Arthur Penn directs Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda and Robert Redford in this lurid drama where a small town tears itself apart after a wayward hometown boy escapes the penitentiary and goes on the run.

A strange, histrionic film that actually won me over the more it jumped it’s own rails. It is an adaptation of a stage play but so expansive you could never guess. The ensemble is massive and Penn does a good job of marshalling all the faces so none get lost in the crowd. The on-the-run aspects with Redford are cinematic and compelling. The scenes of Brando snarkily policing a town swiftly disintegrating into pandemonium start in good, tart humour. He’s a pretty cool customer until the mob overwhelms him. The early satirical interactions between the various social stratas mix soap opera with an Altman-esque freewheeling energy. It is sultry (Fonda and Angie Dickinson are in it for God’s sake… And they are the good girls!) and it is subversive. Then in the last act all hell breaks loose. Things turn incredibly bleak – paranoia turns to drinking, turns to swinging, turns to racism, turns to lynching, turns to apocalyptic destruction, turns to two decent men being martyred. The Chase goes from being a broad political comedy to maybe the most nihilistic Hollywood product ever released. If you are a fan of Falling Down or Do The Right Thing then you’ll find lots to chew over here.

8

Ingmar Bergman directs Doris Svedlund, Birger Malmsten and Eva Henning in this experimental arthouse drama where a filmmaker recreates his friend’s desperate union with a prostitute.

An exploration in sin, misery, corruption and solace. Only really worth watching for some of the meta moments toying with subverting cinema. For example – the credits are read aloud over a tracking shot of a high street. A doodle scribble of movie, a grim one at that.

4

Agnes Varda directs Jacques Demy, Philippe Maron and Edouard Joubaeud in this recreation of her husband’s childhood in Nazi occupied France exploring his burgeoning cinematic ambitions.

Flashes of Demy’s actual work echo throughout. You see the moment inspired recreated as it own portion of celluloid. This is a very sweet heartfelt, cinematic love letter and perfectly watchable coming-of-age drama.

7

Charles Band directs Robert Glaudini, Demi Moore and Al Fann in this sci-fi horror where an infected scientist ends up in a small town at the end of the world.

My second Charles Band experience this week after the equally awful Arena. This is a mildly quirkier film but no less uninspired. It is a lot more bargain basement – a spaghetti Mad Max with none of the stunts, action or punk verve. The roving gangs are pretty harmless and aimless. A lot of the film is just folks bartering and chatting about their lot after a slow disintegration of civilisation. You almost get the feel everyone forgot there’s a monster brewing in our hero and his thermos. It is eventually unleashed to no great consequence.

2

Michael Haneke directs Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche and Maurice Bénichou in this mystery film where a middle class couple of Parisian pseuds are stalked by someone sending them ominous videos of their lives.

Re-exploring Haneke this season, it is clear his bugbears are guilt, surveillance, secrets sins, the evil in children and the hypocrisy of society. He is cold and clinical, he plays with form deliberately making the camera an unreliable character within the story. This slow burner is probably his most accessible work featuring impactful acting and a puzzle plot that never loses its seductive uncertainty or unpredictable wallop.

8

Peter Manoogian directs Paul Satterfield, Claudia Christian and Hamilton Camp in this sci-fi action flick where a human enters an alien boxing contest.

Cheap but tremendous alien design. Everything else just tremendously cheap. Rote, painfully rote. In this world “cheating” is when the handicapping system, that means a human can match a rubbery beastie in strength, is turned off. That’s the white man’s game. It is unfair when he’s not allowed his artificial advantages. There’s no attractive reason to sit through this unless you are really into creature FX.

3

Brian DePalma directs Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt and William Finley in this surreal thriller where a reporter investigates a murder she witnesses in a detached Siamese twins’ apartment.

A pretty deranged piece of filmmaking contains layers of Hitchcock pastiche, bravura split-screen tension tests, loopy arthouse dream sequences and a nonsense punchline ending. The chief pleasure is Kidder’s typically unhinged performance – 4 parts sexy to 1 part oddball. The thriller aspects are the least loved components and DePalma blurts them out like a hungry child forced to say grace. This is still more akin to his Sixties experimental hippie work than his slick, playful shock fests. A likeable transition.

7

Steven Spielberg directs Tom Hanks, Stanley Tucci and Catherine Zeta-Jones in this serious comedy springboarding off from the true story of a man forced to live in an airport when his passport was no longer internationally recognised.

Hmmm… joins Hook in being a very rare duff one from the Hollywood wunderkind. You can sense Spielberg’s totalitarian delight in replicating a lifesize, living, breathing airport terminal – a playset of brand placement and vertiginous camera moves. Balletic cinematography has never been a friend to nimble humour. The script displays the ambition of a Billy Wilder-esque bittersweet bite. It just doesn’t take shape or sharpen into a defined motion. The bureaucratic antagonist seems weak willed, the romantic subplot feels superfluous and the comedy, while graceful, lacks killer laughs. The project has a good hook but no narrative. Hanks does nice work but hardly convinces as an alien. You yearn for him to give up on the fantasy accent and tell us “There’s no crying in baseball”. Now, on that thought, here’s another; Wouldn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger have been a far more fascinating casting choice?…

4

David Mamet directs Campbell Scott, Steve Martin and Rebecca Pigeon in this mystery where the inventor of a valuable “Process” begins a friendship with a man who may want to con him.

The deadpan acting, the rhythmic dialogue, the maze-like plotting. One of the best thrillers ever written. Steve Martin is a seductive enigma in this. Carter Burwell’s score feels like a safe full of instruments being cracked.

9

Edward Norton directs himself, Alec Baldwin and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in this noir mystery where a Tourette’s suffering assistant to a PI has to solve his boss’ death.

One of my biggest personal disappointments of the year. The book was fantastic. Norton has owned the rights for 20 years. And in 1999 he felt like perfect casting for Lionel Essrog – the twitching solver getting to the bottom of an underworld he had been protected from. Finally, the film is made and it is ponderous, flat. The period move to the 1950s works visually but soaks the snappy text in a prestigious death march, robbing it of its confusing poetry. It should be more frazzled, haphazard, overwhelming if it wants to capture Jonathan Lethem’s prose. Motherless Brooklyn moves so serenely you can unscramble its riddles and ranting quirk a little too easily. It looks like it is set in the right world yet very few frames have any imagination. If acting is going on then Norton wants a close-up. Only the establishing shots have the whomp of true cinema. And Norton’s performance is solid but not the homerun he must have planned for. Is his age a factor? Would the naive Essrog work better in his early 20s? Probably. A more sensible adaptor might have eyed up Baldwin’s part for their vanity showcase. Five scenes all of which leave their mark. Less screen time, more meat. Baldwin is glorious as the Titan Of Industry, Moses Randolph… and it is a part created independently from the book! I don’t want to write off Motherless Brooklyn completely. It is well acted, ambitious and often pleasing to watch in the moment. An early car chase is discombobulating in its erratic flow – fitting to Essrog’s mindset. A later stand-off has the pleasing physicality of early Coen Brothers. The deadly slapstick escape recalls Blood Simple or Miller’s Crossing in the simple kineticisms. It is hardly essential though and feels compromised by weak, diluted storytelling choice. Someone should have told Norton to have some fun with it.

5