Roman Polanski directs himself, Isabelle Adjani and Melvyn Douglas in this psychological suspenser about a man who becomes paranoid that his new neighbours are trying to kill him. 

Surreal horror meets slapstick farce ineffectually in this overlong pain. Polanski does the pratfalling cornered prey act suprisingly well and there are flashes of his previous disturbing brilliance. If you want to read into it all some parallels to either his childhood surviving the Holocaust or his fleeing of America on statutory rape charges; then please be my guest. Taken at face value though it is merely a self indulgent puzzle.

4

James Ponsoldt directs Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aaron Paul and Octavia Spencer in this drama about an alcoholic primary school teacher who attempts to go sober while her partner continues drinking. 

Visually this is Bukowski meets Etsy – all dive bars and floral dresses, vomit flecked chins and master shots dappled in overcranked sunlight. It is wryly amusing and hits believable depths. Winstead is beautiful as ever, even when waking up jonseing on a flytipped sofa. You can see her enjoy being challenged by a role that stretches her after a decade of genre work. Here the monster she has to survive is her addiction and she sails that ship to safety without ever being mawkish.

7

Kathyrn Bigelow directs John Boyega, Will Poulter and Hannah Murray in this visceral docudrama recreation of the 1967 riots and an incident of police brutality covered up during its worst night. 

Let’s get it out of the way, straight off the bat, Detroit is an unmissable act of cinema. Bigelow’s current reportage style gives you a broad history lesson and then also focuses in on a one location, one night elongated set piece of sustained oppressive terror. It is a commendable and breathless recreation, daringly confident and it wounds you as a viewer. But as much as Detroit evokes a turbulent period and let’s you helplessly experience a horrendous sequence of events in an immersive experience parallel to Nolan’s Dunkirk, it is also very frustrating at times. You never really get a satisfying grip on the characters with the possible exception of Poulter’s gracious yet disgustingly racist cop composite. John Boyega’s ostensible lead is a good example of how stunted and obtuse the narrative attention span often feels. Boyega is very impressive early on as the security guard who ingratiates himself with the white cops and National Guard. He charmingly conveys a smart guy with one eye on surviving and another on keeping as many of his neighbourhood out of the crosshairs of the unchecked aggressions. His calm self-controlled interactions and crisp uniform evoke Austin Stoker’s iconic turn in Assault on Precinct 13. As he lingers in the motel annexe, subtly trying his best to stop the white authority figures from boiling over you feel him silently calculating the best outcome with each new escalation. Bigelow uses him as our avatar, we and he can see just how tragic the situation we are thrown into is, yet we have no actual power to be heroic to stop the injustice and violence from unfurling. Then once the long night is over and the cover-up begins, Boyega’s everyman finds himself behind bars, implicated in the crimes he tried to avert. And we just leave him behind there for too much of the final act. We get neither chance to see him save lives (fantasy maybe but…) nor get to stay with him when his own story takes an even more exciting turn. Maybe Bigelow feels we have seen these movies too many times before? Maybe the truth is too fuzzy or too unpalatable to stand scrutiny and she wisely brushes over it? Maybe there are legal implications of looking too deeply into the corruption of the courtcase that followed? Whatever the reason though,  every time our de facto protagonist finds himself in a position of compulsive attention, the movie shoves off away from him. What it moves off to each time is not unworthy, but you cannot help but wish we stayed with Boyega’s powerful hero. Or even Poulter’s reprehensible but complex nasty. Sometimes a bit of centring goes a long way.

7

Annette Haywood-Carter directs Hedy Burress, Angelina Jolie and Jenny Lewis in this Joyce Carol Oates adaptation about a beautiful drifter who a group of small town girls form a gang around. 

A quite watchable teen rebellion pic with a stick of rock exciting cast; from attention grabbing freshman Jolie to old hand cult character actors filling out the parent roll call. The lesbian romance is coy but gritty, the girl gang plot line soapy (in a good way). It stumbles off into histrionic tragedy in the last act but the female empowerment message washes away the unbelievable cliffhangers / neat conclusions that hobble the finale.

5

Spike Lee directs Tracy Camilla Johns, Tommy Redmond Hicks and himself in this romantic drama about a young New York black artist who needs three very different black men to satisfy her. 

I’m quite the fan of the first half of Spike Lee’s career but his feature debut always avoided me. I couldn’t seem to get a chance to watch it if it was projected in the sky. At last, Netflix has the rights and…. meh! It has clear simple ambitions; the visual ones are achieved confidently, the intellectual ones have dated uneasily. The broad central characters no longer connect, some of their more theatrical interactions come across as distasteful. As debuts go though She Gotta Have It is often formally exciting and emotionally satisfying. He went out there and got it made, and his masterful eye for framing and rhythm shines through the cheap origins.

5

James Cameron directs Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton and Edward Furlong in this sci-fi action juggernaut where the old T-800 model is reprogrammed and sent back in time to protect an adolescent John Conner from an even deadlier robotic threat than his mother faced in 1984.

They only ever made them like this once. And this was that one time. The scale of the mayhem, the clarity of the action storytelling is incredible. Footchases in malls turn into demolition derbies between motorbikes and 18 wheelers truck cabs. An intense and sweaty barefoot asylum breakout becomes a cybernetic horror show. We take complicit part in a terror attack on a corporate lab. Then a highway chase where a helicopter weaves under and over bridges in relentless pursuit of a SWAT vehicle… DONE FOR FUCKING REALS!! Bringing us to the blistering heat of the finale where our battered survivors are navigating a molten lead works with only a few bullets left, knowing the hundreds they have fired into the unstoppable new Terminator for the past couple of hours have barely slowed it. We also, en route, take in a one sided bar fight, nuclear destruction, future war and assassination attempts on a middle class family. This is how you do a blockbuster. Prime Arnie – just amazing. At home in the action, stretching his legs with the “human” stuff in a pleasingly believable way. Linda Hamilton is THE badass, raging warrior mother. No one has even tried to imitate her elemental, conflicted maelstrom since on screen.  And that triumphant score. Makes we want to watch it all over again. Flaws? The middle section heading to the border drags after all that big portion set-piece tasty. And that incongruous “I need a vacation” ad lib near the end should have found the editing floor. All in all though, thumbs up.

9

Nikolaj Arcel directs Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey and Tom Taylor in this Stephen King fantasy adaptation about a mythical Gunslinger protecting various realms from The Man in Black. 

Really rather heroic and breezy, easily better than its duff critical reputation suggests. Elba and McConaughey are far too powerful a pairing of genuine movie stars to ever be boring, inspite of the often stoic nature of the dialogue. This fast paced, simple adventure is littered with well designed terrors, elegant visual world building and many winking King references for the avid spotter. The finale unfortunately suffers from the duffers of CGI weightless imagery… but no more than Wonder Woman or Spider-Man or just about anything you bought a ticket to this summer. At a brisk 90 minutes this gets more right than wrong and proves decent big name popcorn. I was thoroughly entertained.

7

 

Steven Soderbergh directs Channing Tatum, Adam Driver and Daniel Craig in this heist comedy centred around Good Ole Boys and Nascar.

Diverting but forgettable. Kills a couple of hours colourfully, seemingly happy to clear that low bar. Only Daniel Craig feels like he is having any real fun. There are smart moments but you appreciate them rather than enjoy them. More a case of “I see what you’ve done there” rather than “I like what you’ve done there.”

5

John Schlesinger directs Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn and Pat Hingle in this true tale of an intelligence analyst and his drug dealing childhood friend who start selling secrets to the Ruskies. 

Solid acting gets lost in a meandering repetitive plot. The second hour of mistrust and bumbling attempts to recontact the Russians feels like it is stuck in an interminable loop. Maybe that is how history unspooled but a thriller should surely be a bit more targeted.

4

 

Patrick Hughes directs Samuel L Jackson, Ryan Reynolds and Salma Hayek in this buddy action comedy where a hitman and a bodyguard team-up.

Please just end. End. End. Why hasn’t it ended yet? Sam Jackson must have said all his contractually required amount of “Motherfuckers” by now, surely. Yet it is still going. And going. And going… End! END! End… motherfucker…?!

3