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

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