Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo direct Sam Strike, Stephen Dorff and Vanessa Grasse in this 60s set origin story for Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror icon, Leatherface. 

As a horror this doesn’t really work… there’s no real tension to it. No sympathetic characters to root for, when the deaths inevitably come they are random with little attempt at building fear. Yet Leatherface has a warm nostalgic glow to it (Terrence Malick’s Badlands is a clear inspirational touchstone for it) and we take a surprising path to get that nice young Sawyer boy to turn face wearing powertool killer. I feel if they spent just an extra ten minutes beefing up the shock sequences it wouldn’t all feel like a mere one track domino rally. As it is, this is just grizzled and gorgeous people knocking into each other until the legend is left standing. Only a threesome involving a rotten corpse and an escape involving a dead cow match the viscous ickyness of the Tobe Hooper’s originals. The lurid ferocity isn’t even attempted.

5

Werner Herzog directs Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes and Willy Semmelrogge in this filmed play about a small town soldier driven mad by his local doctor’s experiments and his wife’s infidelity.

A monolithic performance by a committed Kinski makes this worthwhile. Herzog’s usual concerns about decaying society are present and correct, but the narrative is a little too loose and too didactic to buttress Kinski’s terrifying mania.

5

Steven Brill directs Adam Sandler, Jennifer Hudson and Kevin James in this 1990s-set broad comedy romance about an unctuous Hollywood ‘little fish’ showbiz manager who falls for his latest client. 

This shameless mix of Broadway Danny Rose and A Star Is Born trundles along for too indulgent a running time with very few jokes that land. The nineties backdrop is rarely exploited and the star cameos are constant yet equally under utilised. Sandler creates an amusing lonely caricature as the titular Sandy and has great chemistry with Hudson… but it all amounts to further filler for his back catalouge.

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1. Alien (1979)

2. The Warriors (1979)

3. Mad Max (1979)

4. Apocalypse Now (1979)

5. The Muppet Movie (1979)

6. The First Great Train Robbery (1979)

7. The Jerk (1979)

8. Hardcore (1979)

9. Tess (1979)

10. All That Jazz (1979)
11. Vengeance Is Mine (1979)
12. Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979)
13. Time After Time (1979)
14. Manhattan (1979)
15. The Wanderers (1979)
16. Saint Jack (1979)
17. Radio On (1979)
18. Scum (1979)
19. Camera Buff (1979)
20. Breaking Away (1979)

Leo McCarey directs Groucho Marx, Chico Marx and Harpo Marx in this manic comedy about small European fiefdom that finds itself with an acerbic new leader and a war looming. 

War fever! Marx Brothers style. Absolutely crazed. It is hard to think how the generation who watched this, WWI in imbedded their memories and WWII beginning to formulate, felt about a spoof of war. Then again, was Hot Shots: Part Deux any more sensitive to ‘Nam vets and Middle Eastern geopolitics? You get some fantastic sketches welded on… the mirror sequence, the lemonade seller’s destruction and Rufus T Firefly’s unlikely court defence of  Chicolini. All comedy gold.

10

Stefano Sollima directs Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin and Isabela Moner in this action thriller sequel that sees the ethics free drug cartel breakers exploit a kingpin’s child and the border’s human trafficking business to disrupt the drug trade.

Soldado lacks the relentless, being dragged down into quicksand, feeling of Denis Villeneuve’s original entry. It lacks the heart that Emily Blunt’s rookie but capable protagonist brought as our guide into this murky world of covert ops and maximum deniability. You could say the tough kid, Isabela Moner, takes over this function for us. But for the last hour she is rendered mute by both duct tape and PTSD. There are also three or four sequences that are as silly as they are suspenseful. Still, it is a thumping and violent action film with a mature plot in the main. And Del Toro is still an under utilised, truly masculine lead… thirty years into his career. These both are rarities in the multiplexes recently, and should be supported.

6

J. A. Bayona directs Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt and Ted Levine in this fifth instalment of the cloned dinosaurs on the rampage in the modern age blockbuster franchise. 

Well, well, well… this is a pleasant summer surprise. Bitty and daft, featuring millennial support characters as annoying as The Green Inferno’s lampooned protagonists (though these ones somehow don’t get eaten). It should be a disaster disaster movie, right? Well nope… as Bayona in the first half crafts a heartfelt love letter to Spielberg. The PG-13 peril is constantly gripping and escalating, the threat laid out expertly and unfussily, and there are pleasing visual steals from less obvious moments in Raiders of the Lost Ark, War of the Worlds and well… Jurassic Park. I was absolutely swept away. I chuckled at the ridiculous plot wobbles. I was in awe of the shot of the brachiosaurus as we left the island. I bet Steven the ageing wunderkind had tears caught in his beard when he saw that reverent, majestic image that out Spielberged even him. The second half sees Bayona retreat back into his own directorial interests… gothic castles, locked away secrets, princesses in turrets, patterned wallpaper. It is not quite as playful, and the action doesn’t flow fast enough for you not to have adequate time to outthink the ridiculous moments. It is not terrible… just not the breakneck rollercoaster that the island offered. It certainly isn’t an entertainment for humbuggy nitpickers. Howard and Pratt are given short shrift, only a couple of scenes exploit their neat screwball chemistry. And Blue, the trained velociraptor, probably gets a little too much screentime… she is a concept that just doesn’t work as a plot device and, worse yet, utterly dilutes her species “big bad” legacy within the series. I want my raptors to be claw tapping, relentless monsters of death… not reluctant, uncertain sidekicks. Still Ted Levine, Rafe Spall and Toby Jones all bring some cold blooded “boo-hiss”ery to their human villian roles to make up for this fudge. A tapestry of moments, one that possibly won’t hold up to repeated viewings though.

7

John Carpenter directs Kurt Russell, Season Hubley and Shelley Winters in this biopic of Elvis Presley’s life.

John Carpenter’s name promises lean, intense and ominous adventures. So this project is a real curveball. Expansive, laidback and ominous anecdotes from the life of The King. That’s right… still ominous… Carpenter the director can’t shake his horror roots and there’s frequent scenes where characters bid farewell, or drive fast, or get into a scuffle where you expect violent tragedy to strike. I watched one impromptu car chase full of dread, thinking “I don’t remember Elvis losing a limb in a pile-up!” This is down to Carpenter’s house style, he accidentally falls back into the visual mode of suspense even when it’s wholly inappropriate. That’s not to say his mastery doesn’t imbue other mundane or stock moments with a rock ‘n’ roll energy or visual elan. He exceeds the TV movie origins of the production with his talent. But in the main you watch this for Russell. His impersonation of Presley is keen, even when the lip syncing flubs. He has a sweet chemistry with Season Hubley, his Priscilla. Where is Season Hubley now? If you can’t be bothered reading a doorstop biography of Elvis then this gives you the whitewashed highlights, with a few hints at acceptable controversy. A fun, if uncomplicated, afternoon killer.

6

Fred M. Wilcox directs Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis and Leslie Nielsen in this space opera about a crew who land on a planet with no inhabitants except a shipwrecked scientist, his foxy daughter, a haughty robot and strange, deadly projections.

I enjoyed Forbidden Planet far more as a kid than I do as an adult. It is just too talky. We move repetitively onto different sets to endure another 10 minutes of exposition that could be covered in five minutes of action. Ignore the talk, enjoy the pleasures. The Eastmancolor vision of the galaxy has its retro charms, Anne Francis looks delectable as the young lady fuelling her father’s id monsters and  there’s a perverse pleasure in watching Leslie Nielsen play it straight.

7

 

My Top 10 Space Operas

1. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
2. Planet of the Apes (1968)
3. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983)
4. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
5. Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)
6. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
7. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
8. Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back (1980)

9. The Fifth Element (1996)
10. Flash Gordon (1980)

Eli Roth directs Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy and Aaron Burns in this horror thriller about a group of students who travel to the jungle to protect a lost tribe’s right only to end up in their cooking pot.

Middling horror bad boy Roth spends a good hour lampooning the hypocrisy of his millennial social justice warriors with nary a severed limb in sight. So well that I’ve read a fair few reviews from people of that generation who see the protagonists as likeable and well motivated. Ha! You young deluded fools. Roth wants to hate the kids before he ates the kids. And he destroys, and chops, and chews em up good and raw. Grisly stuff… though without a sympathetic protagonist it is essentially a joyless gorno. Joyless gorno… Roth’s signature dish. Let the (kinda) master cook. The set pieces are never dull and always ruthless in their brutality.

6