Barry Jenkins directs Trevante Rhodes, Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali in this triptych following the coming of age of a gay black youth in a crack addled area of Miami.

I feel a little sorry for Moonlight. A small scale, well crafted, bravely experimental and sensitive (if not all that emotionally sophisticated) character study, that now has the weight of expectation that a Best Picture Oscar brings crushing down hard on its shoulders. It is too slight, too personal a film to bear that populist weight, that sneering scrutiny and I feel over time it will suffer an equally unbalanced backlash as one of those notoriously undeserved Academy Awards fuck ups. Not cloying like Crash or A Beautiful Mind (genuine Oscar fails), it still is not quite as moving, intelligent or eye opening a look into the young black experience as say Boyz N the Hood, Fresh or series 4 of The Wire… nor as brilliant a cinematic exploration of a man outside the stereotypical “gay norm” accepting his sexuality as seen in Brokeback Mountain or Beginners. It is, however, a perfectly fine one watch movie, with strong support turns from Harris and Ali, and striking neon infused visuals. I kept seeing echoes of Terrence Malick in the directorial choices and this worked well. One true frustration? I would often praise a movie for not holding the audiences’ hand every step of the way but Moonlight’s aggressively oblique structure often skips what feels like key moments of drama. That’s a stylistic choice but it is one that deprives of us of seeing plot points that would grip, while suggesting only young Chiron’s experience is of value while other characters triumphs and tragedies are at best distracting background noise. The focus is selfishly narrow.

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Jordan Vogt-Roberts directs Samuel L Jackson, Brie Larson and John C Reilly in this glossy romp that mixes King Kong with Apocalypse Now with… I don’t know… something comic book, and colourful, and arch… like Con Air.  

After the sophisticated Godzilla from Legendary we now get their far more goofy Kong. Tonally different, with a lot more monster mashing (like tons and tons) and non-stop gags to match, this hits a sugar rush level of mega budget satisfaction you wouldn’t expect to find outside of a June/July release. The bright palette of rich yellows, dirty golds, toxic blues and innards pink and the jaunty pace hark back to heyday of Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich but this feels a more wholesome, a less cynically calculated movie. It feels and plays out like a lot of kids  in a toy shop fun. Pop mayhem. The opening burst of action and assembling of the team mimics the clean, fresh energy of Raiders or Ghostbusters. If you are aspiring to match those in terms of flavour you cannot be doing too much wrong. The cast helps, there are brilliant bits of work from the older hands (John C Reilly’s stranded WWII pilot is starring in his own separate five star movie), though Tom Hiddleston’s ostensible lead gets lost in the mix. Maybe there are way too many characters vying for attention but to criticise such a breezy and pleasurable movie for aping the secret strength of say high watermarks like Die Hard or Aliens seems hypocritical. Maybe in a decade all these smaller stand-outs will be considered the Hudson, Hicks and Vasquez of a generation.  But headline act is Kong. He gets to be moody, a little romantic (but he has too busy a shift to spend too much of his time wooing the ladies this chapter) and break baddie behemoth balls. As daft as it all is among the humans, the movie leaps up a quality notch whenever he is onscreen. And when Kong is onscreen he dominates. More please.

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Fritz Lang directs Gustav Fröhlich, Brigitte Helm and Alfred Abel in the dystopian epic about a mad scientist who replaces the underclasses prophet with a revolt inspiring robot. 

The complete Metropolis is lost in the mists of time so I prefer this assembly put together by disco producer Giorgio Moroder. Sure it adds a dated but appropriate synth pop soundtrack but it also keeps the plot, pace, form and indelible images pretty much intact. It is the most Saturday night blockbuster-style way of enjoying this abused classic, which after it flopped got cut to shreds by international distributors in the 1920s. As for the film itself it is still an awe inspiring achievement and quite the wild ride; taking in industrial disasters, violent rebellions, rooftop chases, mechanised Satanic rituals and raves spilling out from sex parlours. In this form, Metropolis is a living, breathing and kicking out on uppers experience rather than some dull museum piece dustily presenting its still inspirational visual design. As a throw every against the wall and see what sticks futurist adventure, Fritz Lang’s epic still dazzles.

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Kenneth Lonergan directs Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron and Jean Reno in this drama about New York girl dealing and not dealing with her involvement in a fatal accident. 

An involving and satisfyingly expansive drama is undone slightly by its miniseries length. Paquin is excellent as the troubled kid entering the world of adulthood through a baptism of compromise and surface level morality, and the ensemble around her is a truly impressive roster of talent. Too tighten up the focus or cutaway at the subplots would lose a lot of what makes Margaret distinctive, yet Lonergan’s far more efficient follow up (Manchester By the Sea) explores the sames themes of fate, responsibility and maturity with more certainty and more entertainingly.

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James Cameron directs Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton in the sequel to the sci-fi horror classic, that amps the stakes up to all out war. 

A perfect movie. An hour of toying tension, followed by 90 minutes of relentless hardware heavy action set pieces, of a believable scale and intensity that has never really been matched. The character work is sublime so that even the 20th billed one liners seem imbued with personality. And you don’t need a university education to see it is as much an open critique on capitalism as it is a celebration of motherhood, not just some dumb future squib and pyrotechnics show. Weaver is amazing as the survivor who literally grenades her demons and goes back into the fray. And with truly iconic turns from Biehn, Paxton (“Hey, maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!”), Lance Henrikson, Paul Reiser, Jenette Goldstein AND Carrie Henn you are never a shot away from a great bit dialogue or some background scene stealing. As for the Alien itself, the relentless drone onslaughts are terrifying, the suggestion that THEY are constantly strategically outfoxing the marines is eye-opening… and then… then we meet the Queen. Have the already high stakes of a movie ever been raised quite so boldly? And at a point when most blockbusters are powering down and tying off while you reach for your coat. Jim Cameron loves excess. Cinematic excellence, for sustained big budget thrills Aliens is pretty much incomparable.

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Basil Dearden directs Roger Moore, Olga Georges-Picot and Hildegard Neil in this London set doppelgänger mystery.

Whether you approach it as puzzle to solve or a camp time capsule back to the suits and home furnishings of middle class Britain of the Harold Wilson era, there’s much to enjoy here. Not least of which is our Rog’s performance – admirably straight, often convincingly desperate and open, with not a raised eyebrow in sight. Quite right too.

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Henry Levin directs Jack Palance, Anthony Perkins and Elisha Cook, Jr in this sensitive Western about an outlaw trying to give his estranged son a better life.

An accomplished enough little drama with spikes of gunplay and horseplay. Of interest mainly to see a fresh faced Perkins in an early lead role, though it doesn’t really stretch him or mine his tightly coiled acting style all that well.

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Bill Paxton directs himself, Matthew McConaughey and Jeremy Sumpter in this gothic horror where a pair of boys have to decide whether their caring father has become a god sanctioned demon slayer or a lunatic serial killer.

So Bill Paxton died. Brilliant character actor, utterly cool dude and one of those faces that made little 10 year old me realise there was more to movies than the famous name at the top of the poster. He was foul mouthed Hudson, foul mouthed Severen, foul mouthed Jerry Lambert, foul mouthed Simon and loveable family man Bill Henrickson all at once. This movie though fits in with a series of underrated dramatic thrillers he starred in the 90s. It makes a perfect triple bill with the atmospheric One False Move and brilliant A Simple Plan as gripping small town crime stories which showcase a sensitive, unshowy but heartfelt rare lead turn from the cult actor. He is great here as a genuinely likeable man whose mental illness / mission from the angels puts his children in an increasingly violent and precarious pit. His direction is unmannered, yet he plays with dark and shadows better than any visualist I can think of, and all the actors, young and old, are given ample breathing space to shine and convince. Only the framing device and its expected for its time “twist” ending let the side down. When we are stuck exploring the dark upbringing these boys went through and their Dad’s struggle with his extreme faith, we are watching a great fucking movie.

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James Mangold directs Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Boyd Holbrook in this third solo adventure for everyone’s favourite X-Man that at last might actually satisfy X-Men fans for the first time. 

Gorily violent, sweary, dour and even with a knowingly unnecessary shot of boobs. Mangold and Jackman have taken full effort to make Wolverine’s ninth and last appearance everything his previous solo adventures were not. There’s no brewing atmosphere suddenly sacrificed for giant robot finales. There is no ensemble of characters based around a toyline rather than a plotline. So, the movie avoids the crippling errors of Origins and “2” almost as deftly as it adds what the fan boys crave (the first 20 minutes featuring nothing much more than a broken Logan driving around as a fancy Uber driver and yet has enough hungover naughty words and crimson chunks to sate even the most bloodthirsty punter.) Does this make for a perfect blockbuster cinematic experience? Well… Logan lacks say the utter carnage of Fury Road, the mindblowing intricacies of The Dark Knight or the classy spectacle of Rogue One, preferring to deliver its adult thrills as pit stops in a rather unfussy road movie. The action is relatively low key (but by no means rote or uninvolving), the touchstones are not IMAX influenced but revisionist Westerns like Shane or Unforgiven… and, as my boy Davey pointed out, the arc entire is accidentally identical to Mel’s recent comeback Blood Father, no bad thing. And while the look and heft of it is all grit, cynicism  and melancholy you still get niggles from the more immature franchise attempts of past inching their way on screen. Sketches from a less hardcore movie appear slightly gratingly behind the frame. X-24, when he appears feels like he belongs in the PG-13 world of the previous movies, as do the “death squad” chasing kids to execute them, only to round them up instead for a good old rescue attempt. Support wise Stewart (old hand!), Dafne Keen (deadly little Wolvie!) and Holbrook (charming villian!) all impress thoroughly. But this is Jackman’s movie. He has been incomparable as the anti-hero of X-Series for the past 17 years, suffering Last Stands and Origins, boosting everything else with his convincing beserker rages, world weary gruffness and old school, hidden romantic masculinity. It is a travesty it has taken this long for us to get the movie that that first shot of him back in 2000 promised. Drinking shots in a cage fight, begrudgingly ruining a man for a dollar. Full circle at last. Now we have it, feature length, I’m going to watch it as much as I can on the biggest screen I can. Logan rocks!

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Martin Scorsese directs Michelle Pfeiffer, Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder in this Edith Wharton adaptation of unrequited passions in new New York.

What an absolute treat to watch this on the big screen. One of Scorsese’s most diverting and unique movies, taking his favourite themes of societal responsibility, the formation of New York, the seduction of wealth and the futility in going against the tribe. He enters into a project that has the initial feel of a completely alien genre to him. The first hour sees him working his magic subtly, dialling back all his confident strengths, but the occasional masterful flourish still appears. Flashes of primary colours burn the screen to express stirred up desires, the camera waltzes around a social occasion like a child playing tag between the adults and the overhead shots of elaborate dinner party food being prepared shift from wholesome and delicious looking in the early chapters to sugary and artificial as this world of gossipy dining and prying opera eventually reveal its true nature. Two great female leads; Pfeiffer has never been better as the trapped, worldy yet fragile Countess, Ryder puts in a deceptively layered turn as outwardly naive fiancée Meg. So it all grinds to a noticeable halt in the penultimate act, we awkwardly spend a little too long than is pleasurable watching the lovers silently suffering as they fully realise their imagined happy ending is being edited away by all around them. That doesn’t disclude how powerful and masterful a work this is on the whole from a great director taking long strides out of his comfort zone. Beautiful and affecting, proof that literary period romances do not need to be comforting or staid. Fans of LaLa Land’s controversial ending might see a familiar echo here too.

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