Cedric Nicolas-Troyan directs Emily Blunt,  Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron in this Snow White banning prequel / sequel (bookendquel?) to that big budget Snow White film from a few years back.

Fine… A bit like Willow but with outrageously gorgeous dresses taking over from the real world action sequences. Very talented and beautiful actresses give serviceable performances. They are akin to the eye popping fantasy visuals but very rarely are they married together in the ho-hum sound stage trapped action. An immaculately wrapped present, all white silk and gold ribbon, given to you by some stars you like a lot, but containing a nearly empty cardboard box with just a few comedy dwarfs in it. A promise undelivered on.

4

Stuart Rosenberg directs James Brolin, Margot Kidder and Rod Steiger in the allegedly true tale of a demonic house.

Ugh! It is easy to to say this is a really, really bad film. The 60’s New Wave style direction from Cool Hand Luke’s Rosenberg deflates any reality, the sheer frequency and repetitiveness of the nasty, escalating incidents makes you feel like you are trapped on ghost train on an endless loop with the same scares coming a bit faster, a bit closer and bit louder with every circuit. No tension or unease is ever really built while watching, it all just happens so fast and so uninspired. Both Rod Steiger’s ham boning take on a priest and James Brolin epic perm feel like they are starring in their own seperated movies accidentally spliced into the narrative here. Really it’s the kind of OTT, dated endeavour that would have cool kids at The Prince Charles Cinema hooting and guffawing with glee at every frame, whether silly or not. Yet I’m not going to give it the lowest of scores. I’m pretty sure this is the first horror film I saw, late on telly one night, but nostalgia is not guiding my mercy here. Here’s my three point defence. 1) Margot Kidder is lovely as always and gets a good bulk of screentime here. She is such a refreshing presence in any film I just feel it is a shame her career went off the rails. 2) James Brolin’s performance is something else. Hard to say whether it is terrible or inspired. Like Nicholas Cage at his best, no one else in the ensemble can really synchronise with what he is doing, you certainly couldn’t accuse him of phoning it in. 3) While I arrogantly chuckled away at the unrelenting daftness of it all, after going to bed moments and images lingered creepily. What was ineffective during, had some lasting power after. And that can’t be discounted.

5

Stanley Kubrick directs James Mason, Sue Lyon and Peter Sellers in his blackly comic take on Nabokov’s seminal and sympathetic noncing novel.

Ask me a week ago and I would have said Lolita was one of my favourite Kubricks. A perfectly performed tightrope walk along a controversial topic with a magnificent central performance from Mason (debonair but utterly corrupt) and a witty script that gifts all the support with hilarious moments around Humbert’s frustrations.  Sure, it is pleasantly coy about its paedo content due to the censorship of its time (and would it even be made today?) but what real world horrors this Lolita skips across swiftly is done so with a light footed grace. Yet revisiting it with fresher eyes, it nigglingly also feels like Patient Zero for some of our Stanley’s worst excesses too. He never really mastered passing off the Home Counties as the States in his films… And while I’m not a nit picker… when we are already asked to suspend belief so a 16 year old can play a 14 year old who should really be an 11 year old, then you just cannot run multiple cons concurrently without all the threads starting to unravel. The lack of truth jars a tad too often. Then there’s that Kubrickian length… creeping in so that the final hour is filled by so few scenes,where so little but the expected happens, but with none of that necessary fleet footed that makes the opening salvo chime and hum. Once dirty old Humbert’s fantasies come true his comeuppance lacks structure and satisfaction. Sellers mucks about royally as the more reptilian predator but really it is Mason’s graceful expression of a more internalised plotting and paranoia that keeps you involved and even sympathetic when Stanley takes his foot off the gas. The slightly too old, definitely too womanly casting of Lyon as the title nymphet is oft criticised by others. I actually think she makes for a charmingly inscrutable enigma and prize for the human monsters to lust after. Shame she never really found much more significant work after this. She’ll eternally be a brilliant movie poster. Still, new negatives aside, this often is a wonderful piece of film making, just baggier in the back end than I remembered. Maybe I am outgrowing Lolita’s charms.

8

Yuen Woo Ping directs Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen and Jason Scott Lee in this lower budget belated sequel to Ang Lee’s modern classic.

In 2000 Ang Lee’s classy and painterly take on the Kung Fu flick opened the genre up to a wider western audience with its emphasis on stunning, fantasy visual and restrained yearning romance. CTHD created a whole sub genre of eye popping, well acted prestige martial arts films that took up arthouse screens rather than videoshop back shelves. For good or bad that cycle is now running down, so a sequel without his involvement is a bit of a surprise. But a good surprise. It may lack the budget, craftsmanship, scale, scope, ambition, grace or majesty of it’s progenitor, but Sword of Destiny is an enjoyable blend of likeably iconic characters getting involved in engaging, smartly choreographed and augmented scuffles. The limited amount of sets might scrape a bit of the epic sparkle from the endeavour but during the final two face-offs on ice and tower you’ll be far too involved by the game, note perfect performances from the ageing but still captivating Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen and Jason Scott Lee. A cheap cash in, perhaps, but not one that you resent wanting your money once you’ve paid. It lacks the nuance but delivers on the action and the likability.

7

Mick Jackson directs Kevin Costner, Whitney Huston and Gary Kemp in this hard man protects pop diva romance.

A lengthy but glossy Friday night movie that though often obvious, dull and daft manages to satisfy in a popcorn and king size Coke kinda way. The romance lacks any chemistry, Costner is better than the surprisingly potty mouthed dialogue given (perhaps dumbed down to match Huston’s limited but well-used abilities) and the action drags out.  Hard to see why it made quite as much money back in it’s day long gone. Good soundtrack though. Time travel to 1992 is now possible.

5

Pete Travis (and possibly Alex Garland) directs Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby and Lena Heady in this lower budgeted second punt to bring Old Stoney Face to the big screen.

I was raised on 2000AD and six pages of Judge Joe Dredd a week was always the highlight of a Saturday morning. Thrill power packed stories with a subversive edge and an iconic lead character you could always rely on. So after the daftly epic but unfairly unloved Stallone effort it was pleasing to see the character and his Mega City One given another chance to get it right on the big screen. And boy oh boy do they get a lot right. Tone, violence, design and most importantly casting this feels much more like my own Dredd and – even though it is a completely original tale with some mere practical tweaks in uniform and universe – Dredd ripped straight out of the comic books. Karl Urban bring the essential Eastwood toughness and confident training of an unstoppable killing machine to his middle aged Joe. This stand out turn should have made him an action star. Olivia Thrilby has all the emotional heavily lifting to do as a rookie version of psychic Cassandra Anderson and to sort of quote the film “She’s more than a Pass.” The unconfident rookie and the hardliner old hand trapped in a deadly tight spot both work well with each other and sparking off each other. Heady is great villian; scarily nasty and with more distinctive heavies to put between her and the heroes than any Bond baddie can muster. If you are not already a fan of the existing property, is there much to enjoy? I would say more than so. If you are a lover of hard edge action sci-fi like Escape From New York, Aliens or Total Recall there will be more than equal pleasures here for you in the finely realised future world, the bloody and kinetic confrontations and terse exchanges. For action fans, Dredd is about as strong flavoured a flick as there has been since Arnie went into politics, Jim Cameron started preferring a romance and Carpenter lost the plot. A big, dirty popcorn flick that impresses me more and more with each rewatch far beyond my own nostalgia for its inventive, 2D source.

10

 

Andrew Davis directs Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman and Rachel Weisz in this students on the run from the CIA thriller.

I’m surprised the studio system did not give up on blockbusters after the summer of 1996. Independence Day aside, every big release disappointed that season critically and financially. Take this supposed action thriller with a hot off of Speed Keanu and an even hotter from The Fugitive Davis joining forces to no great shakes. There are two hydrogen explosions for our hero to escape book ending the chase and still it all feels underwhelmingly low stakes and distinctly unthrilling. Keanu stumbles about on a cold, bascule bridge then stops to chat about the plot, then goes on a risk free chase across the ice, then stops to repeat the plot, then slides about on a decommissioned, (therefore highly unlikely to move) indoor exhibition aeroplane, before stopping to repeat the plot again. As a narrative it just stumbles awkwardly forward like our cyphers on the run and it is genuinely hard to tell if a) the lacklustre set pieces have been written first and merely strung together? Or b) the directionless conspiracy plot has forcibly had them shunted in every 10 pages or so for the sake of some action? A young Rachel Weisz is reduced to mere eye candy for the man who likes his babes covered in three thick layers at all times. The classy double act of Morgan Freeman and Brian Cox give their considerable all in some boardroom confrontations while a test audience in Delaware no doubt decided which one will actually turn out to be the villain to get his comeuppance. A shame of a film.

3

John Carpenter directs Kurt Russell, Steve Buscemi and A.J. Langer in this belated sequel to his ripped and satirical cult classic. 

The once dream team of Carpenter and Russell revives Snake Plissken for this depressing trundle over old ground. The satire is weak and dated. The action sparse and haphazardly executed. The whole thing has that nasty mid 90s palate (burned purple / electric greens and blues / mustard yellow) of a film made with potential action figures as the overriding design concern. Godwaful early, rushed CGI over easy to produce practical effects. Fuck… Why is this quite so bad given the talent? There are sparks of hope in Bruce Campbell’s cameo as a psychotic plastic surgeon and A J Langer’s True Love Waits rejecting, gun totingly rebellious president’s daughter but they get either too little screentime or seem permanently excluded in the mid ground of every shot respectively. Buscemi enters into the spirit of the original despite the reality of the actual film shambling apart about him, Russell does the best he can while essentially wearing a bin liner for most of the runtime. He’s still gravelly enough and can fire an assault rifle with that old dismissive cool but as an invested co-writer / producer here maybe he could have at least suggested with only 10 hours to live a man under the gun like Snake really wouldn’t spend his first 90 minutes seemingly getting dressed (in that bin liner). The movie entire actually feels to modern eyes like a series of glitching video game cut scenes (character after character leap out of nowhere to tell an avatar where to go next) and that is a criticism I would also level against A Good Day to Die Hard. And what was depressing as such in that recent misguided sequel is just plain unusual here as EfLA precedes such console games by at least a decade. That does not make this joyless mess in any way ahead of its time… just a clunky continuation of a far better film that apparently should have been left as a solo adventure.

3

 

Park Chan-Wook directs Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode and Nicole Kidman in this sultry and dark coming of age fairy tale.

All the visual razzmatazz of Chan- Wook’s Vengeance Trilogy is imported over to this seductive mixture of Hitchockian perversion and Wes Anderson-esque whimsy. It takes a real master to swirl those flavour into such a delicious dish. Another stand out performance by Wasikowska helps, who here goes on a journey from trapped child plucked from a Tennessee Williams play through to a female empowered Dexter cut loose. Her intentions are so hidden and guarded throughout the process that a moment where she takes a post-murder shower and the camera pans down her body has to be the most exciting cinematic reveal since… well… when we find Mother Bates in the fruit cellar. A saucy good girl gone bad movie elevated by its director’s exquisite taste in mise-en-scene, acting and baroque editing.

9

Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala direct Susanne Wuest, Elias and Lukas Schwarz in this tense thriller of pre-adolescent twins who think their beloved mother has been replaced by a monster.

Bless the Austrians. While most nations push their most blandly prestigious or tragically historical movies at the Academy as their contender for Best Foreign Language Oscar each year, here is one country who thought “Our incredibly well made nasty domestic horror is Austria’s best shot for 2015.” So bleak, bloody and challenging it had no chance of getting even nominated but for the horror fan this is a well performed, interestingly shot and edited treat. I have criticised a lot of movies this week of not delivering on their promise, whereas this little shocker completely pulled the wool over my usually wide open and jaded eyes. The central mystery is so compelling it distracts you from the actual outcome with a magician’s deftness. The sparsely populated rural setting, the off the spectrum casting and eventual full on violence all create a stirring symphony of disturbing cinema.

8