Alain Resnais directs Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anny Duperey and Charles Boyer in this fractured biopic of financier and fraudster Alexandre Stavisky, whose bond scam caused an international scandal in the 1930s.

The luxurious interwar decadence is marvellous but the story and character nuances washed over me. I don’t think I really cared.

4

Mati Diop directs Mame Bineta Sane, Amadou Mbow and Ibrahima Traoré in this Senegalese drama where a soon-to-be-married off girl misses her other boyfriend when he abruptly crosses the ocean looking for work yet begins to be blamed for the strange goings on that happen in his wake.

A strange, sincere film that shifts awkwardly between romance, detective story, supernatural chiller, broad comedy and agit prop. Can’t say I really enjoyed or engaged with it but you can’t fault its ambitions.

5

Anthony Mann directs Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris and Ulla Jacobsson in this action packed WWII movie following the Norwegian resistance fighters who took down a Nazi heavy water facility, stopping Hitler from getting The Bomb.

I mainly work nights. And after a hard shift there’s nothing better than catching half an hour of an old forgotten classic with a glass of whisky on my chest or a Heineken on my coffee table. I worry. Am I giving these films the chance they deserve, watching them exhausted and chopped up over a week? Then I catch something as epic as Heroes of the Telemark this way and know it doesn’t really matter. I want to get home, pour that hard earned drink and see what happens next. The set pieces here are brilliant; procedural, often silent, threat filled. The snowbound setting gives the film the same wonderful stark white visual appeal as On Her Majesty’s Secret Service or the penultimate mind-level of Inception. Kirk Douglas is a rooster in waterproofs, Harris the true believer. The ticking clock finale is fantastic. A superb true story, told with adventurous sweep and thump.

8

Michael Cuesta directs Jeremy Renner, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Oliver Platt in this true story conspiracy thriller about the journalist, Gary Webb, who uncovered the links between the Contras, the Cartels and the CIA.

An impressively deep cast of modern genre faces brings to life this robust paranoid thriller / biopic. The first half where Renner’s Webb is chasing the story is more gripping than the second half where his reputation is attacked from all sides. Well worth a watch.

6

Louis Malle directs Wallace Shawn, Andre Gregor and Jean Lenauer in this arthouse drama where two New York theatre types have a conversation about existentialism over a sumptuous five star meal.

As pretentious as it sounds, only the first hour is pretty much Gregor barraging you with anecdotes and sidebars. It should really be “My Dreary Monologue at Wallace.” Every now again the waiter comes over to serve a course or clear a plate and looks increasingly depressed and judgemental at what he overhears. He can at least pop out for a fag on the fire escape between courses, I was stuck drifting in and out of the whole stifling, butt sniffing, word vomit. The location shots of New York, the final coda and Wallace Shawn’s face all have merits. Side note: Ordered this from Ebay and ended up unintentionally with a pirated copy of the Criterion Collection edition. The Koreans who made it have used images of the parody episode from Community on the back cover rather than the actual film.

3

Antonia Bird directs Linus Roach, Tom Wilkinson and Cathy Tyson in this controversial drama about a priest struggling with the real world problems of working class Liverpool and his own forbidden desires.

An infamous film in its day as it depicted, sympathetically and explicitly, a gay priest engaging in a loving relationship. Roach’s straight-laced and conservative parish newcomer’s travails of having to work through his feelings and beliefs forms the backbone of the film. Yet the drama takes in a lot more scope than what the headlines focussed on. It is an exploration of the ethical and philosophical problems of faith, the hypocrisy of certain tenets and the pull of dogma over humanity. Jimmy McGovern’s script scrabbles at the four or five powerful issues, big nasty dilemmas that crossover with each other. The sacrifices and compromises men of belief must make when faced with harmful realities and their own natural needs is the grand theme. McGovern offers no easy answers, approaching the conflicts with passion and an erudite earthiness. For all its inherent heaviness, Priest is a funny and very involving drama. I kinda prefer McGovern’s approach to the working class over Ken Loach’s and certainly over Mike Leigh’s. You get the feeling McGovern wants to celebrate us for what we are, approach our flawed, dark sides and hypocrisies unvarnished and know that pity only exacerbates our problems. I like his poetic anger and his fight and his superior understanding over Leigh’s caricatures. They feel more approachable than Loach’s binary bureaucrats and worthy martyrs. Which is ironic given the subject matter here. Shout out to the excellent Antonia Bird too, a female director who made a couple of great movies in the 1990s – her Face is also due a re-evaluation. Adept at marshalling rich performances from her British casts and capturing the harshness and silliness of urban life. There are a few moments of disruptive strangeness that elevate Priest from merely being a piece of celluloid agitprop. A wild lad chases some seagulls, a strict vegan housekeeper delivers a cold welcome. Small respites of magic, captured perfectly. Someone should give her a decent budget to make this kind of firey, involving, mature work again.

10

Rian Johnson directs Daniel Craig, Ana De Armas and Chris Evans in this ensemble murder mystery were a private detective tries to solve the death of a millionaire crime novelist.

Chris Evans > Daniel Craig. Toni Collette steals the show. They’ve been spoofing this form since the 1930s. In fact, I’m struggling to think of a completely straight faced release in my lifetime, away from prestige Agatha Christie adaptations. A wonderful cast and some nice wriggles keeps this chugging along steadily but I’ll be honest and admit I never felt lost. Knives Out never reaches a head of steam where you feel overwhelmed by the tightening tale. Part of the joy of these things, beyond seeing a load of good faces bounces off each other, is to have the rugged pulled from under you a few times. Knives Out is so painstakingly soft furnished you get the feeling the production designer wouldn’t allow the carpets to be tugged at, blood stained or even ran across. A very beautiful Cluedo board is set-up, the rules are certainly subverted but you end up spectating the board game rather than rolling the dice and mucking in yourself. Bright larks, all the same. That Rian Johnson sure dictates bold, colourful images.

6

Philippe Garrel directs Anna Wiazemsky, Henri Du Maublanc and Cécile Le Bailey in this semi-autobiographical arthouse recreation of a hipster couple in freefall – one is addicted to filmmaking, the other the heroin.

As boring as cold turkey.

2

James Mangold directs Christian Bale, Matt Damon and Jon Bernthal in this sporty retelling of Ford Motors attempt to design and race a winning car at Le Mans, using non-corporate mavericks rather than suits.

A solid bit of Dad Entertainment. Maybe it lacks the emotional pull of Mangold’s best mainstream work. There isn’t the unforced gruff sensitivity and throbbing dedication here that elevated Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma or Logan… even if it is told in the same sweaty, dusty, scrubby accent. Yet the racing flick is a well constructed piece of adult fluff, macho melodrama. I had three problems that left me personally outside the film.

1. Bale’s performance is cranked up to 11 and not always consistent… he enters into Nicolas Cage levels of intensity and gurning without any of that naive charm. He certainly doesn’t gel with Damon’s more robust genial turn. He took me out of the story often… that laboured accent and face contortions…UGH! A fine actor, trying something that didn’t land with the ensemble or me.

2. You get the feeling the real life character with most agency and allure is actually risk taking Ford executive Lee Iacocca (played by a warm and stout Bernthal). To use the perfect film Moneyball as an apt comparison: he is the Billy Beane of the piece, and he kinda sinks into the background once he gambles and puts his team of wildcards in place.

3. I’m not a petrolhead.

Hey-Ho! It is still probably the most well crafted, assured crowdpleaser on at your local multiplex currently. So give it your money.

6

Brian Kirk directs Chadwick Boseman, Sienna Miller and J.K. Simmons in this police thriller where a trigger happy detective closes down Manhattan to catch a pair of cop killers… but what is the bigger picture?

I guess there is a whole generation to whom the words Serpico or Prince Of The City mean nothing. Will they be surprised by twists and turns this takes? Anyone with wrinkles knows the route this narrative flows along, recognises the scenery and the landmarks. This is Lumet-lite though, smoothed and gritless. Soft play urban corruption, set in a world that achingly does not exist outside each individual camera set-up. It is flat, it is slick, it is perfectly lit. As uninteresting as it’s lead actor, 21 Bridges is a film where characters literally idle in the foreground waiting for their line of exposition to click around, where stand-offs feel so preordained that we might as well just skip a chapter to the next location. There’s just no excitement or love or verisimilitude to this. A fine support cast and couple of thumpingly kinetic moments aside and you have baby food rather than spicy junk.

4