The original John Wick came out in 2014 and was a neo-noir action flick with a tight premise, spectacular action and an utterly committed performance from the apparently ageless Keanu Reeves. A sequel, John Wick: Chapter 2, dropped in 2017 and while the action remained kinetic and exciting, it was let down by an overly convoluted plot that rather diluted the elegant simplicity of the original. Now, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (oy, that title) is here, snap-kicking its way into your heart. But is it worth the bruises? Actually, yeah!

The story starts seconds after the previous film, with John Wick (Keanu Reeves) declared excommunicado by The High Table, and a fat bounty placed on his head. Basically, in a city brimming with assassins, John is now a very tempting target. As is typical of this series, the action begins almost straight away and rarely relents for the following 131 minutes. Parabellum is, thankfully, a lot more streamlined than Chapter 2. Oh, there’s still a bunch of goofy bullshit involving golden coins, secret societies, claimed marks and whatnot, but it never slows the pace of the overarching plot.

Keanu Reeves, still drinking from the same fountain of youth as Paul Rudd, delivers another grim but knowing performance as the titular Wick, and is joined once more by the always reliable Charon (Lance Reddick) and Winston (Ian McShane). Also, we have some newbies this time around, with canine-friendly killer Sofia (Halle Berry) and dark matriarch The Director (Anjelica Huston). Not to mention a delightfully camp villain, Zero (Mark Dacascos), who exudes giddy madness.

Chad Stahelski once again directs and does so with style and panache. Almost every action scene is shot in long lingering takes framed for maximum clarity, showcasing just how much of the action is genuinely performed by humans, and the result is often breathtaking. Combined with a spare script containing minimal dialogue, the film is a beautifully choreographed bullet ballet of shattered glass and broken bones.

Ultimately, John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum is not quite the equal of the first film, but a stark improvement over the second. Fast-paced, explosive and chockers with jaw-dropping stunt work, it’s easily the best pure action destination in town. If that sounds like you, put John Wick on your hit list.

Directed by Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan, we follow the ill-fated affair between Sarah (Sivane Kretchner), an Israeli café owner from West Jerusalem and Saleem (Adeeb Safadi), a Palestinian delivery driver from East Jerusalem.

After a tryst at a bar in Bethlehem brings them to the attention of security services, their relationship is mistaken for espionage and Saleem is arrested. While his pregnant wife races to find answers, Sarah contemplates telling the truth; the consequences of which would clear Saleem’s name but also vilify her as a traitor in the eyes of her military husband and conservative community.

Inspired by true events, The Reports on Sarah and Saleem gives a refreshing and vicarious look at two families in contemporary Israel – a part of the world that is often reported in the media for its conflicts. From geography to religion, Sarah and Saleem’s relationship is dangerous in practically every way imaginable. This is exemplified in a scene where Sarah confides in a co-worker about her affair and is met with immediate forgiveness. Yet when Sarah divulges that he was Palestinian and not Israeli, her friend is disgusted. Because in her eyes, the crime is more a concern of identity than it is of adultery.

What’s also interesting is that the film begins in media res and never determines the motivation behind the affair. For Saleem, perhaps it was a distraction from his working-class job and impending fatherhood. For Sarah, who mentions her business failing twice, it could be a means of escaping the shadow of her husband’s burgeoning career. Instead Alayan – whose brother, Rami Musa Alayan, also wrote the screenplay – looks at the ethical and political ramifications of the affair, with the “reports” in its title referring to the numerous cover-ups and accounts that permeate the story.

As the second half of the film turns into more of a legal drama, we move away from Safadi’s helpless Saleem to focus on the morally-concerned Sarah and their respective spouses. Maisa Abd Eihadi gives an earnest performance as Saleem’s wife, who carries out her own detective work in hopes of clearing her cheating husband from a mistaken political crime. Just as good is Isahai Golan, playing Sarah’s ambitious Israeli army husband – unafraid of employing any means necessary to preserve his family and position.

From lingering shots over Saleem’s shoulder, as he gazes over Jerusalem’s settlements, to glimpses of the Israeli West Bank wall when Sarah rides in the back of his van at night, the hand-held camerawork captures the partition and unrest of its characters and environment.

Despite wearing a little towards the end of its running time, The Reports on Sarah and Saleem is an insightful and well-acted drama that draws you in without having to settle on either side of its socio-political backdrop.

Last seen as a bad ass space renegade in Avengers: Endgame, and soon to appear in Men in Black: International, Tessa Thompson is a revelation in her portrayal of Oleander, a woman struggling on the edge of poverty in Little Woods. It’s the first feature by New York based writer/director Nia DaCosta whose second film will be Candyman, a reimagining of the popular ‘90s horror film, due for release in 2020.

With compelling cinematography by Matt Mitchell, Little Woods grips you into a forbidding world and keeps you on the edge as Tess and her sister Deb (Lily James) battle for survival. The screenplay was supported by the Sundance institute where DaCosta gained a place in the Screenwriters Lab followed by the Directors Lab.

The location of the town of Little Woods in North Dakota was recreated in Texas and the poetic landscape in the early frames are literal and a metaphor for danger lurking. As an archetypal story of female struggle, this is no fairy tale. The use of sound is effective, alternating between passages of backwoods fiddle music, bold thrash song and strategic silences. The dialogue is naturalistic, though sometimes to the point of inaudible.

From the outset we see the sisters, who are mixed race as well as polar opposite personalities, caretaking men – Ollie to bandage a wound and provide painkillers, Deb as mother to a young boy. DaCosta has cleverly woven a narrative that embraces a catalogue of women’s issues. The sisters have to negotiate a harsh world where men, often disadvantaged and damaged themselves, still have more power to intimidate. Even a supportive man like Tess’s probation officer puts pressure on her with his high expectations and random visits to her home.

It’s a credit to Thompson that she gets us on her side from the intense, compelling start. When we meet her, she is a reformed criminal almost at the end of her probation for drug smuggling. When her sister is in dire need she is tempted to risk everything and re-offend. The story makes much of her being pushed into a corner through need but there’s also a nice admission when she tells her sister the danger isn’t just that she may do it again, but that she likes the rush of power it gives her. And, despite Ollie’s toughness, we come to realise her very human need to be needed.

While Thompson is totally believable as the resourceful, beleaguered Ollie, the casting of her flaky and fragile sister Deb is less sure. Perhaps we know Lily James too well as the refined period heroine in War and Peace and Downton Abbey, or the princess in Cinderella, but while she holds a strong emotional centre, she is rather less convincing as a product of the world we find ourselves in. Perhaps DaCosta made a deliberate choice to take a princess ‘type’ and explore what she becomes under hardship – unstable, susceptible to pimps and users. In this world, fine beauty can only get you pregnant and jobs in the sex industry. While we wonder if Tess will bust probation, we follow Deb’s conflict about being pregnant. Her side of the story illuminates a desperate lack of choices for single women in her position. There’s a pivotal fight between the sisters that is electrifying.

While the film doesn’t flinch in its portrayal of men as parasites and bullies, DaCosta reveals the context, a world where men are also brutalised and exploited. They are not the central characters but rather just people trying to live their lives and do the best they can with their circumstances.

We see rodeo riders and construction workers, and there is a fascinating theme of widespread drug dependency that drives the action. With bodies broken by years of harsh living, and in the grip of a pitiless, money-based medical system, the men’s pain is the weak link in the chain that Ollie can exploit. They are desperate for relief and she can get illegal prescription drugs on her runs across the border. The complication, apart from breaking her probation, is an attack by a local drug dealer when she threatens to infringe on his territory.

Described as a western and with echoes of Thelma and Louise, Little Woods is essentially a microcosm of many feminist themes wrapped in a tense thriller, worth the watch for Thompson’s virtuoso performance. When asked by Collider why she was drawn to the role, she explained, “it was getting to make a story about these two sisters that have to learn how to choose each other again that resonated with me so deeply. Obviously, it’s a film about two women, but I feel like she wrote Ollie, especially, as a character without gender. (She) just felt like a person that has a lot of things to do.”