Chris Smith directs Jim Carrey, Andy Kaufman and Milos Forman in this documentary looking back at the Man On the Moon biopic, and how living as comic hero Andy Kaufman drove megastar Jim Carrey over the edge of sanity.

This combined biography of Jim Carrey and Andy Kaufman doesn’t really have enough content to set it out as anything more than glorified DVD extra. As a précis of Kaufman’s unique genius you get the headlines, as a look into Carrey’s descent into method madness it becomes repetitive very quickly. Not that the candid shots of Danny DeVito and Paul Giamatti sighing and rolling their weary eyes in the background don’t have their own perverse pleasures. So there’s 90 minutes of footage if not 90 minutes of story. The documentary works best as a reassessment of Carrey, overnight sensation who hustled on the Canadian and Hollywood comedy circuit for decades before becoming the most bankable star of the Nineties. Star of comedy blockbusters who has unique films like The Cable Guy, The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine and, pointedly, Man on the Moon, filling out his CV at the height of his success. The present day Carrey comes across as a unhinged but adorable figure… aware he made some greats and didn’t take the easy sequel buck too often. He pushed himself when he could have taken a far easier route. The results are the rich yolk of his oeuvre. The famous talking head who stares at us intensely but benignly espouses his philosophies and spiritual justifications for his on-set craziness. He was channelling Kaufman. One feels on a different day the zen and self awareness of such a stand-alone comedy icon might be utterly different. 

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Stuart Rosenberg directs Robert Redford, Yaphet Kotto and Jane Alexander in this prison drama where an unconventional reformer tries to improve a brutal state farm.

Brubaker starts strong. The bleak and violent depiction of the prison is unflinching, incognito new warden Redford poses as an inmate to witness the dehumanising conditions first hand. Once he reveals himself to the administration and inmates the film becomes something a bit more conventional. You can tell it is a later work by Cool Hand Luke director Rosenberg and you can feel its future influence on The Shawshank Redemption. Hell, even a young Morgan Freeman crops up. And by “young” I mean early fifties. The more conventional battle against the system is decent enough, it even throws in a couple of low wattage action sequences, yet the haunting first act does feel a little squandered for the sake of a standard star vehicle.

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Louis Malle directs Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet and Georges Poujouly in this Parisian noir where a perfect murder is scuppered when the killer is trapped in the building’s elevator overnight, his partner in crime thinks he has abandoned her and two kids go on a joyride in his car.

Fate. Justice. Miles Davis soundtrack. Jeanne Moreau wandering the Champs-Élysées at night. Supercool.

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Christian Rivers directs Hera Hilmar, Hugo Weaving and Stephen Lang in this post apocalyptic adventure which imagines an Earth where people live on motorised, moving cities that cannibalise each other.

Mortal Engines is a blockbuster with many problems but one that I quite enjoyed almost inspite of itself. It blows its load early with a gargantuan chase sequence where hulking London tracks and harpoons a smaller township and swallows it whole. This thrilling 15 minutes is what I bought a ticket for. It delivers but then the concept is never particularly revisited. Why would’t we have a sequence where a smaller habitat manages to out run, outsmart or best the behemoth? A missed opportunity. Instead we get a Romancing the Stone / The 39 Steps odd couple (her – good but underwritten, him – annoying and given too much screentime) traversing the wasteland, trying to stop a conspiracy and defeat the villian. The villian is Hugo Weaving, and while again we aren’t seeing him in his best written role ever, watching Weaving play the heel is one of 21st century’s cinema’s surest things. We get a bonus baddie in Stephen Lang’s Shrike; an undead terminator-like tracking cyborg. His backstory and relation to our lead is the film’s most emotionally resonant mystery. For the half an hour when his palpable threat is the focus, the story comes to life and the pleasing Hera Hilmar proves her ability to carry such a monstrously sized production. Ultimately the production values make this. The Gilliam-esque cities, costume design and the flying machines dazzle the eyes. Frustratingly with all these strong elements the final act gives up on being anything special or satisfying and just apes the finale of A New Hope. Now that ain’t a terrible way to end a movie but Mortal Engines is such mixed bag we really need a distinctively spectacular set piece rather than a “Will This Do?” stop gap. A missed opportunity, difficult to recommend, but I can see myself revisiting it for the steampunk eye candy.

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Billy Wilder directs Ray Milland, Jane Wyman and Doris Dowling in this drama about an alcoholic writer who goes on his final bender.

All of that Wilder wit and glossy tightness but attached to a man’s descent into despair. Wilder puts his lead through through the ringer – taking in his corruption and degradation as he tries to have just one more drink. Sure the ending is a little too tidy but in the main this feels quite daring for its time.

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David Lowery directs Robert Redford, Sissy Spacek and Casey Affleck in this true life tale of Forrest Tucker, a career bank robber whose old age meant he was often overlooked by the authorities.

Just a marvellous movie. Slight but never without purpose. Redford shines as the charming rogue, all twinkle, wrinkle and leathery confidence. The movie seems like a celebration and an epilogue to his long Hollywood career. Both nostalgic tribute and playful culmination of 5 decades of handsome excellence in big screen acting. Lowery has assembled a perfect cast for Redford to bounce off of. They all manage to bring their own legacy and backstory to swiftly sketched parts. The movie doesn’t linger on cliche, it knows you’ve seen Out of Sight, Heat and The Hot Rock. So that the police procedural developments almost appear as glimpsed incidentals to the gentler, more endearing character study. Casey Affleck’s cop on the trail isn’t so much a nemesis as a younger man in a career rut who grows to admire his prey… much like the middle aged star himself must envy the back catalogue and creative freedom of his legendary co-star. Lowery adds a warm soundtrack, a lived in 16mm vision and even splices in classic footage of his icon from decades past to create a near perfect cinematic experience. I left the screen with a massive smile on my face.

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Ti West directs Ethan Hawke, Taissa Farmigia and John Travolta in the simple western revenge thriller.

Ti West is the unsung hero of modern genre filmmaking. He may not have directed a classic yet, but equally all his films are a long, long way from being duds. His take on a Western is typically cleanly entertaining. It looks the part, grips even when churning over those sweet old familiar cliches and gives the cast just enough room to imbue their stock roles with bonus personality. Everyone from Hawke’s haunted protagonist down to Burn Gorman’s running joke preacher character shine among the efficient dust and gunsmoke. And if you were scared this precision pastiche is too on the nose as a love letter to the cowboy revenge thriller… then just check out the cutest, most well trained dog ever to grace the big screen. In a Valley of Violence is worth being part of your movie collection just for this little scene stealer alone.

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My Top 10 Westerns

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
2. Dances With Wolves (1990)
3. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

4. Once Upon A Time In The West (1968)
5. Red River (1948)
6. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1975)
7. The Wild Bunch (1969)
8. The Magnificent Seven (1960)
9. Rio Bravo (1959)
10. The Searchers (1956)

Allan Moyle directs Trini Alvarado, Robin Johnson and Tim Curry in this teen movie about underage runaways who bond together and form a punk movement despite their divergent upbringing.

A flawed gem. For example – for a punk film, the soundtrack is decidedly New Wave. It doesn’t always convince – the unmentioned but obvious lesbian romance the girls are in, the strip bar where one innocently works, the meandering motivations of the adults. None of this stuff rings true and all slow things down. But when it is two kids rebelling, breaking out, making their (terrible) music it has a keen, seductive energy. The seedy corrupt Times Square where most of the location works takes place doesn’t exist any more. It looks vibrant and terrifying in films like this, Basket Case and They Might Be Giants. Tim Curry is good value as a radio DJ who wants to empower / exploit the girls. Robin Johnson should have been the breakout star of this, every frame of her brims with attitude and spunk.

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Gus Van Sant directs Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill and Rooney Mara in this real life tale of alcoholic / paraplegic / cartoonist John Callahan.

A very choppy, off putting experience. It wants to be an uplifting tale of recovery through art that retains a gallows humour and hipster detachment from manipulation. It plays like failed awards whore. The film is at its best when out living it large on a tragic bender with its doomed protagonist. Phoenix is just about fine in a role that often comes across as mawkish, badgering and self serving but his co stars (Hill, Mara, Jack Black) all interact with him with so little chemistry and so much etherealness that you are waiting for one or all three to reveal themselves as a fantasy figure. When nearly all of your big name supports ring so so false I assumed they are figments of the lead’s imagination then you know something has gone fundamentally wrong translating the narrative to screen. Neither a story well told nor particularly worth telling (some of his cartoons are snort inducing but I doubt we’d be watching a film about John Callahan the able bodied, sober, satirist).

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Louis Malle directs Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon and Kate Reid in this romantic neo-noir where a pensioner with dusty ties to the underworld and a self improving trainee croupier find themselves entangled in a drug deal in the derelict resort city.

Malle takes a disparate set of classic crime story background characters and promotes them to the forefront in a tale of compromise, attraction and arrogance. Lancaster is wonderful as the old numbers runner who finds himself with a score and a moll bunged into his lap. He embraces the risk and the glamour and the freedom, revitalised by the scam and the young neighbour dragged into his orbit. As Atlantic City is torn down and sanitised around them, these two dreamers live it large and go on the run. Malle isn’t solely about wish fulfilment. He’s no fairy godmother to his hustlers’ desires and audiences’ whims. As the lovers and dealers begin to disengage and get on with their lives a healthy dose of reality drops in. We love the white suited, fedora wearing gangster Lancaster easily inhabits with a movie star’s panache but know the mediocre coward of the written character is still hidden under the manners and fineries. His resigned acceptance when Sarandon abandons him with the score in her suitcase suggests dreams are for the young. If you aren’t living in your dream by the time you are grey and old, best to let the kids have them. Malle also delivers an intense chase sequence in an automated car park structure that thrills. A fine film.

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