Justin Kurzel directs Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard and Sean Harris in this Shakespeare tragedy where prophecy leads a medieval thane down a dark path.

God! This looks incredible. All hazy oranges, like blood is being carried on smoke, and lived in fabrics ready to be splattered in battle and misery. And this is a cast I can get behind. Considine, Thewlis, whispering Sean Harris and those achingly beautiful power couple leads. So why couldn’t I concentrate on it when the screaming stopped and the talking began? The language (as delivered) and the chosen pace of the plotting are flat. It trudges from top setting violence to blankness with stumbling bumbling. When the carnage returns you are long lost, it is lost. A great cast, amazing visuals, yet somehow one of literature’s greatest stories is poorly told. A palpable disappointment.

4

My Top 10 Marion Cotillard Movies

1. Inception (2010)

2. A Very Long Engagement (2004)

3. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

4. Allied (2016)

5. Two Days, One Night (2014)

6. Love Me if You Dare (2003)

7. Midnight in Paris (2011)

8. Contagion (2011)

9. La Vie En Rose (2007)

10. Taxi (1998)

Andrea Arnold directs Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender and Kierston Wareing in this British drama about a council estate girl’s last teenage summer.

This takes lurches that are bleak and triumphant in equal measure while admirably avoiding dribbling away into misery poverty porn for Guardian readers to feel self-satisfied about. Katie Jarvis is captivating in the lead, while Fassbender has a raw energy that seduces. A strong film that doesn’t offer easy protagonists or obvious escapes yet feels respectful and non-exploitatative in its exploration of the modern British underclass.

7

Lukas Moodysson directs Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin and Liv LeMoyne in the Swedish teen comedy about three pubescent teen girls who form a punk band about two years too late.

Really good fun. Moodysson catches the rush and comraderie of starting a band with no talent, and being part of a scene to define yourself. He also lightly hits on what it feels like when your friends temporarily betray you, young love and misguided ambitions don’t go your way. Naturally accurate. Like Dazed and Confused or I Wanna Hold Your Hand this recreates a period and place and emotion in time that probably means more to most people than historical epics of important milestones. “Hate the Sport!”

8

Hans Petter Moland directs Liam Neeson, Emmy Rossum and Tom Bateman in this crime comedy where the Colorado mob find themselves being picked off by a vengeful snow plough driver.

Diverting if unmemorable. Works better as a black comedy than an action thriller. Neeson’s vigilante gets lost in his own movie by the final third (but you’ve seen that part of the movie a fair few times before) while Tom Bateman impresses as a vainglorious mob boss. It unspools into ever weakening punchlines and an overly busy ensemble, but it never bores. Equally, it never even threatens to reach the highs of the Fargo TV show, which you could be watching instead and getting a similar, far stronger fix from.

5

Robert Wise directs James Olson, Arthur Hill and Kate Reid in this sci-fi thriller where a group of scientists in an underground lab try to isolate and investigate an alien virus before it wipes out humanity, based on a Michael Crichton book.

First things first; The Andromeda Strain is a very dry film. Sensationalist in its apocalyptic subject matter, bland and level headed in its delivery. The fascination here is with the documentation and procedure around experimenting with a deadly intergalactic spore. If it were made in this century it would no doubt be a found footage movie. Like nearly all of Crichton’s airport novels, his hook is taking a technological advance into nightmarish realms. Jurassic Park took DNA breakthroughs and created a dinosaur theme park disaster, Discolsure explored the tattered privacy of the corporate world where tiny mobile phones and VR shared networks would be the norm. He tugs at the near future and spins a gripping yarn from its potential. Most of the excitement from The Andromeda Strain isn’t from it ho-hum set-pieces or its one dimensional characters (Kate Reid’s dumpy pessimist excepted), it is from watching elaborately imagined technology be believably utilised against the ticking clock. The hive lab, the robot arms, laser security system… it all has an eyecatching sheen, yet isn’t a million miles from where manmade inventions in reality have taken us. Not the most fun slice of doomsday prevention, but a solid, often prescient, one.

6

Wim Wenders directs Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski and Dean Stockwell in this drama where a missing brother turns up in the desert, near mute and bedraggled, looking for his family.

I was too young first time I watched this one (read: it bored me). Paris, Texas patiently shifts from road movie to father / son romance to detective story to confessional. All the time it feels like a celebration of Americana from an alien viewpoint. The billboards, the LA city lights, the highways, drive thru banking, nudie booths. Wenders picks away at the landscape of the States without destroying it or disassembling it. Like Harry Dean Stanton’s character by the end, we know what happened to him, we relate to him on a surface level but he remains an enigma. Just you because you explore something, get lost in it, recognise it doesn’t mean you’ll ever understand it. What’s true for America is true for Travis in his red cap and desert beaten suit. Stanton is fantastic here and Stockwell and Kinski support him with career best turns. Slow… a mood piece… without easy answers even when we reach a kinda resolution.

7

Howards Hawks directs Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant and Ralph Bellamy in this screwball comedy where a newspaper editor connives to win back his ex wife and star reporter on the eve of her second marriage.

The fastest talking movie ever made. The patter is witty and unmerciful. You’d probably need to watch it three times in a row to catch all the gags. The costumes are stunning (check out Russell’s chevron patterned travelling suit!) and Hawks throws a lot of balls, red herrings and salt in the air. Now, not all of it lands, or is given a chance to hit its mark… that script is purposefully too busy, on the right side of chaotic. This is probably the least romantic romantic comedy to be considered a classic. Russell and Grant have to get together as Grant is a savvier, sexier, suavest star than Ralph Bellamy. Not because he is kinder, more loving or even a better match. Blunt Hollywood politics, his Walter will continue to be a terrible husband but he has the better tan and zingers so he wins the girl. That lovey dovey stuff is muted though precisely as it is secondary. Russell’s immaculate Hildy Johnson is the best at what she does, simple as. The most natural reporter to all the men around her. She can coach a condemned man into a better defence during one brief interview, smell out the truth in another journo’s hack job, rat-a-tat those words out like she was typing Pulitzer prose with her lips. Cary Grant doesn’t seduce her. Her job does, her purpose does, her superiority does. Grant’s trickster ex is just the Cupid who makes her fall back in love with it again. In His Girl Friday, the true victory is a lady lead wins back her career… the headlining man on her arm at the finish is a bonus prize. Progressive for a 1940s movie, progressive even for now.

8

My Top Ten Romantic Comedies

1. When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
2. Say Anything… (1989)

3. The Quiet Man (1952)
4. Sleepless In Seattle (1993)
5. It Happened One Night (1935)
6. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)
7. Jules Et Jim (1962)
8. Groundhog Day (1992)
9. The Apartment (1960)

10. Amelie (2001)

Robert Wise directs Robert Ryan, Audrey Totter and George Tobias in this boxing noir where an over-the-hill longshot tries to win a fight, unaware his bum manager has taken a bribe from a gangster for him to lose on purpose.

Pessimistic, urban and stark; this primecut film noir doesn’t give its sucker a chance. From the outset even if he wins, he loses. The backstreets and nightlife of a seedy city are captured perfectly. The background characters’ universal zeal for riches, glory and blood is amplified in downbeat visual judgement. The greasy Greek chorus of sluggers, trainers and spectators witter on in that hard boiled streetslang – half poets, half lay preachers, all mopes. The real time storytelling gives the narrative a pull of relentless inevitably. We watch Ryan’s palooka fight and struggle in the moral quicksand, every effort and moment of hubris making his comeuppance a little more tragic, a lot more unavoidable.

7

Stephen Fingleton directs Mia Goth, Martin McCann and Olwen Fouéré in this low budget, post-apocalyptic thriller where a lone farmer begrudgingly lets a pair of women into his fiercely guarded allotment.

Mad Max in a potting shed! Like The Rover or Children of Men this imagines a future of desperation and scarcity that might not have biker chases and chainsaw fights but is equally as terrifying in it stark practicalities. The wooden cabin is a rickety defence, only really effective as rampart in its undetectable smallness. There are moments when it is besieged by crossbow wielding Parker hoodies but the real threat is the mistrust and hunger of our central three. Human contact gives way to supplies dwindling, allegiances shifting and vulnerabilities exposed. Our lone shotgun wielding hermit might crave Mia Goth’s sexy malnourished body, but she sees his strength and guile as a shield from the rapists and marauders. Her “mother” trades her daughter’s youth and looks for shelter and supplies but harbours her own deadly plans. The economy of this ravaged community is blunt, brutal and uncaring. Any glimmer of humanity shown is a kill point exposed, even a corpse has utilitarian benefits. The film has a lush wet greenness, overgrown scrubland and rain soaked forest clearings. It makes for a unique setting, one fully exploited. Grim yet gripping, small yet special, The Survivalist is quite the treat.

7

Nima Nourizadeh directs Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart and Connie Britton in this small scale, colourful, glib and quirky action comedy that asks “What if Jason Bourne was a stoner convenience store clerk?”

Answer: You’d send Walton Goggins maniacally giggling lobotomised killer to find him.

5