room. You don’t need to have seen The Room to enjoy it.
Pitch Perfect 3: The characters are still likeable and there are a few funny moments, but they have really run out of ideas, the story is terrible.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle: Follow-up to the 1995 Robin Williams movie. Amazingly it really works and is tremendous fun.
The Greatest Showman: I am not much of a fan of musicals so only went to see this because there wasn’t anything else left to see. It actually wasn’t bad. The songs were inoffensive and the cast is good.
Movie of the month is:
Fandango Groovers Movie Blog 