René Clément directs Alain Delon, Marie Laforêt and Maurice Ronet in this early adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s identity thief thriller: The Talented Mr Ripley.

The best version of this crime classic in that the identity theft actually convinces here. There are hectic set pieces as Ripley evades the authorities and reality through boat and rooftop. And the final reveal is delightfully Hitchcockian. The Italian location work is second to none, we’d all kill for this La Dolce Vita.

9

Andrea Berloff directs Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss in this crime thriller where three housewives take on the protection rackets in Hell’s Kitchen of the early Eighties.

There’s a better film struggling to get out here. You see it peeking through the often trite and short-sighted storytelling choices. On the poorer side, we have a fantasy New York where business owners seemingly want to pay extortion with smiles on their faces, where a well concealed twist then has no further consequences and it all builds to quite the anti-climax where girl power somehow supersedes betrayal and violence. On the plus side though, Domnhall Gleeson makes for a very unusual object of attraction, Bill Camp has fun as a pragmatic mob boss and the colourful visual framing perfectly captures the feel of a 4 issue Vertigo comic book run. I read a Sight and Sound review that said this was ‘incomprehensible’ but then revealed various misinterpretations of the plot that showed the writer hadn’t given the film their full attention. It really isn’t as bad as the critics make out, but equally not strong enough an entertainment to die on a hill for.

5

Tom Gries directs Raquel Welch, Jim Brown and Burt Reynolds in this western where a voluptuous Mexican freedom fighter distracts a bandit and his arresting officer from getting back across the border.

A lot of this is dull filler tosh but there are spikes of interest. Welch takes a wet t-shirt shower by a railway siding. The black lead gets the girl. A raid on a train has true epic sweep. A celebration in a fort turns into unbridled carnage – this throwaway scene has a really, really strange Manson-esque / Season of the Witch carnality. Also of note… producer Marvin Schwarz… The inspiration behind Tarantino’s 1969 Western making, mover and shaker in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?

5

Frant Gwo directs Qu Chuxaio, Angel Zhao and Ng Man-Tat in this sci-fi epic where to save the Earth from a dying sun, humanity has moved underground and the planet has turned into an organic rocket ship propelling itself to a new solar system.

This is one of the most financially successful releases of the year at the global box office, 98% of that haul coming from China. In essence it is an ensemble global apocalypse disaster epic. Like Michael Bay or Rolland Emmerich used to make two decades ago, a mixed bag of plucky but reluctant survivors try to exploit a flaw to subdue a genocidal scenario. The expansive FX work is good, there’s some decent peril and very broad farce humour. The vision of technology saving humanity is terrifying – I think we are supposed to marvel at the hellscape presented of bunkers of people divided by social caste and an entire planet so raped of her resources she now entirely resembles an inhospitable mining pit. The politics are offensive… one character is referred to as a half breed. This wouldn’t past muster during Independence Day or Armageddon, China has had 20 years to catch-up. They clearly give absolutely zero shits about racism or the environment going by their popular entertainments. Watchable but drags more than a little. The sheer abandonment of scientific logic alone will make your mind boggle.

5

Henry Hathaway directs Victor Mature, Coleen Gray and Richard Widmark in this noir where an imprisoned heist man turns informant when his wife sticks her head in the oven and his angelic kids are sent to the orphanage.

Victor Mature is a big clunky screen presence, he looks like a hand drawn caricature of Dean Martin or Robert Mitchum. He’s terrorised by Richard Widmark’s giggling killer. The Joker in all but face paint; he pushes old ladies down flights of stairs and blathers nonsense to anyone who listens. Coleen Gray is beautiful as the shimmering ray of hope who swoops in to turn Mature good when his wife offs herself. Domestic opportunists never looked so pretty and wholesome.

7

Jean-Jacques Beineix directs Frédéric Andréi, Wilhelminia Wiggins Fernandez and Richard Bohringer in this French neo-noir where a postman bootlegs an opera singer who never records her performances and finds himself inadvertently caught in a criminal cover-up.

The official start of Cinema Du Look, the French mini-wave of cinema where cool visuals superseded storytelling and realism. It can feel more than a little vapid at times… the plot takes a while to coalesce, then the middle act is littered with sequences that have little bearing on the protagonist’s dilemma. Yet it does all come together, just before I lost patience with this revisit. The loose, haphazard multiple strand storytelling owes something to Louis Malle’s superior Elevator To The Gallows, the gripping comic book flavoured stand-off finale predates The Coen Brother’s similar Blood Simple by a few years. There’s a few brilliant high speed, marathon chases through Paris and a quirky romance. It is all very Parisian, very 1981. Not quite as good as I remember but worth seeking out.

8

Carl Rinsch directs Keanu Reeves, Hiroyuki Sanada and Rinko Kikuchi in this fantasy adventure where a dishonoured group of samurai band together to fight the evil Lord who plotted their master’s downfall.

One of the biggest financial disasters in recent Hollywood history, I remember this being a perfectly ‘alright’ watch at the multiplex. Sure, there is a massive $175 million overspend here, a first time director and fudgey issues of cultural appropriation… but all that money is up there on-screen! We have a gorgeous looking slice of blockbuster with wondrous location work, lush costume design and good creature FX. So the dialogue often looks like it has been shot from the least acceptable angle, so they’ve crowbarred in a white star into the plot… there’s always something beautiful to marvel at. If you want honky-free samurai vengeance action then Takashi Miike’s contemporary 13 Assassins or Blade of the Immortal do this all so much better but even they don’t have Rinko Kikuchi’s vamping it up as a sex witch making a mockery of the PG-13 rating. Turn your brain off and this is some pretty sweet eye candy. There’s enough positive to balance out the negatives… a very zen experience.

6

Lulu Wang directs Awkwafina, Tzi Ma and Zhao Shuzhen in this drama where an American granddaughter returns to China to visit her dying beloved grandmother, having to maintain the new family secret – Nai Nai is unaware she is fatally ill.

A calm production, lightly humorous, excellent food porn and more preachy than dramatic. I know I’m in the minority for not liking this one more but it seemed to set itself up nicely and then just get stuck in a rut… the plot doesn’t really develop any further than from the pitch and that dragged for me. There’s some nice ensemble work here and moments of slightly stretched magical realism but in the main I thought the focus was off. Awkwafina’s perpetual outsider is quite a whiny, self-centred character and pretty much anyone else already present would have made a more compelling protagonist. The poor nephew and his Japanese bride having to fake a wedding to cover-up the international reunion… are they in love? Where’s her family? Are they going to stay together? Surely there’s a far stronger rom-com there based around the same “lie”. Instead they are sidelined to near silent background extras, while a self-branded ‘millennial’ mopes about for another dozen scenes of stroppy sullenness.

4

Pedro Almodóvar directs Eusebio Poncela, Antonio Banderas & Carmen Maura in this thriller where an obsessed fan ingratiates himself into a sex film director’s life.

A really pleasurable Almodóvar as about half an hour in you tumble you are watching a relaxed, queer equivalent of a yuppie-in-peril potboiler. Unlike, say Fatal Attraction, this is crammed full of Versace shirts, dubbed porn and completely superfluous trans character sister plots… Yet it works really well in a languid, quirky way – invigorated by an early turn by an insidious but seductive Banderas.

7

Spike Lee directs Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster in this Manhattan heist movie.

Spike is a director famous for his racially charged dramas and visual experimentation. Over the 1980s and 1990s he pushed how films looked and felt, he translated anger, injustice and black culture into a form that felt as valid in the multiplex and rental stores as it did the arthouse cinemas. Although Clockers and 25th Hour had shades of noir in them, Inside Man was his first purebred genre film. A Hollywood crime movie – slick, glossy, starry, twisty, action-y. If you approached as just another mid budget release you’d be happy. Denzel! Jodie! Clive! All three don’t phone it in even if they are unstretched by the material. Sometimes it is nice to see what an auteur does if the pressure is off and he just wants to make a throwaway opening weekend number one movie. Spike Lee makes a Phone Booth or a The Negotiator or a 15 Minutes. And if you are a fan of SWAT teams securing the area, well laid plans, moderate conspiracies and tense stand-offs then Inside Man will fill your Friday night better than most studio products. But you can still see Spike the Icon in every scene, he somehow still infuses his mindset and vision into this, making a five finger exercise something more than just that. Refusing to be a paycheck player, refusing to just submit a piece of hacky entertainment. We have his trademark symbolic camera moves deployed to allow us deeper into the lead’s emotional states. We have his slightly more realistic view of a diverse New York. All cultures are represented and it doesn’t seem in anyway Season 10 of Friends forced. We have his worldview that cops and robbers, bankers and power players all have villainy and hate in them. And even in a mere popcorn pusher there’s no need to “dial back the color commentary”, no need to forgive the value system where the powerful man never sees justice. Inside Man is a great con job… our bad guys pull the wool over our eyes, the good guys morph as the plot needs to get us to a satisfying closure and our director hides his agit-prop in plain sight, improving a perfectly accessible thriller through sheer force of personality.

9