Year: 2017 Director: Armando Iannucci

When Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was discovered face down, stinking of his own urine at his dacha in March 1953 his faithful friends and committee members didn’t immediately send for a doctor as all the prominent ones were in gulags or had been shot. He had lain undisturbed for some time as his guards were afraid that if they disturbed him after a bout of heavy drinking, he would have them killed. It is just this atmosphere of farce, fear and black comedy that drives the funniest film I have seen in years.

That’s not to say it’s a broad comic romp as that would be a far more lightweight affair – it’s the fact it touches on sadistic executions, torture, child rape, bloody violence and horror whilst still delivering brilliantly funny line after line that demonstrates what a masterful writer / director Armando Iannucci is. The source material of a French graphic novel demonstrates the paranoia and true life absurdity that was Russian society during the fag end of Stalin’s rule.

The cast I simply stunning that it’s hard not just to list their names but Simon Russell Beale pulls very few punches as Beria, » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: David Bruckner

The setup to this is very reminiscent of The Descent (a group of friends commemorate the tragic death of one of their number by taking a trip into the wilderness). Only this time it’s a group of cocky lads and it’s a hike through the wilds of Norway.

You get lots of great character friction as the tension builds straight away. It’s clear they can’t quite believe they decided to forsake a weekend of carnage in Amsterdam or Ibiza instead of getting back to nature.

Taking a shortcut through a creepy forest, things descend rapidly into full-on nightmare mode.

I can’t imagine anyone being disappointed by this (anyone who likes horror that is). It’s got all the conventional thrills, spills and scare jumps you might expect, but also a dash of humour and an ingenious sense of weirdness.

There’s a line early on where they take shelter from the rain in an abandoned cabin: ‘So this is the place we all get murdered then’. A lovely, knowing moment: we all know we’re on a horror film (audience and characters alike) but we don’t know WHAT KIND of horror film yet.

As the film keeps » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Dennis Villuenieve (spelling??)

Well now. This is a big event for me. The first film had a powerful effect on me and continues to draw me in for regular viewings. How does this long belated sequel stand up?

I won’t put any spoilers here – I’ll save that for the comments.

It’s achingly ‘worthy’, that’s the best way I can put it. Dennis Villenueve is a safe pair of hands as a director, and seems to intuitively understand that peculiar mix of futuristic dystopia and hard-boiled gumshoe feel that constitutes the Blade Runner world. The visual expansion of that world is expertly and sensitively handled – he keeps things moody and smoggy, with a stately, slow-moving camera. No complaints from me on that score.

The soundtrack is also as immersive as the first film, wisely using the same sound palette with a smattering of callbacks to the old key themes.

Overall, you can’t fault the effort that’s gone into this project. It clearly seems to have been a real labour of love and reverence.

But I have to say it left me a bit cold. It doesn’t help that it’s deathly dull. Slow-moving, with ponderous and brooding » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Michael Winterbottom

Anyone who watched British TV in the 1970’s will recollect, quite possibly without much in the way of merriment, Mike Yarwood, the comic impressionist who furnished the nation with the type of broad stroke characterisations that tended to appeal to pissed up blokes in pubs and tragically, David Brent; Denis ‘Silly Billy’ Healy, Frank ‘the cat did a woopsie in my beret’ Spencer and various others who all seemed to be somehow analogous. At the end of his show, Mike would turn to the camera mid routine, ditch Robin Day or Eddie Waring, smile his toothy Ted Heath smile and tell us, his enraptured public, ‘and this is me’. In our house at least, the phrase was a signal – the jokes(?) were over and it was time to put the kettle on. What does this have to do with ‘The Trip to Spain’? Well, not much. Both Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon made their funny bones as impressionists, though I’m sure they believe that’s the least of their talents and although they play ‘themselves’ here, it’s crucial to attach the apostrophes since, as in numerous comedy ventures going back as far as The George » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Christopher Nolan

What an incredible film.

You know how Christopher Nolan’s last few films have fallen into a similar pattern? You get a long, slow buildup with lots of talking and philosophising, then eventually you get three or more storylines reaching a simultaneous peak with multiple, cross-cut suspense sequences? While effective on a technical level, it was all starting to seem a little contrived. And bordering on pretentious.

Well, in a stroke of genius, Dunkirk ditches the buildup and plugs you straight into the cross-cut suspense stuff. I was absolutely hooked within seconds. Forget back-story, forget character-building, forget dialogue, forget quasi-intellectual theorising – Nolan strips all that out. This is just an edge-of-your-seat struggle for survival, with the bare minimum of context and explanation.

It’s Nolan’s tautest film since Memento by quite some way, and should hopefully cement his reputation as the A list director he’s always threatened to be. With a constantly building succession of cliffhangers (all scored by Hans Zimmer’s trademark pulsing slabs of orchestral music), it’s the most buttock-clenching piece of cinema since Captain Phillips.

The colour palette is creamy and vivid, the sound design is a masterpiece of sustain and release (waves lapping, » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Edgar Wright

Let’s skip to the end – I loved the fuck out of this.

This was the film that Edgar Wright was always destined to make given the breaks and the budget. A smart funny sassy flick, stuffed with pop culture references and a soundtrack intrinsic to the action.

The titular lead, young Ansel Elgort as Baby is cocksure and focused whether as a super skilled getaway driver or swaggering down the street in the beautifully choreographed opening sequence to Bob & Earl’s ‘Harlem Shuffle’. If there was no more to his character than this he would soon become an annoying little git. However as we slowly learn more about him, why his connection to music is so strong and the hold that criminal boss Doc (Kevin Spacey in excellent form) has over him.

Waitress and doll, Debora, literally sings her way into his heart and becomes his reason to quit. But, yes you guessed it, it’s not that easy to leave the criminal world now he has something to care about.

From the off the film has its own frenetic style and for narrative reasons a constant eclectic soundtrack which serves and » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Jonathan Teplitzky

A bloke called Charlie Galbraith frequented my local pub in the late 1970’s. Today Charlie would be acknowledged as a semi-functioning alcoholic, but back in those somewhat less enlightened times, he was simply thought of by all and sundry as an old souse. In his cups – Charlie’s cups were as bottomless as The Horn of Plenty – he used to recite a mantra, an incantation if you will and it went something like this: ‘Old Winnie Churchill, Old Winnie Churchill, Old Winnie Churchill and he lives down south.’ Now, at that time, Old Winnie didn’t live down south anymore – as a matter of fact, he’d gone south more than a decade and a half earlier, but no matter, in the slap-happy mind of Charlie, Churchill, the man who led us triumphantly through the dark days of the war, was as tangible as cirrhosis of the liver. That was the thing about Churchill. He had presence, even when he quite literally, didn’t. He was, he is, to use an overused expression, legendary, a status unlikely to be awarded any current politician and certainly not extended to the likes of Bonar Law or Henry Campbell » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Nick Broomfield/Rudi Dolezal

Towards the end of what is a predictably gloomy, gruelling story told in reverse chronology, a still at the top of her game Whitney Houston is asked how she’d like to be remembered. As befits someone who, as the movie shows, consummately managed to handle characters as diverse as an out of his depth Terry Christian and the pissed-up old perv who was Serge Gainsborough, Whitney answers that she doesn’t much care, but would like to be thought of as ‘nice’. Whitney was nice. In fact, part of her problem might well have been that she was too nice. I certainly didn’t enter the cinema with such an impression. I was never a fan and although I didn’t actively dislike her music at the time, I was very much a take her or (preferably) leave her merchant, finding her vocal gymnastics and obligatory power ballads slightly irritating, if just about tolerable. In latter years however, since her tragic demise, I actually did start to dislike Whitney, or or any rate, her legacy. Every cut-price TV talent show perpetually seemed – and seems – to have a roster full of Houston would-be’s, desperately trying to » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Ridley Scott

The whole notion of the ‘film franchise’ applies remorseless commercial logic to an artform. Just as wherever you are in the world a Big Mac is a Big Mac – except of course in France where it’s Le Big Mac. So it is now, six movies in, in the world of facehuggers and ‘it’s in the ship’. Ridley Scott’s efforts to reboot the whole thing and provide an origin story for the acid-dripping nightmare in Prometheus showed how tight the franchise expectations now are. Too much sense of wonder, confusing plot (Engineers, prehistoric star charts, WMDs, black goo, Guy Pearce hiding in the attic) and not enough of the woman-in-vest running down dark corridors with a big gun chased by the dark two-mouth drippy acid nightmare thing. Even Ridley can’t fight the feedback cards it would seem, and so Covenant attempts to do two things: to move the backstory started in Prometheus on while giving the fans what they want in terms of Alien action. Actually three things as everyone loved Fassbender’s bad robot, so let’s have more of that. Double Fassbender to go! We set our scene on the colony ship Covenant, en route » Continue Reading.

Year: 1992 Director: David Lynch

It IS happening again…. finally… After all these years, Twin Peaks is coming back later this month for a third and final season. It might well be all too much (18 episodes, ALL directed by Lynch himself) – but I can’t wait. And my threshold for disappointment is very high. It would need to be very bad indeed for me to fault it (says he who loves Inland Empire, a film that even staunch Lynch fans find impenetrable).

The Glasgow Film Theatre currently has a David Lynch season, this being the highlight. One of the selling points of this screening (apart from being LATE on a Friday night) was that it was a 35mm print. But… em… that just meant it was VERY crackly and the sound was quite badly distorted. I didn’t realise they meant the actual print from 25 years ago. It made me appreciate the benefits of digital restoration, which I think suits Lynch better.

Still, it’s a film that needs to be seen on a big screen. You need to hear Laura Palmer’s horrific screams and the house band in the Pink Room at full blast on big cinema speakers to » Continue Reading.

Year: 1974 Director: Sam Peckinpah

A film where vastly more people have heard of it than actually seen it is always interesting. While it didn’t exactly finish his career: he’d go on to Cross of Iron and, er, Convoy and The Osterman Weekend and (thanks Wikipedia) end up directing Julian Lennon videos, Alfredo Garcia certainly marked the end of his A-list status as a director. Its a film that’s become famous for the vitriol of the reviews at the time: most famously ‘Bring Me The Head of Sam Peckinpah’ and for the way its title has seeped into usage by people who’ve never seen the film, unless Graeme Garden is in fact an aficionado. The last few decades have seen its slow ascent from ignomy to cult status. Now its viewed as Peckinpah’s most autobiographical film – not least for the titanic amounts of alcohol consumed by its protagonist.

The plot is indeed as described: a Mexican gangster boss offers a huge reward for the head of the man who impregnated his daughter, prompting hitmen to scour Mexico. Warren Oates plays a hard-at-heel pianist and bar manager Bennie who picks up the conversation in a bar, and smells a big » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Joel Hodgson

THIS IS NOT A FILM BUT AS IT’S BASED ON FILMS & THERE IS NO TV SECTION – HERE IT IS.

In the early days of satellite TV and the internet you heard about US TV shows via friends, radio and TV – often they were huge, like Seinfeld, but still only shown at midnight on BBC2 sporadically, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (hereafter known as MST3K) was so far off the mainstream radar that unless Danny Baker had mentioned it on his GLR radio show I would not have known of its existence.

By this stage it had entered it’s Sci-Fi Channel phase and had not long to run to the end of it’s final 10th season. First presented by it’s creator Joel Hodgson and later Mike Nelson, the show was simple in its premise. As a test subject for evil scientists, Joel / Mike was on a space station, forced to watch the worst movies ever made along with his robot pals, Crow T Robot & Tom Servo, which they survive by riffing jokes as they watch. The film plays with the silhouette of cinema seats at the bottom of the frame with the » Continue Reading.

Year: 2016 Director: F. Gary Gray

And so to FF8, FOTF, or as it’s described on our ticket the intriguing Fate of the Fur. Sadly it turns out not to be a PETA documentary but Vin, The Rock, Michelle and the others in cars again. The franchise is rapidly mutating into a US car-heavy version of James Bond, with the US government seemingly happy to entrust (with plausible deniability from Kurt Russell) the fate of the free world to Ludacris in a Lambo. He may in fact be in a Bentley but I need this for the alliteration.

This was a family movie choice, keeping teenagers and adults just about enthralled and excited. There’s a pre-credits sequence which focuses on actual racing, set in Cuba, which is pretty straightforward, then it’s onto a Mendes-style incomprehensible plot set-up involving Charlize Theron as hot hacker Cipher. She’s got one over on F & F mainman Dom, who as ever in these films is just trying to settle down when people step to him. She invites him into her private stealth plane (stolen from Agents of Shield), and blackmails him into stealing nasty stuff for her so she can….well do something vaguely wiki » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Jordan Peele

This little film is so perfect, you’ll find yourself giving a standing ovation over the end credits. I hesitate to call it a horror, despite plenty of jump scares and some stomach churning gore in the last act.

But good horrors often make you doubt they are horrors at all. A young black man visits his white girlfriend’s parents in an affluent New Hampshire neighbourhood for the first time and… SOMETHING’S not right. Despite her assuring him beforehand that her family aren’t racist, everyone seems to be treating him with suspiciously veiled politeness. And the only other black faces he sees belong to servants and groundkeepers. You want him to, well, ‘get out’, but you can also see what compels him to stay and face up to whatever is actually going on.

Things get weird. And then violent. I was a bit worried for a while that it was going to be one of those films that leave matters unanswered and expect the audience to make up their own minds. I’m all for open endings, but with a mystery as compelling as this, it would just be cheating.

You want the loose ends tied up. » Continue Reading.

Year: 1978 Director: Philip Kaufman

As a child of the 80’s I have memories of this distinct atmosphere that was the lounge after 9pm at night. If you stumbled downstairs, with a bellyache, thirsty or just unable to sleep the television always looked and sounded a certain way – this fuzzy tone to all the scenes as if being played via a cushion and the films (and it was always a film) were lots of talking in rooms. At first glance the opening scenes of this 1978 remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers perfectly sums up that feeling. Weird outdoor scenes followed by 70s young people having conversations while a TV blares sport in the background and a bit of snogging.

I think it’s probably really hard to come to this film afresh as it’s been parodied and ripped off despite being a remake of a 1956 B-movie itself. The original was (despite claims to the contrary later) a thinly veiled allegory about McCarthyism, reds under the bed, small town paranoia and cold war fearmongering. By reimagining events in a city like San Francisco it perhaps makes the film more relatable but also taps into the alienation and disconnection people in a metropolis can » Continue Reading.

Year: 1955 Director: Charles Laughton

(May contain spoilers to 62 year old film that you really should have seen by now)

“Like my good hand tattooed E.V.I.L. across it’s brother’s fist That filthy five! They did nothing to challenge or resist.”

Robert Mitchum’s character, Harry Powell – the convict psychopath posing as a preacher could have stepped right out of a Nick Cave song if this film was released today. Instead its cinematography and dark themes probably inspired young Nick for a good album or five of songs.

Film history is littered with movies that somehow fall through the cracks with critics and audiences only to gain respect later on (Shawshank) while lesser films are blockbusters and realised to be utter garbage (Titanic). The critical and commercial failure of The Night Of The Hunter is as puzzling as it’s influence on future film-makers is obvious.

A man, Robert Graves, robs a bank, killing two & hides the money at his home with his children as the only witnesses to its location just before the cops haul him away. Whilst awaiting execution he shares a cell with widow murderer disguised as preacher, Harry, who wants that 10,000 dollars and visits his » Continue Reading.

Year: 2016 Director: Richard Linklater

I’ve loved director Richard Linklater since I saw his debut film Slackers in the early 90s (part of me still wants to move to Austin, live in a squat and start a band because of that film). He’s eclectic, unpretentious and I don’t think there’s another director alive whose philosophy on life most matches my own.

Everybody Wants Some!! is a Buddhist manifesto disguised as a frat house comedy. There’s no one I can think of apart from Linklater who could weld such unlikely concepts together so seamlessly.

There’s a deep rooted connection to its predecessor, Dazed and Confused, from 1993. That film (itself inspired by American Graffiti) explored the bittersweet freedom and sense of possibility on the last day of high school, 1976. Everybody Wants Some!! jumps forward to the next natural life step – the first day of college. And it’s now 1980.

Our ensemble cast focuses on a house shared by a group of horny jocks on baseball scholarships. It’s three days until term starts, which they spend chasing girls and getting seriously out of their faces.

That might not sound appealing. And to be honest the sexism and laddish humour is » Continue Reading.

Year: 2016 Director: Mike Mills

According to The Telegraph a “secret treasure of the season, though – crafted with tender precision, and built to last”

According to the Guardian, a film that boasts a “rush of gorgeous moments, a standout performance from Annette Bening and profound thoughts on family and identity”

According to the Mrs F8 “a load of bollocks”. And I’m inclined to agree.

Across two hours we get lots of “quirky”, something which seems to be director Mike Mills forte. Annette Bening plays divorcee Dorothea, mother to 15 year old Jamie living in shabby bohemian chic in Santa Barbara in 1979. The house is also home to lodgers Abbie – an art student with love of punk music who is recovering from cervical cancer, and William, a handyman still devoted to the hippy lifestyle. Jamie doesn’t have a girlfriend but 17 year old Julie sneaks into Jamie’s room most nights for sleep and conversation, but not sex. Although a willing participant with other boys she is off limits to Jamie who clearly adores her.

Early attempts are made to portray Jamie as a difficult teenager but he doesn’t even seem mildly exasperating. We are told in passing » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Chris McKay

‘Every film starts with a black screen….then some creepy music…. then a logo…..Warner Bros? Why not Brothers….’ and right from the off you know that the film isn’t afraid to prick the pomposity of the ultra gothic darkness of the Nolan caped crusader flicks. Batman was the insular macho ass of The Lego Movie and here Will Arnett has the tone of Alec Baldwin’s ‘SNL’ Trump impression although am sure its purely coincidental that both are self important deluded billionaires.

The plot, such as there is one, revolves around The Joker’s annoyance that Batman doesn’t consider him as his mortal enemy or even that they have a relationship. The script throws little barbs at weaknesses in previous Batman outings – ‘that thing with the two boats’ and the campy sixties version with a joke about shark repellent which has a lovely pay off. On the way he drools over Commissioner Barbara Gordon to the soundtrack of Cutting Crew’s ‘I Just Died In You Arms’, accidently adopts his sidekick Robin and with the ever faithful Alfred The Butler (drolly voiced by Ralph Fiennes) tries to foil The Joker’s evil scheme.

There are pop culture » Continue Reading.

Year: 1993 Director: Joe Dante

At the moment the film world is going ga-ga over ‘La La Land’ : a movie that celebrates the golden age of the Hollywood musical. Awards are raining down on it like Gene Kelly pirouetting in a freak shower proving critics and studios alike love little more than a good navel gaze. Yet in 1993 Joe Dante’s ‘Matinee’ paid homage with equal love and nostalgia to an equally beloved era of film-making: the 50’s B-movie that was staple of the Saturday morning matinee.

The film didn’t do great business in 1993, critics were lukewarm, the studio wre sure how to sell it and it sort of sunk without trace despite having a similar vibe as Dante’s ‘Gremlins’ with an equally great score from Jerry Goldsmith. The backdrop of the main action is the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as the world stands on the brink of destruction, adults panic buy Shredded Wheat and boys think “If the world was gonna end, do you think that pretty girl in class would put out?” With such tension and fear in the air, the last of the celluloid showmen sees a chance to revive his flagging fortunes.

John Goodman’s cigar chomping » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Danny Boyle

HERE BE SPOILERS

“Does the sequel have a lust for life?” you’ll read and you’ll want to be out there, pounding down the pavement with store detectives breathing down your neck, arms flailing – direct into the newspaper offices where they write about leisure for your pleasure. Throwing a glass Begbie style into the face of the hack who wrote that “Yous the kind of whiny faced CUNT who says “Costello’s Aim Is Still True” a the end of live reviews.” you’ll be screaming. “it was the sub editor” they’ll whimper but it’s too late. The damage is done – your twentysomething memories have been shat on by a wee fucker.

OK Trainspotting may be better seen as a product of its times and where the audience that put the poster up on the wall were – at uni also purchasing Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Prodigy Fat Of The Land and Taxi Driver or Italian Job posters from the stall in the atrium every Wednesday. It’s soundtrack was a nigh perfect mix of old and new with Pulp, Blondie, Brian Eno, Lou Reed, Leftfield and of course, Iggy Pop’s with Bowie acolytes the Sales » Continue Reading.

Year: 2017 Director: Damien Chazelle

I can’t believe the Afterwrod doesn’t yet have a La La Land review, so here it is. Though you don’t need to be a full on musicals fan, you need to be open to a few basic ideas to enjoy this film. Characters can burst into song and dance in the middle of a scene – fine with me. Open to a bit of jazz? Quite a lot of jazz. Ok? Let’s go then. The story is one of the oldest in the movie business – two dreamers on the make in LA – actress Emma Stone and jazz pianist Ryan Gosling – fall in love with each other, and each other’s dreams. You know what? Success costs and as he hooks up with John Legend (yes) and the success starts coming the cracks in the relationship widen. It’s romantic, it’s a comedy – but most of all it’s a love letter to the MGM musical, to Hollywood and to LA. We go on a whistle stop tour of LA landmarks from the Griffiths Planetarium (Rebel Without a Cause) and gridlocked freeways to the studio backlots. Gosling and Stone twirl, tap dance and croon their » Continue Reading.

Year: 2006 Director: Darren Aronofsky

In the midst of an entertainment culture that’s never seem more focused on guaranteeing excellence – from TV box sets and Josh Weedon helmed reboots – its a pleasure , certainly occasional, perhaps guilty, to focus on a complete howler. Darren Aronofsky, of Pi and Requiem for A Dream, managed to blow 35 million dollars on what appears to be an extended vanity project for then squeeze Rachel Weitz. The film is equivalent to those model portfolio shoots you can do at High Streeet photographers, or the Friday video. All involved, Aronofsky, Weitz and Hugh Jackman – should know way better.

We lay our scene in fifteenth-century South America, where Hugh Jackman plays a conquistador who is in search of the Tree of Life on the behest of the beautiful Queen of Spain – Weitz. No, in fact its the far future, where lotus-position astral voyager Jackman is steering a bonsai tree bubble spaceship into a distant nebula haunted by memories of his dead wife Weitz . Oh wait, in fact we’re really in the present day where Jackman is a brilliant cancer surgeon whose beautiful wife – Weitz in full pixie waif mode » Continue Reading.