"Obsession" - Curry Barker's Books of Blood

Music store employee Baron "Bear" Bailey (Michael Johnston) is smitten with his cool, sassy co-worker Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarrette), but she seems to only see him as a friend. Taking a chance, after dropping her home on trivia night, he decides to break a "One Wish Willow" stick: wishing that she would love him more than anyone in the world. Things go swimmingly.

Well worth the hype and praise it is getting, a deliciously twisted and mischievous take on the classic "caveat emptor": with a sick sense of humour and gore effects aplenty (a car scene in particular...). It refreshingly takes the angle of acknowledging the consequences of this wish: Nikki loses her identity, is a prisoner in her own body, the flesh prison of male gratification keeping what he truly longed for locked deep within. It's a horrifying situation, and by a similar metric Johnston keeps Bear likable by realising that this is a horrifying moment, he does not want to take advantage of this person, this is not Nikki, he wants to back out.
The star of the show, in many eyes, is Inde Navarette, but he deserves praise for this too:

(Credit: Bloody Disgusting)
She is phenomenal here, a star making turn all heavy on the eyes and jarring shifts.
Pretend the film is Michael Stuhlbarg and Olivia Rodrigo, and it becomes even funnier.
A riotous turn, and an excellent look at (hah) obsession, free will, consent and relationship dynamics.
Cracking ending

"Mortal Kombat 2" - Despite All My Rage I Am Still Just Johnny in a Cage

The realms must do battle to decide their fates, the first to win ten tournaments gains dominion over the other. The evil "Outworld" under brutish emperor Shao Khan (Martyn Ford) have gained dominion over Edenia, and its princess Kitana (Adeline Rudolph); and now seek to bring Earthrealm under their bloody banner. Lightning God Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) has gathered five champions for the tournament: legendary martial artist Liu Kang (Ludi Lin), super-powered soldier Sonya Blade (Jessica McNamee), her cyborg colleague and pal Jax Briggs (Mehcad Brooks) and previous champion and zero-to-hero Cole Young (Lewis Tan), but requires a fifth: the Universe has set its sights on fading 90s karate champion and movie star Johnny Cage (Karl Urban), who is reluctantly roped into a tournament to decide the fate of the entire human race...

(Photo credit: Reddit)
An absolutely wonderful time.
The film is a gleefully daft, enjoyable buffet of bloodshed, bollocks, Baraka and bullshit. It embraces the videogame aesthetic (the costumes, finishing moves, structure, arenas including an honest-to-Gibson acid pit and even a camera shot going side on to display the two fighters squaring off) and the ludicrousness of its premise: glowing lights in the sky denote when a character has been defeated, blue for the good guys and red for the villains. It goes full throttle into the blood, guts and mayhem (how it is not an 18 is unclear, maybe because it lacks titties?), yet in a fun, cartoony way: bright colourful costumes to clearly mark each character apart, each one with a different superpower and enough character and charm to them to bring some colour to proceedings even if the crowded ensemble and focus on the spectacle means that characterisation takes second place. Despite that the film manages to keep them from being bland: Jessica McNamee's Sonya Blade returns and is good fun, with a delightful pit fight against banshee Sindel; Princess Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) is a highlight this time around as arguably the conflicted central character, with a delightful lesbian-subplot with her bodyguard Jade (Tati Gabrielle), without either of them being sexualised (the movie even has the sheer brass fucking balls to pass the Bechdel Test); and her arc competently mirrors the larger than life professional loudmouth shithead Cage (Karl Urban on a continued tear with this, "Dredd", "Thor: Ragnarok" and "Star Trek") discovering his heroism in the final act, with some cool edits. Hell, I felt myself getting hyped up despite the stupidity of it all when Kitana made her big choice in the final act and the music swelled: I had embraced the Mortal Kombat way and was relishing in the filth it had baptised me in. Cage gets a supremely fun buddy cop "Mentor/Mentee" arc with Baraka (CJ Bloomfield) I wanted more of; Hiroyuki Sanada returns and is such a class act that with two minutes of screen time manages to make the line "I am Hanzo Hasashi. Hell bends to my will." land with gravitas; the always excellent Tadanobu Asano comes back, and whilst there is less of he and Chin Han than I would have liked, they were still welcome. Star of the show, once again, however was Josh Lawson as Kano: clearly the writers knew that they had struck gold with him in the last film, and write him back in to bully, snarl, swear and be a raging fucking cockbag who is absolutely the best part whenever he is on screen: bullying the villains, spouting solid gold with every line, and even having the audacity to participate in a truly, deliciously ludicrous hell-heist to turn off Cheat Mode in the 3rd act, cementing redemption and rising to become heroes in a film where Sonya Blade spears a banshee's skull on a floor spike and Liu Kang kills a man with a hat (by the way it's worth it for those two fights alone).
Stellar, stupid stuff. Absolutely wonderful in terms of "bang for your buck".

"Normal" - Weatherley With You

Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) is the interim sheriff of tiny, snowy Minnesota town "Normal", after the previous Gunderson died. Holding the place down until the election, Ulysses only expects to be here for a couple of months. But when the bank is robbed during a a snowstorm, Ulysses twigs that there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye...

(London.net)
I was on the fence for the first 30 minutes. The film has a bloody rough start ("Hey, it's me, your husband, Ulysses...") and I was unsure what it was aiming for, and why Ben Wheatley (a rather distinctive director, the voice of such oddball fare as "Down Terrace" wherein a crime family are portrayed as petty, bickering, working class British shitbags in a terraced house; and the absolutely jaw-droppingly ominous and terrifying "Kill List", as well as quirky serial killer romcom "Sightseers"; the elongated gunfight and bloody good time "Free Fire" and psychadeic nutball time "A Field in England") was selected for this rather ordinary (hah) action movie. Sure it had some quirks, like the paint-dripping moose and the mayor (Henry Winkler, rather good in this), but you're waiting for the penny to drop, and the odd one liners and humour feels out of place.
Once the first of several twists at the bank kick in, the film finds its groove, and the script (written by Derek Kolstad) feels less like a knock off of "Nobody" or "John Wick" and more like something Wheatley would have written himself: characters fall down, miss, murder each other with household objects (a yarn shop is particularly fun) and has a sense of bloody mischief to it all. Much like "Nobody 2", it's an outsider's perspective on Americana, the trappings of it all and a pisstake on the classic American action movie: the diner uses an old school record jukebox and is adorned with a comic number of guns; the ice cream parlour has the 50s style hats and chairs; and Fonzie is the Mayor! Only here, Wheatley makes it all come together in service of an out and out ridiculous comedy, after a particularly funny bloody death at the bank. By the time of its excellent finale (a massacre set to "When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman", a choice so bizarre that it has to have been a send-up of the newer trend of pop-music massacres, and it being Dr Hook makes it tailor made for my tastes), caused by a piece of comedic slapstick genius, I was absolutely engaged, and it had surpassed its ludicrous nonsense story of Yakuza money laundering in the Mid-West to become a fun litte afternoon movie, a continuation of Odenkirk's little action movie crusade, and had risen above some of the clunkier dialogue on display. Plus, great to see some non-binary representation in the form of Jess McLeod's deputy.

"Hokum" - Parks and Recreational Drugs

Upon a visit to Ireland to scatter the ashes of his parents, grouchy and curmudgeonly prick of an author Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) finds himself stuck within the walls of the quaint countryside hotel with his own dark past, and that of the hotel. Is it magic, or much more mundane?

(Photo credit: IMDB)
Somewhat wonderfully, the trailers are far different to the actual experience here, and not in a disappointing "Dead Man Down" kind of way. Man when was the last time you heard "Dead Man Down" in a sentence? Anyway, the film is less "Longlegs" or ghost story, and more an unpredictable kind of folk horror and character piece, sharply written as it focuses on the backstory of Ohm (played wonderfully by Scott: channelling Ben Wyatt if he had been through a miserable divorce and lost custody of his children), giving compelling reasons for him being at the hotel (complete with a few neat, unavoidable nods to "The Shining" along the way) and having him honestly make all of the best decisions he can when it all starts going wrong... It feels as if it lacks confidence in its scares early on, relying on jump-chord violen cliches rather than letting the otherwise excellent scares (figures in the background, a rightfully terrifying bunny man who'd be all over the marketing in a lesser film, wisely used sparingly) but once it settles into its groove and has trust in both itself and the audience it soars. It's more spooky and interesting than out and out terrifying like "Undertone" was (still the benchmark for horror this year) aside from an absolutely brilliant, fucking nightmarish lift sequence and aforementioned videotape, but I was gripped by the film even before that so it was clearly doing something right. Tight, sharply written, clever and concise, it ends nicely too.
Great time.