Edgar Wright directs Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey and Jon Hamm in this action romance about a puppyish getaway driver who lives his life to his IPod playlists.

The danger of high expectations. This is a perfectly diverting, accomplished bubblegum movie that wears it heart and manipulations out on its sleeves. But the central conceit of being in sync with a constant killer soundtrack is let down slightly by the music choices. There’s not enough toetappers in there. The familiar songs like Nowhere to Run and Harlem Shuffle feel TOO on the nose while obscurer tracks by Queen, Carla Thomas and The Damned don’t make you wanna run out and download them right away as the end credits roll. It is neither the old stellar jukebox selection of Guardians of the Galaxy nor the treasure trove of cool new jams that say Pulp Fiction was. Sadly given the concept it needs to be. As if you aren’t clicking along to the music it distracts from the cartoonish car stunt work that are a slave to those selected rhythms. There’s still lots of colourful pleasure to be had here, with none of the cast exactly ending up where you expect them to be by the end. Hamm gets some lovely dark moments, Spacey is always persuasive good value and Lily James’ innocent love interest is a sweet treat. I actually enjoyed the brutal finale which culminates in a game of siren-lit hide and seek in a multi storey car park but the stand out sequence is, jarringly for a petrolhead movie, a foot chase. Wright is at his heavily storyboarded barney best when Baby ejects from being Steve McQueen behind the wheel thus turning into Crash Bandicoot through Atlanta. Baby Driver is a fine one watcher but unlike say Drive, a modern classic that shares a lot of the plot, spirit, cool and intention, I didn’t feel any rush to leap back into the passenger seat again for a return journey.

6

Roy Ward Baker directs  Christopher Lee, Dennis Waterman and Patrick Troughton in this Hammer horror where Dracula is ressurected and takes in a runaway libertine. 

In all honesty I drifted in and out of this one, only giving it half my attention at best. Lee is fine as Dracula but the focus seems to be more on his lurking, grunting man servant Troughton. There also is far more sex (well Jack the Lad gropey seductions and running away afterwards past the father rather than any actual footage of the old In Out) and violence (beautiful Hammer primary red paint gore). The support cast is full of saucy raven haired beauties with piercing eyes but then you’d expect that as part of the deal. It is all a bit redundant.

4

Lee Jeong-beo directs Won Bin, Kim Sae-ron and Kim Sung-oh in this violent Korean thriller where a highly trained loner tracks down the body organ harvesters who have kidnapped his cute kid neighbour. 

Not particularly original, this is a good solid rake over Leon or Man of Fire. The plot is snakily smart if way too overlong, the villians quirkily over the top and the final face off manages somehow to be more impressive than all the already impressive action that has happened before. Won Bin is particularly good as the near mute samaritan whose fighting style often centres on slashing at the arteries for the kill as much as twists bones and muscles.

6

 

Breck Eisner directs Vin Diesel, Rose Leslie and Elijah Wood in this fantasy actioner about an immortal witch hunter who finds himself investigating a conspiracy to revive the witch who cursed him to live forever. 

As a Vin Diesel vehicle where the big loveable lunk (a self confessed nerd) gets to live out his Dungeons and Dragons fantasies, this is better than you might have feared. As a shameless blend of Highlander and Constantine, it equally is still nowhere near as entertaining as those two influences combined should be. Oh well, the world building is strong, there’s rarely a scene without some clever bit of design or visual storytelling. But once the stakes are set up the detective story dawdles as we follow one clue bloodlessly to the next and so on and so on. The surprise baddie is guessable from the first shot. And Rose Leslie, so captivating and dynamic in Game of Thrones, gets fobbed off with a poor man’s Marion Ravenwood part here… one where she seemingly was only allowed one take per line reading. It is watchable but never exciting, squandering its strengths and potential inoffensively.

5

 

John Carney directs Ferdia Walsh- Peelo, Lucy Boynton and Jack Reynor in this 1980s set musical romance about a Dublin school lad who starts a New Wave band to impress a girl from the local home. 

Yep – really charming and fun this. Full of on-the-nose humour, sensitive grit and triumphant moments you can’t help but be won over. The making of the ramshackle music videos are out of this world exercises in both parody and affectionate amateurish child’s play. The kind of warm hearted film that has room to give even the most sidelined character their scene to ring true, Grand stuff, so it is.

8

Olivier Assayas directs Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, and Chloë Grace Moretz in this arthouse drama about a mature, glamorous actress practicing lines with her personal assistant for a revival of the play where she originally made her name, about an older woman and her personal assistant, in the hope of finding relevance when cast next to a young star hoping to make her name. 

This is pretentious bobbins but at the very least, pretentious bobbins that gives it two beautiful female leads some juicy, discombobulating scenes to spar off each other in… And a central, unresolved mystery that will keep you puzzling over and on for days after the credits role. A side note:  Assayas’ committed interest in how attached we are to our apps and devices continues to make his films seem both realer and yet otherworldier than anyone else currently working.

6

 

Joel Hopkins directs Diane Keaton, Brendan Gleeson and Lesley Manville in this posh romance incongruously based on the true story of a man who warded off property developers who wanted to move him out of a shack he built on Hampstead Heath decades earlier. 

A rich people’s movie, no doubt made from the hiding of property developers tax loophole wonga, for the viewing pleasure of wives of retired property developers, about a man terrorised by property developers. It reminds me of American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman’s love of Les Mis in its weird politics. Having said all that, North London is filmed rather well and both Keaton and Gleeson are given decent roles. She is more substantial here than she has been since the Eighties. He is better than the material but adds real humanity and heft to what could have been a broad caricature. Gleeson raises this above passable pap and you expect nothing less of him. Still despite all the lush locations and charming chemistry you cannot help but feel certain plot strands are rather swiftly, glossed over. Who is violently bullying Donald off his land? When did he start making the front pages of tabloids? The focus has sensibly been shifted to focus on the romance but the message is so iffy that you wonder if the true story, sans geriatric canoodling, might make the better movie? If so, keep Gleeson.

5

 

André de Toth directs Alexander Knox, Marsha Hunt and Henry Travers in this wartime drama imagining a German WWI veteran’s rise to Nazism and his orchestrating of the persecution of the Jews and a small Polish town. 

Propoganda that inadvertently, and suprisingly successfully, became the first Holocaust movie. It is all but forgotten now (less than 400 people have rated it on IMDB while Baby Driver released just this weekend already has 22000 votes). It is a convincing drama following one man’s desolate corruption into becoming a high ranking SS stooge. Unflinching in its bleak portrayal of rape, murder, anti Semitism and fascism. Given when it was made it is a very adult work with no easy solutions or rote optimistic conclusions. Its only real flaw is it does often suggest one man’s personal gripes are responsible for the brutality inflicted on the innocent, rather than Nazism as a national epidemic. But as a treatise on how “Only following orders” will not be seen as a valid excuse come peacetime, it is a stirring indictment.

7

 

Budd Boetticher directs Randolph Scott, Karen Steele and Pernell Roberts in this western where a bounty hunter arrests a killer’s brother in the hope of luring the worse man out for revenge. 

A strange western this. Outwardly it is primary coloured and jovial. Inwardly it is a grim and vicious revenge plot. There’s a satisfying chase structure as Red Indians and gang members relentlessly pursue the group of “heroes”. And further tensions amongst the protagonists, as everyone has their own devious end games for the bounty. Characters are superficially polite and respectful to each other but their back stories are all dark and twisted, out of sync with what is depicted on screen. As they race towards civilisation together, maybe the point is they need to put all the savagery, hate, lawlessness and vengeance of their own pasts behind them if they want to make new lives. A fair point. On the whole what makes this particularly interesting to modern eyes is smaller turns from Lee Van Cleef and James Coburn, plus a striking female lead in Karen Steele.

6

Luc Besson directs Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich and Gary Oldman in the sci-fi extravaganza about a cab driver who has to protect the embodiment of universal perfection from the end of the universe, mainly at a luxury space resort. 

Has there ever been a more schizophrenic big budget success than The Fifth Element? Most of it is base level thrilling – the futurist visuals are excessively exciting, not afraid of being gaudy or ridiculous. You are a pinball, ricocheting around a wildly conceived galaxy of blue opera singers, floating traffic jams and dog faced terrorists. From Jean Paul Gaultier designed ripped shirts and rubber bikinis to the Jean Giraud inspired alien mechasuits, this is dirty cooked, neon tinged eyecrack that makes the production design on Blade Runner look like Blunt Crawler. And actionwise there’s enough kicking and banging and burning to cataclysmic countdowns that you get your July adrenaline fix too. Willis, probably for one of the last few times, doesn’t phone it in as the too cool for school ageing himbo Korben Dallas. While Milla Jovovich does that Wonder Woman naivety and heroics ting every fool be raving about  a whole two decades earlier and better. She is a marvel in it – sexy, innocent, vulnerable, badass. BUT… Chris Tucker as Ruby Rhod has to be the most annoying character ever committed to screen. More distracting than Rob Scnieder’s Fergie in Judge Dredd. More shrill than Jim Broadbent in Moulin Rouge. More grating than Jar-Jar… “Ooh mooey mooey I love you!” That’s right Mr Binks, you are NOT the utter nadir of turn of the century blockbuster humanoid  shitness. Well done you! Chris Tucker, Chris Tucker, Chris Tucker. Fuck, he’s even still there squawking around in the grand finale, despite serving no purpose. He could have been left back on the exploding cruise spaceship, surely?! You are at a gorgeous banquet, you are loving the amuse-bouche, devouring your starters and savouring those mains and then someone comes and spits on the cheeseboard, shits on your pudding, pisses in your little espresso cup. Chris Tucker, Chris Tucker, Chris Tucker. Hard to know how to feel when one latter half element literally rapes everyone else’s hard work. But I’ll close on a few other things I do like; 1) How superfluous Gary Oldman’s ostensible villian is. Seemingly playing a corporate Southern Bugs Bunny he pointedly never crosses paths with Korben. Though does sack him. A comment on how we never get to meet the true villians face to face? 2) Gary Oldman’s weird little crippled candy floss coloured pet that lives in in his desk. 3) Just how haphazard it all is, yet holds together so well. Clearly, The Fifth Element is a labour of love and a career gamble on Besson’s part. It is not perfect but it is persuasive, sweetly enthusiastic in its ambition. Like a 13 year old has somehow raised $100 million dollars to make a film version of the adventure they acted out in their back garden and their imaginative sun addled head one summer afternoon. But still… Chris… Fucking… Tucker.

8