George Marshall directs Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh and Torin Thatcher in this George Pal produced “biography” of the famous magician’s rise to fame and marriage.
If the doorstop biography I read a few years back is anything to go by this is absolute bobbins, but colourful, utterly watchable bobbins. The real life couple translate that chemistry nicely to the big screen and Curtis performs his recreation of the tricks with an unfakable enthusiasm and showmanship. Fun.
7
Nicolas Winding Refn directs Mads Mikkelsen, Ewan Stewart and Gary Lewis in this violent dark ages odyssey.
Frustratingly slow and oblique, it often feels more like a long winded pisstake than the leather and axe grindhouse saga promised on the DVD box. Despite arty pretentiousness and a mean spiritedly shambolic pace, the mute lead turn by Mads and some promisingly disturbing moments just about allow this to pass muster. Maybe on the big screen, where you might get more lost in the stark imagery, it wouldn’t appear like quite the grubby middle finger to the watcher.
6
Tim Burton directs Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci and Miranda Richardson in a fantasy horror of the classic Icabod Crane versus Headless Horseman story given a serial killer cop thriller add-on.
The noticeable start of the shockingly steep Tim Burton decline, this has the feeling of project done out of boredom rather than passion. A feeling now familiar after a near constant run of uninspired house style remakes and reimaginings. But back then you gave the Burton / Depp powerhouse the benefit of the doubt. It is not a terrible movie. The set and costume design is stunning, Ricci is lovely in her first adult role, Walken puts in a fine extended cameo as the headless and wordless horseman. But for Depp and Burton this feels like ground well trod already and now you know they’d continue to walk back and forth in these deeper and deeper descending mud puddles you just wish they went off route and parted ways sooner. Both talents seem wasted by finding a groove that worked and the only post- Ed Wood endeavour that seemed to create genuine excitement was their awkward but gloriously violent musical sidestep Sweeney Todd. This shares some of that exception’s Grand Guignol excess, but not enough to elevate it to the Edward Scissorhands heyday. Hell, it is not even as fun as Mars Attacks.
6
Rupert Sanders directs Scarlett Johansson, Takeshi Kitano and Michael Pitt in this live action remake of the anime where a cybernetic policewoman discovers the company that salvaged her brain may have taken her life.
I found the animated original a very dry plod when I was a teenager, and I was never a fan of The Matrix series which pirated a lot of the code any remake would also need to plunder. But in the Scarlett Johansson dominated marketing build up for this I found myself quietly hopeful, discreetly salivating at the prospect of a big budget, full on cyberpunk dystopian vision. And I absolutely loved it. Amazingly intricate world building, some nastily dark moments of data rape and a great support from the living legend that is Beat Takeshi. Could have done with a slightly longer action sequence when The Major escapes a second act reprogramming (the movie forgets its blockbuster set pieces as the satisfying introspective noir fully takes over) and the FX get a bit ropey in that last Spidertank sequence. But minor quibbles when a film had the rare visual ambition of Blade Runner or The Fifth Element. Ask yourself what kinda cinema you want made for a $100 million? Where do you want your Scarlett Johansson deployed? Superheroes scrapping and joshing in abandoned airport runways or an entire cityscape spewing out neon holograms of robotic consumerism, there to stage your Kafka-esque action mystery in? I know where my tenner wants to go. Ambition, scope, an unforgettable sensory experience.
10
Steven Spielberg directs Robin Williams,Dustin Hoffman and Julia Roberts in this fantasy where a middle aged Peter Pan journeys back to Neverland to rescue his kids.
I must have watched Hook as a child… must have… yet my only distinct memory of it was a faded poster for its release staying up far, far too long round the back of the Greenford Sainsbury’s car park. Still, it is all a bit shit, ain’t it? Especially considering the pedigree. We spend 35 loooooooong minutes before we even get in sniffing distance to Neverland, with Spielberg photocopying his moments of wonder from better, more inspired blockbusters and Williams being a dullard (albeit with excellent improv skills) around his horrid kids. Then we get to Neverland and it is chaotic yet monotone, ambitious yet flimsy, garish yet hollow all at the same time. The stars all seems to have turned up on different weeks and their footage assembled together on an AVID. The action is sparse, bloodless and lacklustre. The overwhelming amount of sequences with the achingly 1991 vintage, yet charmless lost boys are frustratingly neverending. Julia Roberts sole expression as Tinkerbell looks like she’s done a wet fart in her tights and is smiling to cover up while waiting for an adult to come along to change her. And Hoffman’s Hook is given so, so little to occupy himself with while it all unravels around him… so that it would have been more sensible to call the whole epic fail Smee!… or Steven Spielberg’s Thud Butt. Probably the wunderkind’s weakest, most directionless, least appealing work. They can’t all be winners, kid! I wonder if that poster is still there?
4
Daniel Espinosa directs Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds in this sci-fi horror where a space station is… ALIEN! ALIEN! (Executive Decision) ALIEN! ALIEN! ALIEN! ALIEN!
The credits give away the order of who is going to die when, the two monologues of character work feel like they were written on a coffee break and only the final “twist” shot shows any of the inspired nastiness a flick like this needs about ten times of to survive. In fact that closing sting is the kinda sequence a decent thrill ride would open on and tease with in their teaser trailer. All you really get for an hour after the most famous (but also most annoying presence) takes an early bath, is survivors floating from one airlock to another to another to another. Life? Dead clone, more like.
4
James Gray directs Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson and Sienna Miller in this true life tale of a career soldier and family man who became obsesssed with exploring the South American wilds for proof of a hidden civilisation.
I have struggled with my feelings for this one. Like Gray’s previous gangster flicks it has a rich golden warmth, an intricate nostalgic look and an air of intelligent mediation that suggests a work of quality and lasting merit. Yet like We Own the Night or The Yards it also just passively sits up there on the screen, distant and uninvolving, echoing better movies (in this case Fitzcarraldo and Apocalypse Now). Now there is Leanian ambition here and a riveting enough story here that my mind has drifted back more than a few times to it over the week as an experience. Retrospectively I’m struggling to dismiss its grand narrative, enthusiastic mysticism and measured visual metaphors. And a middle expedition hampered by an absolutely pompous shit of a human added a little much needed fun and humanity to the endeavour, which I loved. Fuck, I’m going to have to watch this again to be sure, aren’t I?
6
Andrew V. McLaglen directs John Wayne, George Kennedy and Neville Brand in this late western about an absent lawman who wants to see his boys do the right thing when they get tangled up with some bank robbers.
The pre credit sequence is fantastic; a fake snow studio set of baddies around a hillside campfire, The Duke turns up, blathers confidentially with them, gunfire on the title card… you can imagine a little Quentin Tarantino in his Speed Racer pyjamas spitting his Fruit Loops out at the TV screen in a road to Damascus moment. After those opening credits though, you get a mawkish and meandering plodder, a distracted lead turn from the normally solid Wayne and only George Kennedy’s fake moustache really hitting its marks with any sense of urgency. For completists only.
5
Ken Loach directs Barry Ward, Simone Kirby and Jim Norton in this glorification of a rural Irish communist.
A minor movie from Loach but also one of his most beautiful and likeable ones. A red flag The Quiet Man for all intents and purposes, catnip to me. You get plenty craftsy period lushness, peaty rainsoaked romance moments and cheeky escapes. You also suffer from Loach’s habit of casting authentic people rather than pro actors in support roles. Here the amateurs really struggle and detract. Sure, it is all viewed through rose tinted glasses and a thick layer of one sided lefty beatification… but then why shouldn’t normal people who fought for education, solidarity and social freedom be treated like saints in this movie age of winsome princesses and billionaire vigilantes?
7
Paul Verhoeven directs Peter Weller, Nancy Allen and Kurtwood Smith in this dystopian action satire about a corporation who use a dead cop’s remains to be the software in their superhuman cybernetic replacement for the police force they own.
I was way too young to know what hard candy I was tasting when I first watched Robocop. All I know is I loved every shot of it. Still do. Verehoeven has baked it so packed with hot and spicy ingredients, there ain’t nothing sweet about this renegade Hollywood confection. When people make big whoop about Deadpool and Logan being R-Rated, they forget how tame they are next to this full on sensibility shaker. The free flowing satire dominates as accurate spoof news updates, blasé commercials for apocalyptic products and the very nadir of sitcoms interject themselves into the main thrust of the near pornographic comic book sci-fi hair-raiser you’ve bought a ticket for. The corporate machinations (the most chilling throwaway line comes from charming Miguel Ferrer’s suit when he casually pitches they are putting top cops out in the streets to die to get an appropriate guinea pig; “we restructured the police force to place prime candidates according to risk factor…” That’s some cold shit!) sit comfortably next a rapist having his crotch blown off or a stooge being turned mutant after they crash into toxic waste. The action is sophisticated and nasty, so are the brute capitalist politics of this near future. Check out those practical effects work; the terrifying ED-209s (except when they fall down stairs and have a mecha-tantrum), the Frankenstein’s monster that is Murphy himself. Check out those villians; Kurtwood Smith out Nicholson’s Jack himself as Clarence Boddicker, Ronny Cox is the embodiment of old white male privilege as oily corrupt Vice President Dick Jones. Check out that loco dialogue; “Can you fly, Bobby?” “Oooh. Guns, guns, guns! C’mon, Sal! The Tigers are playing…” OK so it pretty much all is ripped off from 2000AD in general and Judge Dredd in particular but no straight adaptation of Dredd ever got a score quite as perfectly hummable as Basil Poledouris propulsive classic. And there’s a haunting melancholy to it all. Not just when Murphy starts to regain his memories but that defeatist moment when he looks at the full horror of what he has been converted into in a broken shard of mirror and just sits on an abandoned sofa like a middle aged man reading his divorce papers, choking on his lot and staring blankly off into the middle distance. Heartbreaking stuff from Weller… if you fancy a bit of heartbreaking between your bullet heavy, coke factory raids and your neck gougings. I’D BUY THAT FOR A DOLLAR!
10
