Tom Gries directs Charles Bronson, Richard Crenna and Ben Johnson in this Alistair McLean thriller where a steam train making its way through the Wild West contains a conspiracy that is murdering the innocent passengers.

A movie star I could never get my head around is Charles Bronson. He’s wrinkled like a walnut, pugnacious and void of any real personality. I get the feeling he only existed to mop up the leftover projects than Clint and Steve McQueen deemed beneath them. But whereas those two genuine legends brought a charm and buried sparkle to the screen amid their gruff adventuring (they were their era’s embodiment of old fashioned ruggedness combined with a new self-aware cool), he is just a cowpuncher whose response to the changing cultural landscape was the occasional drop kick. Your proper stars felt like they moved with counter culture, kept their heads above the hippy movement by being both a counterpoint and a veiled acceptance. Whereas Bronson probably actively pursued scripts where he could genocide the youth movement or ignore it all together. McQueen has McGraw and Clint Sondra Locke. Their respective partners on and off screen. McGraw was a proper star in her own right. Locke had very little likability. Pointedly Bronson’s wife / perennial romantic interest was Jill Ireland. She’s a million times more charismatic than him. A far better actress than Locke by any measure, warmer with more than one setting on her emotional register. She and the supporting cast are the best thing in this. Charles Durning, Ed Lauter and David Huddlestone too. An ensemble whodunnit on a Western train… that descends into actioner when it turns out nearly everyone still alive is in on the plot. Would it be improved by McQueen being the lead? He probably would have found it old hat, only the later set pieces are passable. Would Clint have elevated it? Nah, he would have swapped out Ireland for Locke. Thus one step forward and two back. Forgettable stuff but those B players and that in-the-wild location stunt work suggest a better man could have forced this project into being an action classic.

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Henry Hathaway, John Ford and George Marshall direct Debbie Reynolds, George Peppard and James Stewart in this all star, era spanning Western epic exploring manifest destiny from lone beaver trappers in the wilderness to the age of law, order and electricity.

Politically iffy as fuck but just marvel at the sheer goddamn scale of the thing. Genuinely all star, wonderous Cinerama action sequences and your afternoon thrillingly devoured. These may be the white man’s words but by God they sure make a big fuck-off movie.

7

Steve Miner directs Amy Steel, Adrienne King and Marta Kober in this slasher sequel where a new summer camp opens next door to “Camp Blood” and young jiggling flesh is butchered.

More of the lowest common denominator same. The few points to note are not improvements. The killer’s backstory is convoluted to the brink of delirium. Jason is avenging his mother’s death who was avenging his death and his age is off the chart. The highlight for returning viewers is a sequence where the first entry’s final girl is stalked around her apartment; “fans” of the film know at one point an unfortunate stunt cat will be visibly thrown through a window by some poor production assistant for a cheap jump scare… the tension towards the tacky cruelty is unbearable on repeated viewings. The “bad girl”, hired no doubt for her two massive… ahem… talents, turned out to be underage so her much promised nudity has been cut. None of those trivial things make this in anyway required watching. There is no struggling for a break Kevin Bacon… we haven’t quite yet found that iconic hockey mask. For completists only.

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Peter Strickland directs Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Leo Bill and Hayley Squires in this camp British horror where a murderous dress connects its owners to a demented department store.

What starts out as relatively simple premise for a self-consciously mannered horror (cursed item, vampiric otherworldly shop of ominous mysteries) becomes a centrifuge for lots of ideas to spin around. The comical loneliness of a divorcee in a world of inadequates. Menstruating mannequins. A bank with soft sold Kafka-esque performance reviews. A washing machine repairman with sexually hypnotic descriptive powers. A washing machine repair business run like a cartel. All with the visuals palette of a seventies John Lewis, lit like a Tale of the Unexpected. This is an exercise in deadpan parodic style over substance. Not all of the beautiful puzzle pieces scattered are neatly slotted together. There’s a moment well past the midway point where the plot resets (think like Lost Highway or Full Metal Jacket) and you lose a smidge of investment. The restart eventually satisfies, broadening the scope and realigning the intentions of Strickland. This is a satire bathing in the weirdness of horror. The Channel 4 sitcom interludes and Marianne Jean Baptiste’s brilliant, sensitive performance don’t really fit in a pure shocker. In Fabric is a more unruly, ambitious boondoggle. One that is often formally spellbinding and persuasively queer enough to get lost in.

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Lee Unkrich directs Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Joan Cusack in this animated classic where the toys face a new home now Andy is going to college; day care!

First time I watched this at the cinema, it got me. Utterly. Twice. I thought those loyal and neuroses packed little toys were fucked. They held together in a little group… little plastic hands joined together… doomed to sink into a swirling vortex of fire at the dump. A lump formed in my throat. They were really going to do it. Pixar were going to holocaust the toys! And then deus ex machina… one set-up 15 years earlier, swooped in and saved them. Probably the finest cliffhanger ever… characters you loved imperilled with no obvious escape, snatched from the maw of oblivion… BY… THE… CLAW!!! Then it got me the second time. One last playtime. Was I crying like a bitch… no. Were my stubble flecked cheeks entirely dry? Certainly not. And on this rewatch I can say unequivocally that this is it. This is the best one. The thrillingest set-pieces. The prison movie vibe. The brilliant ensemble working perfectly. The hilarious addition of Ken (the start of the Michael Keaton comeback) and Mister Pricklepants. Chuckles the Clown’s film noir flashback. Buzz in spanish mode. That terrifying Monkey! Rex’s poor tail. That relentless, heartless grand finale. The very best of the best. It got me again. Eyes like a Scottish hillside.

10

Claire Denis directs Alice Houri, Grégoire Colin and Jacques Nolot in this French drama about a low level criminal and pizza chef who abandons his lurid sexual fantasies when his teenage sister turns up at his flat.

Rich and incident packed. Denis follows Boni’s compulsive desires well -sensually filming baking, dough, rabbits and gurgling coffee machines. The darker edges of the drama (loan sharks, possible incest) are the weakest but I think this is the first Denis film I watched where boredom never pervaded my brain.

6

Josh Cooley directs Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Annie Potts in this unexpected fourth entry to the beloved Toy Story trilogy… this time Woody is relegated in Bonnie’s affection so tries to protect her new favourite toy on a road trip; Forky, a creation who is so makeshift he wants to be trash.

We didn’t ask for this. Like John Wick 3, it does what it is great at so well you feel like a curmudgeon for pointing out the rest isn’t quite as good. You chuckle rather than laugh out loud. You admire the new characters but miss the ensemble as they move just out of the spotlight. New “villain” Gabby Gabby is a complex delight, Forky works. It looks fantastic… that opening rainfilled shot… WOW! But who turned up to the Toy Stories for their CGI artistry? It is a decent extension, a better summer blockbuster than nearly everything released so far this 2019. But markedly not as perfect as those three stone cold classics that it shares a name with. Legacy still intact but let’s not wear the details off a universally adored plaything, hey?

7

Todd Douglas Miller directs Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in the documentary where the first moon landing mission is captured using large format cameras.

Just dazzling. My favourite type of documentary is a collage of footage. No talking heads, no narration. We can experience being there, like we are making history. Spectating man’s greatest achievement… where’s my cardboard sun-visor? I want to watch the explosive lift off again, and again.

8

Mary Harron directs Gretchen Mol, Lili Taylor and Chris Bauer in this biopic of the 1950s bondage and nudes star.

Enjoyably unjudgmental; both the film and Mol’s approach to her iconic character. She’s revelatory in this… sunny, positive, more open than naive and never portrayed as stupid. She’s only ever the victim when she has no agency. The film mixes period appropriate black and white photography, reanimated antiquated establishing shots and bright 8mm holiday footage. Kink and flesh are kept to a relative minimum… I’m not sure whether that adds or detracts. While the film never reaches true greatness, it equally rarely puts a foot wrong. Far less distastefully formulaic than most Hollywood biographies.

7

Freddie Francis directs Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Donald Sutherland in this standard 60s Amicus horror anthology taking in killer plants, voodoo jazz tunes and art critics chased by vengeful hands.

Donald Sutherland plays Bob Carroll.

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