Melvin Frank and Norman Panama direct Danny Kaye, Glynis Johns and Basil Rathbone in this spoof of Robin Hood style adventures.

Dated farce with likeable female support and tongue twisting wordplay.

4

Bruce Beresford directs Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson in this historical recreation of the British Army’s kangaroo court-martialling of three Australian soldiers during the Boer War. 

What should be a simple courtroom drama opens itself up for fine acting and complex, unresolved questions about culpability and ethics in the dehumanising theatre of war. The condemned are definitely guilty (as is everyone), yet they are equally not given a fair trial. The action sequences have heft. The flashbacks and finale have a lyrical magical realism. There are times when it feels like the witnesses’ stilted recollections are being filtered directly and purposely into the actors’ performances. And the greatest last words ever come out of Woodward’s mouth in the closing moments, he’s a dab hand at iconic final act fatalism. “Shoot straight, you bastards. – Don’t make a mess of it!” Rule 303. One coffin fits all in war, no room for personalities or conscientiousness.

9

Matthew Warchus directs Ben Schnetzer, George MacKay and Faye Marsay in this period drama about the London LGBT community’s attempts to support the miners during Thatcher’s suppression of them. 

I was expecting this to be mawkish crowd pleasing stuff. Like Billy Elliot or The Full Monty, a slightly cartoonish and fairy tale view of working class issues. But no… it has real heart, wit, scope and ambition. It gets the emotions flowing. Not just sentiment but political nostalgia and empowering self worth are renvigorated by it. Warchus colourfully marshalls a perfect ensemble of actors, the new faces holding their own among the gems of a British screen acting. The soundtrack manipulates masterfully, the time and the place is recreated down to the biscuit packaging. It won me over utterly. Joining Brassed Off for its harsh yet entertaining revisitation to one of Britain’s darkest hours and matching the far more agit prop 120 B.P.M. in its popularisation of the gay rights struggles of the last century. Treat yourself if you haven’t already beaten me to this.

8

My Top 10 LGBT themed films

1. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
2. Battle of the Sexes (2017)
3. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
4. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
5. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
6. Mulholland Drive (2001)

7. I Love You, Phillip Morris (2008)
8. Paris is Burning (1990)
9. The Crying Game (1992)
10. Victim (1961)

 

 

Rachel Talalay directs Lori Petty, Naomi Watts and Malcolm McDowell in this post apocalyptic adventure film based on the cult British independent comic. 

Unambitious anarchy. I used to own Tank Girl on VHS. As a teenager I enjoyed its scrappy energy. I was aware but not in love with the source material. And I also knew about its troubled production process. Various sequences were not filmed or cut out so that the comic’s original creator had to animate sequences to fill in the blanks… including the ending. These moments actually work really well, they fit the spirit of the endeavour and actual add a little extra mature edge to the slightly softened bite of the satire. Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin were openly vocal about the finished product despite being active participants in the process.  I always took umbrage at Jamie Hewlett’s snide comments in Empire on release about a test screening that resulted in dildos and burps being cut out. “It’s ridiculous having a bunch of snotty little 14-year-olds deciding how a film should be made. They were probably just snogging their bird or pulling each others’ hair throughout the whole thing” Yeah, fair enough. But who was this film for -butchered compromise or artist’s unadulterated vision – if not teenagers? It is a mid level action comedy about an immature girl driving a graffitied tank through desert populated by stoners and stoner kangaroos. Did you think massive prosthetic cocks were going to be part of the marketing campaign? Was he hoping for Oscars? Even on its best day, Tank Girl was made for the youth market. It is a rebellion flick with a day-glo colour palette. How would he have improved it? “The script was lousy,” Hewlett recalled, “me and Alan kept rewriting it and putting Grange Hill jokes and Benny Hill jokes in, and they obviously weren’t getting it.” Of course not… as those were limited and dated references even back in 1995. Homage to 70s sitcoms and 80s parochial kids shows would have really sunk what little wit the wacky, OTT shenanigans did retain. The film already is a dog’s dinner. Jokes rarely land, action never thrills. It is edited within an inch of its life. It feels like an overlong trailer for an actual film rather than a narrative itself. But Petty, Watts and McDowell all bravely go big rather than go home. The imagery taken out of context is a rich junkyard. The soundtrack is a belter. Stan Winston’s Ripper make up design is beautiful. It is silly. It is rubbish. Just not very entertaining. Not even misplaced nostalgia for when I was a “snotty little 14-year-old” can save it now I’m middle aged. And yeah, Tank Girl herself is chaotic and combative enough to be considered a feminist action hero. But imagine if they actually gave her some obstacles to overcome… then she’d have been a feminist action hero worth remembering.

4

Mickey Keating directs Ashley Bell, Pat Healy and Alan Ruck in this exploitation horror where a young woman is hunted across a sicko’s desert playground. 

Hyperstylised and wantonly nasty. This wishes it were made in 1973 and only shown in old porno cinema’s so bad you can taste it. If you move can past the director’s unrestrained desire to fuck the frame constantly, there’s a gripping enough thriller with a convincing villain and an escalating sense of madness. It has been done better (the recent Revenge) and with more art and guile (Wolf Creek) before.

5

Harold Becker directs Alec Baldwin, Nicole Kidman and Bill Pullman in this yuppies in peril thriller where a perfect couple and a brilliant surgeon get lost in a game of double crosses and culpability. 

So labyrinthian that the opening act and the closing act feel like entirely different films that just happen to share the same actors and locations yet utterly different plots and characters. Baldwin shines as the arrogant doctor but fades into the background a little too early. The mechanical shenanigans allows for great one scene cameos from Anne Bancroft and George C Scott. Everyone looks fantastic, they are perfectly presented as it all twists and turns juicily around them. So knotted is the narrative it really adds up to nothing. A vortex of betrayals, red herrings and secrets, but one that feels classily rarified these days. They don’t really make cat and mouse noirs like this anymore (Nocturnal Animals?  Side Effects?). So even a wobbly one like this feels like a prestige production 25 years down the line.

7

Desiree Akhavan directs Chloë Grace Moretz, Sasha Lane and Jennifer Ehle in this teen drama set at a 90s sexuality conversion camp run by misguided Christians. 

A very well, made if a little bottled up, teen drama. Attempting to be a low key One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is admirable. The film is at its best showing the consistently minor but totalitarian injustices of living in a passive aggressive hostile institution. And Moretz conveys the confusion of having her desires suppressed, her loneliness enforced and her interactions policed with aplomb. Yet its all too coy. There’s no heat or passion to the moments of stolen intimacy or minor acts of rebellion. Also like recent teen flicks Love, Simon and The Kings of Summer, the “cool kids” are actually personality vacuums. It is hard to connect with an ensemble where we are told how fantastic pretty faces Sasha Lane and Forrest Goodluck are but they do nothing but nod blankly along with our lead’s underdeveloped worldview and are, at best, present for snatched moments away from the oppressive regime. They don’t challenge or empower, merely are adjacent as mirrors of each other’s acceptableness. The nerdier christians undergoing the harmful “therapy” prove far richer personalities than the grunge kids of instagram. There’s a really great film struggling to get past an effected detached spaced out attitude. As if Desiree Akhavan was fearful of ever showing her cards and letting her leads respond to the drama or move forward from the unfairness of their plight. You just wish this allowed Moretz to breakout a dramatic swing for the fences, get one grand standing monologue or an engaging bit of insurgency. Despite this passivity The Miseducation of Cameron Post engages and affects via its soft sell injustice and subtle main performance.

6

Colin Hardy directs Taissa Farmiga, Demián Bichir and Jonas Bloquet in this horror spin-off from The Conjuring series where another demonic side character gets their shadowy, jumpy origin story. 

Hollow yet diverting time waster. Unoriginal yet cartoonishly atmospheric. Reds and brown and greys waft starkly at your eyeballs. Something quivers in the shadows or jerks from a side of the screen you were distracted from. Keep your eye on the lady. Catholic iconography sacrilege for set dressing. You are never bored but a horror with an ensemble of three (all of whom seem destined to walk away unharmed) is hardly going to shake the soul or chill the bone. Valak, the big bad, is underdeveloped… she was more a force to be reckoned with in The Conjuring 2. The embodiment of pure evil lashes out but never wounds. To have your monster favour throttling and chucking people away to safety from herself rather than destroying them when they are trapped in her clutches is frustratingly mundane. Looks like a nightmare. Plays like a water treader.

5

Marc Turtletaub directs Kelly Macdonald, Irfan Kahn and David Denman in this New York drama about a timid housewife who discovers she has a knack for completing jigsaws at speed and a rapport with a millionaire looking for a partner in a puzzling competition. 

A nice film battling against its own inherent softness. One that flirts with being a romance and a serious drama and a metaphor for religion but seems most comfy when being a domestic character study. For example when we finally get around to the big competition it is underplayed and feels like an inconsequential forgone conclusion rather than an exciting set piece. Macdonald is strong but the conflicting narrative pieces around her don’t really fit together and you are left struggling to make out the big picture from the obtuse end shot. Brave for a slight story to aim be unresolved and unpredictable but not really better for this approach.

6

 

Lewis Teague directs Robert Forster, Robin Riker and Michael V. Gazzo in this monster movie about a chemically enlarged alligator feeding off laboratory dogs and random workers in the sewer. 

Alligator is one of those superb little B movies that despite limited budget and expectations doesn’t put a foot wrong. Teague fills his cast with interesting, weathered character actors rather than bland pretties. Lead Robert Foster’s resigned to the shit heap detective is a plethora of world weary pleasures – macho, hangdog, balding. The script never gives a mouth a line of dialogue unless it is fun or unusual. Weary sarcasm is the order of the day. The film is subversive in its depiction of the authorities and satirical in its depiction of inner city life. Like the Jaws template dictates, John Sayles script holds back on giving us too much reptile to begin with, then when the titular Ramon goes on the rampage he becomes the focus and the star. The gory chaos he creates with his chomp and his wake should keep even the most nit picky gore hounds happy. The finale is gripping and tautly orchestrated. This was one of the first films I remember watching on Alex Cox’s excellent Moviedrome TV show in the early 1990s. And I thank him for introducing me to it and many other low rent treasures.

8

My Top 10 Monster Movies

1. Alien (1979)
2. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)
3. Jaws (1975)
4. The Mist (2007)

5. King Kong (1933)
6. The Birds (1963)
7. Jurassic Park (1993)
8. Tremors (1990)
9. Alligator (1980)
10. Q: The Winged Serpent (1982)