Baltasar Kormákur directs Shailene Woodley, Sam Claflin and Elizabeth Hawthorne in this true story of a sea faring couple whose yacht is rendered adrift weeks away from inhabited land. 

A solid adventure movie that works better as a flashbacking backpackers’ romance  than as a tale of gruelling survival. The post-disaster scenes have a drawn out morbidity (unavoidable) which mire the likeable leads. They are left with nothing more to work with interminable showboaty despair. Woodley in particular is too sweet and lovable a presence for that to be a situation you want to witness her stranded in at length. It is watchable, and has a late surprise up its sleeve, but 127 Hours covered the same emotional ground with more elan.

6

Donna Deitch directs Helen Shaver, Patricia Charbonneau and Audra Lindley in this period romance about an uptight professor who moves to a ranch in Reno to set up the legal residency needed for a divorce yet falls for a free spirit bisexual. 

A genuinely unpredictable romance (you can’t tell if we are headed towards happy ending or quiet tragedy right up until the final line) that make perfect use of its handsome locations and pretty faces. Deitch employs a series of wipes and fade outs to punctuate scenes of unspoken attraction and intelligent tenderness. Every speaking character has depth and complexity. All the unrequited courtship eventually builds to both damaging drama and a powerful sex scene. All four female leads leave a lasting impression and watching Shaver and Charbonneau spar and flirt and eventually adopt each others’ wardrobes has the winning air of Billy Wilder’s spikier work in the genre. The only film I managed to catch at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival but a great one I was glad to discover.

8

Jonathan Kaplan directs Michael Kramer, Matt Dillon and Pamela Ludwig in this teen drama about a lawless bunch of youths pushed into a riot of destruction. 

There’ll always be a list of films I intend to watch. My knowledge of anything made before the 80s will always be patchy and likewise I doubt I’ll ever see enough foreign cinema to be fully au fait with non-English language movies. But I think having now finally watched Over The Edge I have seen just about everything modern that had always niggled at me for not getting around to. My “must see” spreadsheet is now clear. It is a film I had read about or seen referred to for years. The true start of the teen movie cycle but gritty and realistic. An obvious influence on Linklater’s brilliant Dazed and Confused and one of Kurt Cobain’s favourite flicks. I had to order it on DVD from Germany. And the viewing was a similar situation as to when I watched Miracle Mile. A perfectly fine cult movie that could never compete with the masterpiece that had built itself and played in my head over years of vague imagined imagery and performances. Over The Edge is merely good. The acting from the kids is natural and unsympathetic. There’s bad behaviour and tragedy and urban restlessness. It is no Rebel Without a Cause in craft or manipulation. It is no The Breakfast Club in vocalised heart or era defining cool. The kids often come across as petulantly dickish rather than inspiringly heroic. The chaos of the final riot has all the cartoonish logic of any Disney kids movie of that decade (stoopid grown ups) yet is equally unbelievable in the overkill of the destruction. It leaves the plot with nowhere to go. No resolution will work for the criminality exhibited. The unarrested cheer as the others are carted off in a borstal bus. A hollow victory. Maybe it is supposed to evoke Steve McQueen returning to the cooler at the end of The Great Escape. What’s the message? It is better to rebel than to just be crushed by the system? There’s a great Cheap Trick dominated soundtrack and some of the cinematography is as beautiful as any western’s location shoot. Young Dillon and Vincent Spano make more of an impression in scrappier roles than the romantic leads. You can’t help but feel this whole experience is some kid’s dying fantasy. Does the dream start when our lead settles into his bed, massive blaring headphones on? Or when a gun is casually shot at him in a playful bit of trigger pulling? Or when one of the more likeable kids actually dies… unifying the bored, ignored rabble into direct action?

6

 

Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo direct Sam Strike, Stephen Dorff and Vanessa Grasse in this 60s set origin story for Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror icon, Leatherface. 

As a horror this doesn’t really work… there’s no real tension to it. No sympathetic characters to root for, when the deaths inevitably come they are random with little attempt at building fear. Yet Leatherface has a warm nostalgic glow to it (Terrence Malick’s Badlands is a clear inspirational touchstone for it) and we take a surprising path to get that nice young Sawyer boy to turn face wearing powertool killer. I feel if they spent just an extra ten minutes beefing up the shock sequences it wouldn’t all feel like a mere one track domino rally. As it is, this is just grizzled and gorgeous people knocking into each other until the legend is left standing. Only a threesome involving a rotten corpse and an escape involving a dead cow match the viscous ickyness of the Tobe Hooper’s originals. The lurid ferocity isn’t even attempted.

5

Werner Herzog directs Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes and Willy Semmelrogge in this filmed play about a small town soldier driven mad by his local doctor’s experiments and his wife’s infidelity.

A monolithic performance by a committed Kinski makes this worthwhile. Herzog’s usual concerns about decaying society are present and correct, but the narrative is a little too loose and too didactic to buttress Kinski’s terrifying mania.

5

Steven Brill directs Adam Sandler, Jennifer Hudson and Kevin James in this 1990s-set broad comedy romance about an unctuous Hollywood ‘little fish’ showbiz manager who falls for his latest client. 

This shameless mix of Broadway Danny Rose and A Star Is Born trundles along for too indulgent a running time with very few jokes that land. The nineties backdrop is rarely exploited and the star cameos are constant yet equally under utilised. Sandler creates an amusing lonely caricature as the titular Sandy and has great chemistry with Hudson… but it all amounts to further filler for his back catalouge.

4

 

1. Alien (1979)

2. The Warriors (1979)

3. Mad Max (1979)

4. Apocalypse Now (1979)

5. The Muppet Movie (1979)

6. The First Great Train Robbery (1979)

7. The Jerk (1979)

8. Hardcore (1979)

9. Tess (1979)

10. All That Jazz (1979)
11. Vengeance Is Mine (1979)
12. Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979)
13. Time After Time (1979)
14. Manhattan (1979)
15. The Wanderers (1979)
16. Saint Jack (1979)
17. Radio On (1979)
18. Scum (1979)
19. Camera Buff (1979)
20. Breaking Away (1979)

Leo McCarey directs Groucho Marx, Chico Marx and Harpo Marx in this manic comedy about small European fiefdom that finds itself with an acerbic new leader and a war looming. 

War fever! Marx Brothers style. Absolutely crazed. It is hard to think how the generation who watched this, WWI in imbedded their memories and WWII beginning to formulate, felt about a spoof of war. Then again, was Hot Shots: Part Deux any more sensitive to ‘Nam vets and Middle Eastern geopolitics? You get some fantastic sketches welded on… the mirror sequence, the lemonade seller’s destruction and Rufus T Firefly’s unlikely court defence of  Chicolini. All comedy gold.

10

Stefano Sollima directs Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin and Isabela Moner in this action thriller sequel that sees the ethics free drug cartel breakers exploit a kingpin’s child and the border’s human trafficking business to disrupt the drug trade.

Soldado lacks the relentless, being dragged down into quicksand, feeling of Denis Villeneuve’s original entry. It lacks the heart that Emily Blunt’s rookie but capable protagonist brought as our guide into this murky world of covert ops and maximum deniability. You could say the tough kid, Isabela Moner, takes over this function for us. But for the last hour she is rendered mute by both duct tape and PTSD. There are also three or four sequences that are as silly as they are suspenseful. Still, it is a thumping and violent action film with a mature plot in the main. And Del Toro is still an under utilised, truly masculine lead… thirty years into his career. These both are rarities in the multiplexes recently, and should be supported.

6

J. A. Bayona directs Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt and Ted Levine in this fifth instalment of the cloned dinosaurs on the rampage in the modern age blockbuster franchise. 

Well, well, well… this is a pleasant summer surprise. Bitty and daft, featuring millennial support characters as annoying as The Green Inferno’s lampooned protagonists (though these ones somehow don’t get eaten). It should be a disaster disaster movie, right? Well nope… as Bayona in the first half crafts a heartfelt love letter to Spielberg. The PG-13 peril is constantly gripping and escalating, the threat laid out expertly and unfussily, and there are pleasing visual steals from less obvious moments in Raiders of the Lost Ark, War of the Worlds and well… Jurassic Park. I was absolutely swept away. I chuckled at the ridiculous plot wobbles. I was in awe of the shot of the brachiosaurus as we left the island. I bet Steven the ageing wunderkind had tears caught in his beard when he saw that reverent, majestic image that out Spielberged even him. The second half sees Bayona retreat back into his own directorial interests… gothic castles, locked away secrets, princesses in turrets, patterned wallpaper. It is not quite as playful, and the action doesn’t flow fast enough for you not to have adequate time to outthink the ridiculous moments. It is not terrible… just not the breakneck rollercoaster that the island offered. It certainly isn’t an entertainment for humbuggy nitpickers. Howard and Pratt are given short shrift, only a couple of scenes exploit their neat screwball chemistry. And Blue, the trained velociraptor, probably gets a little too much screentime… she is a concept that just doesn’t work as a plot device and, worse yet, utterly dilutes her species “big bad” legacy within the series. I want my raptors to be claw tapping, relentless monsters of death… not reluctant, uncertain sidekicks. Still Ted Levine, Rafe Spall and Toby Jones all bring some cold blooded “boo-hiss”ery to their human villian roles to make up for this fudge. A tapestry of moments, one that possibly won’t hold up to repeated viewings though.

7