Michael Haneke directs Isabelle Huppert, Jean- Louis Trintignant and Fantine Harduin in this cold farce about a disconnected upper class Calais family. 

Often feeling like a Haneke Greatest Hits Tour (murderous children filming their crimes, old relatives wanting to be euthanised, untrustworthy relationships between poshos and their immigrant servants) finally proves inconsequential. It is frothy and glossy rather than intellectual or rattling. Just as it has the Haneke seal of quality on it, does not mean he has anything new to say, or fertile ideas to re-explore. It feels very much like a placeholder made by a director because he could fund a film this year, rather than he should. It is sunnily shot, Fantine Harduin puts in a good child performance as the bad seed among the bad eggs, and the few moments when the family interact with the local dispossessed African immigrants have a laugh-worthy, open mouth shock.

4

Richard Fleischer directs Lee Marvin, Gary Grimes and Ron Howard in this revisionist western following three farmboys who try to emulate the life and crimes of a violent but charismatic bank robber they cross paths with. 

Standard product that tries to be as palatable for the kids as The Cowboys was, while still somehow wanting to match the grit and tragedy of The Wild Bunch. It manages neither, struggling to walk the same path as the superior Bad Company. The loss of innocence is effecting, the robberies have an inept shock to them, and Marvin’s untrustworthy fairy godmother figure is surface level alluring. Just as you’d expect from one of the dying genre’s last true stars, he makes the best impression in a role that might as well have been tailored for his magnificent presence. But even if you are a fan of his and the form, this is often merely workable at best.

6

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger direct Eric Portman, Laurence Olivier and Anton Walbrook in this World War II propaganda thriller imagining Nazis on the run in Canada. 

The inverse of One of Our Aircraft is Missing , this depicts a group of (mostly) despicable hun running roughshod over Western freedoms. It works really well though, both as a thriller in a mode not dissimilar to Predator or Centurion,  and as a didactic piece to encourage the States not to deal with Hitler and his values. While it may lack the magic of their technicolour fantasy work, The Archers make striking use of rural Canadian life in stiff juxtaposition to the fugitives’ politics. The Nazis interact with, and are bested by, continually decent sorts, whether it be Larry Olivier’s bullish hunter, a community of sweet Hutterites or Lesley Howard’s gentleman explorer. It may force its points across bluntly, but beyond these forgivable manipulations, it proves a tight little adventure.

9

Christian Duguay directs Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis and Jennifer Rubin in this Philip K Dick inspired future war thriller about killer weapons hidden among us. 

An underwhelming first act and an equally lacklustre finale hobble a neat little premise. Weller is gruffly enjoyable as the battle hardened lead grunt and the FX are pretty good (and cleverly deployed) considering the low budget. But whenever these two undeniably pleasurable positives get abandoned for any other business the movie reveals its pedestrian lack of ambition. Watchable.

6

Nikolaj Arcel directs Alicia Vikander, Mads Mikkelsen and Mikkel Følsgaard in this true story period drama about a love triangle in the Danish Court between a mad, young king, his tormented trophy wife and a radical physician. 

Beautiful people in historical fineries swing between beastly behaviour and passionate affection to distracting enough effect. It starts like Marie Antoinette, shifts into the tone of Ridicule and ends up reaching towards being The Crucible. It never quite meets the quality of those mature, harsher re-enactments but it frames Vikander and Mikkelsen to look their most scrumptious and allows Følsgaard to explode vividly as the brutish fool of a young king.

7

Christopher Nolan directs Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy in this sci-fi actioner about a team of criminals who plunge into a tycoon’s subconsciousness to implant an idea. 

This is the point where Nolan climbed up from being an exciting cinematic voice in the blockbuster field to that rare ground occupied only by Hitchcock, Kubrick, Spielberg, Tarantino, and maybe Fincher. A maker of event cinema so consistently imbued with intelligence, ambition, technical mastery and scope that each release feels more urgent and relevant than the latest episode in even the most popular of franchises. This is where Nolan became a cinematic luxury brand of the rarest quality. His name means you are going to see things you never have before in the multiplex. Go on opening night.

And for all its outlandish concept, labyrinth plot and looping mysteries (one of Inception’s strengths is the sheer density of the endeavour means that repeat viewings aren’t just rewarding but essential – there’s no way to absorb all its surprises, subtext and sidebars in a few sittings) it works best as a simple men on a mission adventure story. We get sequences that rival James Bond in their elan and sheer goddamn size: shoot-outs in ornate flooding shiros, gravity defying hotel corridor brawls and ticking clock paramilitary raids on brutalist mountainside clinics. All are given surrealist twists to match their dreamscape setting but all conform to a restrictive, stake setting logic. Anything can happen in the world of dreams but “anything” comes with a tension increasing set of rules to fight against. “You musn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”

Having said that, for all the snow ski chases and trains rumbling through rush hour traffic jams grandness, the most gripping sequence takes place in the real world (… possibly?) The Mombasa foot chase is a mad dash scramble where DiCaprio’s Cobb dodges and scrapes through the tightest of spots, a relentless pursuit that would make even Jason Bourne want to stop and have a breather. One of my favourite set pieces ever, the screen rumbles with the same reality falling apart ferocity as any of the dream maze mindbenders.

I keep harking back to Bond as clearly it is a touchstone for Nolan. Away from the aped confidence and magnitude, and even the unbelievable tech, it is the impossible lifestyle that Nolan matches here. Sure, he already convincingly conceived on the big screen the lavish wealth of billionaire vigilante Bruce Wayne, but Inception has a tailored, globe trotting opulence that matches only 007. Skyscraper rooftops, bullet trains, first class compartments and varnished oak panelled Parisian university lecture rooms  represent the real world… When Cobb’s team of forgers and theives create a brain maze they truly pluck it right out of the five star, Michelin rated, 1001 Places To See Before You Die gloss pages of a tycoon’s travel brochure. I bet the toilet paper is like velvet in that imaginary penthouse suite. And while that lush life never dissipates, as we go deeper into the subject’s mind the worlds we visit do become blanker. We start (probably) in the bustling cityscape, drop further into a high end but subtly corporate hotel, eventually finding ourselves falling into blank snowscapes, and finally the void of the sea and a beach. Detail gives way to canvas the more pressing the mission becomes.

Inception’s other key strength is its ensemble. Sure, the illustrious likes of Michael Caine, Ellen Page, Dileep Rao and Ken Watanabe are often leant on to be exposition spoutters or dumps, but that is, at the very least, quite the band of charismatic thesps to talk us through Inception’s complex terms and conditions. They all get nice bits of business away from explaining and enquiring. No one needs to hand back their Oscar just because there is a tanker load of information to implant in the audience. In fact considering just how much world building Inception has to do, it is credit to Nolan just how breezily he lays out the game.

Of the lead performances there is a four way tie, which means we, the audience, ultimately win. Leonardo DiCaprio gives his corrupt master thief a Bogart-esque world weariness, a mode that he previously worked similar magic with in Blood Diamond. His compromised Cobb is a compelling creation who never lets his personal tragedy or addiction take the viewer away from the task at hand, even if it throws all manner of obstacles into his crew’s path.

Joseph Gordon Levitt gets most of the action and the moments of quiet heart as the straight edge second-in-command, Arthur. It is nice to have the man of action in a blockbuster be the most restrained and clipped. He brushes flintily but rewardingly against Tom Hardy’s flamboyant gun-for-hire forger Eames. His laidback and cocksure arrival midway into the plot redraws the dynamic of the team brilliantly and we get the undeniable treat of seeing the moment a star is born right before our eyes. In fact, it is hard to tally the equally impressive grunting brute superstar we now love with the lady’s choice posh boy who (almost) steals the show here. “It’s a shame, I really wanted to know what was going to happen in there. I swear we had this one.”

Marion Cotillard has never been more beautiful in a role, one that should make her cipher but is filled by her with rage, confusion and threat. As a violent projection of Cobb’s wronged wife, she becomes a harbinger of doom. Whether she arrives in evening gown or arctic combats when Mal appears the mission is one false move away from fucked. The personification of risk and disaster.

Then we have Inception’s greatest puzzle. Is the mission about ‘simply’ inspiring a business heir into splitting up his father’s empire or is it really about getting Cobb to forgive himself and re-enter the real world? Or both? Even when we are in what we assume is reality the architecture has a puzzle like circuitry, the screen occasionally wobbles, the mazes we wander around have a detailed anonymity. Can we ever claim to know when we are in the real world? Each character has a totem, a physical object that lets only them know if they are in reality from how it reacts to physical force, as long as only they know how it feels? Yet Cobb’s totem, the iconic spinning top, is actually Mal’s and has been touched by his mission setter Saito. So how trustworthy is it? When Cobb is taken to see a basement full of dream addicts, his pharmacist warns him he may not like what he sees. Probably as nothing wakes one from a dream faster than realising it could be one. How long has Cobb not been “stateside”?

If we look at the foreground mission with Cillian Murphy’s target, it reveals the recipe for Inception. The target needs to be emotionally engaged with the idea, feel like it is his own, and be conned into becoming part of the team’s sting to open up the deepest level of his emotional subconscious so the inception takes grip. Once we see this play out, could we not say Cobb has gone through the same journey? Have his friends made up a mission, so that Cobb can be distracted into unlocking and confronting his deeply buried guilt and return to reality? The more you watch the movie with this in mind, the more it becomes apparent we are watching two Inception heists.

Beyond hidden bonus plots, Nolan has made Inception as an ode to movie making itself. The team create worlds, limited yet convincing, so that action and drama and personal growth can take place. Like a movie set, if you were to wander off to the edge you would realise the con. Like a well edited scene, if you stayed for too long in one place you’d question the artificiality. But if the trick is convincing, distracting and dazzling… well forged as Nolan does masterfully, the viewer can believe a fake idea. You can use special effects to warp reality, turn cities on top of themselves or blow up an avalanche but the more you do it the more you bring attention to the pretence.

Like a great magician or skilled grifter or the finest auteur, Nolan shows us how the flim-flam is done, tells us it is flim-flam but does it so assuredly we get caught up in the magic. We believe. That’s what makes a perfect blockbuster. Inception.

10

Skott Snider directs Dean Cameron, Ami Dolenz and Felicity Waterman in this beach comedy about a loser who uses a cute genie to win the love of a vapid model. 

Horrid, cheap, sexist, cliched, unfunny. A charmless Dean Cameron looks like a middle aged accountant yet is playing a teenager playing at being a sub-Bill Murray. Bizarrely as you wade through all the unimaginative shite, Dolenz manages somehow to shine out effervescently as the wish granting better woman he doesn’t notice until the forced finale. If the movie had any focus at all, she would be given the master’s share of the screentime and someone … anyone… with a bit of screen appeal to bounce off of. Instead we get crowbarred in volleyball games, titty shots and lacklustre cameos from jobbing Pat Morita and Vincent Schiavelli. Her spirited support role makes it all watchable… Ami Dolenz, where are you now?

4

Héctor Babenco directs Luiz Carlos, Rodrigo Santoro and Ciao Blat in this poetic yet gritty look at a prison community in Brasil, set in the real life dilapidated complex that eventually saw a riot, massacre and a demolition. 

A sprawlingly messy and captivating look at a tough yet vibrant subculture. São Paulo lock-up is certainly more open yet chaotic than what we see in the States or the West. If you loved City of God, you’ll find much to marvel at here. The street life flashbacks and gang affiliations are presented in a similar harsh yet strangely romantic light, while incarcerated life is often given the incongruous sheen of magical realism. Babenco’s progressive attitudes towards representing homosexuality and the unflinching shock of the tragic final act make this much more than an freak show for the curious yet law abiding viewer. Broad yet powerful.

8

Terence Fisher directs Peter Cushing, Francis Matthews  and Eunice Gayson in this sequel that focuses on the good mad doctor’s continued experiments in re-animation rather than his monster’s desires. 

Quite a forgettable Hammer Horror, lacking a lot of the lurid exploitation that makes the later ones such fun… though it therefore feels quite classy when compared to them. You get a solid lead turn from Cushing and a relatively watchable drama about the titled resurrectionist trying to set up a new lab under the suspicious noses of the stuffy local medical council. Hardly the stuff of nightmares or dark fantasies though.

4

Mary Lambert directs Dale Midkiff, Denise Crosby and Fred Gwynne in this Stephen King adaptation where a yuppie family move nearby a burial ground that ressurects the dead. 

Laughably awful. One of those situations were your reader’s imagination might interpret what Stephen King banged out on his typewriter as creepy, but a low budget film crew can only manage to remake as spoof worthy. The very rare nicely shocking bits of imagery that spurt out at us accidentally are repeated and revisited so often even they lose all their low wattage power very quickly.  We are left with almost two hours of horrid people played by grating nobodies making terrible decisions.

2