Lloyd Kramer directs Lindsay Lohan, Grant Bowler and Theresa Russell in this romantic biopic of the on-off Hollywood romance between Liz Taylor and Richard Burton.

And then this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. Plotted like a Wikipedia entry, there’s little to like about this TV movie where fallen star Lilo plays original scandal attracter, Cleopatra herself. The scenes move way too rapidly for her to do anything much more than look beautiful in Liz Taylor drag. Yet the story is chopped up by a few scenes set in a black box theatre where an out of time Burton and Taylor reminisce to camera. These mannered separations work, and Lohan feels like she’s putting in a markedly better performance during these interludes. The bulk of the film has no grain or heft, it is just a series of vapidly condensed incidents. Yet there’s camp pleasures in the budget opulence recreated. And bless her for all her public trouble, Lohan is an old school movie star who dominates the screen, even at half strength, even in tosh like this.

4

Lars Klevberg directs Aubrey Plaza, Brian Tyree Henry and Mark Hamill in this horror remake of the killer doll frames his child owner chiller.

A genuine surprise, in that it improves on just about every aspect of the terminally alright original. The kills are gorier, the humour hipper, the political swipes are on point. Everyone brings their A-game to a B-Movie. Plaza and Henry are self aware, seductive presences, imbuing the stock material with their unique personalities. The cinematography, editing and production design is all just noticeably cared about more than any of the previous franchise entries ever did. This is a great looking horror flick. As for Chucky being the result of dodgy AI rather than supernatural possession, it works. As for the kids being aged up slightly to give the heroes a Stranger Things vibe, it works. As for the often spectacular deaths being tied into a synced up app that controls multiple household appliances and security systems, it works (just). There could probably be one or two more murders in the first act is the only real gripe I can bring against the entire production. Child’s Play doesn’t reinvent the wheel but certainly adds embellishments to a tired, unambitious series that acerbate the entertainment and quality. I’m not going to make any argument that this is a new horror classic but the upgrades are winning, you leave the multiplex happy you took a risk. Horror resurrections genuinely never get such loving, understanding overhauls. One in the eye for the defanged and slick Platinum Dunes crowd.

7

Lee Daniels directs Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey in this steamy 60s set thriller where a pair of journalists use a woman who writes to prisoners to access a killer.

Very lurid. Very rum. Very undisciplined. You get to see a lot of prestige actors vamp and camp it up. Nicole Kidman simulates a blowjob, Efron gets pissed on and is racist. McConaughey likes rough trade. There’s no denying the entertainment value in watching Hollywood’s best and brightest make an exploitation soap. And it’s not all rubbernecking. John Cusack does fantastic against type work as a hillbilly bad egg… his most exceptional screen work since his millennium heyday. Yet it is haphazard- good on atmosphere, bad on focus. The events tumble into each other with a random escalation, a messy pantomime that never convinces. Like Monster’s Ball, if so much tragic shit happened in a smalltown over a short period, well… shit… Mulder and Scully would be called in. Daniels employs every technique in the book to keep the plates spinning… split screen, discombobulated flashcuts. He’s no De Palma… there’s no playful control or cinematic grandstanding in the flourishes. This is everything but the kitchen sink filmmaking, it doesn’t really work but you can’t take your eyes off it while it all jiggles and flails about.

5

Maren Ade directs Peter Simonischek, Sandra Hüller and Ingrid Bisu in this comedy about an ageing father, with a taste for pranks, who invades his estranged business executive daughter’s life with his infantile whimsy.

As a dual character study of two lonely people Toni Erdmann is rich and commendable for taking the road less travelled. As a comedy it often is chucklesome in its cringeworthyness. And as a satire of modern corporate life and the fag end of globalisation, it has some apt points. It is not a laugh riot however, is leisurely paced and the change in the protagonists is marked but somehow still ambiguous. Fans of arthouse will no doubt sift more out of it but I found it to be a satisfying one-watcher.

6

Albert Brooks directs himself, Kathryn Harrold and Bruno Kirby in this romantic comedy about a movie editor who dumps a woman and then deals with the fallout.

The finest, funniest Brooks film I’ve seen – this is full of wit and self-loathing. A long weekend of bad behaviour from a needy man. It is quite, quite recognisable. Cinematically playful and unpredictably sly, this is a forgotten classic. Fans of Woody Allen and Nora Ephron will find a more self-aware, hipper, misanthropic alternative to their best works. Or if you are looking for a more emotionally intelligent Curb Your Enthusiasm, then it hits that sweet spot too.

9

Dominic Sena directs Hugh Jackman, John Travolta and Halle Berry in this crime actioner where a hacker is coerced into taking part in a billion dollar heist.

Starts well, ends messily… but on such a gargantuan scale that you can’t help but admire it. It is a big nothing movie. Speeches are made, tables turn, things explode, cyphers run for their lives, a bus flies… and not one plot point connects neatly to another. All flash, no bucket. Infamous for Halle Berry being paid an extra half a million dollars to show her boobs. They are nice tits but the moment feels cold, lifeless and forced much like the brainless razzle dazzle that occupies everything around them. Two hours of sledgehammer cinema.

5

Pablo Berger directs Maribel Verdú, Macarena García and Daniel Giménez Gacho in this monochrome warping of the Snow White fairy tale stealing its look from 1920s silent cinema and centring around a bullfighting dynasty.

A magical, often very sexy, pastiche. It could move a little faster in the opening stretch… this Snow White doesn’t become the fairest of them all until well after the midway point. The matador backdrop will prove distasteful to some. Yet any film that adds a mischievous chicken as an agent of narrative change is alright by me.

7

Renny Harlin directs Zi Yang, Richie Jen and Nick Cheung in this Hong Kong action thriller where morgue workers are held hostage by villains at Christmas.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder. Cliffhanger. The Long Kiss Goodnight. Harlin had a decent 90s Hollywood career of producing top end mayhem. This Asian career revival is smaller scale but actually works well. The narrative is a hard pump of chases, stand-offs, twists and opportune interruptions. There’s enough carnage and kinetics to sate the nostalgic action fan. It promises Die Hard in a morgue, it delivers Cliffhanger across a two storey building. The baddies want a bullet from a corpse. The hostages do everything they can to undermine and frustrate their armed transgressors. Nick Cheung makes for a nerdy reluctant hero, more Poirot than Jack Traven. Zi Yang is spunkily capable as his plucky assistant. Both end up with the ending you want for them. It just zips along pleasingly… loyal to what you’d expect from its director’s back catalogue, hitting the note you want from a HK gun flick. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel and it carries the crushed baggage of a production of its type. It is all a little too polished (especially the unlived-in setting), the humour is very dated, the smaller characters are one note and histrionic (a delivery driver turns up who you’d swear is a Sacha Baron Cohen creation if he were only a foot taller) and there are two too many subplots that are tied up way too neatly with little cumulative significance. But all in, all out… this is a Friday Night throwback that even when it wobbles, wobbles in a way familiar to the sub-genre it apes. Watched at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

7

Alan J. Pakula directs Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt and Rubén Blades in this thriller where a decent NYC beat cop discovers his pretty lodger is an IRA gunrunner.

Underwhelming but not the utter disaster it was tagged as on release. It is a film that painstakingly sets up its two protagonists for either a cat-and-mouse action finale or a more character based drama… then pigheadedly achieves neither. Pitt gets lost in the mix, Ford does a lot with weak material. It is hard for Ford to make a bad film, he just is utterly compelling on screen, even in watery broth like this. Pitt was quoted as saying this was “the most irresponsible piece of filmmaking” he’d ever seen. You can understand why… his part is diminished, the politics iffy, the reshoots adding very little to an uncertain mix. Yet it idles along glossily and there’s rarely a scene that couldn’t work well in a more lively film. Average, unspectacular, old fashioned.

5

My Top 10 Harrison Ford Movies

Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe directs Terry Gilliam, Johnny Depp and Jean Rochefort in this documentary following Gilliam’s thwarted attempt to adapt Don Quixote that suffered budget cuts, flash floods, inappropriate locations and sick leads.

When this ‘unmaking of’ was first released, we all viewed it as a humorous shambles. The series of bad luck occurrences that compounded to derail a Gilliam movie. He’d been there before with Brazil and Baron Munchausen… classics were finally born from those troubled production. This time we got an aborted project… we learnt what a gamble movie making is outside of the studio system. A few compromises and you no longer have any flexibility in your shooting schedule, a few acts of god and you no longer have a film. 15 years down the line and a version of his The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has finally been made, different cast, smaller scale… inaccessible currently to the average UK film fan. But on rewatching the first stumbling try, you realise the true tragedy unfolding is not that one story Gilliam attempted to tell was shuttered but that it was his reputation was destroyed. The Python animator had been one of the key visualist of my childhood. From Holy Grail to Fear & Loathing he produced grand, ornate, grotesque mega budget celluloid cornucopias. Since Jean Rochefort’s hernia, he has muddled about in lower budget messes and defanged studio projects. The appetite to fund his visions disappeared over those ten chaotic, uncontrollable days of non-shooting. The trust in him to deliver another 12 Monkeys or a Fisher King or Time Bandits by the money men vanished. His movies no longer make bank, his movies no longer had the resources to align his unique visual sense with a mainstream audiences’ quality control. We didn’t know it then but Lost in La Mancha isn’t about one movie not completed, but the genius permanently crippled.

6