John Landis directs Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall and Shari Headley in this romance where an African prince travels to Queens to find his.

Whisper it… but one of the biggest and most expensive comedy hits of the 1980s is not all that funny. Sure any bits in the barber shop, nightclub and the Black Awareness rally are hilarious but equally the majority of scenes, where Eddie and Arsenio are not also playing supporting characters in heavy prosthetics, are pretty much laugh free. Perhaps this is the earliest symptom of the once brilliant Murphy misjudging his popularity and forcing himself into lead comedy roles that intentionally lack punchlines rather than him finding serious projects (as he did effectively eventually in Dream Girls)… yet more importantly it somehow doesn’t really hobble the very charmingly old fashioned romance movie that envelopes the gaggier bits here. Landis and Murphy lean towards Golden Age Hollywood alchemy – the intention here is clearly to make a black Philadelphia Story or Roman Holiday. Intention achieved. From the gently spectacular credit sequence to the pomp and physicality of the dance number in the palace of Zamunda to Murphy’s incredibly loveable fish out of water to the living room farce finale… this is how they used to make them. An outstandingly lavish yet heartwarming affair with just enough marketable Murphy foulmouth schtick to keep the avid Axel Foley fan equally sated.

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Oliver Stone directs Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley and Rhys Ifans in this biopic on the NSA whistleblower who discovers the US really is watching everyone, all the time.

Who would want to be a whistleblower? They risk their lives, destroy their livelihoods and decimate their reputations and relationships to bring us “truths” that we the public just shrug our shoulders about. That disconnected ennui sadly limits Snowden the movie – what he uncovers and proves is terrifying but also something most sensible people probably already suspected; the security services spy on all of us via our own elaborate tech. It is about as surprising a revelation as you cannot breathe in outer space… When we were faced with Snowden’s damning evidence, nothing massively changed in how we conducted ourselves or the silent pact we have made with the intelligence agencies of the Western Hemisphere. The stakes for him personally are high (though we never see his life threatened explicitly or even implicitly) but the outcome is fumbled. Stone seems constrained by telling a story still in motion, about a life still in the spotlight. His Jim Morrison and Jim Garrison benefited from a chunk of critical distance. He could approach them with a freedom build an exciting movie on. Here you get the feeling a regular journeyman might have churned out the same staid drama, at best a nice enough visual modern history lesson. Only the late boardroom meeting with Ifans’ shadowy CIA chief’s massive face and some slightly trippy epileptic attacks have any of that Olly inventive mastery shown in the 80s and 90s. And this should all be paranoid bait for his hungry fish mouth. Still there are plenty of stars dotted around to keep it trundling along. Woodley has a nice chemistry with our eponymous hero, Nicholas Cage seems to be entering a similar stage of his faltering career as late period Dennis Hopper – managing to be a freak yet paternal, all American yet out of time, in just a few choice scenes (a positive development). And Gordon-Levitt as always is excellent, he saves the movie with a tight, simple central performance. Imagine what he could do given an exciting script?

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Terrence Malick directs Richard Gere, Brooke Adams and Linda Manz in this almost fabulist story of a farmer who falls for a poverty stricken worker, despite suspecting her “brother” is really her lover. 

Set exactly a century ago, Malick cautiously explores his house style of making his humans’ interactions seem insignificant to the beauty of landscape and the obliviousness of nature. Here a simple pastoral love triangle is leant painterly beauty and a languid, almost discordant, adolescent narration. It has the feel of both a painstaking labour of love and yet also an effective improvised energy. You’ll struggle to find a more gorgeous film, certainly not one about grafters and grifters rather than upper middle class consumers. Just magical, possibly the often Marmite auteur’s best.

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Kurt Neumann directs Vincent Price, David Hedison and Patricia Owens in this atomic sci-fi horror about a scientist who accidentally fuses himself with a bluebottle. 

Nowhere near as totalitarian in executing its concept nor as gorily unpleasant as Cronenberg ‘s 80s remake, this often straddles the perverse fence of being both campily dated and remarkably inventive for its time. A certain hysterical hopelessness pervades it that outlives mere cheap jump scares. The mystery that bookends the slight tale of a scientist who buzzes too close to the sun is a smart play and the FX are quickly effective when glimpsed. Price, especially, but Owens also, are charming leads – much like Goldblum and Davis would later prove to be in the superior update.

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John Huston directs Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn and Lillian Gish in this western drama about a cattle family who have to defend their adopted daughter from both native and townsfolk attacks when rumours spread that she may not be white. 

Alluding to themes of predjudice, incest and manifest destiny, but with any intensity lost to a meandering soapiness, this proves to be merely a decent way to waste an afternoon. None of the starry cast put in their best shift though Hepburn exudes a surprising sexiness often smothered in her cutsey-ier turns and Gish, as the slightly barmy matriarch, does things admirably her old school way. Huston loses his usual economic grip on the story and emotions but pulls off a couple of great action sequences (a chase through the fog, maybe smoke, midway is visually arresting) and Durango, Mexico has some stunning landscapes.

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Robert Benton directs Barry Brown, Jeff Bridges and David Huddlestone in this revisionist western focusing on a group of Civil War draft dodging teens who head west in a gang. 

A winning surprise this. One of those westerns that has the grit and heft of a lived in realistic representation of the old frontier but the quirk and mosaic like plot structure of myth and fantasy. All the episodes of the boys tramping around, getting into scrapes and falling apart have a melancholic edge and corruptive air that is both entertaining yet affecting. It is directed by the writer of Bonnie and Clyde and if you are a fan of that groundbreaking classic you’ll know what to expect here in its less lauded equal. Bridges has a fine old time as a de facto lead tearaway. A proto Han Solo with a clunky six shooter, he even gets his own Luke Skywalker to pal up with in the mannered but fascinating Brown. Trivia fans will even enjoy that the charismatic big bad who eventually emerges is played by The Big Lebowski himself. Huddlestone’s clipped, weary superiority was already with him in middle age. In fact, the whole highly pleasurable endeavour feels like a Coen Brothers movie that got lost in time somehow, made when they were adolescents.

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Ben Younger directs Miles Teller, Aaron Eckhart and Ciaran Hinds in this true story of a boxer who after a car accident refuses to have his spine fused and trains to re-enter the ring. 

I’m a sucker for a good boxing flick and this one delivers enough toil and reach to satisfy. So the ring action is a bit scrappy (if anything it makes the short bursts of actual sport feel intimate and improvised) the drama has its own enticing energy. Younger manages to squeeze real juice from Teller, Eckhart and Hinds acting trinity of broken champion, drunk trainer and overbearing father. In fact the film is often at its best when celebrating the unlikeable arrogance that makes such working class characters break their limitations. It may not reinvent the wheel but it gives it a good fucking spin.

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Mike Hodges directs Michael Caine, Ian Hendry and John Osborne in this bleak thriller about an enforcer who travels North back home to investigate his brother’s suspicious death.

I’m too close to Get Carter to be in any way reasonably critical of it. Even watching it after a few years off with my wife for her first time (and she’s not a fan of Caine) I just got seduced by its dank beauty and squalid pessimism. It sounds and looks and moves the way a great crime thriller should – like cheap whisky in a lipstick stained cut glass tumbler, catching the winter light before burning the throat. Nasty stuff full of shimmering refractions and sadness. The score by Roy Budd is brilliantly jazzy and mournful. Hodges matches his documentary background for capturing a milieu with the propulsive urgency of a born action director. All the cast land devestating blows as the how and the why tragically unfolds but Caine towers over all as the brute force bastard who keeps pulling at strings no one wants to see undone, not even him. He is just tremendous here and gets to actually do a bit of that acting he’s not half bad at given the chance. Perfection.

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Jim Jarmusch directs Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani and Barry Shabaka Henly in this week in the life of a bus driver and secret poet who reaches a creative dilemma. 

We have come full circle. Jarmusch all but invented the quirky indie film where the inconsequential is given considered, almost surreal attention. And for the last 20 years he has seemed keener on reappropriating his house style to genre pieces – rambling, poetic low budget films about hitmen, cowboys and vampires… rather than immigrants, tourists and taxi drivers. In the interim small town Americana became a genre in itself. Well acted, knowingly arch slice of life ensembles became the go to “indie blockbusters” for slumming it stars and studio owned boutique production houses wanting an easy success. The Station Agent, Juno, Lonesome Jim being the better examples of a more laser targeted evolution of Jarmusch’s early legacy. So here he eventually is, back on home turf and… it is all very pleasant and diverting. Nicely performed, with some fine time spent on the pleasures of an unambitious life, meditations on the inspirations for the creation of poetry and visual rhyming couplets (not all twins are related). In no way is Paterson life altering but Jarmusch’ low key dramerdy hits the same notes as a merely decent Hitchcock thriller or a lesser Wes Craven horror film can. It is just a good example of a likeable genre by someone who more than knows what they are doing.

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Jon Favreau directs Will Ferrell, James Caan and Zooey Deschanel in this drama about an illegal immigrant who flits from job to job while trying to connect with a father who was unaware of his existence, the cultural differences of his adopted family’s nation impede him.

We put the Christmas decorations up and watched Elf. A shameless Christmas film that manages to be merely OK and perfect at the same time.

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