Mike Flanagan directs Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr. and Samantha Sloyan in this horror where a lone deaf mute is besieged in her isolated home by a masked killer with a crossbow.

Slick and undemanding cat-and-mouse antics. Not as smart as it thinks it is but with some keen splatter and tense moments. Siegel is a solid, mature final girl – a nice mixture of vulnerable and indomitable. Why doesn’t the killer break one of the glass doors earlier? Well, we have 90 minutes to fill and it is that kinda movie. Some nights there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that kinda movie.

6

James Gray directs Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland in this space epic where a career astronaut follows his long lost father’s trajectory into the far reaches of the solar system in the hope of making contact.

There are two ways to approach Ad Astra. A space adventure with set pieces that include a moon buggy demolition derby and a horrific side rescue mission on an seemingly deserted laboratory. These sequences thrill and grip, come with such a measured regularity that Ad Astra can be broached as a mature thrillride in the same vein as The Martian. Yet even these set pieces have a sonic and visual sophistication that suggest Gray is aiming for something more ambitious. For Ad Astra can also be embraced as a character study of a lonely, career focussed man journeying into oblivion and slowly revealing his psychological cracks and emotional needs. An exploration into the soul of modern man, distant from his father yet on the exact same track and overly aware of the inadequacy of others he must rely on. A portrait of modern masculinity in and out of a vacuum. I’m going to be honest, I preferred the beautiful big screen rollercoaster elements but here is a generous work of cinema that scores each way. Pitt is excellent (again) as the closed-off questor. Gray finally cashes in on his long promised reputation. His previous films have all been museum grade forgeries. Explicit Coppola clones without the heart, noodling around ground broken by a superior creative decades before. There still are shades of that here… Hell… Ad Astra essentially has the plot of the film owing as much to that vibe (retracing the steps where the last pioneer generation overreached) as it does Apocalypse Now / Heart of Darkness in space. Yet for such a stark, sparse experience the key difference is this 8th film by Gray is never boring or cold even if it operates within the same core programming as his earlier heroic failures. Something in the code has finally debugged, after 30 years of Hollywood indulgence he’s finally made a bonafide good one.

8

Paul Verhoeven directs Sharon Stone, Michael Douglas and Jeanne Tripplehorn in this sex thriller where a sociopathic bisexual author is accused of murder, and seduces the cop enthralled by her dangerous lifestyle.

Premium trash, gory gloss. A whodunnit where who did it doesn’t matter as everyone’s doing it. A thriller where the lunging attacks and impressive car chases are overshadowed by the mind fuck games and aggressive fucking. Every time these characters get naked or unguarded then they are in more danger than in any of the shoot-outs. Intimacy is the killer, baring all is the only way to break the other. Stone is brilliant here. Her Catherine Tramell; in control yet vulnerable, poisonous yet possibly innocent. That iconic scene where she reveals her noo-noo is infamous but pointedly that’s all she reveals in a police interrogation. She still holds all the cards, her attractive body is just a tool she has mastered the most obviously. Whether you approach her as villain or victor, she is never victim. A rarity. I’d struggle to think of another modern Hollywood film that presents such a complex yet teasingly undefined female character as this. The role of a lifetime. It is an undeniably erotic film… mixing lingering acts of sexual violence with high end fashion framing gorgeous bodies. Now, I’m not saying Basic Instinct is perfect. The ending is a slight fudge, wanting to have its twisty cake and eat it, and while there are a fair few dated wasteful moments that push it firmly into 1990s camp. Warts and all, this is a DVD we watch with satisfying regularity in the Carroll household. Probably more so than a lot of your wholemeal movie classics. I just have to hear that floating, thrusting seductive score and know I’m going to be enthralled and tickled for two hours. Jerry Goldsmith rips-off Bernard Herrmann yet it heralds a superb evening of neo-noir naughtiness. One so brazen, repeat viewings are mandatory.

8

Kieran Darcy-Smith directs Woody Harrelson, Liam Hemsworth and Alice Braga in this western where a Texas Ranger travels to the compound of a holy man who killed his Daddy years ago, investigating a potential massacre of Mexicans.

Lurches between boring and deviant – Harrelson chews up a poorly written role. There’s a decent mystery plot, not adequately focused on, and some bloody confrontations hit the right nerve in the final act. Whether you make it through that lacklustre slog at the start to get to the good stuff though is your own decision.

5

Robert Day directs Tony Hancock, George Sanders and Paul Massie in this comedy where an accounting clerk abandons his humdrum job to become an artist on the Parisian Left Bank.

Charming, almost exclusively due to Hancock’s very unique screen persona. A sexless Carry On, a pratfall-free Norman Wisdom film, a biteless Ealing comedy. This has the feel, look and qualities of all these other more defined British larks but interestingly rarely aims for explicit laughs. As a showcase for Hancock the comedian it doesn’t entirely do its job, as a light drama needling at the outmoded idea of conformity it is a very relaxing watch.

6

Steve Oram directs himself, Tom Meetem and Julian Rhind-Tutt in this surreal comedy where South London suburbanites behave like inarticulate apes, and a battle for dominance emerges.

A one joke concept, Buñuellian but not very funny. It has consistency in its challenging strangeness that is admirable but struggles to make any greater points as it circles its sole idea.

4

Nicholas Ray directs Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame and Martha Stewart in this noir romance where a troubled woman falls for the hot tempered, hard drinking screenwriter she has just provided an alibi for… but what if he did murder that girl?

Watched with Natalie at the Cameo on her birthday. Dark, brooding, poetic, sexy, witty, mysterious. This is a real fucking movie. Mood: a whisky glass stained with blood and lipstick. Get lost in its spell. Perfection.

10

Lorene Scafaria directs Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu and Lili Reinhart in this true crime tale of NY lap dancers who drugged their white collar marks and maxed out their corporate cards for a better life.

A neon soaked, diamanté studded, juicy jiggling crowd pleaser. It owes a massive debt to Soderbergh; he is the only other director to put Jenny From The Block to such fantastic use, present strippers humanely while still getting all the visual bump ‘n’ grind right, and tell a con job in such a high wire fractured, yet deeply personal, way. No mere copycat though, Scafaria manages to spin the story away from being an alternative Wolf of Wiggling Wall Street, suddenly turning the honey trap power bitches into fake nail and big purse modern day version of A League of Their Own. In all honesty Hustlers feels like a lot of movies you’ve already seen… J-Lo and Wu’s initial interactions have all the form of a prison movie friendship… but these are movies you love, mashed up in such a way that only fleeting traces of the original influences are detectable. And Lili Reinhart’s adorably nervous good girl steals at least five scenes by dry retching… you don’t see that kinda body wit at the multiplex all that often.

8

Lamberto Bava directs Natasha Hovey, Urbano Baverini and Fiore Argento in this Argento produced horror about a Berlin cinema where the patrons start turning into things far, far worse than what is being projected up there on the big screen.

A cinema full of nerds, whores and punks slowly warp into killer freaks from hell. The finale involves a motorbike, a samurai sword and a helicopter… then things get apocalyptic. The church-like cinema is a glorious mind-boggling maze, the effects spurt and shift with a gloopy satisfaction. The girls simper and turn nasty hotly. After quite a lot of arty farty flicks, it was nice to watch a real beast of a movie on its mad, rabid rampage. A score to die for too.

8

Małgoska Szumowska directs Juliette Binoche, Joanna Kulig and Anaïs Demoustier in this drama about a middle aged journalist investigating college girls who become prostitutes in Paris.

A politically troubling film. On one hand it presents the pressures, risks and exploitation of young working class girls who sell their bodies. Very feminist in giving a voice to these silent, hidden, brave women. On the other hand you have some of the hottest actresses in European arthouse cinema baring all, doing degrading acts in seductive poses and it is all wonderfully lit. So Elles is one half polemic, the other half whacking material for the dirty mac brigade. I have no issue with either but it hardly sits well together. I guess what I really did like about Elles (apart from the obvious) is that it not only made clear it is Juliette Binoche’s class of person creating the conditions in which the young girls have to commodify their bodies but they want to remain ignorant it is precisely their type who are to blame. The journalist doesn’t fully grasp it is men like her rich husband who buy this type of girl for the night until the closing scenes, set the rents they can’t afford, arrange the bureaucracy that means there is no real safety net when these lower income workers find they cannot afford the middle class lifestyle of university. One woman talks of never forgetting the smell, Binoche’s posho assumes she means semen but she actually means her housing estate she left for educational advancement among the monied. Another describes the first meal her john makes her before pissing in her mouth, later Binoche unthinkingly prepares the same Waitrose-level cookery – too busy to see the parallel Szumowska is making. The film in its own way preempts my current feelings on identity politics. If everyone can make themselves a victim of an unjust society then suddenly the rich who are the biggest problem, the most exploitative, can let themselves off the hook because of some vague general gender / sexuality / race prejudice that other people suffer from and they co-opt. That’s not the main thrust of Elles, and there is some very arousing thrusting, but I liked the fact it was there in plain sight.

6