Jon Wright directs Richard Coyle, Ruth Bradley and Bronagh Gallagher in this Irish sci-fi horror comedy where killer aliens swarm a remote community.

Shaun of the Dead go Bragh. Tremors with a drinking problem. Craggy Island Gremlins. Whatever the pitch was, it worked out. This is an undemanding one watcher with impressive creature FX and likeable performances. I enjoyed Ruth Bradley’s big city Garda a lot, she stands out among the stereotypes. The conceit that the monsters won’t kill the extremely drunk because of their dehydrating blood alcohol opens things up solidly. Follows the rule book slavishly, delivers the goods with surprising conviction.

6

Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer directs Alex Essoe, Amanda Fuller and Noah Segan in this Hollywood horror where a wannabe toys with the offer to submit to a demonic casting couch for a breakthrough role.

Strong on nervy paranoid atmosphere but lurches into some awkward directions – there’s a gore sequence that feels like it is there for the trailer, not the narrative. Essoe is good as our frustrated lead, and there’s some strong body shock imagery but you can’t help but keep thinking you are watching a poor man’s Mullholland Dr.

5

David Ayer directs Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Peña and David Harbour in this found footage buddy cop movie where two patrol officers police a hellish district.

A modern update on The New Centurions full of great and horrific moments. The “camera in story” conceit doesn’t work one itty bit and the introduction of some BIG BAD cartel villainy comes straight outta a comic book. To make up for these faults you have Gyllenhaal and Peña’s smoking camaraderie and Anna Kendrick dancing to the Birdie Song… Yo!

7

Robert Aldrich directs Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster and Caesar Romero in this action western where a struggling plantation owner and a gregarious bandit become mercenaries for the Mexican emperor.

A cowboy action extravaganza with the unusual twist that the white hat and the black hat become friends. Vera Cruz is a progenitor of both the spaghetti western and the buddy movie. This is an electric entertainment, powered by the fact we know our stars are going to have revert back to their natures and face off over the gold, girls and freedom fighters floating around the plot. The ending is thrilling and unpredictable. Lancaster is all teeth and smiling menace in one of his best early roles.

9

Bill Forsyth directs Robert Buchanan, Billy Greenlees and John Gordon Sinclair in this crime comedy where a group of unemployed Glasgow lads plot to steal a warehouse full of stainless steel sinks.

A quirky little low budget number littered with nice moments but a bit too thin and amateurish to hold your attention for its entire feature length. The running joke about the boy who really gets into impersonating a cleaning lady for the sake of the score has aged the best, surprisingly.

5

Abbi Kiarostami directs Behzad Dorani, Farzad Sohrabi and Noghre Asadi in this Iranian arthouse drama about an engineer stranded in a remote village waiting for an elder to die while he struggles to acquire milk and phone signal.

Kiarostami sure loves middle aged men driving around outskirts of towns meeting people and considering their mortality! I’m not sure I do quite so much but this was watchable.

6

Richard Lowenstien directs Michael Hutchence, Kylie Minogue and Paula Yates in this found footage documentary following the life, lovers and decline of the INXS frontman.

INXS was my very much one of my sister’s bands but I have nostalgia for their bangers… of which they have enough to earn their place in pop history. This documentary by a friend of the subject is strange in that rather than being a celebration as intended it feels a collection of backhanded compliments focussing on the failures, tragedies and misfires rather than the hits. While it tries to paint a positive portrait of Hutchence and justify some of his worst behaviour and poor reputation, it unwittingly only proves the case for his diminished standing. Worst yet the hits are skipped over like distractions. Only very candid footage of an incognito romantic interlude with Kylie in the Orient has the right mixture of intimacy, heat and glamour that these muso documentaries need to fascinate us and humanise their subjects.

5

Rick Rosenthal directs Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance and Dick Warlock in this direct continuation of Halloween… will a hospitalised Laurie Strode survive until dawn with the invincible Micheal Myers still on the hunt?

As with Rocky II, the producers / writers (Carpenter and Debra Hill) weren’t overly confident the returning audience would remember where the principals were left in 1978, so cheaply just rerun the final five minutes again at the top. There are tweaks… that clumsy peek at Michael’s face when he adjusts his mask is trimmed out and the lawn he falls down on and disappears from is now a verdant green rather than patchy late October soil. Then we get an hour of idling -new characters we don’t care about being introduced and old survivors having their screentime diminished to a minimum of shooting days. Jamie Lee doesn’t wake up until the final act, by which time Myers has offed a group of nobody nurses and candy stripers with seemingly anything but his trademark big knife. He’s evolving, bless his soul. It is a cheap-ish cash-in sequel with all the compromises and reheating such a production entails. But the final 20 minutes when Laurie Strode is back in final girl mode are pretty effective and explosive. Pudding worth waiting for. There’s also some garbled guff about pagan evil and hidden family histories that the series latched on to but has never really made work… For a stock slasher sequel, I kinda appreciate its unashamed utilitarianism. Roll on Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, a true underrated gem.

6

John Carpenter directs Jamie Lee Curtis, PJ Soles and Donald Pleasance in this slasher classic where mute spree killer Michael Myers returns to his hometown for a night of murderous carnage.

I’m going to get into trouble for this review. My wife loves Halloween. Where as I’m a little more ambivalent to the Michael Myers franchise. And that schism of thinking isn’t really permitted in our marriage. We had wedding vows that contracted I must show unwavering fealty to her slasher favourites. I think I watched this the first few times comparing it to its contemporaries and found it lacking. There’s none of the dark fantasy of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Your Texas Chainsaw Massacre is gorier, gloopier and intense-ier. Scream is funnier. Candyman more mythic. Hellraiser more mindfuck disturbing. Friday the 13th has more titties. Evil Dead has Bruce Campbell. Halloween just feels to jaded eyes simpler, slightly unspectacular.

Now… for many… that is part of its allure. The original Halloween is a pristine genre film, fuelled by uncut voyeuristic stalking and neat jump shocks and a unique in 1978 warping of suburban normality. A lot of the above series took what Carpenter achieved with his elegant gliding camera and persuasively creepy score and iconic masked ghoul and then upgraded all of it with creature FX bells and whistles. The grammar of modern franchise horror was being established here. It is a synoptic text. Whether these modifications by other filmmakers who used Halloween’s simplicity as a jumping off point are improvements is down to your own taste, I guess my horror palette was defined by violating trees and souls being torn apart… so The Shape popping in and out behind bushes and laundry for an hour feels a little… basic. Ketchup when you’ve got a bottle of Mesquite BBQ or Garlic Mayo on your condiments shelf already.

The violence is PG-13 (only five people bite it!) and the canter is of a leisurely spook story. I’ll admit seeing it at the Prince Charles Cinema a few years back on the big screen at least broke me out of my average opinion of it. Watching Carpenter’s cinematic confidence on 35MM wowed me in a way the small screen flattens out. They even had a hulking Michael Myers waiting for us in the back row on exit.

And you get PJ Soles wearing her red cap. Donald Pleasance hamming it up as the exposition spouting scientist/ dirty mac Captain Ahab hunting / obsessing about a troubled mental patient / evil incarnate avatar {delete as applicable}. And the biggest name to breakout in slasher horror history, Jamie Lee Curtis herself. She’s a perfect movie star – DNA to personality – and while H1 doesn’t utilise her comedy chops, she is the correct balance of fresh likability, convincing vulnerability and desperate pluck.

Do I find Halloween scary? No. Does Myers get the monstrous imagination pumping like Freddy or Leatherface? No. While it doesn’t sate my demonic lusts I can now appreciate its milestone importance and effectiveness as a Friday night thriller. And that ominous synth theme music really thumps.

8

Jean-Luc Godard directs Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Paul Briarly in this romantic comedy where after one sap refuses to have a baby with his quirky stripper girlfriend one of their mutual friends tries to swoop in.

A pair of nerds squabble and neg Anna Karina for her heart. Very playful cinema but not much substance, pretension outways impact. Every woman is a stripper, in Godard’s world, ruled by her fantasising heart, so if there is substance, it is dully misogynistic. That doesn’t change how chic and magnetic and sexy Anna Karina is in a series of tricolour outfits. We aren’t watching for cod philosophy… non?

6