Jacques Tourneur directs Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins and Niall MacGinnis in this supernatural curse movie where a sorcerer who lives with his Mum puts a murderous hex on all who doubt his powers.

A really unique British genre film in that it has scenes and sequences that feel completely original and unrepeated in cinematic horror. The sceptics at the seance, a children’s party that exposes the villian’s psychological core, and that train track final reveal are all glorious swathes of celluloid grotesque. MacGinnis and Athene Seyler, as the warlock and his sweet old ma respectively, put in great camp performances. The less said about the vanilla protagonists the better though. A monochrome treat.

7

Mel Brooks directs Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn in the spoof western about a black sheriff taking on the railroads.

One of those classics I’m going to get in trouble for feeling a bit “meh” about. The support is spirited, I’ve always got time for Gene Wilder – one of my comedy heroes. Maybe his presence means I crave Richard Pryor in the lead. Cleavon Little seems a little stiff. Sad truth is that most of the skits don’t make me personally laugh… which surely is the only true measuring stick for a comedy.

5

Park Chan-wook directs Im Soo-jung, Rain and Kim Byeong-ok in this surreal romcom where two asylum patients fall in love, one of whom believes herself to be a killer cyborg.

A change of pace for the Oldboy auteur shifting between sweet, colourful and utterly baffling. A bit too random to hold my attention, it does have some wonderfully composed images.

5

Quentin Tarantino directs Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio in this western where a slave is freed and teams up with a bounty hunter to win back his beloved from a plantation.

Probably Tarantino’s funniest film and truest genre experience. Six shooters, horses, hats. Period accurate but in a vaudeville, seventies exploitation perspective of what is true and what has happened and what fantasy we want. There are three brilliant performances here. Waltz is superlative as the white saviour… the polar opposite of his Hans Landa in morals but exactly on point in verbosity and calm under pressure. DiCaprio plays stupendously against type as the villainous Calvin Candie -a dolt who feels justifiably superior in his wanton cruelty. And Samuel L Jackson is damn near magical as The Big House overseer Stephen. His momentary shifts between playacting, conniving, assessing and controlling is a comic performance par excellence. He should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, should have won that Oscar. Which brings us to Django’s one flaw… Foxx’s lead is a bit too blank. He feels perceptibly like an absence of cool whenever the focus is on him. Once two of those lower billed, yet stellar, players bite the dust the film still has a reel left in it. The ensuing violence is gloopy fun, but the scenes have none of the verbal vim that the better actors bring to the first two hours. It is a small hurdle that trips Django Unchained up from reaching perfection.

9

David Evans directs Colin Firth, Ruth Gemmell and Mark Strong in this romantic comedy where a career orientated teacher falls for a loutish football fan who can’t commit to her over his Saturday fixtures.

Something of a forgotten gem among the Brit-Rom-Com period of the late 90s, this to me is the best of the cycle. I was never really into football as a kid. My Dad, uncles and cousins brought me along to all the QPR home matches but I very rarely got caught up in the games. I’d spend the 90 minutes distracted by the programme, the occasional Roy of the Rovers comic they gave out or resting my forehead against the icy cold handrail of the concrete terrace. Football was unavoidable as a kid in the UK, you were defined by your ability on the playground, your team and your Panini sticker collection. I only really excelled at the latter two… QPR were going through a rare First Division golden patch -the Guinness sponsorship made the strip look extra cool- and I liked collecting stickers (though preferred the movie and TV based ones – my Thundercats collection rocked).

Based on Nick Hornby’s memoirs, Fever Pitch often gets being a football fanatic in that era bang to rights though. The crush of match days, the squeezing through the turnstiles, the chanting on the harsh grey unseated stands. I guess the tribal sense of belonging, the testosterone laddishness is more seductively captured here on film than the reality. The movie’s rose tinted view of the early nineties on the terraces takes in Hillsborough with sensitivities but avoids the unwavering paranoia I felt as a child that it could all kick off at any moment. The unease felt over constant presence of riot gear and police horses on Loftus Road, the dread over pubs you shouldn’t walk past on match days are primal emotions still embedded in me from those Saturdays in White City. Although it was a world I never fully embraced, it was one I was in a few weekends a month until I grew into the things that defined me… music, films, girls. These are Hornby’s other touchstones, explored more thoroughly in High Fidelity. A favourite of mine in my twenties, book and film. Yet I still have a soft spot for Fever Pitch. Maybe because its underlying message is footie is something you should grow out of if you want to succeed with the fairer sex.

The gender politics of the film aren’t perfect. Hornby avatar Paul is stereotypically immature and insensitive. A man child. He hasn’t grown out of the sense of belonging match days with his absent Dad (Neil Pearson -standing out in a small but well sketched role) gave him. He likes the comforting regularity of the football year. The predictable annual cycle of matches that means he won’t be abandoned by Arsenal. If he wasn’t such a good teacher and played by Mr Darcy himself you’d struggle to see why we as an audience would root for him to grow up and get his act together. Firth brings a natural charm to him, even in Paul’s more petulant moments, and he actually reminds me of a few of my leather jacketed, shaggy haired A-Level teachers. Men who probably always saw working in a college as a means to supporting their hobbies rather than a vocation but connected with the pupils better than the career teachers. Fag break legends.

Ruth Gemmell has a harder schlep. Her Sarah can be a bit of a demanding shrew as written. It is difficult to figure out what she sees in Paul apart from proximity. She wants to change him for the better. But surely there are less demanding renovations? Luckily Gemmell is sexy and believable in her performance. She convinces there is some glimmer of hope in the mismatched pairing. You want them to work for her sake. She’s worked consistently since 1997 but this is probably the role of her that resonated most with the general public. She’s helped by a banging soundtrack of earlier 90s hits that sweep us along the rougher patches in their relationship and gives the street party finale a real sense of celebratory magic. You’ll leave Fever Pitch with a big smile on your face, surprised they’ve pulled such an unlikely, slightly dated will-they-won’t-they dynamic off. Goal!

8

Katharina Wyss directs Loane Balthasar, Annina Walt and Sabine Timoteo in this teen drama where a young actress struggles to connect with the real world.

Well shot and sensitively acted this covers much of the same ground as Madeline’s Madeline. Yet far less grating.

5

Ernest R Dickerson directs William Sadler, Jada Pinkett and Billy Zane in this horror about a man trying to protect a vial of Jesus blood from a devil.

More consistent and better assembled than it’s follow-up yet somehow less memorable. A decent enough evening killer.

5

Jim Jarmusch directs Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloë Sevingy in this ensemble horror comedy where zombies take over a self-aware deadpan town.

Jarmusch has been subverting genre for years, making films of the mundane moment other filmmakers chop out or never imagine. This half hearted take on the walking dead though just doesn’t land. A genre that has had as many superior comedy infused variations as pure horror entries already (Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, Warm Bodies to name three) and whose genesis was with the satirical George Romero. The jokes Jarmusch wants to make have been done to death by livelier productions, the political points (about mindless consumerism and waning individuality) he churns up were already front and centre in Romero’s own Dawn of the Dead… way back in 1978. Which leaves The Dead Don’t Die resting on its “strengths” as an entertainment. It is too weak willed as a horror, too low energy as a comedy. Sure… you expect cold readings from both Bill Murray and Adam Driver, but they are both so monotone here that any trace of wit in the script is lost. As for Chloë Sevingy’s whiny coward character, it feels like a misogynistic betrayal of a great actress and something that wouldn’t even have passed muster in a straight horror post-Scream… let alone woke 2019. I’m sure the intention wasn’t there to create such a hateful caricature of a weak woman but, by God, it scans as such. Disappointing

3

Tobe Hooper directs Hunter Carson, Karen Black and Timothy Bottoms in this remake of the sci-fi horror from the 1950s where aliens exert mind control on a town’s population.

A very haphazard film. Told from a child’s POV, it has a naive innocence. Maybe it has retained that simplistic vibe from the 50s source material but it really doesn’t work. You have a prepubescent in a horror situation, where he is the only one behaving rationally or heroically. You can’t really get scared for him and the narrative balloons to take in way too much scale for him to still feel like a valid lead by third act. The humour might be tongue in cheek but doesn’t hit. Only some gloopy creature FX work makes this watchable.

3

The Coen Brothers direct Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones in this western neo-noir thriller where a Vietnam vet with a case full of money, an assassin with a nihilistic code and a cautious lawman find themselves in a deadly chase.

One of the finest films ever made – expertly cast, right down to the one line characters, and somehow looking like both a comic book fantasy and a mundane reality in every shot. Thank you Roger Deakins… master of twilight cinematography and roadside dryness. The stalk and kill sequences have a compelling beauty to them. They click over with a well oiled mechanism’s certainty and precision, kinetic set pieces in fatalism. Carter Burwell’s atonal score scrapes all hope from the proceedings – one pause or wrong move and there’s nothing but cruel nature and fate out there. Cormac McCarthy’s dark musing on mankind is given room to breathe – the third act is one of the strangest yet most memorable in mainstream cinema. Leaving a simple plot abandoned full of questions, maybes and unseen grim certainties. Blackly hilarious too. When you aren’t glued to the screen in danger, you are chuckling at the poor gormless side characters just trying to get on with their day, oblivious to the maelstrom we are in. Perfection. “Call it, Friendo!”

10