Sam Fuller directs Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill and Robert Carradine in this WWII movie following the 1st Infantry from the Africa campaign to the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.

Based on Sam Fuller’s own combat experiences this episodic series of manly vignettes is very entertaining. I would wager that this is the last Hollywood studio release to treat war as an adventure, finding gallows humour in the camaraderie as often as it finds futility in the constant death. Lee Marvin turns in a fantastically gruff lead performance, one of his very best. 

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Akira Kurosawa directs Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Keiko Tsushima in this samurai epic about a destitute village under threat from bandits who hire seven warriors to defend them. 

I watched a YouTube visual essay called Every Frame a Painting about Kurosawa’s use of movement earlier this year. Just the additional knowledge of how he uses motion in the foreground and background and pivots characters in shifting dynamics opened this film up massively to me. Supreme artistry aside, it is a magical adventure full of cool moments and true moments. A lot more entrepreneurial in its playfulness when assembling the team in the first half (the final battles prove a tad drawn out from an action perspective). Mifune’s wildman wannabe is a marvel of improvised erraticness. He makes a good counterbalance to Takashi Shimura worldly wise leader. Both are proper distinctive cinema stars who act as accelerants to the rest of a firey ensemble. This is rich epic, still well worth investing a day into. Although I do personally prefer the colourful and shorter charms of The  Magnificent Seven… if you forced me to choose.

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Hirokazu Kore-eda directs Lily Franky, Sakura Ando and Maya Matsuoka in this drama about an extended family living hand to mouth and on the nick, who take in a bruised 5 year old left out on her parents’ balcony every night. 

A very ingratiating humanist drama. There are seductive modern day echoes of Dickens, Oliver Twist in particular. A makeshift family grift and subsist together. Enviably close in practice yet the joins of the low level con team prove to be less predictable than you first assume. They have achieved a loving harmony in their poverty, one that their “kidnapped” new ward flourishes within. Life is better with stolen gluten cakes and fun on the beach than beatings and abandonment. When the second act closes on such a coddling high point (fireworks excitedly glimpsed from the slums) you wish we could just press pause and leave the inhabitants of Grandma’s bungalow in their simple happiness. Reality comes crashing in, we lose sweet emotions for a brutal comedown that is just as miserable as Loach, De Sica or The Dardennes at their most polemic. Powerful stuff about people living in the financial cracks of modern society but the romantic in me wishes we could have avoided realism. Why can’t the fairytale triumph occasionally?

Sandi Tan directs herself, Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique in this documentary about three rebel Singapore teenagers who worked on a colourful road movie only for their mentor / the film’s director to disappear with the footage after the wrap for decades. 

Lemonade out of lemons. A really colourful and enkindling documentary slightly undone by a narrator who is quite simply (and self acknowledgedly) full of herself. The footage of the film she worked on as a teenage is naively seductive, the hook of its stunted production fascinating. Yet you get the feeling the whole story is actively being avoided. The kids lost control of a project they worked on in secondary roles on. Sexism or the natural order of indie filmmaking? Attempts to suggest their loveably amateurish Jim Jarmush pastiche was a lost classic or an echo of #metoo #timesup abuse just ring hollow. They met an enigmatic, dishonest weirdo who directed their / his film and he kept the footage when the money or workforce disappeared. Shirkers is a far better doc when about young female empowerment in 1990s Singapore and the inspiring punk energy to make a cool outsider film. The mysteries of the fallout, while marketable, are not particularly high stakes if viewed rationally. Delightfully watchable if suspect in its unguarded manipulations.

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Tamara Jenkins directs Paul Giamatti, Kathryn Hahn and Kayli Carter in this droll drama about a middle aged New York couple jumping through endless scientific hoops when they cannot conceive, who take in a wayward neice who might be the answer to at least one of their myriad problems.

Very astute and warm indie drama about a creative couple going through infertility woes. Pleasingly broad at times but never forsaking an emotional intelligence that mirrors Woody Allen’s finest. Giamatti is in his element as a man permanently suppressing eternal frustration. But we already love Giamatti… so here it is the female ensemble that shines through with brave wit and natural vitality. Hahn is gifted her most expansive showcase yet, fittingly she is generous in scenes with others, scenes where she could easily walkway with the audience. Newcomer Kayli Carter more than holds her own as the surrogate mother / surrogate child who finds herself adrift in the leads’ miserable wake. In years to come this will be seen as all three actors’ key film. Mature, accessible yet fulfilling. Entertainment for adults.

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Tobe Hooper directs Marilyn Burns, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen, Caroline Williams, Dennis Hopper and Bill Moseley in this very black and gory horror series with growing shades of satire… the Sawyers are All American grave robbing cannibals who keep getting intruded upon by outsiders.

The first part is THE lurid thrillride, the sequel a camp OTT parody. Hooper wants to warp and reflect ridiculous American values. Whether he is treating kids as cattle or spoofing the lust and greed of a hard working, capitalist family. The first film is truly disturbing, relentless when it gets going. The second has three stretched out scare and torture sequences framed by a detective revenge story incongruously involving a DJ. The films don’t really correlate, don’t feel a piece. But when the excess comes it feels related though. Screaming, squealing, dirty, nasty, sweaty, pointed shock imagery.

The sight of Leatherface appearing from around the corner for the first time, braining an annoying hippy, then slamming the door to his world shut on us again almost instantaneously is one of the finest moments in horror cinema. Jump scare, joke and tease to even bigger grimness all-in-one.

His sexual awakening in Part 2 is sweet. He’ll put a fresh severed face on you and show you his moves. The lad.

He dances frustratingly with his Chainsaw in the dawn by the end of 1. Just another monster we leave behind as we head shellshocked back to civilisation. By the end of 2 it is the final girl is doing the Chainsaw mambo (a winning Caroline Williams… the acting is better in 2 by country miles). She is defiantly the top of the food chain now. Just as deadly, just as angry. It lacks the grotesque pure art of the original’s finale, but it seems to fit nicely. We start the series in a reflection of America, we end in its comic book fantasy. One where Leatherface is a romantic interest, Chop Top (Moseley wins as the freakiest ghoul) is comic relief and “Just the Cook” resembles a certain president.

10/7 

Peter Medak directs George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere and Melvyn Douglas in this classy horror about an urbane composer who moves into a haunted mansion.

If the was just 90 minutes of the brilliant George C Scott being terrified by bumps and distractions I would have been happy enough. The plot goes off piste at the midway point taking in supernatural conspiracies and ageing senators. That stuff isn’t quite as focussed but we do get a cracking seance set piece.

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My Top 10 George C Scott Movies

1. The Hustler (1961)

2. Dr. Strangelove or : How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

3. Hardcore (1979)

4. They Might Be Giants (1971)

5. Patton (1970)

6. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

7. Petulia (1968)

8. The New Centurions (1972)

9. Malice (1993)

10. The Changeling (1980)

David Gordon Green directs Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer and Nick Castle in this redacted sequel that imagines what happens 40 years after the original Halloween if you ignore all the follow ups and reboots. What happens: lots of masked murder.

Perfectly adequate if rarely very scary. There’s a good reintroduction to Myers and his first new suburban massacre viewed through a series of windows and doorways is neat. But Jamie Lee (the real selling point) feels under utilised in the middle section. And all the kids look the same. Really… they all have the same cheeks and noses and complexions. Cut them up, Michael. Cut them the fuck up! John Carpenter’s retooled score does a lot of the grafting here.

6

Peter Hunt directs George Lazenby, Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas in this 007 adventure where a strange looking and sounding Bond falls for a mafia boss’ daughter while Blofeld is programming international beauties to cause genetic destruction.

One of the very best Bonds, happens to star easily the worst actor to take the lead. Lazenby is handsome and competent but that’s about all you can say for him. The film around him however is magnificent. It should have been young Roger’s first or Sean’s swan song. It is almost as if they knew their lead couldn’t smoothly grab the baton from Big Tam so made damn sure every other element was perfect. Diana Rigg is one of the very finest Bond girls. Tracy is resourceful, complex and stunning. She rescues Bond more often than not and keeps her cool head in a series of escalating set pieces. No wonder 007 had to marry her. There hadn’t been better. No wonder the producers had to kill her off. Audiences might have preferred her next adventure to Lazenby’s. That ending though… brutal. “We have all the time in the world.” We are not used to emotion in Bond.

A moment’s silence.

Two banging themes. Louis Armstrong’s contribution is now a standard, it has outlived and outgrown its association with the franchise. John Barry’s Moog infused action theme is amazing… I prefer it to Monty Norman’s Bond signature tune. If I’m ever doing anything remotely active, this is the score to my movements playing in my head. And when it comes to action OHMSS truly delivers. It takes over an hour for the large scale set pieces to kick in but once they do they come fast and furious. A gruelling cable car mechanism escape. Two epic stunt ski chases (edited very modernly). A dogged pursuit through a winter market where you genuinely fear for Bond… he’s explicitly paranoid, hounded and exhausted… James as you’ve never seen him… desperate. The sunset raid on the Alpine institute, a finale so good Christopher Nolan cribbed from it for Inception. Then a bonus toboggan chase… Cool Runnings meets Speed! I could make sarcastic comments about the cheesy fashions and set dressings, the awkward undercover persona Lazenby chooses to infiltrate Blofeld’s lab, the racism and sexism inherent in the diabolical plan as presented, the uncertain fourth wall denting attempts at fan service. But in a way they are part of the 1969 charm. One of the most confident, riskiest, romantic and spectacular of the early Bonds. It really only is superseded by Goldfinger in terms of quality.

10

George Tillman Jr. directs Amandla Stenberg, Russell Hornsby and Regina Hall in this YA drama about a conscientious black girl who gets embroiled with police violence and gang violence after her childhood friend is shot by a nervous cop.

The trailer missold this as a preachy, one note ode to wokeness. One that presents and exploits a lot of racially charged situations for scenes of “poor me” handwrininging and triumphant sermonising. The film itself is still very Hollywood in its production but more complex in its exploration and conclusions. The drama is given time and patience to percolate and articulate itself, the characters are sophisticated and fallible. It is a film with equal amounts of disdain towards black on black violence and hashtag activism as it has for police brutality. If the imagery can often be a little syrupy, the acting is anything but. Stenberg charms in the scenes where she just gets to be a kid and is comfortable in navigating the starker moments. Hornsby, as her a former dealer of a father, makes for a fine patriarch. He brings a frustration and a sensitivity to a part that might fall apart in a lesser actor’s hands. He reminded me of Laurence Fishburne’s iconic turn in Boyz N the Hood. Maverick Carter is a better father than Furious Styles. Here’s hoping this persuasive support turn is remembered come Oscar nominations time.

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