Joel Schumacher directs Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix and James Gandolfini in this detective thriller where an investigator needs to discover whether a reel of ‘snuff’ footage is real.

I remember this being a disappointment on release. Cage was at the height of his box office powers. Andrew Kevin Walker’s script was a selling point after the notoriety of Se7en and The Game. Schumacher was a Hollywood man but if you looked at his Falling Down / Flatliners / A Time To Kill output, not the worst marriage of material and hack. And for the first hour it gets away with it. Cage is subdued but committed. The sleazy world of porn and BDSM that he edges around is as convincing as the one George C Scott visited 20 years previously in the superior Hardcore. Joaquin makes for a show-stealing sidekick. Schumacher xeroxes the autumnal look and morbid pacing from Fincher’s adaptations of AKWs work. Walker has said that Schumacher entirely diluted his script. The draft I’ve read is only a shade darker. Maybe a better director would amp up the sad, threatening atmosphere… but Schumacher as far as I can read is pretty faithful to what is on the page. Yet we tonally go off the rails at the end of the second act. The mystery element gets wrapped up too quickly. Believability goes out the window. The psychological abyss you suspect Cage’s family man is being dragged into is skirted over. The risk he puts his loved ones in by entering this world should be heart jolting yet never comes to a head. Violent pornographers, psychos in gimp masks, upper class conspiracies are dashed through toothlessly to get to a shootout in a warehouse and punch up in a cemetery. The ball is fumbled near the touchdown line. What could have exploded into a morally bankrupt rollercoaster just kinda peters out into comic book excess. From the maker of Batman Forever… and yet not as bad as I remember.

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Powell and Pressburger direct Robert Helpmann, Ludmilla Tchérina and Moira Shearer in this cinematic opera following the three fantastical romances of a gothic poet.

I ain’t an opera guy. I found massive swathes of this indecipherable. Yet I let the stunning visuals wash over me. They are camp, chintzy, horrific and gaudy. Moira Shearer as always is delectable, and gets loads of opportunities to show off her balletic prowess. You are going to see things here no other film has ever attempted. Dreamscapes. Yet I couldn’t recount the plot to you for toffee.

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Arthur Penn directs Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando and Kathleen Lloyd in this revisionist western where a group of rustlers are hunted by an eccentric regulator.

Derided on release, and infamous for Brando and Nicholson not getting along on set, you can see the issues with The Missouri Breaks. It lurches between comedy, romance, art film and actioner. Brando is unhinged, strangely accented, attired and behaved. You can tell his scenes are editing room salvage jobs from various improvised takes. He was legendary in his trademark wiping his arse with a script and derailing narratives by this point in his career. It is also obvious from the few scenes where he and Nicholson interact that it is highly likely they never stood in front of the camera together after the first week. Doesn’t kill the project though! Nicholson’s anti-chemistry with his co-star is palpable and appropriate. Brando’s shenanigans are memorable and mix-up otherwise solid bits of horse stealing and gingham clad seduction. A few decades on, without reputation, and you get a satisfying alternative cowboy flick with a hard edge, a soft heart and a quirky villain. And Harry Dean Stanton.

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Jane Campion directs Nicole Kidman, John Malkovich and Barbara Hershey in this feminist adaptation of Henry James’ classic novel about a young heiress marrying the wrong man.

It looks elegant down to the very last stitch, Campion adds jolts of formal disruption and on paper you couldn’t find a more appropriate cast. Yet it never comes to life, never grabs you. Cinematic taxidermy.

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Elliot Silverstein directs Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin and Michael Callan in this musical comedy western about an accidental female outlaw.

Big, silly, not very sharp. Fonda is cartoonishly slinky, Marvin somehow picks up an Oscar for his laziest performance, Nat King Cole crops up as Greek Chorus style figure. There’s nothing wrong with it, its busy with shouty, shorty, flirty stuff. But there ain’t much to write home about either.

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Julian Schnabel directs Willem Dafoe, Rupert Friend and Oscar Isaac in this look at the last chaotic years of Vincent Van Gogh’s life.

This felt like being on the wrong side of eternity’s gate.

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Ralph Fiennes directs Oleg Ivenko, himself and Adèle Exarchopoulos in this historical drama charting the ballet career of Rudolf Nureyev, building up to his defection from the USSR to the West in 1961.

Dull, dull, dull, dull, dull, some muted dancing, dull then we get a thirty minute one act play set in a Paris airport where Nureyev has to decide to risk his life and abandon is career over a cafe au lait. That sequence is perfectly pitched and paced. All the childhood flashbacks and training, bed hopping and politics are ballast to make a feature length film from a great 30 minute short.

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Peter Yates directs William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver and James Woods in this thriller where a janitor discovers a murder and uses his insider knowledge on the crime to leverage dates from a hot and hungry newshound.

A very strange Friday night throwaway thriller. Mossad people smugglers, Vietnam vets, affairs, disabled dads and dosed up pet dogs are piled on top of what should be quite a simple genre entertainment. The romance is icky (Hurt plays a manipulative weirdo… one who certainly wouldn’t be the hero in this current century’s cinema), the action sequences crop up randomly. It just never settles into anything consistent. Which is not to say barely connected scene to barely connected scene, this isn’t passable.

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Tim Burton directs Danny DeVito, Michael Keaton and Colin Farrell in this remake of the flying elephant circus soap.

Whisper it but I think Tim Burton might be getting his mojo back. This is chaotic, maudlin and distracted yet it hits a visual authenticity that harks back to the bubblegum gothic that established him. A nostalgic cast, a trace of heart and soul. Like Miss Peregrine this isn’t a classic but it feels just a little more wholemeal than recent remakes and retreads by the former wunderkind. Circus freaks and and theme park satires, Burton’s touchstones and strengths find a home in a film that seems openly critical of Walt Disney-esque figures. Keaton’s otherworldly entertainment tycoon is a Satan in a luxury car. Strange for a remake of a Mousehouse property paid for, produced and put out by the corporation that bears his name to make their own figurehead the big bad?

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My Top 10 Michael Keaton Movies

1. Out of Sight (1998)

2. Batman (1989)

3. Batman Returns (1992)

4. The Paper (1994)

5. Toy Story 3 (2010)

6. Birdman (2014)

7. Beetlejuice (1988)

8. Jackie Brown (1997)

9. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

10. Spotlight (2015)

Asghar Farhadi directs Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Ricardo Darín in this psychological thriller where a wedding reunion becomes a kidnapping mystery.

Watchable due to the talent involved, though only Javier Bardem’s star power is satisfyingly utilised throughout the lengthy running time. The set-up for an intense hostage negotiation gets sidelined by soapy revelations and crippling grief. By no means a bad film yet one that doesn’t stretch itself in any aspect.

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