David Guy Levy directs Jeffrey Combs, Brittany Snow and Sasha Grey in this poor people torture each other for rich people’s amusement shocker.

Hard to figure out who this is for?… An Agatha Christie mansion set globule of torture porn that balks at the gore and blood that the existing fan base surely crave. The cast is the very cream of the D list. Everyone has at least one significant credit from a better liked TV show or film, which may mean the acting is of a higher standard than the genre’s baseline, but really just serves to remind you that you’d rather be watching something else and could be watching something better. Good old Jeffery Combs at least gives it his all and former pornstar Sasha Grey seems to be having more hoopla  here than the rest of the cast (the story of her career, really). Pleasantly made for an unpleasant film and what is the fucking point in that?

3

Jeff Nichols directs Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton and Kirsten Dunst in this sci-fi road movie.

Some films just should stay a great poster or a great trailer. Kid with blue googles and superpowers is chased by everyone but  protected by his family through the highways, motels and gas stations of the South. Should be great. Kinetic, soulful, gritty. Moment by moment Midnight Special is a finely acted and carefully made film but it finally adds up to very little and skirts the dull hard shoulder too often overall. Riffing on Starman, Flight of the Navigator and D.A.R.Y.L. but carrying over a bit too much of that 80s cycle’s grim mysticism, Midnight Special forgets the fun and the excitement. You’ve got a cult, all the government agencies and possibly even something beyond the stratosphere pursuing our family yet they all feel benign threats – road bumps on the journey rather than killers on the road. There’s no real sense of peril as the cast trundles to a destination where we know something big will happen… but not what. Action comes in the form of juddering interruptions of surprise crashes, satellite debris showers and traffic jam kidnappings but none of these emergency set pieces seem to have any lasting effect on the plot, they are just shocker jolts to make this seem like something more worth your time than National Lampoon’s Cosmic Vacation. Then we final arrive at the M. Night Shyamalan and it is underwhelming to say the least. All the cast are better than this and the goodwill from previous sterling work makes up for stoic inertia of their parts here. Not in anyway a bad film but one that forgets both the “midnight” and the “special”, which to me is unforgivable given the title.

5

John Glen directs Timothy Dalton, Maryam d’Abo and Jeroen Krabbe in this near perfect Bond adventure.

The EON Bond machine calibrates a perfect espionage adventure and exotic romance to launch their new 80s Bond. Dalton brings a contained anger and gentlemanly seductivness missing from previous incarnations. A meaningful glance here, a subtler line reading there, he bulks up the husk of 007 with his superior acting talent. And he is given proper Fleming Bond activities to perform; sniper stand offs, jail escapes, fraught border crossings… we are dangerously close to novel Bond perfection in the smaller action beats. Only the occasional hangover from some Roger Moore intended japes still left in the script chafe with his refreshingly terse take on the superior super spy. The big set pieces are uniquely great – especially the snowbound mountain chase to the Austrian border and a brilliant fight on a wayward net hanging out the back of a cargo plane set to go boom. A satisfying amount of villians keep the plot chugging along but really it is Dalton’s actual romancing of d’Abo’s sweet Bond girl that give the stiller moments their strong core. A script that focussed as much on the kiss, kiss as the bang, bang is a welcome return to Bond’s cinematic roots. The Living Daylights joins From Russia With Love, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and later Casino Royale (all brilliant entries too) as a Bond that tugs the heart strings as much as quicken the pulse. The final act involving James teaming up with the Taliban creates some unintended humour for modern eyes, but all in all in this is a class affair through and through. A top end, epic slice of blockbuster cinema.

9

 

Ruben Fleischer directs Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone in this comedy road trip through a zombie apocalypse.

Not quite as funny as it’s clear inspirations of Ghostbusters or Shaun of the Dead, this well realised horror comedy has a constant flow of action, fun and game performances that elevate it. The writers went on to pen Deadpool and many of the self aware strengths and trickery here carry over to that. I’d say this is the sweeter and saltier ride though.

7

Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson direct David Thewlis, Tom Noonan and Jennifer Jason Leigh in this stop motion puppet look at one man’s insidious depression.

Amazingly realised stop motion and the nuanced adult take on the trap of mental illness make this a very easy film to praise but equally a difficult one to love. The burbling, if perfectly realised, small talk reveals its strengths and weaknesses. Yep… it is humorously accurate in how it captures the frustratingly mundane interactions of strangers and those with nothing left to say to each other. But… if it was live action rather than the soundtrack to such richly realised animation, you would have walked out after twenty minutes. Crude humour, sex and fantasy eventually crash the Kafkaesque misery but really the only bastion of satisfying entertainment contained within this metaphor for clinical sadness is the one act spark of puppet romance. When that hope is inevitably dashed against the rocks, sacrificed for the point the film exists to make, I thought “Yes, very smart but how long now until I can leave.” Not a hotel room you’d want to revisit no matter how stunningly achieved or intelligently conceived. As a one off experience though, it is very effective.

6

Cedric Nicolas-Troyan directs Emily Blunt,  Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron in this Snow White banning prequel / sequel (bookendquel?) to that big budget Snow White film from a few years back.

Fine… A bit like Willow but with outrageously gorgeous dresses taking over from the real world action sequences. Very talented and beautiful actresses give serviceable performances. They are akin to the eye popping fantasy visuals but very rarely are they married together in the ho-hum sound stage trapped action. An immaculately wrapped present, all white silk and gold ribbon, given to you by some stars you like a lot, but containing a nearly empty cardboard box with just a few comedy dwarfs in it. A promise undelivered on.

4

Stuart Rosenberg directs James Brolin, Margot Kidder and Rod Steiger in the allegedly true tale of a demonic house.

Ugh! It is easy to to say this is a really, really bad film. The 60’s New Wave style direction from Cool Hand Luke’s Rosenberg deflates any reality, the sheer frequency and repetitiveness of the nasty, escalating incidents makes you feel like you are trapped on ghost train on an endless loop with the same scares coming a bit faster, a bit closer and bit louder with every circuit. No tension or unease is ever really built while watching, it all just happens so fast and so uninspired. Both Rod Steiger’s ham boning take on a priest and James Brolin epic perm feel like they are starring in their own seperated movies accidentally spliced into the narrative here. Really it’s the kind of OTT, dated endeavour that would have cool kids at The Prince Charles Cinema hooting and guffawing with glee at every frame, whether silly or not. Yet I’m not going to give it the lowest of scores. I’m pretty sure this is the first horror film I saw, late on telly one night, but nostalgia is not guiding my mercy here. Here’s my three point defence. 1) Margot Kidder is lovely as always and gets a good bulk of screentime here. She is such a refreshing presence in any film I just feel it is a shame her career went off the rails. 2) James Brolin’s performance is something else. Hard to say whether it is terrible or inspired. Like Nicholas Cage at his best, no one else in the ensemble can really synchronise with what he is doing, you certainly couldn’t accuse him of phoning it in. 3) While I arrogantly chuckled away at the unrelenting daftness of it all, after going to bed moments and images lingered creepily. What was ineffective during, had some lasting power after. And that can’t be discounted.

5

Stanley Kubrick directs James Mason, Sue Lyon and Peter Sellers in his blackly comic take on Nabokov’s seminal and sympathetic noncing novel.

Ask me a week ago and I would have said Lolita was one of my favourite Kubricks. A perfectly performed tightrope walk along a controversial topic with a magnificent central performance from Mason (debonair but utterly corrupt) and a witty script that gifts all the support with hilarious moments around Humbert’s frustrations.  Sure, it is pleasantly coy about its paedo content due to the censorship of its time (and would it even be made today?) but what real world horrors this Lolita skips across swiftly is done so with a light footed grace. Yet revisiting it with fresher eyes, it nigglingly also feels like Patient Zero for some of our Stanley’s worst excesses too. He never really mastered passing off the Home Counties as the States in his films… And while I’m not a nit picker… when we are already asked to suspend belief so a 16 year old can play a 14 year old who should really be an 11 year old, then you just cannot run multiple cons concurrently without all the threads starting to unravel. The lack of truth jars a tad too often. Then there’s that Kubrickian length… creeping in so that the final hour is filled by so few scenes,where so little but the expected happens, but with none of that necessary fleet footed that makes the opening salvo chime and hum. Once dirty old Humbert’s fantasies come true his comeuppance lacks structure and satisfaction. Sellers mucks about royally as the more reptilian predator but really it is Mason’s graceful expression of a more internalised plotting and paranoia that keeps you involved and even sympathetic when Stanley takes his foot off the gas. The slightly too old, definitely too womanly casting of Lyon as the title nymphet is oft criticised by others. I actually think she makes for a charmingly inscrutable enigma and prize for the human monsters to lust after. Shame she never really found much more significant work after this. She’ll eternally be a brilliant movie poster. Still, new negatives aside, this often is a wonderful piece of film making, just baggier in the back end than I remembered. Maybe I am outgrowing Lolita’s charms.

8

Yuen Woo Ping directs Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen and Jason Scott Lee in this lower budget belated sequel to Ang Lee’s modern classic.

In 2000 Ang Lee’s classy and painterly take on the Kung Fu flick opened the genre up to a wider western audience with its emphasis on stunning, fantasy visual and restrained yearning romance. CTHD created a whole sub genre of eye popping, well acted prestige martial arts films that took up arthouse screens rather than videoshop back shelves. For good or bad that cycle is now running down, so a sequel without his involvement is a bit of a surprise. But a good surprise. It may lack the budget, craftsmanship, scale, scope, ambition, grace or majesty of it’s progenitor, but Sword of Destiny is an enjoyable blend of likeably iconic characters getting involved in engaging, smartly choreographed and augmented scuffles. The limited amount of sets might scrape a bit of the epic sparkle from the endeavour but during the final two face-offs on ice and tower you’ll be far too involved by the game, note perfect performances from the ageing but still captivating Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen and Jason Scott Lee. A cheap cash in, perhaps, but not one that you resent wanting your money once you’ve paid. It lacks the nuance but delivers on the action and the likability.

7

Mick Jackson directs Kevin Costner, Whitney Huston and Gary Kemp in this hard man protects pop diva romance.

A lengthy but glossy Friday night movie that though often obvious, dull and daft manages to satisfy in a popcorn and king size Coke kinda way. The romance lacks any chemistry, Costner is better than the surprisingly potty mouthed dialogue given (perhaps dumbed down to match Huston’s limited but well-used abilities) and the action drags out.  Hard to see why it made quite as much money back in it’s day long gone. Good soundtrack though. Time travel to 1992 is now possible.

5