John D Hancock direct Zohra Lampert, Mariclare Costello and Barton Heyman in this sensitive lady moves into a haunted farmhouse chiller.

This independent horror middle ground between the far superior Carnival of Souls and Texas Chainsaw Massacre lolls around frustratingly goreless and scareless until an OTT spook house twist finish. The building mystery is as often grating and snail paced as it can be beautiful and eerie. The same for the acting. Too often you feel like you have interrupted a particularly sexless swinger’s party rather than a waking nightmare. The period features make it watchable.

5

Dennis Duggan directs Adam Sandler, Adam Sandler and Al Pacino in this annoying sibling moves in with her settled brother comedy.

I openly like Adam Sandler films. Some are sweet, some are mindlessly funny, some are a bit rushed and lazy. This one though (according to the Internet) is allegedly a contender for the worst films ever made. And yes, it contains Sandler’s standard schtick, ensemble, strange celebrity cameos and fast food plus resort chain product placement but also occasionally enough some laugh out loud silliness. Essentially par for the course for Team Sandler undeserving of any hate, shock or ire, and a mindlessly OK way to kill an evening.

4

 

Paul Goodwin directs Pat Mills, Dave Bishop and Grant Morrison in this documentary about the galaxy’s greatest comic.

2000AD was a massive monolith of my childhood. Every Saturday I would be up at the corner shop first thing to buy my copy and many a day were wasted re-reading or merrily cataloging back issues. It defined and evolved my tastes and ambitions until college when I almost unforgivably just gave it up. Partly I had outgrown it, partly the current run of stories no longer spoke to me. Many, many file boxes of six panel teenage mind expansion were dumped at a charity shop when my parents downsized a decade later. About a year ago, I returned to being a regular reader, more out of nostalgic reasons than anything else. And expectations tempered, it still holds up. This documentary feels like a DVD extra to my youth. The creators bitch and moan, we don’t really cover any further than the period I loved. And for that reason Future Shock is not the best or all that entertaining text for the unitiatiated. Neither a full history, nor an unbiased one… Seemingly every fan became a writer and we know that isn’t true. Also a bit too much screentime is given to outlier superstars Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, who yes, contributed a few good stories when they needed the money but weren’t mainstays like Wagner, Mills and Garth Ennis (the latter of whom is noticeably absent and unmentioned.) Animation brings the still brilliant and distinctive artwork to life, the talking heads are passionate but if you had not been raised by Tharg you’d still walk away 100 minutes in not really knowing who or what Indigo Prime, Robohunter, Button Man or even a Future Shock are. Charming but insubstantial.

6

Jon Faverau directs Neel Sethi, Idris Elba and Ben Kingsley in this live action(ish) adaptation of Walt Disney’s classic adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s classic.

Jonny Fav is becoming the sure thing when it comes to directing universally gratifying cinematic jaunts. Elf, Iron Man, Chef and now this. None of them felt like must sees the day before their release but then he just knocks these full of heart, big starry entertainments out of the park and creates a new family favourite every time. We haven’t had someone quite like this making movies since Speilberg and Zemekis first came to power. So just take my word for it this The Jungle Book really works. It is full of adventure and excitement, eye popping visuals and deceptively easy humour. The vocals help. Murray as Baloo and Kingsley’s Bagheera are spot-on loyal updates of the animated original’s voice work, whereas Walken’s King Louie and Elba’s Shere Khan take their villians into riskier but more rewarding directions. The tiger in particular shifts dramatically from the old charming bully to that recognisably terrifying psycho  none of us can make eye contact with in the pub for fear of a random thrashing. A radical change that works, so well done Idris for unleashing Khan’s inner geezer. If such changes make you cautious let me put your understandable doubts at ease. The Jungle Book 1967 is my all time favourite Disney, and I all feared this would be a fumble of a retread, yet within minutes of popping my 3D glasses on I was enraptured. I instantly appreciated how much this steered the attitude and philosophy back to Kipling’s source for good without rejecting what worked as cartoon. It is a new, action set-piece strong experience, faithful yet modern, old school yet cutting edge. A balls to wall awesome piece of family entertainment.

10

Gavin Hood directs Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul and Alan Rickman in this drone based war film.

Involving as an emotional and intellectual debate, this dry little thriller tries to be 12 Angry Men / Fail Safe on the current big issues of drone warfare and collateral damage. And quite impressively almost meets that self-imposed high standard. The dialogue could be a bit meatier but really the consistently muscular cast add flavour to the proceedings even when the script falters on them. Nice to see Captain Philip’s breakout actor Barkhad Abdi impress again in another well written part but it’s Rickman in his penultimate big screen turn that steals the show. Thank goodness this late bow leave his marvellously unique acting reputation not just intact but given an additional bit of spit and polish. He alone is  worth your tenner’s admission.

7

Demian Lichtenstein directs Kurt Russell, Kevin Costner and Courtney Cox in this action film about careers criminals who are really into Elvis.

Here’s a pitch: Elvis impersonators rob a Las Vegas casino. Here’s a great cast. Here’s $62 million dollars. How do you fuck that up? Watch this poor, poor movie and find out. I’m not entirely sure why Tarantino shoulders the blame for every wannabe script that was put in production off the back of Pulp Fiction. It is not his fault that no one in Hollywood could seemingly tell the difference between the premium quality of his own genre writing and derivative, rambling, misogynistic (every female character is introduced with a shot of her butt), wordy guff like this. But I’m guessing when this flopped quite so hard he thanked Lichtenstein for literally directing the life out of the weak ass rip off to its even further detriment. No one has bothered “homaging” the pop culture bandit himself again to my knowledge, leaving QT to be his own brand. Every trick in the book is pulled out by 3KM2G’s floundering director from CGI fighting scorpions in the credits, a time lapse montage of Vegas that lasts longer than Christian Slater’s screentime and Ice T turning up in the final five minutes literally to just hang upside down with some Uzis. All evidence that Lichtenstein seemingly wants to be making any film but the one we have bought a DVD of. There’s just enough aimless action to make for an impressive trailer and if you check your brain in at the door there’s some disjointed fun to be had. Not enough to justify the running time nor the suspension of disbelief needed when the nominal good guys and a struggling against form Costner baddie cross paths for seemingly the umpteenth time. Biggest sin of all, given the central concept of the whole fucking movie, there is so little of The King on the soundtrack… A mire of dud noughties music hurts the ears instead. Which really is criminal.

3

Bill Duke directs Forest Whitaker, Gregory Hines and Robin Givens in this spot on Chester Himes adaptation.

There is nothing like a good crime writer for capturing the lingo, feel, opportunities and dangers of a time and a place. And Chester Himes’s Harlem novels are some of the best for this. This vibrantly loyal adaptation captures the rhythm and sprawl of his yarns retaining the much needed violence and the authentic humour. Well cast to even the bittiest of parts, with Robin Givens the stand out as a knock out grifter. Her charming performance is the ultimate con, distracting us and the other players with a little help from an impressive series of period true, spray-on dresses and sometimes even less. After a blisteringly lively and sexy first hour of shaggy dog storytelling the denouement is a little too contained to impress quite as much. One late 15 minute slog seems to take place on a sole sidewalk with little ingenuity. But all in all this will leave you with a broad, dirty smile on your face come the credits. A proper videoshop 18 certificate treat.

7

Brett Leonard directs Jeff Fahey, Pierce Brosnan and Jenny Wright in this dated VR take on Flowers for Algernon.

A hot mess, one that starts boldly with Pierce stating matter of factly “That’s the best chimp I’ve ever had.” This was never going to be a quality two hours but did The Lawnmower Man really need to be quite so awful? Uncertain as to what it is; a surburban set slasher, a brutalist sci-fi or a lurid southern bit of gothic means the only stand out sequence is that chimp’s attempted escape told disconcertingly from the primate’s point of view. Everything else is a sickly gumbo of differing cinematography, listless plot lines and obtuse acting styles (everyone is trying an accent) with only Pierce’s nascent star power adding any smooth to all the sharp edges. He amusingly loses more and more clothes every time he dictates his experiment notes… Take these small pleasures where you can. Fahey fails to convince either as retard or genius, in fact the shift between the two is barely noticeable. The selling point CGI FX sequences are only groundbreaking in that it was the first time someone tried to get away with work this cheap and nasty using the new technology. Inept but as this ages further that might increase its charm. At the moment it stands proud as probably the most WTF wide release in cinema history.

2

Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber direct Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart and Eric Stoltz in this time travel tragedy.

Donnie Darko for the dim. Back in 2004 when it was released there was no way you’d get me to buy a ticket for an Ashton Kutcher movie made by Final Destination sequel creatives. But a decade down the line it appeared my snobbishness was foolish. A few people had said in passing they loved it and it had a surprisingly high 7.5 IMDB rating… the same current rating as Robocop, Beetle Juice and Brooklyn to give you some context. So I gave The Butterfly Effect a belated but open minded chance. Nope! Turns out I was very much right in 2004. This was fucking dreadful. Although conceptually solid (the time travel works and is neat), the inherent yet gleeless nastiness that each new timeline inflicts on its cast make this a relentlessly depressing watch, sometime elevated by just how tasteless or inept the cast are in their new reality but not in a way that justifies watching until the end. Not even for schadenfreude. There is just no droplet of joy to be wrung out from this flannel. One alternative where Kutcher wakes up a flailing paraplegic sees all the extras laugh at him for falling out of his chair. Just no… That’s a very juvenile idea of a worst case scenario, one that reveals just how emotionally disconnected this is as an experience. Amy Smart is better than the variety of parts given, while Eric Stoltz (as her nonce dad) seems to have the haunted look of a man who almost starred in the Back to the Future films in a better timeline and now by some twisted quirk of fate somehow has ended up in shit like this half heatedly barking orders at children actors behind a camcorder while trying not to spill his fake scotch. It has flavourless look of a TV movie, and the narrative focus and character development of a 500,000 word piece of message board slash fic. The very worst of a bad bunch of films I took a punt on this week, and let us not forget that’s a list that included the execrable The Lawnmower Man. Pretend you live in a reality where this does not exist.

2

Roland Emmerich direct Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx and James Woods in this White House set actioner.

This is how you do it! Die Hard in the White House not just in concept but in spirit. Tatum is John McClane – the heroics, the narrow scrapes, the wit, the rescuing of his dysfunctional family, the conversations with his dysfunctional family, the dirty white vest, the depleting rounds of ammunition, the Boy Scout ingenuity – they just spelt his character’s name a little wrong (barely) and given him convincing hair plugs. White House Down will sit happily in your Die Hard box set as an unofficial sequel, fits in snugger than 4 and 5 for sure. The baddies even have personality… Sure it’s not Gruber, Karl or Theo but… Emmerich just gets so much right in this popping tribute. At times too much. The large ensemble of classy actors takes us away from the main action a little too often just like the 1987 original. Not the only flaw. After a punishing limo chase around the grounds of the landmark proves a mid point highlight, the action fails to find anywhere new or better to go. The buddy banter between Tatum’s muscle and Foxx’s liberal POTUS sparkles so much, you’ll be frustrated they don’t carry on side by side in the third act kicking ass and taking names together. The closing eight minutes to doomsday timer is stretched out over an actual silly 20 of viewing time. Time shouldn’t move this slowly in the big bang finale. But when it keeps moving White House Down is adept Friday night entertainment. The kind they really don’t seem to make anymore. Big and dumb, smartly so.

7