IN BRIEF: QUICK REVIEWS OF 'A STAR IS BORN,' 'A WRINKLE IN TIME' and 'THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS'

We take a quick look at some of the films that saw their respective releases last year but are still being watched by audiences the world over.

A STAR IS BORN (Bradley Cooper, 2018)

Lady Gaga as Ally lights up A Star Is Born, Bradley Cooper's somber and restrained directorial debut about the sincere yet troubled romantic relationship between a famed musician (Cooper as Jack Maine) battling alcoholism and drug addiction, on the one hand, and a talented nobody who suddenly finds herself rising up to pop music queendom, on the other.

With deftness and sensitivity, Lady Gaga approaches her character bereft of the bombast and glamour of her real-life persona as a pop icon herself. Instead, she delivers a riveting performance as the hesitant breakout musical discovery transitioning from her roots in western music to sexy pop.

This movie remake has been all the buzz in the upcoming movie awards season in Hollywood, and for a reason: the film's dual combo of cynicism and cautious optimism delivers the feels and, ultimately, the punch.

A WRINKLE IN TIME (Ava DuVernay, 2018)

There is a reason the St. Louis Film Critics Awards bestowed the Worst Film of 2018 title to A Wrinkle in Time (Ava DuVernay, 2018): it's a complete mess.

Here, the characters are not fully developed, the sequences are dragging, there is not much action going on, and the overall narrative fails to convince.

The recurring themes in the movie are abstract, if not a bit too much to process: the universe, the origin of time, space, time travel. There is hardly anything to concretize any of these concepts, so the viewers end up absorbing these themes like junior high school students would in a class session on the theory of relativity: with a blank face and a blank mind.

This is a movie that is probably a little too ambitious, resulting in a glorious half-baked spectacle that says more than it shows.


THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS (Eli Roth, 2018)

Movies with titles made up of more than three words are a rarity these days. Take The House with a Clock in Its Walls. For regular moviegoers, reading this title is not only a welcome departure from the usual, but the exercise is also enough to arouse their curiosity as to what the film is all about.

Lewis (Owen Vaccaro) is a 10-year-old orphan who moves in with his eccentric magician uncle Jonathan (Jack Black). Right next door is Jonathan's equally eccentric best friend Florence (Cate Blanchett). Lewis eventually discovers something is amiss in his uncle's household, with magic being the norm more than anything, and eventually learns to embrace magic himself.

The title pertains to a mysterious and hidden clock created by the house's previous owner, Isaac, who died after falling victim to a magic trick he performed himself.

It is revealed the reason Isaac devised the clock is to annihilate humanity except for himself and his wife Selena. As a soldier, Isaac witnessed the horrors of war and the extreme devastaion caused by it -- things he didn't want to see himself nor wished for anybody to witness. To him, wiping out humanity would spare solve all that.

This is reminiscent of Avengers: Infinity War, where half of the population of the universe is wiped out by Thanos as his way of restoring order.

But unlike Thanos who succeeds in discharging his plan, Isaac fails in his despite his pact with the devil and his resurrection from his death. The cause of this massive failure? A magic 8-ball.

With rich cinematography and a snappy script, The House with a Clock in Its Walls amuses but fails to push the envelope more than it should with its utter predictability.