Shigehiro Ozawa directs Sonny Chiba, Yōko Ichiji and Masashi Ishibashi in this sequel where Terry turns down a hit job on a master he respects and all karate hell breaks loose. 

After two brief prologue hit jobs  with Chiba’s irrepressible Terry whacking and gobbing like a wrong un, he disappears for the first half an hour and we get stuck in stock footage of martial arts school demonstrations and elongated monochrome flashback to the first superior film. Yet before Clarence and Alabama can storm out and ask for a refund, he’s back on screen and delivers at least an hour of eye popping, rock ‘n’ roll exploitation fun, the highlight being a snow laden weapons battle at the midway point. Shenanigans but the Toei Company just about get away with their bald faced cheek.

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James Watkins directs Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender and Jack O’Connell in this hoodies versus Guardian readers survival horror.

A chilling and unrelentingly nasty little thrill ride, once it gets going you cannot fault Eden Lake as a technical exercise. Politically it is dubiously even handed making the loveable Reilly and miscast Fassbender appear equally as culpable as the nihilist kids who brutalise them (early O’Connell and ever huggable Thomas Turgoose are fine but the rest of the gang have been picked for their looks rather than acting prowess). There are moments that recall A Clockwork Orange, Straw Dogs and Scum and if Watkins and co are touching those landmark bases it is hard to ignore or discredit them. Satisfying exploitation whatever rag you read. If you have the stomach for it Eden Lake will grip the shit out of you.

7

 

Dan Attias directs Gary Busey, Corey Haim and Everett McGill in this lesser Stephen King adaptation that is so chockablock full of camp, alternative pleasures the werewolf central hook seems more like a forgotten aside.

I missed this as a kid, not just from my adolescent aversion to horror either, I never knew of its existence until a decade after its release. And while it won’t be for everyone, frankly this ticked a lot of boxes for me. The main plotline (and I use those words cautiously) about a baseball bat wielding werewolf terrorising a small town feels almost like a spoof of Stephen King’s distinctive house sauce. But hanging off it is about a half a dozen other mini-movies, all effective. We have the pleasurable whodunnit aspect as we drift past a whole population of stock characters (well cast) who could be the werewolf. We have a Jaws-lite like situation where a community under threat turn against the sheriff in their thirst for vigilante justice. We have a young teenage narrator learning to accept her brother’s disability. We have Corey Haim’s wheelchair bound hero; who rides around on increasingly souped up motorised wheelchairs, firing fireworks off in nightbeast’s faces and racing cars on the open highways. This aspect is definitively less believable than all the werewolf scares and feels like something that even The Goonies or Monster Squad may have turned their noses up at as just being plain silly. But before you can write Silver Bullet off, I saved the best until last. We have Gary Busey going full throttle as the most irresponsible but loveable uncle ever. Boozing it up, hitting on underage girls, adding another hot rod engine to his nephew’s mobility chair while handing him some Mexican fireworks… it is the kind of unhinged, show stopping job that a young Nicholas Cage must have witnessed and thought “That is where I want to take my acting.” So for giving one of B-Movies finest sons their wildest hour (Busey out spectacles even the fine monster effect work), Silver Bullet transcends all its issues and coalesces into a great popcorn movie.

7

Ron Howard directs Warwick Davis, Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley in this high fantasy adventure where a small Nelwyn farmer protects a baby in a Dakini war zone.  

An admirably straight laced plot, a superbly realised world and frequent amusing exchanges means Willow has aged better than most fantasy films. Sure, it probably is one early action sequence short of being an out and out classic but career best work from all the C-list cast creates a lovely dynamic even when not all that much happens in the first half. It gives you time to settle into the still shockingly dark world (for a family film… the 80s, eh?!) before you get caught up in cart chases, two headed dragons, the entire cast being turned into pigs and that amazing downhill shield as makeshift sled stunt. It cleaves very close to Star Wars in its format, but is there anything all that wrong with that? Only the regular cutaways to comedy sidekick Brownies fails, the jokes just don’t land, but even they set up a nice piece of comedy romance when Kilmer’s excellent Madmartigan falls for his hot enemy in a love spell. The production is lavish and the score hypnotically perfect. Treat yourself. Revisit Willow.

8

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger direct Godfrey Tearle, Eric Portman and Hugh Williams in this wartime propaganda thriller about a downed bomber crew making their way back through the occupied Netherlands.

A nice little teatime adventure through the realities of resistance Europe bursting with stiff upper lip acting and a few of the experimental flourishes you’d expect from the makers of A Matter of Life and Death and The Red Shoes. We start with the doomed bomber mission and for twenty or so minutes The Archers touch base with future Paul Greengrass in their docudrama recreation, after that though proceedings normalise into something a bit sweeter but familiar. Fine but nowhere close to their brilliant gold period.

6

Jonathan Hensleigh direct Thomas Jane, John Travolta and Samantha Mathis in this early Marvel feature that attempts to dilute the unstoppable gun nut vigilante for a mainstream audience. 

A very uncertain movie actively hobbles a well cast Jane. Only the purposefully conceived assassination of Frank Castle’s family convinces (a blistering quarter of an hour seemingly borrowed from a forgotten 70s thriller), as after that the script desperately tries to avoid anything too Punisher-y. We obstinately concentrate and embellish the minor sitcom subplots of Garth Ennis’ comic revival (instead of its transgressive violence and anti-heroics), while giving Travolta’s bland mob launderer equal screentime, and only allowing distinctive henchmen to be as nasty as the named protagonist really should be. A Punisher flick that seems repulsed by Punishing. C’mon Marvel, what the fuck? Google “Punisher Laundry Day” to witness what should have been instead.

3

Roger Allers and Rob Minkof direct Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons and James Earl Jones in this Hamlet inspired tale of a Lion prince who goes absent after his father’s murder.

The Lion King has never been a favourite. I never rated it as a teenager but then again I was a teenager, starting to define my movie tastes through Tarantino, De Palma and Verehoven… Disney was pointedly kid’s stuff. Another chance for the global megahit released when I was putting away childish things then… Two decades down the line it turns out that spotty, greasy me actually had this one bang on. The Lion King is just dull. The Oscar winning Elton John songs are insipid. The king by birth right plotline grating. Maybe it is the small ‘r’ republican in me but I find “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” and prologue’s overwrought ceremonial worship for the birth of Simba’s by the other subjugated species to chafe at my very soul. The royalty aspect of other Disney films comes from a narrative necessity: so that Princes and Princesses are just a key to an ideal, albeit sometimes stolen, dream life. The crown is the symbolic prize for the good, heroic and lovely, there is no political import to it as the end point of the drama. A fantasy full stop with banquets and four poster beds and romantic happiness for everyone. Whereas here it constantly suggests that the chosen apex predators are essential to a cohesive society, the strong must lord it over the weak, Ayn Rand meets The Jungle Book, the Divine Right of Kings propaganda with Happy Meal tie-ins. UGH! The animation is handsomely put together but lacks the gilded Wow Factor spectacle of Beauty and the Beast, the perfectly calibrated adventure sequences of Aladdin or darker, underrated The Hunchback of Norte Dame. As for the forced humour… I think by the eighth “food chain” dud gag we can maybe all just put some guns in our mouths. The post- Walt conveyor belt at its most soulless nadir, though I realise it is wildly, inexplicably successful.  Can you feel the hate tonight?

3