John Guillermin directs Peter Ustinov, David Niven and Bette Davis in this all-star Agatha Christie ensemble murder mystery.

“All-Star” in that it features a lot of the willowy rake-thin beauties of the era but it is only really any scene with Bette Davis or Angela Lansbury that holds the attention. Poirot taking on a cobra – meh. Bette Davis been mooned by Egyptian kids – YEAH! An adequate afternoon waster.

4

Richard Fleischer directs Richard Attenborough, John Hurt and Judy Geeson in this true crime docudrama which recreates the serial murders of Ladbroke Grove sex killer John Christie and the miscarriage of justice that saw one of his victim’s husband’s sentenced to death.

My mother grew up in the shadow of Mister Christie. She was born just down the road from the notorious murder site and these slum buildings, where this film was shot on location, still existed on her doorstep throughout her entire childhood. When we went to the basement of horrors in Madame Tussaud’s, the animated waxwork that has stayed in my memory is Mister Christie wallpapering a body into his walls. Remembrances of the police looking for a murderer and finding the rooms at Rillington Place growing smaller and smaller as more bodies were hidden in the walls were the gruesome folk tales of my West London childhood. Don’t linger near that strange house, Mister Christie will get you. This well acted, unsensational film has the same sleazy, creepiness as Hitchcock’s Frenzy. Fleischer had done similar work with his take on The Boston Strangler case but this is the superior product. He lets the ghoulish details speak for themselves and presents the tragedies that unfold like an ambivalent god watching unfortunate fate tumble into its pre-ordained slots. There is a persuasive creepy voyeuristic tone – you do often find yourself sharing the thrill and desperation of disgusting John Christie. The legal elements of the case are just as fascinating… it doesn’t take a genius to see that Fleischer knowingly omits the moments where the police would have falsified statements and evidence to frame the wrong man. But this was made when those incompetent and corrupt figures of authority would still have been in power and a Hollywood production still wouldn’t out and out attack those the government chose to turn a blind eye to. Powerful stuff.

9

Jon Amiel directs Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Ving Rhames in this heist thriller where an aged art thief plans a job with a supple young insurance investigator.

Flat and rote, lacking peril, glamour or romance.

2

Jim Cummings directs himself, Nican Robinson and Jocelyn DeBoer in this comedy drama where a simple and frustrated small town cop has a series of breakdowns after his mother dies and his ex-wife sues for sole custody of their daughter.

Essentially a series of one-man show monologues from an awkward, desperate soul we are supposed to find sweet and endearing. While there are other characters and jolts of action, this most often feels like a one-man piece of Fringe theatre cinematised. If you go with it you’ll find its manipulations and indie palette pleasing. I found Cumming’s delivery of intense, haphazard, half sentence monologues draining by the end of the first scene. Not entirely sure I had much sympathy for a uniform policeman prone to violence and self delusion nor the particularly bad taste device that is kickstarted in the final scenes to set his life back on track. I can see what it was going for, see why people like it, but it wasn’t for me.

5

Roy Boulting directs Ian Carmichael, Peter Sellers and Terry-Thomas in this British satire where a hapless posho finds himself infiltrating a factory union.

I had higher hopes for this. I just expected, given its classic status, it might have been laugh out loud funny. There’s a stellar cast of British comedy stalwarts and a fair bit of sauce. It often feels like a slightly more intelligent Carry On film. The unsung Irene Handl and Liz Fraser make the best impression as Seller’s dotty but wise wife and their glamorous sexpot daughter. And the satire swipes in every direction. The owner class happy to destroy workers’ rights, productivity and the economy to make sweat free short sighted profits rings true still. The union of professional skivers dodging any and all work has an Only Fools and Horses cheekiness to it but does feel like punching down given the plummy tone of the direction.

6

Fred Zinnemann directs Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones and Gloria Grahame in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical about cowpokes duking it out over a belle.

Bright, jaunty technicolor larks on the surface but a toxic darkness lingers underneath. Two men fight for ownership of a lady while Grahame’s simpleton slut (a highlight) creates her own love triangle. It is big and distracting but has not aged particularly well in pace or politics.

6

John Woo directs Chow Yun Fat, Danny Lee and Sally Yeh in this Hong Kong Gun-Fu action classic where a classy hitman falls for a singer he accidentally blinds in a hit and catches the attentions of a philosophical cop.

Possibly the first foreign language film I fell in love with as I became a movie fanatic. Relentless balletic shootouts, stylised editing, wonderful sentimentality. YES, PLEASE! A lot of Woo’s trademark flourishes now seem like camp cliches. But here they have a true poetry among the brutality. Is it unintentionally homoerotic? Yes… very much so… but Chow Yun-Fat is a mystifyingly attractive movie star – gorgeous, suave, a little clownish. This is his signature turn. No wonder everyone in the film wants him – gender and sexuality be damned. But it is the action that has aged the best. Woo is an artist with chaotic squibs, a master with hectic speed. I was a little disappointed the subtitle translation for this DVD had been sanitised / made authentic. I grew up with far dafter names attributed to the leads on the Tartan VHS I cherished. I mean… Who the fuck is “Ah Jong”? I want Jeff. Jeff the badass with a sniper rifle and a fake moustache. Jeff was the absolute boy.

10

Tom Hooper directs Francesca Hayward, Jennifer Hudson and Judi Dench in this big screen adaptation of the Broadway / West End smash about cats having a competition over who deserves to be top cat.

I don’t really do schadenfreude. If everyone says a movie is terrible I don’t buy a ticket hoping to rubberneck. I’ve never been to see The Room, I enjoy Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen Or Glenda for their enthusiasm and DIY ambition, I really, really rate Batman V Superman as an overlooked modern classic. I go in to damaged goods hoping for a unique experience, and while I’m unwilling to be contrary for the sake of it, very few movies are beyond redemption, especially pre-ordained massacres. Cats has some nice misty neon set design, if you watch it with soft eyes rather than harsh eyes, there are visual pleasures lost in the poor FX work… Listen, there’s a very camp Night Train cat who tap dances a bit of spunk into proceedings long after you’ve given up. And that’s about all I can salvage from this monstrosity.

How can something so awful be so boring? The plot is “Meet a singing cat, now meet another singing cat, now meet another singing cat, and a pair of singing cats, and just one more singing cat… ok… meet eight more singing cats… just meet them one at a time…!” What significance do all these Cats have on the story? There isn’t one. Some Cats are horrendously miscast (Idris Elba and Ray Winstone), others have the dead eyed look of having been in one of these familiar doomed productions before (Dench and Ian McKellen) and you can see them gritting their teeth, counting their money in their head and motoring down their efforts to an uncommitted minimum. The lead Cat has nothing to do, barely any lines, except to continually be pushed aside by the next arrival and convulse out the occasional incongruous pirouette.

Any film with both of the blunt force trauma personalities of Rebel Wilson & James Corden in prominent roles is going to struggle to align itself with audiences. I know Hollywood has a semi for both of them but their continued employment is one of those aberrations that will be difficult to explain to future generations like Brexit, climate change denial and Ladbaby. And they prove unavoidable in this repellent stain. Interestingly, their CGI is the worst, so I’m guessing the highly paid MoCap animators couldn’t face another month looking at their bludgeoning performances and gave up adding convincing fur and whiskers.

What about the singing powerhouse talent? Taylor Swift and Jennifer Hudson are the poorest beggars at the rotten feast. T-Swift gets late drafted a duff, unmemorable number. They play their queen piece of casting when she has no power. Hudson meanwhile has to perform with a distracting slug of snot permanently on her top lip. She gets the only banger in the song book, Memories, but it is delayed and interrupted. Like The Last Jedi’s epic final battle you are way too knackered by all the unnecessary preamble to appreciate it. Like Aquaman, everything has all been so fake, trite and forced that you have no investment in the conclusion. For a film to squander its best show-stopping song through sheer grinding boredom is quite the feat.

Cats should never have been made, some sensible executive, studio head or creative should have figured out no element translates well to contemporary cinema. At least the hipsters have something to bray about. Blood in the water that is more than just chum. There’s a sack of struggling Cats for the snark sharks to devour. The rest of us just wanted a gaudy musical.

2

Taika Waititi directs Roman Griffin Davis, Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johannson in this WW2 comedy where a little lad in the Hitler Youth imagines his best friend to be Adolf himself.

A colourful romp that hits loads of lovely laughs in its first hour but maybe lurches into tragedy and self-importance a little too heavily for the final act. I get it. We are dealing with big issues here – fanaticism and doing the right thing when you’ve been brainwashed otherwise. Ethics. Morals. Big chew aside, it is at its best when just being exuberantly daft. It showcases another brilliant Sam Rockwell turn and a great one scene comic masterclass by Stephen Merchant. Scarlett Johannson is zippier, maturer and warmer than is her norm. The kid performances are sweet but CBBC-esque with only Thomasin McKenzie from Leave No Trace showing any dramatic range. As for Hitler himself, Waititi leans into the buffoonish hubris well. Selling him as a Beatles equivalent rock’n’roll icon in the opening credits is a master stroke of scene setting – he understands the pull of hype, pageantry, mass hysteria and branding.

7

Greta Gerwig directs Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh and Emma Watson in this modern adaptation of the classic novel about four sisters growing up in Civil War Massachusetts.

I must have read a babyfied abridged version of Louisa May Alcott’s classic as a child. The adored story’s turns and moments are so familiar to me and they felt familiar back during the Winona Ryder adaptation in the 1990s. This approaches that over squeezed text with energy and verve. Equal parts reverential and inventive. Boring, dated and overplayed elements are shuffled around and diminished or refashioned. It says a lot about Greta Gerwig the director that you knew what her intentions, strengths, worldview and personality were straight off the bat during Lady Bird. That she felt like the directorial real deal in her debut. A fully formed auteur. The fact she has taken a dusty, twee yet cherished text like Little Women and breathed the same kind pump into it without adulterating the original source is fine testament to her cinematic talents. Long may she continue to partner up with impeccable Saoirse and perfect Tracy Letts. A few winsome stars aside, I loved how all the cast were deployed. The sequence where a book comes to life (intentional ironies) is wondrous. The minor melodrama of the March’s aren’t my traditional choice of tale yet Gerwig ensnared me into their dreams and tribulations as much as this old grouch could ever be entangled. More than I expected. Just because it isn’t my kinda movie, doesn’t mean it ain’t a good’ un.

7