Irvin Kershner directs Sean Connery, Kim Basinger and Klaus Maria Brandauer in this remake of Thunderball from the people who didn’t bring you James Bond.

Obviously Big Tam did this for the cold hard cash but imagine a moment where he watched everything wrong with the Roger Moore era films and said aloud “Why can’t I do all that shite, only cheaper and slower?” And then set to it with a production team with none of the flair or love for the franchise that EON clearly possesses. Just awful, with only the villians putting anything resembling more than minimum effort in.

2

 

Jon Lucas and Scott Moore direct Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn in this comedy where moms rejected by the PTA unite and rebel… mainly by drinking.

An absolute waste of a great and spirited cast all of whom have carried worse premises than this. The jokes just aren’t there, everything spewed out of the mouths of the hardworking comic actresses feels mechanically like what male writers think dirty talking moms might say, when all we really want is punchlines. Instead we get a lot of loud soundtracked montages and pratfalls. Now the drinking ones do actually have a surreal OTT quality that raises chuckles but they act like signal flares in an ocean of mediocrity. The film also exists in an alternate reality where characters seem to operate under short term memory loss and there are no real world consequences. The most troubling moment comes at wrap up, when in a sop for false sisterhood, Kunis befriends Christina Applegate’s brilliantly boo hiss villian mom AFTER SHE PLANTED DRUGS IN HER DAUGHTER’S SCHOOL LOCKER ONLY SCENES EARLIER. Add to that a joke free sequence where Mila struggles to pick up a man in a single’s bar because she keeps revealing she has kids…. yeah right, it’s Mila Fucking Kunis… And you have a comedy that might as well be set on Mongo it is so blandly not of this world.

3

Woody Allen directs Seth Green, Diane Weist and Mia Farrow in this celebration of his own youth and the radio stars of the 1940s.

A collection of vignettes charmingly cast and recreated. It would all feel a bit disposable and indulgent if it didn’t have quite so many stand out moments. My own personal favourite is when Farrow’s struggling actress witnesses a mob hit and is then taken home by Danny Aiello’s hitman so he can borrow a shovel from his Ma to bury her. A lot of classy fun.

7

Tim Burton directs Eva Green, Asa Butterfield and Samuel L Jackson in this quirky, gothic tale of freak children hiding in a timeloop sanctuary from monsters who want to eat their eyeballs. 

Like Sweeny Tood, this feels like an acceptable echo of what the formerly brilliant Tim Burton can achieve if he engages with his source material. Stuck in the middle of this film is an hour long hoot where we gently meet and interact with all the strange younglings, get hints of their personalities and potential dramas. If that middle hour was a pilot for a TV show you’d be hooked. A ghoulish and visually stunning Party of Five or Dawson’s Creek with Eva Green as the big name adult showing the youth how to steal the show. The problem is the opening and closing acts that bookend it all. We take far too long to get to the titular home and after an admittedly thrilling prologue it’s a trudgy route taken. While the close is actually about three finales crushed into one, with the established tone drastically shifting from magical to knockabout, and only Samuel L Jackson’s full fat villian managing to keeps things popping. The most promising of these climaxes sees Butterfield’s relative norm leaping through eras to reconnect with his new love lost. Frustratingly this promising premise should have been the sequel rather than a rushed afterthought. Still if this disturbing little romance does get a second shot then more pipe smoking Green and floating Ella Purnell and moody Scottish adolescent reanimators with less forced plot would actually be most welcome.

6

Colm McCarthy directs Paddy Considine, Gemma Arterton and Senna Nenua in this zombie apocalypse thriller told from the perspective of a half infected child.

At times compelling, then at other moments cliched, this 2000AD / Vertigo inspired zombie movie fails to catch the creep of Romero nor match the relentless action bleak of 28 Days Later or World War Z. It feels very much like a spin off from one of those recent superior films – and while that is satisfying in bursts and often ambitious in its attempts to find beauty in the corpse strewn wastelands – it would struggle to seduce you into a second viewing. Nenua, as the child lead is sweetly convincing; her potential vaccine carrying monster, one missed meal away from munching on the attractive supporting cast but looking for a cuddle, is about as complex a turn as a young actor can deliver. Whenever the focus shifts from her to the adults who surround her though you can’t help but feel star power wins out and you’d much rather more screentime was devoted to Considine’s hardline grunt, Arterton gorgeous knitwear clad teacher or Glenn Close’s fanatical scientist. The neat ending also starts to get tied into a ribbon a little too early and obviously. Gory, even unsettling when more children are introduced into the mix, but doesn’t linger or thrill in the way the best of this sub-genre manages too.

6

Saul Bass directs Michael Murphy, Nigel Davenport and Lynne Frederick in this cerebral sci-fi chiller where ants become the dominant species.

If stark imagery is your thing then you may get more out of this than I managed. For the first 15 minutes we hear narrated excerpts of reports over footage of solar flares, ant hives and desert landscapes – it feels like the iconic graphic designer’s only ever movie is going to be some alienating visual tone poem. It never truly settles into a homogeneous rhythm even after this mode is thankfully abandoned and you would struggle to eke out any entertainment from it but the visual horror is often powerful. Close ups of insects ominously swarming and devouring each other alive, scientists unleashing primary coloured pesticides on them plus collateral damage American farmers, while pulsating geometric wounds abound. Like I say this is never a romp and then it ends on a confusing note. The original deleted ending is bootlegged on YouTube and watching it makes the whole slog slightly more worthwhile. We get a revealing Escher / Dali inspired montage of humanity being subjugated then assimilated by our new insect overlords. At least I think that is what happens, it is open to interpretation. Either way the trimmed off finale resembles the stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which proves a telling comparison that at least justifies the aims and intention of this disturbing cold fish of a flick.

4

Jim Clark directs Bambi Woods, Robert Kerman and Christie Ford in this legendary porn film following a group of cheerleaders trying to make some fast cash by doing a variety of odd jobs.

One of those films that everyone has heard of but nobody has seen, I took a punt on this blast from the past. It is cheaply daft to the extreme with all the girls eager and naive while all the men are middle aged creeps who somehow still get their way. To be honest the improvised enthusiasm put into the set ups (carwashing, tennis changing rooms, candle shop threesomes, library spankings) for each sex session gives this a sleazy charm not dissimilar to an American Pie spin off or a Robin Askwith flick… Though some late in the day dialogue revealing that all the female characters are supposedly sixteen and all the girls agreeing not to cross any lines for money but then all eventually doing so really jars with the “innocent” fun. As for the sex itself, it is hardcore but with some very strange emphasis. There are a disturbing amount of shots of tongues flicking and popping out to eternally lick, to the point where you might never want to ever see a tongue again after 90 minutes. Also coyly fleeting shots of nudity but then almost neverending shots of genitals going at it from unappealing angles featuring maximum butt. The finishes are revealing too, as most of the performers’ faces have unguarded flashes of “Well that wasn’t as bad as I though it was going to be” as their individual sequences reach their climaxes. The pleasingly cliched soundtrack, the excessive bad hair and the appealingly natural bodies of the performers (no plastic surgery or diet ravaged hardships for these kids) make this feel a bit less harmful and bit more cheesily accessible than its dead eye, streamlined modern equivalents. If you go into it with an open mind it can be a decent time waster and a pleasurable museum piece though I doubt anyone is going to get the horn from it anymore.

5

S. Craig Zahler directs Kurt Russell, Matthew Fox and Richard Jenkins in this faithful western following a rescue party heading into the wilds.

135 minutes fly by in no time, in this impeccably judged Western. The language, look and tone are spot on even when it lurches in the finale into some of the most shocking body horror I have ever seen in a film, mainstream or independent. The villainous lost tribe of cannibals when revealed are not just brutal in their attacks but scuttle quickly at you and have a distinctly creative look that is part Preadator, part ash covered 9/11 survivors. They are the stuff of your new nightmares. And the White Hats who have to face off against them are a beautifully drawn bunch with Russell, Fox, Patrick Wilson, Lili Simmons and particularly Jenkins getting many affecting moments of light and dark to make you truly care for them. More faithful yet hardcore trips like this down the trail by Zahler would be quite the tonic for the dusty but beloved genre.

8

 

Anthony Waller directs Tom Everett-Scott, Julie Delpy and and Julie Bowen in this belated and dodgily related sequel to the comedy horror masterpiece. 

It was a disappointment in 1997 and time has been even crueller to this misjudged cash-in. The CGI werewolves are dreadful, the cast of Pepsi Max Extreme bozos grating, the humour all over the shop but never finding the aisle that sells Laughs. You feel sorry for Delpy and Everett-Scott as their natural charisma gets lost in the choppy edit. The biggest casualty of this misfire though is Anthony Waller who brings all the impressive camera swoops and gothic mastery from his eye catching debut (Mute Witness – worth tracking down) to this very flat and uncertain retread. His attempt to add some visual vim to the flailing plot and unlikeable characters is a textbook case of a turd being desperately polished.

2

Spike Lee directs himself, Danny Aiello and Ossie Davis in this hyper reality snapshot of life in an impoverished New York City black community on the day leading up to a tragic death. 

We watched this yesterday as prep for our upcoming New York trip, only to read about Bill Nunn’s (Radio Raheem) real life death almost immediately after. Double tragic happenstance as there are other blatantly obvious reasons why this is still achingly timely for Americans. His is one of a plethora of great performance in Lee’s didactic, frantic, colourful, experimental work which jibes at everyone’s own inherent racism by making you pick sides and form bonds (or reject with laugh raising ridicule) with all manner of directionless predjudice, hate and anger in a setting that is both recognisable yet theatrical. A powerful work currently sitting stylistically in that weird limbo where the visuals and risks feel a little dated rather than classical. Still it is funny, engaging and complicatedly honest. Back to the brilliant ensemble; Aiello is the stand out as the white man business owner who does not recognise his own hidden racism as he openly loves the community he profits from until the heat gets too much. An early Samuel L Jackson role is also blisteringly cool. In a decade’s time this will be back on top as many people’s favourite movie about race and city life and just being human. And that’s the triple truth, Ruth!

10