Shane Black directs Boyd Holbrook, Olivia Munn and Thomas Jane in this sci-fi action sequel where the alien “bass fisherman” of genre legend takes on a bunch of mentally unstable veterans, a kid with Asperger’s, a sexy expert, a government conspiracy and a bungalow sized security guard from his home planet. 

There are two ways you can approach this particular Predator movie. 1. Like a dickhead who has watched too many Cinema Sins YouTube clips. Or 2. As a fan who accepts for every tight ensemble special effects thriller with Arnie, you get 5 or so yardie versus cartel, Adrien Brody as an action hero, please stop adding Aliens, beer and a pizza sequels. Crack open a crate, call Papa Johns… as Schwarzenegger is not in this one.

Lowering your standards means you can accept this for what it is… a series of silly, cool, gory, silly moments strung together with a bare shoestring of a plot. Not “There’s something out there and it ain’t no man” mythic but certainly on a par with the dreadlocked slaughterer who loop pedals kids saying “Want some candy?” I love me some Predator 2. I really like me some Predators. The Predator comes in at the lower end of the quality scale of that last one. But only just lower. Acceptably lower.

There are undeniable problems. Some of the second half CGI is rushed and ropey… but I’m never a fan of CGI I can notice. The Predators seem to abandon their long established modus operandi and let easily killable humans with weapons survive quite a lot in the middle section. There’s kinda, sort of a narrative reason for this but it still doesn’t sit well within the philosophy of the franchise. Some of the set pieces are overly dark and chaotically edited. One major character dies in the blurry background and I had to check Wikipedia when I got home to see if he actually did meet his maker.

There are other cast members and subplots abandoned by reshoots (what happens to Gary Busey’s son, the FBI Agent who collects Munn’s scientist, Yvonne Strahovski’s house arrested Mum and what is going on with that Jacob Tremblay obsessed normal dog?) but not as many loose strands and plot holes as the critics’ review suggests. Shane Black has always been a fan of coincidences and half mentioned asides motoring entire plots. As beloved as Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys are, their mysteries are rushed and coincidental to the action. A second watch smooths out a lot of what seems like random occurrences. That happens here also.

No… Holbrook’s lead doesn’t dumbly directly send his son alien tech, the PO box subscription he hides it at runs out. Olivia Munn isn’t just in the mix for sexist reasons. Munn clearly adds some glamour to the proceedings but she does figure out major plot points that move things forward, gets funny lines and is an active combatant in the set pieces. She’s not just tits in a lab coat. Yes, the tall predator and his dogs are a bit ridiculous looking but they fit in with the caste system and ecology suggested by Robert Rodriguez’s threequel. The final coda teeing up a continuation you know damn well will never be explored is awkward. Neither will that intriguing pirate’s musket that ends 2 or the fate of Brody and Braga’s off world mercs. It is this particular franchises style that we end on a glimpse of a greater narrative just before the credits roll, one that is never revived in sequels. Did Arnie’s Dutch retire, recuperate or was sectioned after the end of Episode 1? It is not that kinda of series. Homage is paid (did I mention Jake Busey plays Gary Busey’s son in this?) to the past but cliffhangers aren’t revisited.

So The Predator is messy, even a little obvious reshoot incoherent on a first watch. Who cares about clean? I for one didn’t turn up to a Predator flick for neatness. I turned up to watch cool stuff happen in a bad taste adult environment. The first half builds nicely. Space chase gives way to Holbrook’s sniper being introduced mid mission in a kinetic cold open. By the time he’s on the run with alien tech in his backpack and tequila on his mind, I was sold. He’s been good before in Logan but here he projects a capability and a goofyness that reminded me of Mel Gibson at his best. He undersells Black’s frenetic, foul mouthed dialogue nicely. I’m keen to see what he does next. Black’s witty and dirty approach of constant banter works for me. It works for his better-than-B-movie standard cast too; giving Sterling K Brown, Munn and Strahovski brighter moments to shine here than more prestigious projects their agents have forced on them recently ever did. Trevante Rhodes has brilliant chemistry with everyone he interacts with. Thomas Jane’s Tourette’s suffering basket case is the highlight though. 10 years ago, he’d have been the go to lead for this sort of reboot. Now he gets to play the most offensive, adorable, ass kicking support character with no pressure. Kudos for stealing a very crowded and busy show.

The carnage is here too. There are two cracking, prolonged swathes of action. All the characters cross paths early on. There’s a joy in watching a Predator tearing up an installation while Munn and the Loonies try to escape being permanently redacted. And the grand finale where the survivors have to stop a Predator spaceship from leaving Earth moves briskly and plays nicely with the warped physics of forcefields and crashing UFOs. All the skirmishes in between are chunky and meaty too. There’s enough glowing green blood and spattering red blood to justify the swearing and the hard R legacy.

As for dafter moments involving an explosion at Halloween, a thumbs up with a severed arm, a Predator dog playing fetch… all stuff that would been a two page “comedy” moment in a Dark Horse comic book in 1990s. This ain’t serious, this ain’t Shakespeare. It is however bonkers and enjoyable. Park your brain at the door, your expectations with Carl Weathers and devour the most ludicrous Predator entry yet. Like the derided Justice League or Tom Cruise’s The Mummy proved, just because a botched movie is very easy to slate doesn’t mean said movie can’t still be crudely pleasurable. “I’m Gonna Have Me Some Fun… Have Me Some Fun!”

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Frank Sinatra directs himself, Clint Walker and Tatsuya Mihashi in this WWII parable about a Japanese and an American set of soldiers abandoned on an island together.

Sinatra’s only work as a director is a relaxed and prepossessing affair. He gives equal light, screentime and sympathy to the Japanese battalion, even allowing room for their culture and customs to shine through. There’s a couple of duff performances in the ensemble and it ain’t exactly subtle but all in all this is a decent little anti-war movie.

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Franco Rosso directs Brinsley Forde, Trevor Laird and Karl Howman in this tale of a young black British man struggling with prejudices in Thatcher’s London. 

The acting isn’t going to win any BAFTAs… but that aside Babylon is an evocatively shot (Chris Menges is DoP) and thoughtfully insightful youth drama. Excellent dub soundtrack and derelict London locations.

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Melvin Frank and Norman Panama direct Danny Kaye, Glynis Johns and Basil Rathbone in this spoof of Robin Hood style adventures.

Dated farce with likeable female support and tongue twisting wordplay.

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Bruce Beresford directs Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson in this historical recreation of the British Army’s kangaroo court-martialling of three Australian soldiers during the Boer War. 

What should be a simple courtroom drama opens itself up for fine acting and complex, unresolved questions about culpability and ethics in the dehumanising theatre of war. The condemned are definitely guilty (as is everyone), yet they are equally not given a fair trial. The action sequences have heft. The flashbacks and finale have a lyrical magical realism. There are times when it feels like the witnesses’ stilted recollections are being filtered directly and purposely into the actors’ performances. And the greatest last words ever come out of Woodward’s mouth in the closing moments, he’s a dab hand at iconic final act fatalism. “Shoot straight, you bastards. – Don’t make a mess of it!” Rule 303. One coffin fits all in war, no room for personalities or conscientiousness.

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Matthew Warchus directs Ben Schnetzer, George MacKay and Faye Marsay in this period drama about the London LGBT community’s attempts to support the miners during Thatcher’s suppression of them. 

I was expecting this to be mawkish crowd pleasing stuff. Like Billy Elliot or The Full Monty, a slightly cartoonish and fairy tale view of working class issues. But no… it has real heart, wit, scope and ambition. It gets the emotions flowing. Not just sentiment but political nostalgia and empowering self worth are renvigorated by it. Warchus colourfully marshalls a perfect ensemble of actors, the new faces holding their own among the gems of a British screen acting. The soundtrack manipulates masterfully, the time and the place is recreated down to the biscuit packaging. It won me over utterly. Joining Brassed Off for its harsh yet entertaining revisitation to one of Britain’s darkest hours and matching the far more agit prop 120 B.P.M. in its popularisation of the gay rights struggles of the last century. Treat yourself if you haven’t already beaten me to this.

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My Top 10 LGBT themed films

1. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
2. Battle of the Sexes (2017)
3. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
4. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
5. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
6. Mulholland Drive (2001)

7. I Love You, Phillip Morris (2008)
8. Paris is Burning (1990)
9. The Crying Game (1992)
10. Victim (1961)

 

 

Rachel Talalay directs Lori Petty, Naomi Watts and Malcolm McDowell in this post apocalyptic adventure film based on the cult British independent comic. 

Unambitious anarchy. I used to own Tank Girl on VHS. As a teenager I enjoyed its scrappy energy. I was aware but not in love with the source material. And I also knew about its troubled production process. Various sequences were not filmed or cut out so that the comic’s original creator had to animate sequences to fill in the blanks… including the ending. These moments actually work really well, they fit the spirit of the endeavour and actual add a little extra mature edge to the slightly softened bite of the satire. Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin were openly vocal about the finished product despite being active participants in the process.  I always took umbrage at Jamie Hewlett’s snide comments in Empire on release about a test screening that resulted in dildos and burps being cut out. “It’s ridiculous having a bunch of snotty little 14-year-olds deciding how a film should be made. They were probably just snogging their bird or pulling each others’ hair throughout the whole thing” Yeah, fair enough. But who was this film for -butchered compromise or artist’s unadulterated vision – if not teenagers? It is a mid level action comedy about an immature girl driving a graffitied tank through desert populated by stoners and stoner kangaroos. Did you think massive prosthetic cocks were going to be part of the marketing campaign? Was he hoping for Oscars? Even on its best day, Tank Girl was made for the youth market. It is a rebellion flick with a day-glo colour palette. How would he have improved it? “The script was lousy,” Hewlett recalled, “me and Alan kept rewriting it and putting Grange Hill jokes and Benny Hill jokes in, and they obviously weren’t getting it.” Of course not… as those were limited and dated references even back in 1995. Homage to 70s sitcoms and 80s parochial kids shows would have really sunk what little wit the wacky, OTT shenanigans did retain. The film already is a dog’s dinner. Jokes rarely land, action never thrills. It is edited within an inch of its life. It feels like an overlong trailer for an actual film rather than a narrative itself. But Petty, Watts and McDowell all bravely go big rather than go home. The imagery taken out of context is a rich junkyard. The soundtrack is a belter. Stan Winston’s Ripper make up design is beautiful. It is silly. It is rubbish. Just not very entertaining. Not even misplaced nostalgia for when I was a “snotty little 14-year-old” can save it now I’m middle aged. And yeah, Tank Girl herself is chaotic and combative enough to be considered a feminist action hero. But imagine if they actually gave her some obstacles to overcome… then she’d have been a feminist action hero worth remembering.

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Mickey Keating directs Ashley Bell, Pat Healy and Alan Ruck in this exploitation horror where a young woman is hunted across a sicko’s desert playground. 

Hyperstylised and wantonly nasty. This wishes it were made in 1973 and only shown in old porno cinema’s so bad you can taste it. If you move can past the director’s unrestrained desire to fuck the frame constantly, there’s a gripping enough thriller with a convincing villain and an escalating sense of madness. It has been done better (the recent Revenge) and with more art and guile (Wolf Creek) before.

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Harold Becker directs Alec Baldwin, Nicole Kidman and Bill Pullman in this yuppies in peril thriller where a perfect couple and a brilliant surgeon get lost in a game of double crosses and culpability. 

So labyrinthian that the opening act and the closing act feel like entirely different films that just happen to share the same actors and locations yet utterly different plots and characters. Baldwin shines as the arrogant doctor but fades into the background a little too early. The mechanical shenanigans allows for great one scene cameos from Anne Bancroft and George C Scott. Everyone looks fantastic, they are perfectly presented as it all twists and turns juicily around them. So knotted is the narrative it really adds up to nothing. A vortex of betrayals, red herrings and secrets, but one that feels classily rarified these days. They don’t really make cat and mouse noirs like this anymore (Nocturnal Animals?  Side Effects?). So even a wobbly one like this feels like a prestige production 25 years down the line.

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Desiree Akhavan directs Chloë Grace Moretz, Sasha Lane and Jennifer Ehle in this teen drama set at a 90s sexuality conversion camp run by misguided Christians. 

A very well, made if a little bottled up, teen drama. Attempting to be a low key One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is admirable. The film is at its best showing the consistently minor but totalitarian injustices of living in a passive aggressive hostile institution. And Moretz conveys the confusion of having her desires suppressed, her loneliness enforced and her interactions policed with aplomb. Yet its all too coy. There’s no heat or passion to the moments of stolen intimacy or minor acts of rebellion. Also like recent teen flicks Love, Simon and The Kings of Summer, the “cool kids” are actually personality vacuums. It is hard to connect with an ensemble where we are told how fantastic pretty faces Sasha Lane and Forrest Goodluck are but they do nothing but nod blankly along with our lead’s underdeveloped worldview and are, at best, present for snatched moments away from the oppressive regime. They don’t challenge or empower, merely are adjacent as mirrors of each other’s acceptableness. The nerdier christians undergoing the harmful “therapy” prove far richer personalities than the grunge kids of instagram. There’s a really great film struggling to get past an effected detached spaced out attitude. As if Desiree Akhavan was fearful of ever showing her cards and letting her leads respond to the drama or move forward from the unfairness of their plight. You just wish this allowed Moretz to breakout a dramatic swing for the fences, get one grand standing monologue or an engaging bit of insurgency. Despite this passivity The Miseducation of Cameron Post engages and affects via its soft sell injustice and subtle main performance.

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