Jim Hosking directs Aubrey Plaza, Jemaine Clement and Matt Berry in this cult comedy about an unsatisfied housewife who runs away with a laundromat Equalizer to watch her ex perform a mysterious cabaret show.

Mmmmmmm…..mmmm! I didn’t bother catching The Greasy Strangler – a film that was released to triumphant reviews that felt indulgently strange and looked off puttingly dank. But then my Dad called up to tell me about it after he caught Jim Hosking’s debut late one night. Full of praise and misquotes. His last movie recommendation was Cockneys V Zombies, to put the conversation into context. The man who fathered me sure has access to late night Freeview, that’s for certain. I decided to give Hosking’s follow-up a try as I liked all the cast and thought the set-up was less grim sounding. And it proved a treat. Natalie and I laughed frequently at its forced queerness. It is easily the best film many of these eye catching performers have been the leads in (particularly Berry, Plaza and Craig Robinson). The visual palette and soundscape is naffly seductive. The performance style is blunt and brazen. It is knowingly obtuse and jarring. Not every joke works, not every slab of weirdness is even intended as a joke, but it gels together as a unique, romantic, chuckle filled piece of low rent quirk. Parking-lot strange. Hosking likes knitwear, hairy fat man tits, bad snacks, shouting, dancing and jealousy – often smashed together in the same scene. Turns out I do to. I’m going to have to attempt to watch The Greasy Strangler now…soon. And this again…sooner. I bet Beverly Luff Lynn grows on me further with repeat viewings. Mmmmmmmmmmm….mmmmmm.

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Joe Cornish directs Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Denise Gough and Dean Chaumoo in the British children’s adventure movie about an average boy who draws Excalibur from the stone unleashing Arthurian fantasy into the present day.

This feels very much like six episodes of a teatime 90s CBBC show spliced together into feature length. But what might have been a highlight of “The Broom Cupboard” doesn’t really hold muster in the modern multiplex. The limitations show constantly. The FX aren’t bad but they aren’t awe inspiringly great. The banter isn’t particularly funny, but fits nicely in the kids’ mouths. The performances are a bit guileless but don’t grate. The adventure plods along gently but never gets the heart racing. Sadly the best thing you can say about Joe Cornish rather staid fantasy meets Grange Hill mash-up is the animated credit sequence setting out Arthurian legend is eye catching and wonderous. The film it acts as prologue to is terminally adequate.

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My Top 10 Children’s Adventure Movies

1. Back to the Future (1985)
2. Stand By Me (1986)
3. The Jungle Book (2016)
4. Back To The Future Part 2 (1989)
5. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
6. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

7. Walkabout (1971)
8. Return to Oz (1985)
9. Jurassic Park (1993)
10. The Goonies (1985)

Julien Hallard directs Max Boublil, Vanessa Guide and Carole Franck in this sports comedy about the formation of France’ first female football team in 1969.

A League of Their Own, this is not. Dated attitudes, tropes and jokes. All smother a potentially decent story. Biggest crime of all – the main character is a man, the only character with some shading, agency and arc. The creators intentions are to produce something light and fluffy, the politics behind it betray a misjudged understanding of where the world now is.

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Robert Altman directs Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall and Ray Walston in this comic strip adaptation about the super strong sailor and his romance with a whiny damsel in distress.

What a mess! The first 30 minutes are near incomprehensible – the trademark overlapping dialogue, busy ensemble and drab visuals of an Altman work proving completely unsuitable for a kid’s musical. It does improve slightly. There are minor musical numbers and set pieces that, though cack handedly finished, do have some punch to them. The cast all look the part (though Williams’ adult ad-libbing is very inappropriate when discernible) and the full fishing village set is impressive. A production so ungainly and obtuse you stare deeply into it trying to salvage the good from the insane.

3

Peter Jackson directs original footage of World War I from the Imperial War Museum’s archives to create a rememberance of the experience of going to war in 1914.

A wonderful kaleidoscope of memories and images. Jackson tries to recreate the universal experience of a British soldier in the trenches, rather than getting caught up on specific battles or biographies. The effect is mesmerising and touching, often humorous but decent and respectful. The one niggle (and it is a slight one) is the film isn’t outwardly anti-war. It deals with the horrors matter of factly and skirts over the moral quagmire lightly. Jackson doesn’t want to cheapen a generation’s sacrifice nor exploit it for modern concerns. But you do walk away wondering whether it is retrospective patriotic proganda, normalising hellish conflict and immunising the schoolkids watching it that being blindly taken into a half decade long massacre by political leaders is a boy’s own adventure that should not be questioned. Overall, though, a reverential triumph.

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Gianfranco Parolini directs Gianni Garko, William Berger and Fernando Sancho in this Spaghetti Western where an angel of vengeance dogs a robber in the middle of an elaborate insurance fraud massacre.

The first Sartana entry has all the right camera angles, sweaty faces, wailing score and rubbery dubbing. If you’ve come for shoot-outs and our protagonist (“hero” might be a lie) appearing in strange corners of rooms out of nowhere, you’ve come to the right shop. Garko’s gimmick is he has a few gadget guns (like an unshaven 007) but he’s no Connery or Clint. Of its time, bog standard product but a product I enjoy immensely… even if this one’s plot is knotted so rigorously you can no longer see the rope.

6

Chang Cheh directs Jimmy Wang, Lisa Chiao Chiao and Tien Feng in this martial arts tale of a disabled warrior whose limitations may liberate his fighting style to defeat his former master’s enemies new lock weapon.

Sweet and colourful. The pacing is off and the fights aren’t going to impress modern eyes. Yet a good solid Shaw Brothers entry.

6

Oliver Stone directs Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Taylor Kitsch and Blake Lively in this starry drug cartel thriller where a Californian threesome find themselves being stepped on by a Mexican kingpin.

Numb leads. Distracted plotting. Frenzied direction. Every time Savages threatens to settle into something compelling, it wanders off in a haphazard direction. Squandering a strong support cast of Benicio, Travolta and Salma. They may be hammy and ill served by stock parts but they remind you of the better movies this isn’t. Way of the Gun, Pulp Fiction or Once Upon a Time in Mexico. You could be having a real good time elsewhere.

4

Chris Smith directs Billy McFarland, Ja Rule and Andy King in this documentary about a high end tropical island music festival sold on Instagram that didn’t exactly deliver on the once in a lifetime experience promised.

A hyperbolic look at a hyperbolic non-event. Are a struggling rapper and a jock turned entrepreneur the biggest fraudsters of their generation? Or people who knew how to sell an idea in the digital age but not how to deliver the infrastructure? I get the feeling the latter is true and most of the ticket buyers seem equally pathetic and useless. The prick who confessed to destroying neighbouring tents so he could have a little bit more shithole than everyone else is more detestable than the yes men, dead eyed models and party bros who destroyed their “reputations” by failing to deliver a Blink-182 gig on Pablo Escobar’s former retreat. These jarbronis are representative of such a small subsection of their generation, rather than indicative so this is an exercise in lightweight schadenfreude, pure and simple. Essentially an amusing anecdote stretched over 90 minutes the highlights involving an exciting bit of bartering for mineral water (no thanks, I’ll keep my Evian!) and Ja Rule screaming like a dictator “If we fuckin wanna go see the pigs, we go see the pigs”. Spoiler warning… Pigs are seen of all sizes.

5

George Cukor directs Judy Garland, James Mason and Jack Carson in this musical remake of the Hollywood romance where one famous husband’s career wanes while his discovery / wife’s flourishes.

Not the original but the best. It mixes cynicism with spectacle beautifully, a real sweet and sour delight of golden age filmmaking. Mason excels as the alcoholic romantic, he has never been better. I feel a cad typing this… Garland maybe is noticeably a decade too old to play the ingenue but her unique cinematic sparkle cannot be diminished. She is simply tremendous in the musical numbers. The version we watched is the slightly Frankensteined edition, where lost scenes are patched together with publicity stills. These moments would have been good cinema if retained but the subplot covered by them is inessential in the grand scheme of things. If you want glitz, tragedy and sweep then Cukor’s A Star is Born is the alternative Hollywood epic of choice. One without a battlefield, loincloth or horse in sight. Get ready to be starstruck!

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