Randal Kleiser directs John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John and Stockard Channing in this high school musical about spunky seniors constantly battling with their non-conformist identities and their raging hormones.

I love Grease. I love the hit after hit songbook, a soundtrack that defined summer holidays and school parties for at least two entire generations. I love the dated Carry On style innuendo based humour. I love Stockard Channing actually puuting in an award worthy acting turn while everyone else is just trying to look a decade younger than they are. I like the thrills and spills of “Thunder Road”. I love the American Bandstand sequence which could be watched with no context to the feature’s plots and be the most frenetic, exciting and energetic short film you’ve ever seen. I love that bit where an animated sausage jumps into an animated bun and its more romantic than a million Love Storys. Flawed, messy perfection. “Why, it could be Greased Lightnin’!”

10

My Top 10 Musicals

1. Singin’ In The Rain (1952)
2. Mary Poppins (1964)
3. LaLa Land (2016)
4. The Jungle Book (1967)
5. Grease (1978)
6. South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut (1999)

7. Yellow Submarine (1968)
8. The Muppets Movie (1979)
9. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
10. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

 

Cary Joji Fukunaga directs Abraham Attah, Idris Elba and Kurt Egyiawan in this African set war movie about an orphan lost to and indoctrinated into a squadron of child soldiers.

This was always going to be a hard watch at home… and I put it off for a fair few years for more obvious pleasures. It proves to be an expansive, uncompromising and gruelling, as expected. The imagery is vivid and the stylistic flourishes feel organic to the story rather than flashy overkill. Anchored by a powerful turn by Idris (he abandons suave and seemingly channels Tom Hardy’s or Oliver Reed’s trademark brutishness) and bluntly direct child performances, this is one of the finest war films in recent years.

8

Gary Ross directs Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway in this girl’s only spin-off to the Clooney / Pitt / Soderbergh classy comedy heist series. 

Alarm bells rang with the trailers… there were no discernible jokes in the marketing footage. Turns out the trailer sold the film accurately. This is a movie so glossy it glides along its slick surface without ever hitting a snag or tickling out a laugh. If a security guard almost enters an area in which the ensemble are criming, then it is within a vague and tensionless proximity…. then the distractions come long before we could possibly fear the jig is up. If a character opposes the coutured crew then they are folded into the team with baffling speed and motivations. The plot moves from A to A with nary a skipped heartbeat in sight. The score: a 108 minute plastic mannequin for pretty dresses, a motionless vehicle for sort of stars to pretend they are flim flam grifters. Why no Emma Stone? Why no Angelina Jolie? Why no Scarlett Johansson, Jodie Foster, Jane Fonda, Michelle Pfeiffer, Pam Grier, Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Angelina Jolie, Meg Ryan, Viola Davis, Angie Dickinson or Jennifer Lawrence?  Surely Julia Roberts, who has form in this series, was a shoo-in? Oh… Awkwafina is in the 8 “big names” though… I’m sure she’ll bring a lot to the table. (She doesn’t… four of the eight feel utterly disposable after their recruitment scenes). A wasted opportunity with only Anne Hathaway’s mark having any infectious larks.

3

Gerard McMurray directs Y’lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis and Marisa Tomei in this prequel to the dystopian ‘crime is legal for one night, now survive the night’ The Purge series. 

The weakest entry so far. This is due to daftly unlikeable protagonists and occasionally overly restrained mayhem. If you come to The Purges for pure 100% carnage this feels a little stepped on. There’s still exciting shock imagery; glowing contact lenses typify the early adopters, KKK knights on quad bikes, exploding baby toys and a very disturbing “pussy grabbing motherfucker”. And Y’lan Noel makes the unbelievable but thrilling leap from drug kingpin to projects’ John McClane. He’s not quite Frank Grillo but the movie picks up whenever he’s onscreen rescuing the untrustworthy dogooders from the conspiracy death squads and more enthusiastic locals. Engaging if not revolutionary.

7

Baltasar Kormákur directs Shailene Woodley, Sam Claflin and Elizabeth Hawthorne in this true story of a sea faring couple whose yacht is rendered adrift weeks away from inhabited land. 

A solid adventure movie that works better as a flashbacking backpackers’ romance  than as a tale of gruelling survival. The post-disaster scenes have a drawn out morbidity (unavoidable) which mire the likeable leads. They are left with nothing more to work with interminable showboaty despair. Woodley in particular is too sweet and lovable a presence for that to be a situation you want to witness her stranded in at length. It is watchable, and has a late surprise up its sleeve, but 127 Hours covered the same emotional ground with more elan.

6

Donna Deitch directs Helen Shaver, Patricia Charbonneau and Audra Lindley in this period romance about an uptight professor who moves to a ranch in Reno to set up the legal residency needed for a divorce yet falls for a free spirit bisexual. 

A genuinely unpredictable romance (you can’t tell if we are headed towards happy ending or quiet tragedy right up until the final line) that make perfect use of its handsome locations and pretty faces. Deitch employs a series of wipes and fade outs to punctuate scenes of unspoken attraction and intelligent tenderness. Every speaking character has depth and complexity. All the unrequited courtship eventually builds to both damaging drama and a powerful sex scene. All four female leads leave a lasting impression and watching Shaver and Charbonneau spar and flirt and eventually adopt each others’ wardrobes has the winning air of Billy Wilder’s spikier work in the genre. The only film I managed to catch at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival but a great one I was glad to discover.

8

Jonathan Kaplan directs Michael Kramer, Matt Dillon and Pamela Ludwig in this teen drama about a lawless bunch of youths pushed into a riot of destruction. 

There’ll always be a list of films I intend to watch. My knowledge of anything made before the 80s will always be patchy and likewise I doubt I’ll ever see enough foreign cinema to be fully au fait with non-English language movies. But I think having now finally watched Over The Edge I have seen just about everything modern that had always niggled at me for not getting around to. My “must see” spreadsheet is now clear. It is a film I had read about or seen referred to for years. The true start of the teen movie cycle but gritty and realistic. An obvious influence on Linklater’s brilliant Dazed and Confused and one of Kurt Cobain’s favourite flicks. I had to order it on DVD from Germany. And the viewing was a similar situation as to when I watched Miracle Mile. A perfectly fine cult movie that could never compete with the masterpiece that had built itself and played in my head over years of vague imagined imagery and performances. Over The Edge is merely good. The acting from the kids is natural and unsympathetic. There’s bad behaviour and tragedy and urban restlessness. It is no Rebel Without a Cause in craft or manipulation. It is no The Breakfast Club in vocalised heart or era defining cool. The kids often come across as petulantly dickish rather than inspiringly heroic. The chaos of the final riot has all the cartoonish logic of any Disney kids movie of that decade (stoopid grown ups) yet is equally unbelievable in the overkill of the destruction. It leaves the plot with nowhere to go. No resolution will work for the criminality exhibited. The unarrested cheer as the others are carted off in a borstal bus. A hollow victory. Maybe it is supposed to evoke Steve McQueen returning to the cooler at the end of The Great Escape. What’s the message? It is better to rebel than to just be crushed by the system? There’s a great Cheap Trick dominated soundtrack and some of the cinematography is as beautiful as any western’s location shoot. Young Dillon and Vincent Spano make more of an impression in scrappier roles than the romantic leads. You can’t help but feel this whole experience is some kid’s dying fantasy. Does the dream start when our lead settles into his bed, massive blaring headphones on? Or when a gun is casually shot at him in a playful bit of trigger pulling? Or when one of the more likeable kids actually dies… unifying the bored, ignored rabble into direct action?

6

 

Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo direct Sam Strike, Stephen Dorff and Vanessa Grasse in this 60s set origin story for Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror icon, Leatherface. 

As a horror this doesn’t really work… there’s no real tension to it. No sympathetic characters to root for, when the deaths inevitably come they are random with little attempt at building fear. Yet Leatherface has a warm nostalgic glow to it (Terrence Malick’s Badlands is a clear inspirational touchstone for it) and we take a surprising path to get that nice young Sawyer boy to turn face wearing powertool killer. I feel if they spent just an extra ten minutes beefing up the shock sequences it wouldn’t all feel like a mere one track domino rally. As it is, this is just grizzled and gorgeous people knocking into each other until the legend is left standing. Only a threesome involving a rotten corpse and an escape involving a dead cow match the viscous ickyness of the Tobe Hooper’s originals. The lurid ferocity isn’t even attempted.

5

Werner Herzog directs Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes and Willy Semmelrogge in this filmed play about a small town soldier driven mad by his local doctor’s experiments and his wife’s infidelity.

A monolithic performance by a committed Kinski makes this worthwhile. Herzog’s usual concerns about decaying society are present and correct, but the narrative is a little too loose and too didactic to buttress Kinski’s terrifying mania.

5

Steven Brill directs Adam Sandler, Jennifer Hudson and Kevin James in this 1990s-set broad comedy romance about an unctuous Hollywood ‘little fish’ showbiz manager who falls for his latest client. 

This shameless mix of Broadway Danny Rose and A Star Is Born trundles along for too indulgent a running time with very few jokes that land. The nineties backdrop is rarely exploited and the star cameos are constant yet equally under utilised. Sandler creates an amusing lonely caricature as the titular Sandy and has great chemistry with Hudson… but it all amounts to further filler for his back catalouge.

4