Sydney Pollack directs Dustin Hoffman, Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange in this comedy about an unemployable method actor who poses as a middle aged woman to secure a part on a soap.

Tootsie is one of those “classics” that I always meant to get around to watching, it is embarrassing I hadn’t til now being quite such a big Hoffman and Bill Murray fan. It didn’t quite meet my high expectations for it. As a comedy or a drama it isn’t quite feast or famine. The humour from the set up is amusing at best, with only an uncredited Bill finding laugh out lines. Drama wise the developments are too broad – points are made about sexism and questioning identity but in a foamy sitcommy way, it is a little too as expected, a little too soft play safe. Tootsie stands out on strong performances and charm, good New York location work and an insider’s relish of the acting world. It is a very, very likeable film giving Hoffman plenty of room to excel in dual roles… he creates and maintains Dorothy as her own person admirably. And Jessica Lange makes the most of what could have been a throwaway part – instilling her romantic interest with depth, seductiveness and vulnerability.

7

Jean Luc-Godard directs Anna Karina, Sady Rebbot and André S. Labarthe in this drama following a young free spirit’s descent into prostitution.

A bit of class this. So beautiful, so stylish and evocative of its era. Yet also deliberately cold and calculated. Distancing techniques abound like chapter intertitles, abrupt cuts, unflinching cameras, long shots of the back of people’s heads, bleak clinical narration from government surveys about prostitution. Yet all of it cannot suppress a glowing star turn from Anna Karina – as the gorgeous fool who would rather oblivion than her normal constraining life, she is captivating. You feel for her ennui and failed attempt to break out, savour her guilt and acceptance of her lot. Yes – it is a tragedy but there are some quirky moments embracing pop culture scattered to entertain us (a trip to the movies / a jukebox is played), that poke holes of light into the darkness. Great!

8

 

Stanley Kramer directs Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Anthony Perkins in this staid apocalyptic romance about the citizens of Melbourne waiting for the deadly radiation from a nuclear war that has wiped out the rest of the planet to reach them. 

I’m getting old. Some kid at work has nicknamed me “Grandpa” and another asked me what the biggest change I have seen in my lifetime was. And the answer I gave was I grew up thinking at any moment nuclear war would begin and that would be that. I grew up on Mad Max, The Terminator, Threads and When the Wind Blows. And then after the Berlin Wall fell… that mindset… that the only possible future would be dictated by the thermonuclear loaded gun our governments had created… seemingly disappeared. The weapons haven’t gone anywhere, just the appetite, I guess? We’d much rather the slow gnaw of environmental breakdown than the spectacular immediate burnout of a man made extinction level event. This film rather calmly explores the fallout of this. But rather than hordes of marauding mutants racing the wasteland for another arseholes to fuck and then eat, we follow a group of sailors and civil servants going about their romances and admin in the face of timetabled approaching doom. It is a well made but bleak film, troubling yet quaint. If it wasn’t for the annoying repetition of Waltzing Matilda, I would probably reward its classy stoic pessimism with a higher mark. As a collection of haunting dramatic ironies it has weathered the storm well enough.

6

 

Barry Jenkins directs Trevante Rhodes, Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali in this triptych following the coming of age of a gay black youth in a crack addled area of Miami.

I feel a little sorry for Moonlight. A small scale, well crafted, bravely experimental and sensitive (if not all that emotionally sophisticated) character study, that now has the weight of expectation that a Best Picture Oscar brings crushing down hard on its shoulders. It is too slight, too personal a film to bear that populist weight, that sneering scrutiny and I feel over time it will suffer an equally unbalanced backlash as one of those notoriously undeserved Academy Awards fuck ups. Not cloying like Crash or A Beautiful Mind (genuine Oscar fails), it still is not quite as moving, intelligent or eye opening a look into the young black experience as say Boyz N the Hood, Fresh or series 4 of The Wire… nor as brilliant a cinematic exploration of a man outside the stereotypical “gay norm” accepting his sexuality as seen in Brokeback Mountain or Beginners. It is, however, a perfectly fine one watch movie, with strong support turns from Harris and Ali, and striking neon infused visuals. I kept seeing echoes of Terrence Malick in the directorial choices and this worked well. One true frustration? I would often praise a movie for not holding the audiences’ hand every step of the way but Moonlight’s aggressively oblique structure often skips what feels like key moments of drama. That’s a stylistic choice but it is one that deprives of us of seeing plot points that would grip, while suggesting only young Chiron’s experience is of value while other characters triumphs and tragedies are at best distracting background noise. The focus is selfishly narrow.

6

 

Jordan Vogt-Roberts directs Samuel L Jackson, Brie Larson and John C Reilly in this glossy romp that mixes King Kong with Apocalypse Now with… I don’t know… something comic book, and colourful, and arch… like Con Air.  

After the sophisticated Godzilla from Legendary we now get their far more goofy Kong. Tonally different, with a lot more monster mashing (like tons and tons) and non-stop gags to match, this hits a sugar rush level of mega budget satisfaction you wouldn’t expect to find outside of a June/July release. The bright palette of rich yellows, dirty golds, toxic blues and innards pink and the jaunty pace hark back to heyday of Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich but this feels a more wholesome, a less cynically calculated movie. It feels and plays out like a lot of kids  in a toy shop fun. Pop mayhem. The opening burst of action and assembling of the team mimics the clean, fresh energy of Raiders or Ghostbusters. If you are aspiring to match those in terms of flavour you cannot be doing too much wrong. The cast helps, there are brilliant bits of work from the older hands (John C Reilly’s stranded WWII pilot is starring in his own separate five star movie), though Tom Hiddleston’s ostensible lead gets lost in the mix. Maybe there are way too many characters vying for attention but to criticise such a breezy and pleasurable movie for aping the secret strength of say high watermarks like Die Hard or Aliens seems hypocritical. Maybe in a decade all these smaller stand-outs will be considered the Hudson, Hicks and Vasquez of a generation.  But headline act is Kong. He gets to be moody, a little romantic (but he has too busy a shift to spend too much of his time wooing the ladies this chapter) and break baddie behemoth balls. As daft as it all is among the humans, the movie leaps up a quality notch whenever he is onscreen. And when Kong is onscreen he dominates. More please.

7

Fritz Lang directs Gustav Fröhlich, Brigitte Helm and Alfred Abel in the dystopian epic about a mad scientist who replaces the underclasses prophet with a revolt inspiring robot. 

The complete Metropolis is lost in the mists of time so I prefer this assembly put together by disco producer Giorgio Moroder. Sure it adds a dated but appropriate synth pop soundtrack but it also keeps the plot, pace, form and indelible images pretty much intact. It is the most Saturday night blockbuster-style way of enjoying this abused classic, which after it flopped got cut to shreds by international distributors in the 1920s. As for the film itself it is still an awe inspiring achievement and quite the wild ride; taking in industrial disasters, violent rebellions, rooftop chases, mechanised Satanic rituals and raves spilling out from sex parlours. In this form, Metropolis is a living, breathing and kicking out on uppers experience rather than some dull museum piece dustily presenting its still inspirational visual design. As a throw every against the wall and see what sticks futurist adventure, Fritz Lang’s epic still dazzles.

8

Kenneth Lonergan directs Anna Paquin, J. Smith-Cameron and Jean Reno in this drama about New York girl dealing and not dealing with her involvement in a fatal accident. 

An involving and satisfyingly expansive drama is undone slightly by its miniseries length. Paquin is excellent as the troubled kid entering the world of adulthood through a baptism of compromise and surface level morality, and the ensemble around her is a truly impressive roster of talent. Too tighten up the focus or cutaway at the subplots would lose a lot of what makes Margaret distinctive, yet Lonergan’s far more efficient follow up (Manchester By the Sea) explores the sames themes of fate, responsibility and maturity with more certainty and more entertainingly.

6

James Cameron directs Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton in the sequel to the sci-fi horror classic, that amps the stakes up to all out war. 

A perfect movie. An hour of toying tension, followed by 90 minutes of relentless hardware heavy action set pieces, of a believable scale and intensity that has never really been matched. The character work is sublime so that even the 20th billed one liners seem imbued with personality. And you don’t need a university education to see it is as much an open critique on capitalism as it is a celebration of motherhood, not just some dumb future squib and pyrotechnics show. Weaver is amazing as the survivor who literally grenades her demons and goes back into the fray. And with truly iconic turns from Biehn, Paxton (“Hey, maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!”), Lance Henrikson, Paul Reiser, Jenette Goldstein AND Carrie Henn you are never a shot away from a great bit dialogue or some background scene stealing. As for the Alien itself, the relentless drone onslaughts are terrifying, the suggestion that THEY are constantly strategically outfoxing the marines is eye-opening… and then… then we meet the Queen. Have the already high stakes of a movie ever been raised quite so boldly? And at a point when most blockbusters are powering down and tying off while you reach for your coat. Jim Cameron loves excess. Cinematic excellence, for sustained big budget thrills Aliens is pretty much incomparable.

10

Basil Dearden directs Roger Moore, Olga Georges-Picot and Hildegard Neil in this London set doppelgänger mystery.

Whether you approach it as puzzle to solve or a camp time capsule back to the suits and home furnishings of middle class Britain of the Harold Wilson era, there’s much to enjoy here. Not least of which is our Rog’s performance – admirably straight, often convincingly desperate and open, with not a raised eyebrow in sight. Quite right too.

7

Henry Levin directs Jack Palance, Anthony Perkins and Elisha Cook, Jr in this sensitive Western about an outlaw trying to give his estranged son a better life.

An accomplished enough little drama with spikes of gunplay and horseplay. Of interest mainly to see a fresh faced Perkins in an early lead role, though it doesn’t really stretch him or mine his tightly coiled acting style all that well.

5