Douglas Trumbull directs Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts and Ron Rifkin in this environmentalist sci-fi about an astronaut who kills his crew to save the bio dome that contains the last of Earth’s fauna and flora. 

Dull hippy posturing with longuers of nothing and anachronistic Joan Baez songs. Sure, the effects and set design are retro futuristic marvels and Dern has never been unwatchable… but Jesus… this takes the least direct, most boring road to oblivion.

4

Chris Petit directs David Beames, Lisa Kreuzer and Sting in this British road movie where a factory DJ drives from London to Bristol after his brother commits suicide. 

One of those films where nothing really happens and yet seems to be about so much more than self-consciously worthier “issues” movies. As Beames softly spoken, detached, beer loving bloke drives across counties, we meet broken people, cruise past industrial monstrosities and brutalist architecture, hear news reports about the Northern Ireland conflict, see graffiti about the Baader-Meinhof Group. Ireland and Germany… two countries on either side of the UK divided by 20th century politics. Is that the intended point? We do meet two people who lives have been damaged by such divisions. One is the beautiful Lisa Kreuzer, a German immigrant searching for her child. She could almost be playing the same character as her single mother cinema usher in Wim Wender’s monochrome road epic, Kings of the Road. The soundtrack is nostalgic yet modern – Dury warbling about Sweet Gene Vincent, Sting practicing his Eddie Cochran tribute, Bowie singing in German, Kraftwek prophecying in an analogue robot language. Maybe that’s what touched me so during my watching of it. 1979 West London of flyovers and factories… lost cinemas and recognisable tower blocks where friends and lovers lived. I was born into this world… a landscape that had just embraced Thatcherism, a cityscape where the electronic signage is now gone or seems utterly anachronistic. And that familiar drive out of London… the route to summer holidays and later many an out of town comedy gig. Sitting in a car, waiting for the sign for Fleet services to appear or a plane at Heathrow to land parallel to someone else’s car. Maybe Radio On only reflects a world that means so many somethings to me. But it did. And as a mood piece I found it utterly affecting and grimly sublime.

8

Jean Negulesco directs Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters and Maggie McNamara in this Italian set romance where three American secretaries struggle to keep hold of love in Rome. 

A colourful CinemaScope confection that suffers from the fact that only one of the triptych of pairings has any passion or attraction to it. It is diverting and all rather sweet, yet you can’t help but worry the marriage based on companionship between Clifton Webb’s ageing writer and McGuire (excellent here) might have more issues than his health. She’s an unwitting beard if ever I’ve seen one.

6

 

Dominic Cooke directs Saoirse Ronan, Billy Howle and Anne-Marie Duff in this literary adaptation of the tragic Ian McEwan novella about a pair of 1960s newly weds, in love, but struggling to consummate their marriage.

We have reached the point in summer where a distributor has risked launching a big polished period drama in the hope of mopping up those leftover cinema goers bored of juvenile FX fests. Always featuring a powerhouse female lead and flaunting a Waterstones friendly source material legacy, these counter programming punts can often be treated rather sniffily by the critics. Last year’s My Cousin Rachel was a seductive and vital take on a modern classic… the reviewers shrugged that if it were truly any good it would have been held back to a winter weekend, where awards contention ghettoises mature, well educated fare. And you get the feeling On Chesil Beach has suffered from the same snootiness. It is a lush and powerful adaptation, playfully visualising McEwan’s wrought, intimate tale of two people unprepared for the emotions they evoke in each other. Ronan delivers another perfect lead turn, and is spray painted into a series of vibrant yet demure frocks. I swear I love these things as much for the costumes as the tear jerking. It is a smart, affecting drama told with a confident cinematic poetry. A small, seemingly inconsequential moment where a stereo system is listened to with backs turned from camera acts as a harbinger for all the silent destruction of the romance we are about to witness. There are many pieces, subtle and unsubtle, that reverberate and echo against each other in the narrative mosaic of these two straight edged kids’ cruel love story. It all adds together to be a whip smart, intelligently crafted and very beautiful weepie.

9

Lucio Fulci directs Ian McCulloch, Tisa Farrow and Richard Johnson in this former “video nasty” horror about a group who go to a Caribbean island to investigate a zombie curse.

The first thing that strikes you about Zombie Flesh Eaters is the spectacular location work. Both the New York Harbour and tropical paradise island are exploited fully. It wouln’t be until the mega budgeted World War Z that we’d see the undead unleashed and interacting with proper landmarks like the World Trade Centre or Brooklyn Bridge on this unfettered scale again. Likewise the island scenes look both beautiful yet eerily remote. Then there’s Fabio Frizzi’s overpowering CASIO keyboard composed score. One that playfully evokes exotic fun and doomed hopelessness in one key change. Thirdly, the monster make-up and injury gore is inspired. We get worms writhing in hollow sockets, close-up gougings and neck injuries that gush like exploding kegs of blood. The plot and acting is so-so. It is never particularly scary, more a gory adventure yarn. Scooby Doo where the monsters are real and Shaggy packs a shotgun. But it looks fantastic, showing you excessive things you’ve never expected from a zombie cheapie. An undead does indeed fight a real shark underwater. For reals! The “all is lost” cliffhanger is particularly chilling and expansive, tying this counterfeit cash-in directly into the Romero trilogy canon. Zombie Flesh Eaters was originally intended as an unofficial sequel to a bootleg version of Dawn of the Dead. Romero’s stone cold apocalyptic classic was re-edited and scored by Dario Argento / Goblin, released in Italy under the title Zombi… this was conceived produced and released there as Zombi 2. An intended sequel that works better as a prequel in reality. Does all this matter? The film watches fine as a stand alone experience, if anything it is weirder watching something that should be grim, slapdash and shonky yet is so gorgeously realised.

6

John Gilling directs André Morell, John Carson and Jacqueline Pearce in this Hammer horror about a town suffering from a series of mysterious deaths. 

Underwhelming period horror seriously lacking any big name star power. The zombies keep themselves to the themselves for the first hour, leaving a laddish bunch of posh cads, a fearful town and a voodoo flavoured mystery to keep you occupied. Busy enough then.

5

Ron Howard directs Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover and Emilia Clarke in this prequel where the “scruffy nerf herder” meets Chewie, steers clear of any imperial entanglements and flies the Millennium Falcon for the first time.

Solo is an absolute blast. A pure space western adventure that plays around with old cowboy tropes as much as it does the Han mythology. You get one tremendous action sequence – a prolonged mountain train robbery where the rails resemble a rollercoaster and hovering speeders are the horses. Later, you get to see the famous “Kessel run” with its ominous mists, swirling meteorites, maelstroms of anti-gravity and Lovecraftian planetoids. You get to explore young Lando’s cape armoire. Donald Glover performs a marathon of knowing charm in a few sequences… racing through impersonation, embellishments and re-suaving the galaxy’s coolest betrayer. Even for the casualest of Star Wars fans, this is the shit worth seeing.

Does it all work? No… Emilia Clarke is a little too ambiguously sketched (there’s plot reasons behind this) for you to care about her character, she ends up being a well used, plucky clothes horse for some intergalactic noir outfits. The ending goes for soapy resolutions rather than spectacle. That’s not the end of the world but it is pointedly not the end of the world. Visually, it can be noticeably murky at time. The film starts in the slums then goes to the muddiest trenches, only brightening up once the Falcon becomes the centre stage. And I’d say we’ve probably reached and exceeded peak comedy sidekick droid at this point.

Infamously, this was a troubled production. On first watch you scour the high time for signs of a rush job or sloppy parenting. Reshooting from scratch an almost wrapped movie was always going lend any endeavour an air of a flop, no matter how undeserved. But the end product is really simple and spirited. Sharing the same energy and middleweight scrappiness as Spider-Man: Homecoming or Logan. It isn’t rewriting the summer blockbuster rule book but it is breathlessly entertaining. Cough… Cough.. Howard did after all direct Willow.

The Han and Chewie double act is given a chance to shine. In fact, “Han & Chewie” might have been the more family enticing title for this retro-styled experience, one that taps into its truest power, Solo’s easy accessibility. Like the triumphant Rogue One, it is a Star Wars that can be enjoyed with zero knowledge of the previous entries. And like Rogue One, it is a Star Wars episode that middle-aged men will get a pleasing pang of deja vu from. The way Howard marshalls his Han, Chewie, Lando and Falcon is with same the zippy playfulness as a kid playing with his toys on the bedroom floor. The occasional off the wall joke (the shower gag) is welcome but better in small doses. Star Wars barely lends itself to self-aware winks not constant parody.

I genuinely think Lucasfilm did the right thing with Miller and Lord OUT / Howard IN. I get the feeling their spoof-ish take would have been detrimental and utterly divisive. The mine robbery sequence does play out as a very scrappily shot five minutes and I can’t help but feel it is the work of two guys going “wouldn’t it be great if Lando did this or Chewie did that” for a week on set rather than composing well framed storyboarded shots or shooting coverage so you can make a coherent exciting set piece in the edit. A fresh take on Star Wars, in theory, is a great idea but who wants a Star Wars that has indulgent impro sequences like 22 Jump Street or Pineapple Express. Miller and Lord are the types who should punch up the final draft of a script for a project of this scale to give it an anarchic flavour but never rang true as a pair who should have been given a directorial free hand when so much relies on delivering a clean product that can be merchandised and appease a very intolerant fan base. The result was 100 million dollar reshoots and tarnished reputation. 

Star Wars as a franchise is now on a very public correcting course. It relaunched wanting to inject new voices into old worlds and characters and instead has realised it is too beloved a series to allow that much experimentation. I think it hit a nice groove as THE perennial Christmas blockbuster which, like the LOTRs 15 years ago became a tradition that the whole family (grandparents, uncles and aunties etc) went en masse to see together each year. By moving from that sweet spot, to a very busy, World Cup squashed summer, with a story that wasn’t essential, was tainted with bad hype, and a marketing campaign that was weak willed… Made Solo a baffling experiment of a release! Almost a cruel test to see how robust the Star Wars box office is. 

Why no trailer before The Last Jedi? Why no trailer before Infinity War (there wasn’t at my opening weekend showing)? Solo was doomed to a lacklustre opening. It still made more in 4 days than most movies gross in their entire run but in the current marketplace that just isn’t enough. Solo has the one saving grace that Jurassic World 2 seems in the same boat hype-wise and is its only competition for six weeks. Maybe those legendary Star Wars legs will save it. Maybe…

Solo suffered from corporate over confidence. It is a great, unadulterated family action film… one I’ll go see a few times more… But there should have been a sensible conversation or a Venn diagram drawn before production was greenlit. Who cares about this story? Who cares about this film if it doesn’t feature Harrison Ford? Turns out I’m one of the few people in the centre of that crossover. 

Why do kids care about Solo? They don’t. Why would they care about Kylo Ren’s dad’s youth? And there is the integral problem. There’s a generation who love the Lego sets and Rebels cartoons but already got their essential summer blockbuster fix with Infinity War. So if you are a parent on a budget, why are you wasting £30-50 dragging your kids to see a film they aren’t pestering you about? Why take them on opening weekend when the sun is out? Why take them on opening weekend when you might have to sit next to us sweaty geeks with no social skills, stinking the auditorium out with our awful message board fostered attitudes, honking laughs at obscure fan service, bitching in the lobby afterwards? Spending three hours in that kinda company by choice is akin to going to football match on derby day when you are a casual sports watcher. Not an attractive option. 

Solo’s lacklustre rep and unlikely ability to reach a profit has now happened. Lessons will be learnt. I reckon the mooted Boba Fett or Obi Wan prequels will be quietly shelved. There’s think piece questions about whether the franchise has been exhausted in the short space of half a decade? Whether Kathleen Kennedy at Lucasfilm has any kinda end game or grand narrative planned out? A similar blueprint like what has worked so well for Kevin Feige at Marvel hidden in a safe? But not every franchise has to be Marvel… Seriously. There’ll eventually be a game changer movie series that’ll make the Feige machine seem old hat. I’m not saying Marvel will crash and burn, just that eventually someone will unlock another way to make billions from a series of movies. My money would be on James Cameron if he wasn’t lost in Avatar sequels.

The Fast and Furious films became behemoths by giving a core fan base more of the same and tapping into a greater audience with its diversity and daft scale. They are the closest we have to the Roger Moore Bonds and I bet there isn’t a long term narrative road map even scribbled on the back of Vin Diesel’s D&D player’s handbook. Likewise Bond seems to manage to bloody his fan base’s nose constantly with controversial entries and chaotic journeys to screen. No one is predicting the end of that franchise. 

Star Wars still needs to figure out what it is that makes it essential in the current marketplace. Nostalgia alone won’t do it. Overlong, uncertain entries won’t do it. An absolute thrill ride that appeals to kids and adults and couples alike will. Solo is almost that film. They just needed to sell it harder to the kids and not the “faithful”. 

PS Coming from a massive Ford fan, I thought Alden Ehrenreich was fantastic. He was an over confident rapscallion, a romantic and his chemistry with Chewie was a joy to behold. I hope Solo’s middling reputation doesn’t stop him from returning to a galaxy far, far away.

8

 

My Top 10 Prequel Movies

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
2. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
3. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
4. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
5. Casino Royale (2006)
6. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

7. The Godfather Part 2 (1974)
8. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
9. Prometheus (2012)
10. Batman Begins (2005)

 

Léonor Serraille directs Laetitia Dosch, Souleymane Seye Ndiaye and Erika Sainte in this Parisian character study of a feckless woman entering her thirties realising she has no job, skills, home or support network after she breaks up with her university professor.

For the first 20 minutes alarm bells were ringing. A cute woman, who we are supposed to love but is frustratingly self sabotaging, having a manic episode. But eventually the movie settles into a tale of urban alienation, teetering on homelessness (parallels to Somersault) and eventually newly discovered agency to win the small battles she can and become independent. Though often a piece that swings from melancholy to outright annoying, you can’t deny the powerhouse performance by Laetitia Dosch that all the chaos orbits. A little bit Charlize Theron in Young Adult, a little bit Holly Golightly on uppers… who she most reminded me of in the more scabrous scenes was Julia Davis’ relentless sociopath in TV’s Nighty Night. Jeune Femme is too nice a film to continue down that dark path but it’s intriguing to see a movie at least experiment in that territory for a short while.

6

My Top 10 Paris Movies

1. The Bourne Identity (2002)
2. Amelie (2001)
3. An American in Paris (1951)
4. Le Samourai (1967)

5. Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (1954)
6. La Haine (1995)
7. Read My Lips (2001)
8. Nikita (1990)
9. Belle de Jour (1967)
10. Dangerous Liasions (1988)

 

Iván Zulueta directs Eusebio Poncela, Cecilia Roth and Will More in this surreal Spanish horror about low budget filmmakers addicted to “raptures”.

A strange concoction of David Lynch and Pedro Almodovar, Arrebato has lingered with me since I saw it at the Filmhouse in my early twenties. A warped tale of addiction and sensuality it is hard to put even the plot into words. An established horror filmmaker returns to his flat only to find his ex girlfriend / star of his first film asleep. They do heroin together and start to reminisce about a strange young man they both met. An isolated amateur filmmaker who appeared to have unlocked some metaphysical secrets about space, time and nostalgia that can send you into a euphoric trance. The man boy has sent our protagonist his last film, a study of himself and urban life via a camera with vampiric tendencies. It is actually more long winded and less clear cut than that. Arrebato can often be an amateurish, eventless and directionless experience. God only knows what the original three hour cut was like? But there is imagery and ideas and a deathly sense of unease about the whole endeavour that imbues it with an enduring power. Iván Zulueta’s intentions and potential may be obscure but this cinematic dream puzzle shares much of the unnerving quality of surreal classics like Last Year at Marienbad and Carnival of Souls.

7

Patrick Brice directs himself and Mark Duplass in this found footage two hander about the imbalanced relationship between a filmmaker and his client. 

Dull and cheap stalker thriller barely enlivened by Duplass’ occasionally decent improv weirdness. Snore.

2