Ray Austin directs Ann Michelle, Patricia Hines and Vicki Michelle in this sexploitation film about a psychic model who makes a powerplay in a coven of witches. 

Surprisingly sweet and wholesome for a quickie made for the dirty mack brigade… No doubt due to the BBC sitcom creatives anonymously slumming it on the other side of the camera. Colorfully shot and quirkily edited, giving loads of room for the girl actors to overpower their archetypical parts. Approach with an open mind and you might just be seduced too.

6

Stephen Sommers directs Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale and Richard Roxburgh in this sloppy wannabe blockbuster using the iconography of the Universal Horror series. 

Fucking awful. The potent imagery of the 1930s classics, Jackman’s normally radiant charisma and a lot of money is drowned out by woefully amateurish CGI and unpleasant characters moaning endlessly during the choppy action. I cannot believe I gave this a second chance. Frankenstien’s Abortion would have been a more apt title.

2

 

Andrew V. McLaglen directs Roger Moore, Anthony Perkins and Michael Parks in this teatime thriller where an eccentric lord leads a diving team against a group of villains holding oil rigs to ransom. 

A bargain bin airport novel given the big screen treatment, this trundles along pleasantly, albeit with very little action. The bulk of the movie consists of talking and sneaking. But what a cast of absolute treats to go talking and sneaking around with for two distractingly old school hours. Moore excels as an anti-Bond; swigging whisky, hating women, doing cross stitch to help him think and leaving the castle estate to his pack of kittens should the rescue mission go tits up. In Moore we trust, the kittens will have to wait to sell off his ancestral pile. In throwaway boy’s own nonsense like this my Bond lives forever.

7

Robert Altman directs Keith Carradine, Karen Black and Ned Beatty in this sprawling ensemble following a week of country music, affairs and electioneering. 

The danger with writing this blog is revealing to my half dozen readers that occasionally there’s a bonafide classic that just does nothing for me. The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, E.T. and this. Other people’s favourites and universally lauded critical darlings that genuinely baffle me with their inertness. I usually enjoy a mosaic narrative (Dazed and Confused, Do the Right Thing and Pulp Fiction are among my favourite films) but this proves dawdling and purposeless. It squanders a good cast and some decent original songs on grating, pointless, obvious sequences that bored the skin off me.

3

Richard Fleischer directs  Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grace Jones and Sarah Douglas in this violent fantasy romp which sees Conan escort a nubile princess to reclaim a jewel. 

Less emphasis on the epic and more on daft kinetics, this is the most watchable of the Conan series. So it’s silly, and Olivia D’Abo is far far too young to be the Tits & Ass for the lads… it powers along through ornate sets and consistent character design pleasingly. And even with almost endless shots of Arnold’s prime warrior slaying physique, Fleischer still somehow finds room for both Eighties faves Sarah Douglas and Grace Jones to vamp it up proper rotten.

6

RZA directs himself, Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu in this wired yet reverent pastiche of retro kung-fu flicks.  

Visually opulent and well cast, this is an amped up, playground run through of all that is great about mad old martial arts flicks. It is a little too jam packed with characters and incidents to ever truly coalesce into a flowing journey. RZA’s vanity casting of himself in the lead role leaves a gargantuan charisma deficit and the jarring use of hip hop language and misogyny tarnish a fair few sequences. Still Russell Crowe and Byron Mann are particularly good value.

5

John Madden directs Jessica Chastain, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Michael Stuhlbarg in this political drama about a hard nosed lobbyist who crosses over to the side of gun control. 

This whole lengthy walker / talker orbits around a supposed powerhouse performance by Chastain. Yet she remains an enigma throughout, blurry at her ill defined edges, inhuman… and not in a dastardly way. As an insight into the world of cut throat influence groups it share more with the pulpy Grisham novels Sloane reads in her downtime than say the high watermark passionate exploration of a The Social Network or a Moneyball. That’s the inimitable power Aaron Sorkin brings to his own potentially dull corporate dramas, a power no-one has ever got close to matching, certainly not here. You feel your own knowledge of this lobbying subculture is being affirmed, rather than expanded. Unforgivably though, the twists are foreseeable, especially the final piece of brinkmanship involving a support member who is too good to be cast aside from the main thrust quite so early. Bragging time, I rarely get caught pants down by a narrative switcheroo these days, I’m as cynical and searching as the avatars here are supposed to be. But a movie like this really should try much much harder to at least obfuscate its surprise coup de grace to battle hardened eyes. Not awful, merely a slick fail.

4

Joel and Ethan Coen direct Jeff Bridges, John Goodman and Steve Buscemi in this flawless bowling noir. 

The Coen Brothers most accessible film in that it is unequivocally a laugh a minute ride, and some of those laughs are very, very dumb. The punchlines often feel as much at home in Only Fools And Horses as they do Raymond Chandler. Obviously Altman’s equally hip and loose adaptation of The Long Goodbye is a massive influence but the shaggy dog thriller plot is just a Christmas tree to hang some marvellous character baubles off. And the character work from this deepdrilled Coens-y castlist, though broad, is overwhelmingly excellent. This review will now turn into a list. The Dude: Jeff Bridge’s best, most apt performance- the Dude abides. Goodman’s Walter is even more of a hoot – a raging failure of a man, at war with a world who doesn’t care about his aggression. Then you have smaller stand outs like Turturro’s pederast rival bowler Jesus, his bitch Liam, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s drippingly oily PA to the eponymous Big Lebowski, David Thewlis’s grating and discombobulating cameo, and nihilist pornstar Peter Stomare. The soundtrack is heaven, the film even gets away with multiple dream sequences that are not just exercises in avante garde but move the plot gently forward. Wow!… “This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass, Larry!”

10

François Ozon directs Paula Beer, Aierre Niney and Ernst Stötzner in this post World War One drama about a Frenchman who visits a grieving German family with hidden motivations.

A lovely slice of arthouse this. Visually intoxicating, achingly heartfelt yet Ozon still gets to play his games. By the end of the first act we still aren’t sure what the Frenchman is planning on confessing? Where he and the titular dead German pre-war lovers? Or did he kill the young man in the theatre of war? Or is he now Frantz himself, warped into the body of the enemy? And then by the end of second act we are heading somewhere else entirely. There’s a fine romance to hook you in throughout but as mediation on loss, guilt, patriotism and deceit this beautiful work excels.

8

 

John Glen directs Timothy Dalton, Carey Lowell and Robert Davi in this extremely hard edged Bond where 007 quits the secret service to infiltrate a drug cartel with revenge solely on his mind. 

Like Moonraker or even more pointedly Quantum of Solace, this is one of those Bonds that lurches so far away from the long perfected franchise formula that it proves too overpowering in flavour for some. The graphic violence, lack of humour and more intimate plotting put many off on its summer release. I love it though. Nearly every aspect of it stands out. Davi’s baddie is complex and compelling. Both Bond girls serve a narrative purpose, have their own agendas, look great and even are proactive. Not that I have a crass ranking list but Carey Lowell is almost definitely the sexiest sidekick to save James TWICE! Cracking theme by Gladys Knight (the soundtrack entire could easily be for a Eddie Murphy romantic comedy rather than spy thriller). Three prolonged stunt sequences – frock coat plane jackings, scuba diving escapes, petrol truck demolition derbies. A young Benicio Del Toro with bad teeth! And you get loads of on assignment Q! Dalton looks a little less comfortable here than in the more romantic, trad The Living Daylights. Still he is the only Bond never to make a duffer while being still great in the role. Tim can hold is dignified head up high on this his premature exit adventure.

8