Dan Attias directs Gary Busey, Corey Haim and Everett McGill in this lesser Stephen King adaptation that is so chockablock full of camp, alternative pleasures the werewolf central hook seems more like a forgotten aside.

I missed this as a kid, not just from my adolescent aversion to horror either, I never knew of its existence until a decade after its release. And while it won’t be for everyone, frankly this ticked a lot of boxes for me. The main plotline (and I use those words cautiously) about a baseball bat wielding werewolf terrorising a small town feels almost like a spoof of Stephen King’s distinctive house sauce. But hanging off it is about a half a dozen other mini-movies, all effective. We have the pleasurable whodunnit aspect as we drift past a whole population of stock characters (well cast) who could be the werewolf. We have a Jaws-lite like situation where a community under threat turn against the sheriff in their thirst for vigilante justice. We have a young teenage narrator learning to accept her brother’s disability. We have Corey Haim’s wheelchair bound hero; who rides around on increasingly souped up motorised wheelchairs, firing fireworks off in nightbeast’s faces and racing cars on the open highways. This aspect is definitively less believable than all the werewolf scares and feels like something that even The Goonies or Monster Squad may have turned their noses up at as just being plain silly. But before you can write Silver Bullet off, I saved the best until last. We have Gary Busey going full throttle as the most irresponsible but loveable uncle ever. Boozing it up, hitting on underage girls, adding another hot rod engine to his nephew’s mobility chair while handing him some Mexican fireworks… it is the kind of unhinged, show stopping job that a young Nicholas Cage must have witnessed and thought “That is where I want to take my acting.” So for giving one of B-Movies finest sons their wildest hour (Busey out spectacles even the fine monster effect work), Silver Bullet transcends all its issues and coalesces into a great popcorn movie.

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Ron Howard directs Warwick Davis, Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley in this high fantasy adventure where a small Nelwyn farmer protects a baby in a Dakini war zone.  

An admirably straight laced plot, a superbly realised world and frequent amusing exchanges means Willow has aged better than most fantasy films. Sure, it probably is one early action sequence short of being an out and out classic but career best work from all the C-list cast creates a lovely dynamic even when not all that much happens in the first half. It gives you time to settle into the still shockingly dark world (for a family film… the 80s, eh?!) before you get caught up in cart chases, two headed dragons, the entire cast being turned into pigs and that amazing downhill shield as makeshift sled stunt. It cleaves very close to Star Wars in its format, but is there anything all that wrong with that? Only the regular cutaways to comedy sidekick Brownies fails, the jokes just don’t land, but even they set up a nice piece of comedy romance when Kilmer’s excellent Madmartigan falls for his hot enemy in a love spell. The production is lavish and the score hypnotically perfect. Treat yourself. Revisit Willow.

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Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger direct Godfrey Tearle, Eric Portman and Hugh Williams in this wartime propaganda thriller about a downed bomber crew making their way back through the occupied Netherlands.

A nice little teatime adventure through the realities of resistance Europe bursting with stiff upper lip acting and a few of the experimental flourishes you’d expect from the makers of A Matter of Life and Death and The Red Shoes. We start with the doomed bomber mission and for twenty or so minutes The Archers touch base with future Paul Greengrass in their docudrama recreation, after that though proceedings normalise into something a bit sweeter but familiar. Fine but nowhere close to their brilliant gold period.

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Jonathan Hensleigh direct Thomas Jane, John Travolta and Samantha Mathis in this early Marvel feature that attempts to dilute the unstoppable gun nut vigilante for a mainstream audience. 

A very uncertain movie actively hobbles a well cast Jane. Only the purposefully conceived assassination of Frank Castle’s family convinces (a blistering quarter of an hour seemingly borrowed from a forgotten 70s thriller), as after that the script desperately tries to avoid anything too Punisher-y. We obstinately concentrate and embellish the minor sitcom subplots of Garth Ennis’ comic revival (instead of its transgressive violence and anti-heroics), while giving Travolta’s bland mob launderer equal screentime, and only allowing distinctive henchmen to be as nasty as the named protagonist really should be. A Punisher flick that seems repulsed by Punishing. C’mon Marvel, what the fuck? Google “Punisher Laundry Day” to witness what should have been instead.

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Roger Allers and Rob Minkof direct Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons and James Earl Jones in this Hamlet inspired tale of a Lion prince who goes absent after his father’s murder.

The Lion King has never been a favourite. I never rated it as a teenager but then again I was a teenager, starting to define my movie tastes through Tarantino, De Palma and Verehoven… Disney was pointedly kid’s stuff. Another chance for the global megahit released when I was putting away childish things then… Two decades down the line it turns out that spotty, greasy me actually had this one bang on. The Lion King is just dull. The Oscar winning Elton John songs are insipid. The king by birth right plotline grating. Maybe it is the small ‘r’ republican in me but I find “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” and prologue’s overwrought ceremonial worship for the birth of Simba’s by the other subjugated species to chafe at my very soul. The royalty aspect of other Disney films comes from a narrative necessity: so that Princes and Princesses are just a key to an ideal, albeit sometimes stolen, dream life. The crown is the symbolic prize for the good, heroic and lovely, there is no political import to it as the end point of the drama. A fantasy full stop with banquets and four poster beds and romantic happiness for everyone. Whereas here it constantly suggests that the chosen apex predators are essential to a cohesive society, the strong must lord it over the weak, Ayn Rand meets The Jungle Book, the Divine Right of Kings propaganda with Happy Meal tie-ins. UGH! The animation is handsomely put together but lacks the gilded Wow Factor spectacle of Beauty and the Beast, the perfectly calibrated adventure sequences of Aladdin or darker, underrated The Hunchback of Norte Dame. As for the forced humour… I think by the eighth “food chain” dud gag we can maybe all just put some guns in our mouths. The post- Walt conveyor belt at its most soulless nadir, though I realise it is wildly, inexplicably successful.  Can you feel the hate tonight?

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Richard T. Heffron directs Blythe Danner, Peter Fonda and Arthur Hill in this sequel to the iconic sci-fi blockbuster Westworld.

OK… so in set-up, look and philosophy it may be wearing the better known movie’s hand me downs but I actually think Futureworld is slightly better than its more famous progenitor. Fonda and Danner are bigger stars (the latter excelling in a thankless Lois Lane role), there is a ton more action and paranoia, even the score is more energetic. So it’s all a bit cheesier… I love cheddar… And who exactly is watching either film in 2016 for their artfulness? Personally I can’t wait to revisit this version of Delos, got my return ticket booked.

8

Mike Bakewell directs himself, Mollie Moncrieff and Doreen Valiente in this even handed but charming look at “modern” British witchcraft.

A lost treat currently available to stream if you have a quick google… a BBC special taking in covens, lapsed witches and zealous Christian objectors. The whole endeavour has a fascinating echo from the past feel, revealing a time when people were both less hyper aware and not falsely open with filmmakers. Whether your interest is in pagan culture or 70s attitudes, this proves a genuinely captivating peek through the temporal peephole.

9

Courtney Solomon directs Rachel Hurd-Wood, Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek in this colonial curse chiller. 

Everything but the kitchen sink is thrown at you in the jump scare stakes meaning this “true” ghost story never calms down anywhere near long enough to build an involving sense of dread. The decent cast seem lost, the sets distractingly cheap, the stylistic flourishes random and the final twist feels like a bad taste character assassination on people long dead… just to add a bit of justification to a litany of unoriginal and laughable carnival tricks. Avoid.

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Emile Ardolino directs Jennifer Grey, Patrick Swayze and Jerry Orbach in this sixties set summer camp romance with backstreet abortions, incongruous Eighties music and a questionable age difference between a dim middle aged dance instructor and a forward thinking kid. 

I’m not going to justify my love of Dirty Dancing. You don’t have to either.

10

Edward Zwick directs Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders and Danika Yarosh in this sequel to the ex-military drifter takes down a conspiracy time waster. 

A step in the wrong direction for a series already put on warning. While the first one celebrated, tongue firmly in cheek and pleasurably so , the Reacher / Cruise uberhuman, this one dials everything comic book right down to a whisper so our unstoppable force becomes someone who just dashes about a lot and survives the occasional one storey fall. Nothing to write home about. The mystery is superfluous, the baddies one note. We had a Richard Jenkins, Rosamund Pike, Robert Duvall, Jai Courtney and Werner Herzog in the last one. This one just contains TV faces… a sequel that makes you yearn for the days Jai Courtney was in the cast… what is the world coming to? The one interesting plot wrinkle is that Reacher picks up a makeshift family of a temporary Mrs Reacher and Junior Reacher. Even this feels like a subversion better saved for a fourth or fifth entry when we are completely comfortable with the concept being skewered. And the action is meh. Any third entry might want to ignore this rare dud from the TC brand and look back to the opener’s ridiculous but self aware strengths.

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