Zoltán Korda directs Humphrey Bogart, J. Carrol Naish and Bruce Bennett in this ensemble war movie where a desert tank picks up a passenger from just about every nation participating in World War II and then they have to work together to protect a well from a Nazi battalion. 

Blatant propaganda that plays to stereotypes but with the brilliant Bogie front and centre and a strong Western plot transplanted to keep you gripped.

6

James Ponsoldt directs Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley and Brie Larson in this teen romance that sensitively explores the attraction between two mixed-up kids. 

This passed me by on release but I have enjoyed all of the James Ponsoldt’s movies I have discovered this year and the cast have all become big names since. So I gave it a try… and… Wow! Filmed with a slippery magic hour brightness and a timeless sense of fashion, this is an excellent teen movie trying to evoke the subtle truths of Say Anything… and Dazed and Confused – the teen genre’s high points. It casually explores the characters to start, allowing us to be seduced by their fresh faces and warmth to each other. There’s no love at first sight thunderbolts or fake rivalry. These kids get together with faltering uncertainty, they have sex with slightly worried / slightly surprised smiles on their faces and interact with the friends and exes still orbiting around them as people rather than as stock villains created to interrupt their binary happiness. Ponsoldt, with the help of some very charismatic leads, has somehow managed to bottle the temporary, elusive smoke of what a teen relationship actually feels and looks like. And then he introduces his second theme – our quirky and confident boy has bigger issues. Hinted at throughout the first hour, his alcohol dependency hides in plain sight. Characters comment on it obliquely but he is oblivious, we rarely see him in a scene without a drink to hand, and it is only when his new love Aimee starts carrying a hip flask to school too that we begin to question how healthy his lifestyle is, for them both. The movie switches on us – we thought we were being sold on a fun guy taking a chance on falling for a shy girl romance, a Cinderella story in faded t-shirts. Instead we start to explore what Miles Teller will be when he no longer has high school as a safety net to fall into, hungover each morning. Will he straighten up and be responsible? Will he grow up and stay with the girl clearly smitten on him? And as he explores who he is and what his future looks like, the heavier drama grips and still rings true. Remarkable stuff.

9

Thom Eberhardt directs Catherine Mary Stewart, Robert Beltran and Kelli Maroney in this cheap, unambitious horror comedy about valley girls surviving a near deserted LA, irradiated by a passing comet. 

Conceptually this should be a lot more fun as a cheerleader and an arcade machine  player take down zombies with machine guns. Sexy cult mania ensues, surely? But the thrills are not the priority. A perky attitude and laidback pace set this apart, often making it adorable. Beautiful even, but with barely any action, gore or killer jokes it ends up being at best a distracting in the moment mood piece.

6

Richard Kelly directs Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and Frank Langella in this Twilight Zone style mystery about a 70s couple given a red button with simple instructions  – if they press it they receive a million dollars, also if they press it someone they do not know will die. 

The Box is an absorbing supernatural thriller that gets off on its escalating sense period paranoia rather than set-pieces or logic. The first act recreates one those neat impending twist imminent Tales of of the Unexpected; faithful, tight and straight. The second hour shifts into the world of fantasy, punishment and fear without ever feeling like it has gone off the rails. It retains its grip even though we run off into unchartered territory, slowly looping in and out of the ramifications of the button being pressed. Kelly never really followed through on the brilliance of Donnie Darko. Here he at least taps back into his wunderkind debut’s woozy suburban angst but it is a colder, more detached experience. He lovingly recreates elaborate NASA testing factories and sitcom era kitchens then fills them with teasingly confusing bleakness. And I really like that. Langella convinces as the otherworldly choice giver and button deliverer. We also get Cameron Diaz’ last great performance now she has seemingly retired. Vulnerable yet curious, the comedy actress was rarely stretched by her likeable filmography, but this morality tale needs to be reassessed as one of her strongest dramatic risks.

7

Guy Hamilton directs Sean Connery, Honor Blackman and Gert Fröbe in this premium 007 adventure where Bond tangles with a gold obsessed megalomaniac. 

This is the movie that has defined the tropes and format and quality of the Bond machine for the next five decades. As it, indisputably, is the dog’s bollocks. How many other films series have their peaks at their third film? Often a time when complacency and losing sight of core values becomes endemic in franchises.  It is easily the most relaxed and classiest of thrillers. Bond essentially patiently waits in the wings for Goldfinger’s evil plan (and it is a corker of a mad scheme) to reveal itself. Irradiate the world’s gold stores by nuking Fort Knox, creating financial chaos and giving old Auric the monopoly on the metal he loves. This leads to an incredible pop art finale where Bond is cuffed to a bomb and Odd Job and he fight for control of the ticking timer, razorsharp brimmed hat and all. Production design, agonising near silence then percussive score, muscular action and star power mix together perfectly. The meander we take to get to this point involves all the classics; quips, laser beam castration set pieces, quips during laser beam castration set pieces, nude women being suffocated in gold paint, an Aston Martin full of  Q Branch tricks (why would such a well armed car ever need a passenger ejector seat?… Oh…), that Shirley Bassey romper stomper of a theme song, plus my personal favourite moments… Tilly Masterson’s alpine assassination attempts on the villian. These classy location stalking sequences are beautiful and pleasurably overanxious, utterly true to Fleming too. They are often overlooked as Pussy Galore rocks up in the second half with her squad of sexy pilots. Being all iconic and shit. The bad girl is always going to overshadow the good girl. She bosses Bond about, is aloofly amused by his attempts to flirt, she is more than a match for him. Sure, he eventually seduces the lesbian out of her (it was a different time™) but you get the feeling there haven’t really been enough Honor Blackmans in the series since. Bond girls who probably vaguely remember that spy as a mere notch on the bedpost rather than vice versa. For such a leisurely actioner Goldfinger delivers thrills, laughs, glamour and Bond genuinely put in the ringer a few satisfying times. Perfection.

10

 

Niels Arden Oplev directs Ellen Page, Diego Luna and Nina Dobrev in this remake of the 1990 psychological thriller about med students experimenting with near death experiences. 

I have a massive soft spot for the original Flatliners. A teen friendly Jacob’s Ladder with amazing MTV gothic imagery, reuniting The Lost Boys dream team of Kiefer Sutherland and Joel Schumacher. It was a gateway horror film for me and holds up far better than its contemporary reputation suggests. This will never be thought of in the same way in 25 years time. Sutherland returns, maybe as the same character under a new name, only to have little effect on the precedings. The death sequences and fears that they bring back are uninspired. There’s a nice shock at the one hour mark but this is squandered by a trite resolution where characters who don’t deserve quite such an easy happy ending seemingly walk away scott free. With the exception of the ever likeable Page and Luna playing the oldest med students ever, there is very little to recommend this dull, flattened out retread.

3

John Flynn directs Sylvester Stallone, Donald Sutherland and Tom Sizemore in this prison actioner where a convict due for release is transferred to a brutal penitentiary by a warden with an axe to grind. 

For a fan of 80s action, I never really had as much time for Sly as I did Arnie, Mel or Bruce. His flicks always seemed sloppy, cheesy and achingly unaware. Lock-Up serves up the usual mess of mawkish sentimentalism, macho comedy, male bonding montages, bicep flexing and uninvolving fights. But it somehow works better than other Sly flicks. Just as schizophrenic – a football match is treated as war, an oppressive guard regime allows them to build a muscle car for fun, jokes about bug racing precede tragic deaths – yet somehow a good time. It helps that Donald Sutherland, Sonny Ladham and a scarily young Tom Sizemore are all on hand to chew the scenery. I enjoyed Lock-Up despite all its inherent flaws.

7

George Lucas directs Robert Duvall, Maggie McOmie and Donald Pleasance in this dystopian sci-fi drama where a human drone goes off his emotion suppressing meds’ and begins to feel love / yearn for freedom.

As a mood piece THX 1138 is unrivalled. It is a chillingly and convincingly, vertically intergrated vision of a hellish future where all human emotion is suppressed to make the people subservient components to a singularity. It is oppressive and avante garde. As confusing and nightmarish and believable as such a scenario should be. Where the film loses its edge is when it enters into thriller territory. The chases are bog standard. Only the final ironic punchline which ends the pursuit seems to fit the cold terror we witnessed in the first hour. Lucas’ creation has far more power when we are lost in a white abyss, or  fighting through a crush of unsympathetic commuters, or watching a terrifying robot overseer escort a toddler back to their cell. Whether any viewer would want to repeat a visit to such a visceral experience is up for debate though.

7

Jean-Pierre Melville directs Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret and Jean-Pierre Cassel in this historical thriller following a cell of French resistance fighters. 

Told in a cool, detached docudrama style with a harsh air of pessimism overwhelming even the noblest of heroics recreated. This is tough as nail. Melville entertains with drawn out, captivating set-pieces and bold, brusque masculine performances, even from a gracefully aging Signoret. But the tragedy of the doomed lives these people live is what lasts with you. Operating in a frustrated world of paranoia, abandoned missions and summary executions; they never can see the difference they are making nor can interact with the citizens they are fighting to free from Nazi rule. The world of mistrust they are lost within is painted as a greater sacrifice than the torture and death they constantly face. And we are made to feel that expertly by the French crime genre’s master director. Double Bill this with the glossier but equally slippery Allied.

7

Tom Makiewicz directs John Candy, Mariel Hemingway and Emma Samms in this comedy vehicle where a TV soap writer finds himself living in his fictional world, his typewriter giving him godlike powers and both female leads distracting him from getting back to reality. 

There are some light knowing asides to soap opera inanity lingering at the sidelines but this is essentially a project so caught up in running through its concept it seemingly forgets to put any laughs in. Not even one nice piece of John Candy comedy business just plot, plot, plot, plot, plot.

2