Lukas Moodysson directs Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin and Liv LeMoyne in the Swedish teen comedy about three pubescent teen girls who form a punk band about two years too late.

Really good fun. Moodysson catches the rush and comraderie of starting a band with no talent, and being part of a scene to define yourself. He also lightly hits on what it feels like when your friends temporarily betray you, young love and misguided ambitions don’t go your way. Naturally accurate. Like Dazed and Confused or I Wanna Hold Your Hand this recreates a period and place and emotion in time that probably means more to most people than historical epics of important milestones. “Hate the Sport!”

8

Hans Petter Moland directs Liam Neeson, Emmy Rossum and Tom Bateman in this crime comedy where the Colorado mob find themselves being picked off by a vengeful snow plough driver.

Diverting if unmemorable. Works better as a black comedy than an action thriller. Neeson’s vigilante gets lost in his own movie by the final third (but you’ve seen that part of the movie a fair few times before) while Tom Bateman impresses as a vainglorious mob boss. It unspools into ever weakening punchlines and an overly busy ensemble, but it never bores. Equally, it never even threatens to reach the highs of the Fargo TV show, which you could be watching instead and getting a similar, far stronger fix from.

5

Robert Wise directs James Olson, Arthur Hill and Kate Reid in this sci-fi thriller where a group of scientists in an underground lab try to isolate and investigate an alien virus before it wipes out humanity, based on a Michael Crichton book.

First things first; The Andromeda Strain is a very dry film. Sensationalist in its apocalyptic subject matter, bland and level headed in its delivery. The fascination here is with the documentation and procedure around experimenting with a deadly intergalactic spore. If it were made in this century it would no doubt be a found footage movie. Like nearly all of Crichton’s airport novels, his hook is taking a technological advance into nightmarish realms. Jurassic Park took DNA breakthroughs and created a dinosaur theme park disaster, Discolsure explored the tattered privacy of the corporate world where tiny mobile phones and VR shared networks would be the norm. He tugs at the near future and spins a gripping yarn from its potential. Most of the excitement from The Andromeda Strain isn’t from it ho-hum set-pieces or its one dimensional characters (Kate Reid’s dumpy pessimist excepted), it is from watching elaborately imagined technology be believably utilised against the ticking clock. The hive lab, the robot arms, laser security system… it all has an eyecatching sheen, yet isn’t a million miles from where manmade inventions in reality have taken us. Not the most fun slice of doomsday prevention, but a solid, often prescient, one.

6

Wim Wenders directs Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski and Dean Stockwell in this drama where a missing brother turns up in the desert, near mute and bedraggled, looking for his family.

I was too young first time I watched this one (read: it bored me). Paris, Texas patiently shifts from road movie to father / son romance to detective story to confessional. All the time it feels like a celebration of Americana from an alien viewpoint. The billboards, the LA city lights, the highways, drive thru banking, nudie booths. Wenders picks away at the landscape of the States without destroying it or disassembling it. Like Harry Dean Stanton’s character by the end, we know what happened to him, we relate to him on a surface level but he remains an enigma. Just you because you explore something, get lost in it, recognise it doesn’t mean you’ll ever understand it. What’s true for America is true for Travis in his red cap and desert beaten suit. Stanton is fantastic here and Stockwell and Kinski support him with career best turns. Slow… a mood piece… without easy answers even when we reach a kinda resolution.

7