Nicholas Meyer directs Malcolm McDowell, David Warner and Mary Steenburgen in this time twisting romantic thriller where H.G. Wells uses his time machine to chase Jack the Ripper into the future.

A neat little film, using Disney-fied special effects of the time, to play about in a lot of genres. We get a psycho thriller that owes more to Holmes and Moriarty, as Wells tracks down his nemesis. The Zodiac killer is even mentioned and that doesn’t feel gratuitous. You get a subtle fish-out-of-water comedy as the stuffy yet game Wells (McDowell playing against type – heroic and restrained) experiences McDonalds, escalators and seventies fashions. And a very affecting romance as our anachronistic protagonist falls for a modern feminist bank worker. He and Steenburgen have a palpable chemistry, their instant attraction is believable and her life becoming part of the deadly cat and mouse game ups the stakes surprisingly in the final act. It is a film that has the weave and heft of a teatime family adventure yet the daring and grit of an adult entertainment. And while this might have made it a tough sell oddity at time of release, in now feels like a oddity worthy of mass rediscovery. If only for the sight of the always sinister Warner taking to coke and disco era San Francisco with denim clad relish.

8

 

William Friedkin directs Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer and Francisco Rabal in this New Hollywood remake of The Wages Of Fear. 

Where have you been all my life? Remaking a stone cold classic is folly… it almost never works. But this joins Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Magnificent Seven as an attempt to modernise a great movie that actually succeeds as an improvement as well as an update. Fucking alchemy, turning gold to diamonds. Not that it was considered any kind of success on release. Second only to Heaven’s Gate as a death blow to quality adult American cinema. These indulgent, overrunning costly auteur productions of the late seventies got directorial freedom permanently revoked from the mavericks whom Hollywood had rewardingly gambled on for a decade. The budget for Sorcerer grew and grew and grew. And what did Paramount and Universal get for backing the wunderkind behind The French Connection and The Exorcist? A dour, grimy, sweaty, pessimistic tale of doomed middle aged men shipwrecked by geopolitics. Mainly subtitled. And opening up the same month as Star Wars tore up the box office. Oof! The first I heard of it was in Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. His account of the troubled production and fatal release focused on the hubris of making a film like Sorcerer. He neglected to mention just how intensely fantastic this overwhelming experience is. Friedkin adds bookends to the main narrative. Giving us four convulsive mini-thrillers to introduce us to the desperate drivers. Letting us know just how they found themselves cornered in the middle of nowhere. Then we get the practicality and economics of expendable men driving temperamental nitro-glycerin over unforgiving terrain. Like the original, the action is just as gripping but we see constant critical glimpses of the destruction and displacement that the corporate machine has inflicted on this treacherous paradise and naive people. Every rattle, gunshot and rock crack spells death. We go existential. Tangerine Dream’s synth score caresses us and gives voice to our wailing dread. Even the happy ending is brutal. Realistic adventure. Wry political comment. Dangerous filmmaking. An immersive masterpiece.

10

 

Johannes Roberts directs Bailee Madison, Christina Hendricks and Martin Henderson in this belated slasher sequel set in an (almost) deserted trailer park.

It is like Scream never happened. Fog and neon dominate. A well selected 80s jukebox soundtrack. Lots of creepy lingering and geysers of blood. A finale that ends on a referential, deferential high. But it takes a long time to get going for a slight 80 minute movie. And there aren’t enough victims or sensible decisions to elevate it out of being a faithful delivery system for merely adequate thrills. An average slasher but still a million times better somehow than the recent Truth or Dare’s anaemic grind.

6

José Padilha directs Rosamund Pike, Daniel Brühl and Eddie Marsan in this dramatic recreation of the hijack, hostage situation and rescue mission that happened in 1976.

Entebbe is hamstrung slightly by the fact it is a dedicated recreation of a true story that involves six days of waiting about in a derelict airport terminal and an action sequence that lasted all of three minutes in reality. But it is a fascinating, ethically complex moment in recent international history. And Brühl and Pike (always watchable leads) make for sexy, sexy freedom fighters. “I want throw bombs into the consciousness of the masses!” My manhole is wet. Buttons popping from brown beige blouses as the plane is taken. PHWOAR! Day of the Jackal for horny Guardian readers.

7

Paul Schrader directs Nicolas Cage, Anton Yelchin and Alexander Karim in this espionage drama about a CIA legend, with a deteriorating brain, tracking down his long-lost nemesis. 

This was allegedly taken off Schrader in post production  by the producers and blanded down from an immersive drama to a DTV potboiler. Plot-wise this certainly has potential and ambition beyond being a poor man’s Taken but the end product comes across as flat, cheap and standard. A waste of Yelchin and a shame for Cage.

3

Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie directs Aaron Poole, Kenneth Welsh and Kathleen Munroe in this gory body horror about a hospital under siege from a satanic death cult. 

Why so serious? The Void takes infrequent but winning swings at Hellraiser and The Thing and Assault on Precinct 13 … AND HOLY SHIT KIDS THIS MUTHAFUCKER MUST BE A NEW LATE NIGHT CLASSIC!!! Great inspiration aside, this isn’t. The acting is way too wobbly, the pacing meandering and the ending unsatisfactory. There’s no need for anyone to survive if we have no investment in the minor characters that do. It clearly is an experience that was designed to be a cool trailer first… a feature length experience a distant second. But when those gloopy, excessive, iconic, grotesque VFX shots do rear their gorgeously pulsating heads… God, are they good. An overly serious pastiche, a love letter to a lost genre from the dullest nerds. I’d watch this again for the visceral bursts of freakish mutancy. Possibly even on mute with a nice Zombie Zombie or Godspeed You! Black Emperor vinyl on my turntable.

7

My Top 10 Body Horrors

1. Alien (1979)
2. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)
3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
4. Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987)

5. Freaks (1932)
6. Prometheus (2012)
7. The Exorcist (1973)
8. Re-Animator (1985)
9. The Fly (1986)
10. The Neon Demon (2015)

 

John Woo directs Zhang Hanyu, Ha Ji-Won and Masaharu Fukuyama in this Chinese action thriller about a corporate lawyer framed by his pharmaceutical company who have assassins and corrupt cops on their payroll. 

Sentimental flashback. Doves gracefully darting around a shootout. Antagonists respecting each other and teaming up. I guess John Woo is back doing what he does best. It is very convoluted (another hallmark of Heroic Bloodshed era) and tongue in cheek. A little too parodic – one thing that marked The Killer and Bullet in the Head out was their unguarded sincerity. Equally the action is a little unsustained. It comes in short chaotic, often forced, bursts. Only a motorbike siege on a country house reaches a prolonged sense of kinetic mania. Neat but really not a patch on the Eighties classics it tries to revive. Was Chow Yun-Fat busy?

5

 

 

Norman Jewison directs Al Pacino, Jack Warden and Jeffrey Tambor in this satirical drama about the modern day court system. 

Sold as a political thriller on the DVD blurb, this feels more like a dated sitcom pilot. Not a very funny one at that. Even the closing credits has Pacino breaking the fourth wall, staring at us incredulously, while a sub-Randy Newman recap of events is sung cheerily at us. It is a film that alludes to three separate rapes. I think Jewison’s aim is to bring a scathing, Catch-22 style madcap portrait of a screwed up bureaucracy. Instead we get a weak stew of corruption and zaniness ending in a much needed Pacino speech. Albiet a Pacino speech with zero HO-HA!s.

4

Gillian Armstrong directs Judy Davis, Sam Neill and Wendy Hughes in this Australian period coming of age tale about a young woman who wants more than to just be married off. 

A compelling central performance from Davis, a pure feminist message and neat period realisation of every strata of Aussie life make this a watchable treat. I’ll confess I had to hunt this down illegally on YouTube and the version available was seemingly speeded up by about 30 percent. So not an ideal viewing experience but the quality still shone through.

7

Danny DeVito directs Jack Nicholson, himself and J.T. Walsh in this biopic of the doomed teamster leader’s life. 

God only knows what 13 year old Bobby Carroll made of this when he first watched it in 1993. Adult, well versed in US history and Jack Nicholson fan Bobby Carroll had to sit on his own hand this week. I had to do it to stop myself from continually reaching for my phone to distract me from all the unfocused turgidness. DeVito tries every visual trick in the book to propel the story along. We get cartoonish match cut after match cut, hauntingly fake studio bound exteriors and prosthetic make-up that is better suited to a Batman movie (The Joker meet The Penguin). But all that can’t hide that this lengthy borer fails to reveal much about the important eponymous subject as it rushes through the headlines of his life. There’s a man’s life hidden in all this barking incident.

4