Anatole Litvak directs Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif and Tom Courtney in this murder mystery war film, where a good German officer tries to figure out which of his superiors is slicing up prostitutes during the European theatre of war.

A massive afternoon devourer… the kinda film that could never live up to its six minute credit sequence. An easy dozen fantastic stars and character actors names framed by fetishising shots of Nazi uniforms and bombastic military marching band pomp. The Jack-The-Ripper in jackboots detective story gets sidelined for the plot of Operation Valkyrie in the last hour but either story allows for gloriously hammy grandstanding, spectacular action and attractive turns from O’Toole and a very self determined Joanna Pettet. It is no Doctor Zhivago but for a shameless David Lean wannabe epic it certainly gives dated old Lawrence of Arabia a run for its money. At least this knows it is nasty, distasteful, excessively budgeted hokum.

8

Just Jaeckin directs Sylvia Kristel, Nicholas Clay and Shane Briant in this Cannon Film Group’s adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s controversial and explicit upper class wife and manly servant love affair.

Derided on release and still of poor repute, this really ain’t half bad. Sure, Kristel and Clay give one note performances (often clunkingly dubbed) but their naked bodies look spectacular together. If you’ve turned up solely for the First Lady of Soft Porn she delivers everything you’d expect in terms of arty smut yet surprisingly her Mellor’s gets more flesh baring shots. It dashes through the plot and some of the deeper themes, there’s no real sophistication to this adaptation… but if you were studying the text for A-Levels you’d still get everything you’d need in terms of characters, narrative and philosophical ideas from this race across the story. York notes for the horny. Considering it is Cannon, studio heads Golan & Globus are infamous for their cheapo productions, it looks bloody marvellous. The rich period detail from lacy stockings to convincingly opulent location production values are gorgeous, albeit filmed in that hazy, Vaseline lensed “Letter to Playboy” way. Anton Furst who’d go on to do Production Design for Tim Burton’s Batman and Neil Jordan’s Company of Wolves gets an early credit here. And while the leads are cast for their looks and lack of inhibitions, Shane Briant and Ann Mitchell gift us subtle, complex and often teasingly inscrutable bits of acting as the sidelined Lord Chatterley and his nurse respectively. I’ve watched this twice in my lifetime, enjoyed it both times and for a night of classy exploitation I’d argue it is quite the hidden gem.

7

Pedro Almodóvar directs Carmen Maura, Angel de Andres-Lopez and Chus Lampreave in this kitchen sink farce where a cleaning lady watches her family fall apart in a mundane world of sex and drugs.

I don’t think Almodóvar will ever direct a film I love but I am enjoying these early comedies much more than I expected. They go in random directions but the kink and strangeness never seems forced. While not laugh-out-loud funny I was certainly never bored. The bursts of sex and violence amongst the everyday worked really well.

6

Matt Palmer directs Jack Lowden, Martin McCann and Tony Curran in this Scottish thriller where two city boys have to cover up a tragic death in a small hunting community, surrounded by those who have already marked them out as trouble.

Passable but the lack of any sympathetic or attractive lead characters means you never really care what happens next. Often what should be a hard, little throwaway thriller undermines itself by constantly issuing curveball “Get out of jail free” cards to the two prats scrabbling to escape. The intention is to replicate an earthy mixture of Shallow Grave, The Wicker Man and The Last Great Wilderness. Yet the encroaching strangeness and unavoidable doom of those superior Scottish films isn’t anywhere in the mix. It isn’t awful moment by moment, the production values are strong and Kate Bracken makes a nice impression as Iona, the town’s one humane character.

5

Jim Fields & Michael Gramaglia direct Dee Dee Ramone, Joey Ramone and Tommy Ramone in this music documentary charting the rise and fall of the NY punk band that sold a billion t-shirts.

Scraps of footage and talking heads are smashed together into a life story that contradicts itself, gets lost in repetitions and doesn’t present the music particularly well. This really struggled to hold my attention.

4

Michael Mann directs James Caan, Tuesday Weld and James Belushi in this neo-noir where an independent safe cracker with a penchant for “ice” makes a deal with an organised crime devil.

Fluorescent light ravages the night sky. These are dark times, with no place to hide. A jagged cityscape where the utilitarian and the modern offer no comfort. An artificial world of glass, chrome and brick ready to explode. A Michael Mann world. James Caan’s titular Thief suits it. At one point he stabs spears of incandescent illumination into an “impenetrable” steel safe. He starts out master of his domain, smooth operator, beholden to no man, fingers in legitimate pies. Greed, love, want… three things gets him to break his code, get in with people who want to use him, control him, own him. The shady cops he can handle. The old boss who can give him everything he desires though, that man he underestimates. He wants a kid, a pragmatic normal life with Tuesday Weld (her beautiful black eyes have seen the same harshness and chaos this lifestyle brings), a clean life with no risk, his father figure to die free. The criminals aren’t true to their word. They deliver but the price is they want him forever. You can’t trust criminals. So Caan burns his world down. If he can’t be his own master, be in control, be free then he is going out with a scorched earth bang. Fuck them. This is primal genre work. Ugly and beautiful. Existential and lean. Full of meaningful dialogue and stoic, impactful set pieces. No excess. Just pure. Not basic. Pure.

8

Agnes Varda directs Sandrine Bonnaire, Macha Méril and Yolande Moreau in this drama exploring people’s encounters with a free spirited, wandering homeless girl and how their lives where affected by meeting her.

Like Sunset Boulevard, we start with our protagonist dead. Then like a documentary, we hear people remember their temporary interactions with her, often Rashomon style, as their prejudices do not tallying with the footage dramatised onscreen. Yet long after she has moved onto the next part of her journey, we return to the less “free” ensemble, see their lives are often just as vulnerable and limited as her spartan, shelterless movements. Especially the other women. Despite the grim subject matter and muddy look this isn’t all misery and polemic. There are moments of wit, moments where Bonnaire’s magnetic lead turn defiantly inspire you with her pig headed determination. For a film that starts and then circles back to such a doomed destination, the journey is full of pleasure and intelligence.

8

Andy Muschietti directs Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy and Bill Hader in this “27 years later…” horror sequel where The Losers have grown-up and forgotten all about the killer clown beast that terrorised them… until Mike calls them all up and reminds them.

We rewatched Chapter One in the build up to this being released. A solidly entertaining prestige horror motored by a strong child cast. Here the bigger name adults don’t hit the same Stand By Me / Stranger Things vibe. So we get flashbacks (unused editing room trims) to the previous ensemble padding out the middle hour. It forces the plot to bloat, bogging IT 2 into a bum numbing bore. I kinda knew it was never going to be nimble, never pacy, but this is self-indulgent and self-important to deathly levels. For example Muschietti reaches a neato final punctuation shot of the survivors staring at a reflection of their younger selves in a Derry shop window. Then adds four more codas. None of which are particularly cathartic, crowd pleasing or iconic. The two best scare sequences (a genuinely unsettling hate crime and a sadly brutal child murder) do not involve any of the main cast. There are good King inspired moments dotted in and around all this hubris but they get lost in an ocean of spoilt storytelling largesse. And there just doesn’t feel like enough Pennywise… The same ground covered without the charm, the scares diluted and uninvolving, the key brand monster relegated to measly support in his own movie. An overlong, if at least ambitious, misfire. We all bloat down here.

5

Pedro Almodóvar directs Julieta Serrano, Chus Lampreave and Marisa Paredes in this comedy where a nightclub singer hides out in a nunnery full of eccentric sisters.

A pleasant, relatively gentle farce featuring heroin, tigers and smutty erotica. Was it an influence on Sister Act?

6

The Guardian have published their random selection of a 100 films of the past 20 years. It certainly isn’t definitive. There’s only about a dozen the average cinema-goer would have had multiplex or streaming access to. That’s roughly the same amount that overlap with my own personal choices here. I reckon there are a lot more here the unpaid, amateur blockbuster fan will agree with, than not. Though their number one (There Will Be Blood – a great film) probably fell out of the list by only a few places. My own controversial preferences are here; only one Marvel Studios film, Moneyball in pole position, my love of unwieldy, much maligned, ambitious, adult blockbusters become mainstays from entry 38 onwards. Only 5 are from non-English speaking countries though that is very much my bad, though equally I am surprised there isn’t more horror. Happy disagreeing – just please remember about 50 of the best films ever were released in 1999 which is why X, Y and Z are ineligible for this list!

1. Moneyball
2. No Country For Old Men
3. Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2
4. Dunkirk
5. Toy Story 3
6. The Fighter
7. Zodiac
8. Kill List
9. The Bourne Supremacy
10. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
11. The Bourne Identity
12. Mystic River
13. The Mist
14. The Royal Tenenbaums
15. Phantom Thread
16. La La Land
17. Memento
18. Amelie
19. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
20. The Dark Knight
21. Whiplash
22. The Prestige
23. 25th Hour
24. Gran Torino
25. Mad Max: Fury Road
26. Inception
27. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
28. A Prophet
29. High Fidelity
30. Children Of Men
31. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
32. Sightseers
33. Drive
34. Green Room
35. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
36. The Social Network
37. Black Swan
38. Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice
39. Bad Santa
40. The Illusionist
41. Battle of the Sexes
42. Ghost in the Shell
43. Whip It!
44. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
45. Brokeback Mountain
46. Quantum of Solace
47. American Psycho
48. Dragged Across Concrete
49. The Guard
50. Captain Philips
51. City of God
52. The Martian
53. Only God Forgives
54. The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers
55. The Old Man and the Gun
56. The Avengers: Infinity War
57. The Jungle Book
58. Casino Royale
59. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
60. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
61. Inside Man
62. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
63. Factotum
64. The Conjuring
65. X-Men: Days of Future Past
66. 28 Days Later
67. Unbreakable
68. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
69. Prometheus
70. Best in Show
71. The Wolf of Wall Street
72. Comedian
73. Punch Drunk Love
74. Dredd
75. Gone Baby Gone
76. Frozen
77. Way of the Gun
78. Spider-Man: Into the Spidey-Verse
79. Nine Queens
80. X-Men
81. Sexy Beast
82. Django Unchained
83. A Bittersweet Life
84. Crimson Peak
85. The Cabin in the Woods
86. The Lives of Others
87. Birdman
88. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
89. Ali
90. Atonement
91. Moonrise Kingdom
92. The Spectacular Now
93. Miami Vice
94. X-Men 2
95. In Bruges
96. Donnie Darko
97. It Follows
98. Open Range
99. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
100. Seabiscuit