Miloš Forman directs Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love and Edward Norton in this biography of the moonshine runner turned Hustler porn magnate and his battles against censorship.

As a drama this drags its feet in the last act (Norton’s excellent final speech to the Supreme Court notwithstanding) but in the main it crashes and barges through the life of a detestable man who finds himself fighting on the frontline for the freedoms of the permissive society. All this is thanks to Harrelson’s blistering central turn, managing to add a twinkle and much wit to a belligerently obnoxious predatory millionaire and yet smartly avoid mawkishness when Flynt’s unlikely stance ripples out into further and further personal tragedies. Ably supported by Norton, Love, Crispin Glover and his own brother (playing Flynt’s brother no less) it is an undeniably powerful and seductive movie even if you turn it off not entirely sure whether celebrating a pornographer’s lashing out at the people attacking his profit line was quite such admirable civil rights battle in reality. Luckily Forman’s skill at satire rides that slippery rail tightly and successfully.

8

Wes Craven directs Adrienne Barbeau, Louis Jordan and Ray Wise in this comic book movie about a scientist who falls for a man turned into a vegetating monster.

Made before comic book genius Alan Moore got his reinventing hands on the character this relatively straight adaptation amps up the A-Team style action, tits & ass and has some fun with the tongue-in-cheek henchmen. Possibly the least intriguing movie Wes Craven has made, yet both in its constant childish energy and admirably never over analysing what it is, this throwaway cheapie still somehow manages to hit similar notes to the old, better Universal horror movies. Even now in 2017 Swamp Thing proves equally as watchable.

6

Osgood Perkins directs Ruth Wilson, Paula Prentiss and Bob Balaban in this very relaxed and pretentious arthouse chiller.

Hmmm… the kinda film you want to be better than it is. It looks handsome, the ensemble is diverting and the trap should work but it is never triggered. Preferring to be puzzling rather than gripping, deathly slow rather than seductive. I guess it takes more than occasional unseen hand pulling a phonecord to make a decent Shirley Jackson-esque horror. For a better stab at a shocker where nothing happens try The House of the Devil instead.

3

Henri-Georges Clouzot directs Yves Montand, Charles Vanel and Peter van Eyck in this intense existential actioner of hobos who drive trucks packed with nitroglycerin across the rocky roads of South America for a massive payday.  

Utterly engrossing. The first hour following the stranded itinerant workers left bumming around a jobless town, too broke to buy a ticket home, establishing the grizzled characters and the desperate motivation that fuel the concept is masterful enough but once we hit the road where every bump is a catastrophe waiting to happen then we, the viewer, is transformed into God. Casually observing but unwilling to intervene with the tragedy unfolding. A series of nail biting, ambitious set-pieces made all the more unpredictable due to Clouzot’s casual pessimism at the the pointless struggle of survival. Tough guy adventure doesn’t come any darker.

10

Mike Nichols directs Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver in this comedy of a working class secretary who takes over her untrustworthy boss’ office when her proposal might become lost in the shuffle, business and romantic complications ensue. 

I have introduced my wife to many, many movies over the years. I can proudly say she now loves Die Hard and likes Adam Sandler and I’ll just have to accept I’m never going to win on neither Predator nor Michael Caine. But one film she has opened my eyes to was Working Girl. I must have watched it and dismissed it in my teens as just another average yuppie romantic comedy… but after many watches over the past few years the perfection of its witty screenplay, the unparalleled beauty of the New York location shoot and Nichol’s magisterial harnessing of three stars’ illuminating power (plus Joan Cusack) have almost completely turned me around on it. Nichols has always been a cold and glossy, sometimes even snide, observer of messy modern sexual politics (see The Graduate, Carnal Knowledge, Wolf or Closer) but here he injects warmth and glamour into the interplay of career advancement hungry assistants and redundancy fearing investment brokers. The equally sexy Griffith and Ford have great chemistry together, both showing previously untapped wells of vulnerability, while Weaver walks off with it in a falsely flouncy yet mischievously hard as nail turn as the villian. Working Girl is still a little too adult and a little too barbed a fantasy at times to truly seduce romantically like say When Harry Met Sally… but as a heroic triumph of a grafter over the privileged it warms the cockles endlessly. Get caught up in it and you’ll be punching the air with a tear in your eye and grin on your face by the final, deftly extravagant shot. And Carly Simon’s theme song is an absolute banger.

9

Chad Stahelski directs Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane and Ruby Rose in this action thriller sequel where the Baba Yaga shows exactly how he can kill at least two men with a fucking pencil.

The headlines first: It’s not quite… and only quite… as great. The story lacks the high concept simplicity of retired hitman avenges his puppy, the special guest stars are not nearly as special (Common is noticeably not Willem Dafoe, Ruby Rose nowhere as close as fun Adrianne Palicki’s instant cult favourite Ms. Perkins was) and some of the world building here involving a network of hobos isn’t as inspiring as all the secret rules and currency introduced almost as asides in John Wick the First. Minor gripes though. Keanu continues to ooze deadly perfection in a series of monochrome outfits, the production design is crunchingly eye catching, the sound design is deafeningly involving, the new dog is a cutie and equally loveable return players McShane and Lance Reddick always make big impressions with minimal screentime. Oh… did you come for action? Action galore… my fave was a high beam torchlit catacombs chase where John works from sidearm, to machine gun, to the biggest fucking shotgun you’ve ever seen. Others might be equally impressed by the Modern Art installation finale which is smaller scale but throws our boy Wick into a smorgasbord of Scaramanga’s murder maze, the iconic moments of Point Blank, a peirside Hall of Mirrors and an Escher etching all at once (plus a million bullets). Those and a tantalising cliffhanger ending mean I doubt we’ll get a better purebred actioner out this year and it is not even March yet.

8

Terry Gilliam directs Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Thierry  and David Thewlis in this sad sci-fi satire of our online work, social and sexual lives in a dystopian future.

I don’t recognise this world. Not the one on screen, mind. The one on screen with tramps living in piles of rubbish, stain glass illuminated cyber junk shop homes and erotically twee dream states, I recognise keenly. Yes, it’s a Terry Gilliam movie. I recognise the straight from the Brazil-era bureaucracy that controls the protagonists lives to young Lucas Hedges showing up to mimic Brad Pitt’s manic turn in 12 Monkeys. No, I just don’t recognise a world where it takes me 4 years to get around to watching the latest Terry Gilliam creation, and then feeling like it was an utter slog to watch. Sure… Brothers Grimm, Tideland and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus weren’t up to much but they had glimmers of hope and spunk within their collective troubled productions’ end products. The Zero Theorem merely feels like a lost old man raking over his long past glories and throwing in a few smart cars, references to social media and a plinky plonky cover of a modern song from 20 years ago (Radiohead’s Creep À la a John Lewis Christmas ad) in the begging prayer it makes him seem relevant. So grinding and obvious it is the first Gilliam feature I have no interest in ever revisiting, despite a sweet and sexually enticing turn from Mélanie Thierry. Sad times.

3

Sebastián Cordero directs Anamaria Marinca, Michael Nyqvist and Sharlto Copley in the found footage space exploration thriller. 

A perfectly watchable little sci-fi that leans into it “found footage” gimmick to obfuscate the low budget satisfactorily  and is benefitted by the fact these missions would have every angle digitally recorded as standard, so as to sidestep the normally frustrating issue of you wanting to scream “Stop filming and run!” at the screen by the second act. Format aside though, this doesn’t excel or fuck up in any way, playing out almost exactly as you’d expect an astronaut disaster movie to.

6

Wes Craven directs Susan Lanier, Michael Berryman and Dee Wallace in this exploitation “classic” where a stranded family get torn apart by some inbred desert cannibals. 

I feel a little guilty now. I slag off The Descent below and here comes my own Master of Horror, Wes Craven, with exactly the same set-up; obnoxious group fall apart when they become meat for a feral family. Let’s ignore the fact the cat and mouse fun and games starts mercifully sooner, I guess what makes The Hills Have Eyes more my thing is Craven satirically blurs the lines of who we are supposed to root for, whereas you get the feeling The Descent’s girl power climbers are supposed to be taken as “cool dudes” no matter how boorishly they behave. The villians here are horrid, malformed and callous but the victims are presented as no better.  Cowards, squabblers, overconfident, looking to exploit an easy buck whereever they can find it, leader Big Bob is a casually racist policeman, the group prayer feels the height of laughable hypocrisy, and that family unit goes to shit the second the kids’ backs are up against the wall… shell shocked mom sure would make good bait for a Home Alone-style booby trap. And isn’t that celebration between brother and sister when they eventually do get the best of an attacker just a little too rhythmic and intimate for siblings? It is a ragged at the edges, full-on  grindhouse experience where the dog gets it, the baby looks delicious and you are supposed to reject all surface sheen civilisation presented as being chuckle worthy. All the violence and taut set pieces comes down to a simple message: kill or be killed. And if that leaves a red, metallic taste in your mouth then that’s exactly where Craven, the former philosophy major turned pornographer, wants to leave you. At first glance this is hardcore, if dated, fun for the depraved or open minded watcher, go deeper and it eviscerates an entire value system… Yours.

7

Neil Marshall directs Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid and Shauna Macdonald in this gory  British horror where Spelunkers go up against cannibal troglodytes in a cave. 

I have a lot of time for the British Contingent of the Splat Pack (James Watkins, Christopher Smith and Marshall) and also know this is a lot of people’s favourite horror of the last couple of decades. It does nothing for me though. I find the opening hour spent with the catty, shrieking adrenaline junkies hard work as they make bad choice after bad choice and only get the satisfying but temporary thrill of seeing such unlikeable characters get gouged at, gutted and impaled without ever rooting for their scrabbling fight for survival. Effective FX, stunts and jump scares abound in the closing stretch but all in all not my cup of coffee… and I normally love coffee at this strength. Oh well… two strikes and out for The Descent.

5