Howard Franklin and Bill Murray direct Bill Murray, Geena Davis and Randy Quaid in this crime comedy of a bank robber dressed as a clown who after executing a perfect heist finds himself trapped in the New York public transport system en route to the airport. 

Ghostbuster, Groundhog Day and Rushmore… sure, sure… but no one ever brings up Quick Change these days, Bill Murray’s near forgotten but hilarious slice of misanthropic perfection. It is filled tip to toe with great casting; Jason Robards and Tony Shaloub get as many laughs as the main man himself. The premise of Murray desperately fighting against the careless bureaucracy, casual ineptness and proud inefficiency of city life opens up to gift the audience with some amazing zingers and there are at least three expertly sustained nail biting comedy set pieces. Gold stars to everyone involved, and too many unique moments to mention.

10

John Schlesinger directs Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman and Brenda Vaccaro in this tale of a dumb Texan who travels to the Big Apple to become a hustler only to discover he is the mark for everyone else in the city to exploit.

Told in bold, fractured swipes, Midnight Cowboy is still a brave and affecting drama focussing on two complex failures; who want to be predators but are trapped as the lowest of the low on the NY food chain. Schlesinger captures a time and place with a heady mixture of both picture postcard accuracy and grimy police report pessimism. Equally, he visually taps in to the two leads fears and desires through discordant flashbacks and petty fantasies jutting into the increasingly dismal narrative. Hoffman puts in fine work with less screentime as the enfeebled Rizzo, a character that shifts from repulsive to beloved over his tragic decline. A bonafide classic.

10

Bruce Malmuth directs Steven Seagal, Kelly Le Brock and William Sadler in this tale of a cop who recovers from a seven year coma to take down a corrupt senator who killed his wife. 

A one year past its sell by date Eighties action thriller written by aliens who only understand the Earth and human interaction via some space capsule filled solely with Eighties action thrillers VHSs sent to them by a prankster in NASA. See if you can follow the logic: Seagal films some dodgy dealing on a camcorder > he immediately goes to an off licence to buy a bottle of champagne > hoods hold up off licence and kill owner but Seagal subdues them > while waiting for the uniform cops to let him go he calls a cop friend to tell him about his new home movie > he then heads home, hides video behind fridge, has a prayer with son, fucks wife, drinks warm, blood spattered champagne  > goons turn up, kill wife, let kid run away, put Seagal in coma, don’t bother looking for incriminating evidence > an internal affairs cop covers up Seagal’s lack of death, adopts son > 7 years later and Seagal wakes up a John Doe with a hot nurse infatuated with him and his nemesis having become an untouchable senator > a hospital chase ensues with a bedbound Seagal marshalling his gurney away from an assassin > hot nurse takes him off to a countryside dojo, she conveniently is housesitting, so he can recover via the power of training montage, the grounds happen to be littered with temporary structures just waiting to be crashed through should there be a second act car chase… And that, my friends, is your first half an hour. Mental? Yes. Campily enjoyable? Yes! A baffling early step in Seagal’s baffling rise and inevitable fall at the box office? YES!

3

Wes Anderson directs Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Owen Wilson in this stylised comedy drama about a family of child geniuses who are now damaged adults and their distant, gruff patriarch who fakes cancer to reconnect with them / not divorce their mother. 

A perfect film (though not quite as out and out fun as its predecessor Rushmore) that is intricately assembled in look, emotion, humour and detail with a watchmaker’s precision. A very stylish watchmaker. Anderson got caught in the trap of trying to repeat too closely what worked here a little too often afterwards but that does not diminish the calvalcade of fine movie moments this marches at us. So much to love: Alec Baldwin’s Barry Lyndon inspired narration, the vinyl celebration of a soundtrack, a toweringly charming beast of a central performance from Hackman, the sole decent turn from Paltrow in her career, or the deeply cutting moments that resonate, hidden among the twee visuals and soft antics. Movie heaven.

10

Tom Ford directs Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Shannon in this psychological thriller about dissatisfied art dealer who becomes enthralled in her long estranged ex-husband’s dark debut novel. 

Like The Accountant after an hour of near perfect set-up we get the rush of disappointments as we realise the punchline is not the strongest part of the joke. In Nocturnal Animals case, a flawed but visually exciting lurk around bad choices, imagined lives, revenge and the weakness of gender, we at least always have achingly beautiful people to watch as it all untangles nihilistically onto the floor. Two narratives bounce off each other; a Bret Easton Ellis homage starring Adams frames a Jim Thompson inspired thriller starring Gyllenhaal and Shannon. Both absolutely grip with a facist’s zeal to keep you guessing and fearing the worse from the start. 40 minutes in, I thought we had something with the truly dark, seductive threat of a Blue Velvet on our hands… but that tension eventually peters out. What remains is not bad but lacks the palpable power generated earlier on when we find ourselves out on a lost highway.  Gyllenhaal also feels a little understretched here after a brilliant run of immersive roles. Still the powerful flavours Tom Ford plays with do linger afterwards and I get the feeling Nocturnal Animals might be worth a revisit sooner rather than later. Never a bad sign.

7

John Carpenter directs Roddy Piper, Keith David and Meg Foster in this cult paranoid thriller about a drifter who discovers aliens walk secretly among us and probably vote Republican.

A bubblegum movie that sits better in your memory banks than on your flatscreen. There are the illicit thrills of the tongue in cheek 10 minute long alley fight, the occasional inspired line and the world as seen through the bullshit filtering Ray Bans but all in, this is Carpenter noticeably on the wane. The acting just about pasts muster (Kurt Russell is a noticeable loss), the plotting almost obnoxiously weak, it is as loose as a motherfucker, and the aliens, once revealed, appear no tangible threat apart from in their competitive, inflitrating politics. A great reputation for a merely good, albeit silly, albeit prescient movie.

7

Gavin O’Connor directs Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal and J.K. Simmons in this thriller about a highly functioning autistic who takes to looking into some very bad peoples’ ledgers. 

About midway through The Accountant I figured out everything that would occur, and also exactly what it is. There is a flashback heavy scene of exposition that occurs between two subsidiary characters at the 90 minute point that had the length and heft and taste of an Issue 5 in a comic book series. An issue where traditionally we get a self contained subplot that also manages to fill in a lot of the blanks of the main character’s mysteries.  I’m not the first person to realise that The Accountant is a low fantasy superhero origin story… but more importantly it is, in every fibre of its very being, a comic book movie. I should love it then, right? But it is a comic book movie with a need for every image and idea and wrinkle introduced in the first half of the plot to find a fitting home in the second. Every column must add up to an end sum, every piece of the jigsaw (a fitting metaphor considering our protagonist is first introduced completing one) must slot together to form a neat square. Too neat to enjoy once you twig that is the goal, to show off, to Sixth Sense you. Coincidence becomes cliche. Formal issues… and they are difficult to overlook… aside we get strong performances from a starry cast and glossy, kinetic violence that satisfies, but too often in the second half, grip gave way to audible chuckle as an entire cinema screen realised another misshapen piece had popped in perfectly. I even feel those laughs are intentional… but I came for a thrill ride a la Bourne or John Wick, not a screenwriting Rubik’s cube. An efficient  actioner about an emotionally closed off individual has early moments where it truly connects, until you realise just how grindingly mechanical the manipulations are. An enjoyable enough shame.

6

John Sturges directs Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall in this fictional World War II flick about a Nazi mission to kidnap Churchill on English soil. 

Lazy direction from retiring journeyman master Sturges almost hobbles this taut and surpringly romantic fantasy war thriller but luckily New Hollywood star power wins through. Sutherland and Duvall shining brightly in particular as an IRA inflitatrator with the soul of a poet and the man with a plan respectively. The tricky situation of encouraging an audience into backing the baddies is sensitively handled, all our protagonists seemingly take on the impossible mission to avoid doing more troubling Nazi work, and by the end, by God, do you almost wish they make it. No mean feat considering weighty real life tragedies this daftly light boy’s own adventure is constructed around. So it is no The Great Escape or Attack! this last hurrah for the blockbuster ensemble war movie hits a spot no longer catered for. Unless Nolan’s upcoming Dunkirk proves incredibly cheerier and much more triumphant than anticipated.

7

Ronald Neame directs Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine and Herbert Lom in this romantic crime caper centering around a lookalike for rich art collector’s lost wife. 

This colourful little timewaster coasts along on star power (Caine is particularly glowing) and smart narrative tricks. The opening swindle (on us the audience it transpires) is an expert bit of storytelling and the final “job” has a killer punchline – one of the best visual gags in movie history. Everything else could move a little quicker or hit a little harder but all in all Gambit proves still a lovely, relaxed method to steal away an afternoon.

6

Peter Sykes directs Christopher Lee, Richard Widmark and Nastassja Kinski in this tale of a teenage nun raised by satanists who comes under the care of an occult fiction writer. 

A poor man’s The Omen / The Exorcist that twiddles it thumbs cheaply, mainly in Widmark’s Docklands flat, then ends abruptly with no distinct resolution. Clearly the budget dried up early on in the production.  A top to bottom (in more ways than one for Christopher Lee and an underage Kinski) excellent cast muddle through to make it watchable. You cannot have this much talent floating about on screen and not get a few moments of quality… Scares, on the other hand, are off the menu today.

4