Colin Hardy directs Taissa Farmiga, Demián Bichir and Jonas Bloquet in this horror spin-off from The Conjuring series where another demonic side character gets their shadowy, jumpy origin story. 

Hollow yet diverting time waster. Unoriginal yet cartoonishly atmospheric. Reds and brown and greys waft starkly at your eyeballs. Something quivers in the shadows or jerks from a side of the screen you were distracted from. Keep your eye on the lady. Catholic iconography sacrilege for set dressing. You are never bored but a horror with an ensemble of three (all of whom seem destined to walk away unharmed) is hardly going to shake the soul or chill the bone. Valak, the big bad, is underdeveloped… she was more a force to be reckoned with in The Conjuring 2. The embodiment of pure evil lashes out but never wounds. To have your monster favour throttling and chucking people away to safety from herself rather than destroying them when they are trapped in her clutches is frustratingly mundane. Looks like a nightmare. Plays like a water treader.

5

Marc Turtletaub directs Kelly Macdonald, Irfan Kahn and David Denman in this New York drama about a timid housewife who discovers she has a knack for completing jigsaws at speed and a rapport with a millionaire looking for a partner in a puzzling competition. 

A nice film battling against its own inherent softness. One that flirts with being a romance and a serious drama and a metaphor for religion but seems most comfy when being a domestic character study. For example when we finally get around to the big competition it is underplayed and feels like an inconsequential forgone conclusion rather than an exciting set piece. Macdonald is strong but the conflicting narrative pieces around her don’t really fit together and you are left struggling to make out the big picture from the obtuse end shot. Brave for a slight story to aim be unresolved and unpredictable but not really better for this approach.

6

 

Lewis Teague directs Robert Forster, Robin Riker and Michael V. Gazzo in this monster movie about a chemically enlarged alligator feeding off laboratory dogs and random workers in the sewer. 

Alligator is one of those superb little B movies that despite limited budget and expectations doesn’t put a foot wrong. Teague fills his cast with interesting, weathered character actors rather than bland pretties. Lead Robert Foster’s resigned to the shit heap detective is a plethora of world weary pleasures – macho, hangdog, balding. The script never gives a mouth a line of dialogue unless it is fun or unusual. Weary sarcasm is the order of the day. The film is subversive in its depiction of the authorities and satirical in its depiction of inner city life. Like the Jaws template dictates, John Sayles script holds back on giving us too much reptile to begin with, then when the titular Ramon goes on the rampage he becomes the focus and the star. The gory chaos he creates with his chomp and his wake should keep even the most nit picky gore hounds happy. The finale is gripping and tautly orchestrated. This was one of the first films I remember watching on Alex Cox’s excellent Moviedrome TV show in the early 1990s. And I thank him for introducing me to it and many other low rent treasures.

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My Top 10 Monster Movies

1. Alien (1979)
2. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)
3. Jaws (1975)
4. The Mist (2007)

5. King Kong (1933)
6. The Birds (1963)
7. Jurassic Park (1993)
8. Tremors (1990)
9. Alligator (1980)
10. Q: The Winged Serpent (1982)

Aneesh Chaganty directs John Cho, Debra Messing and Michelle La in this mystery thriller about a Dad’s search for his missing teenage daughter told entirely via FaceTime, search engines and social media. 

A well conceived gimmick (all the online branding and interaction rings true) and a strong lead performance make this convincing detective thriller hum. I figured out the eventual outcome quite early but was happily distracted by some well played red herrings that filled the running time. It is still only a one watcher yet one that never bores given the limited playing field its concept traps us in.

6

Marc Forster directs Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell and Jim Cummings in this children’s film that imagines an adult Christopher Robin being revisited by a forgotten Pooh and friends when his life hits a rut.

Whoah! This starts bleak. And I’m not taking about the brutal few shots that started Up or the finale of Toy Story 3. I’m talking a full hour of abandonment, bereavement, drudgery and depression before the pace even begins to pick up. Beautifully rendered muddy, scruffy versions of A.A. Milne’s iconic characters amble about, are ignored and criticised. This is heartbreaking stuff. As we reach the home stretch it becomes a bit more of a romp, there’s dashing around and larks. But that first hour… What kids wants to sit through naive Pooh deluding himself that Christopher Robin still loves him or cares about his nuisance making? With gorgeous shots that resemble Terrence Malick at times and the performers (human and animated) putting you through some emotionally complex feels, I cannot discount the ambition or effect this contains. But lord only knows what kids make of it.

6

Todd Phillips directs Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn and Luke Wilson in this comedy about three thirty-something men who start their own frat house when one moves into a cheap property near campus. 

Old School shouldn’t work. Wilson’s obstensible lead has no agency or personality. The plot is the epitome of bog standard. Yet it allows Ferrell and Vaughn a showcase to do what they do best (naive havoc and motormouth nihilism respectively) without having to do any heavy lifting in terms of draggy exposition or character arcs. Any scene that just let’s them run with the ball is a joy to watch. Whether it be a bit of solo streaking, a gym competition won while still smoking or a children’s party involving a tranquilliser gun. These gems are scripted but it is the stars who sell them, adding the quirk and persuasiveness. Old School has enough moments like this that leave you in stitches so that you really don’t care about the uninspired guff that happens to join it all together.

8

Idris Elba directs Aml Ameen, Shantol Jackson and Stephen Graham in this crime drama about a young gangster travelling from Jamaica to London and figuring out whether he wants a life of domesticity or revenge.

Here’s a film that on googling it after watching I was surprised it hadn’t done better. Mixed reviews and lacklustre box office when it was genuinely good? The highbrows might criticise Yardie for sticking too close to its unrefined source material. There are characters and subplots that are basic and dated. The three soundclash kids could easily come from an 80s kid show like Grange Hill. Fair points. And Joe Public expecting a movie called Yardie to be carnage filled, might be disappointed that the violence is only occasional and subdued. I see that. But these are minor niggles given the film’s strengths. The feel and sounds of both period locations are evoked vibrantly and seductively. You experience the heat of Kingston, the threat of the wet Brixton pavements, and the smoky wail of the underground club scenes. Idris is to thank for this. He has a keen eye, a zealot’s eye, for detail. His squats and his shanty towns and his backrooms feel true. As do his support characters. Stephen Graham delivers a dozy of a villian. Danger exudes from his interactions, you feel the unstableness of his mental state as he slips from welcoming to tyrant, patois into thick Brit accent. A whirlwind of nasty schizophrenia. Shantol Jackson stands out as the childhood love trying to make a peaceful life in the smoke. Aml Ameen has a trickier job. His protagonist, D, is unfixed, every other scene seems to see him making a conflicting moral choice. Swerving between peace and crime. But isn’t that refreshing? To see a character in a crime drama not just following the Goodfellas template of rise and fall. In most gangster films, once the innocent gives into corruption he gets worse or becomes a bystander to behaviour even he cannot stomach. In Yardie, our lead carries on trying to untangle himself. Sometimes doing the right thing, other times unleashing his own demons. Elba’s aggressive direction matches that turmoil. His camera jerks and shakes and glides with the action. As the world of Yardie moves you, his vision matches the pace. It is a film whose soundtrack, unpredictability, sensitivity and world building make we want to revisit it soon, it is directorial debut that promises great things for Idris’ next project.

8

Chris Koch directs Jason Lee, Julia Stiles and Selma Blair in this gross out romantic comedy about a soon to be wed groom who keeps bumping into the girl he might have slept with on his stag do. 

Clearly aiming for a There’s Something About Mary vibe but the gags aren’t there, the charms isn’t there and the heart is no where to be seen. You end up with lots of weak characters behaving like no one in reality ever would and extraneous side plots that reach for wacky but can’t grasp onto anything tangible. When film historians ask why the brilliant Jason Lee wasn’t an A-list star, the answer will be misguided breakout vehicles like this.

3

Antoine Fuqua directs Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal and Melissa Leo in this sequel to the highly trained vigilante reboot. 

Denzel is unstretched by the drama. The action merely bookends the film, there are no set pieces for a good 90 minutes of the running time. Is this because the various plot strands are particularly complex? No. It is by the numbers conspiracy stuff. So rote I struggled to figure out exactly why the baddies were covering their tracks. I’m sure there was a macguffin, I just lost interest whenever Denzel wasn’t onscreen either righting wrongs, raising up or beating down. There enough of his take on Robert McCall doing these things that you don’t feel your time has been utterly wasted. The avoidance of going bigger is admirable but it could have been better, no? Only the grand finale in an evacuated town really hits the sweet spot.

4

Roger Vadim directs Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law and Anita Pallenberg in this sci-fi space adventure where a sexy intergalactic navigator investigates a planet full of surreal danger, physical intercourse and hateful inhabitants.

Not quite as good as I remember. The near constant costume changes of a gorgeously vapid Fonda and a production design that loves a bit of coloured, diaphanous moulded plastic are the highlights. I love the tackiness of the breathy bubblegum pop soundtrack and the shag carpet spaceship interiors. The moments of peril are ludicrously inventive; vampiric dollies, death by sparrow cage, a fatal sexual pleasure machine induced into overload. Shame nothing more is made from them… you wouldn’t call Barbarella action packed even though the foundations are there. Essentially each set piece involves Fonda bound in a kinky death trap then released after a beat of struggling.  But it does trundle along slowly with no end in sight. And when the end comes, it is abrupt. An experience that probably needed one screenwriter rather than 14. Yet the boredom of an aimless narrative isn’t what sticks in the memory a week later. All that saucy nuttiness does.

6