#46: AVATAR

Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver. Written and directed by James Cameron. Music by James Horner. Running time 162 minutes. Budget $237 million (original) $9 million (re-release). Box office $2.878 billion!!!!! 

It's been 22 years since Avatar was originally released and stormed the world and box office claiming the prize of biggest ever box office, although adjusted for inflation it's apparently only 14th in North America box office, but worldwide it's second to Gone With the Wind. 

The plot sees Jake Sully, a crippled marine vet, sent to the planet Pandora to pilot a 10ft tall blue avatar (hence the title) for a corporation trying to strip-mine a rain forrest the size of a planet of a substance called Unobtainium. The trouble is there's this indigenous race of blue skinned warriors called the Na'Vi who just happen to be living on top of the biggest deposit of Unobtanium known to man. 

After that it's a case of white saviour rescuing the noble savage from corporate greed. It's the Wild West in space, Dances With Alien Wolves, if you will. As Jake discovers the hero within thanks to these blue-skinned warrior natives. 

Look, that chances are you've probably seen this, I'd be surprised if you haven't. I saw it back in the day, more than once. I even owned it on DVD and Blu Ray. And despite enjoying it greatly when first released, I've found rewatching at home a somewhat tedious and dull experience. With news of the sequel finally arriving this December and the chance to rewatch this on the big screen in 3D I decided to give it another go. 

Bloody hell, that was fun! Back on the big screen, this looks amazing! Cameron knows how to frame action and how to direct the shit out of this sort of thing. He's truly is the King of the World in that respect. And I know the story is pants, the logic is poor, the motivation is lame, I know, I know, I know. But I still thoroughly enjoyed this! Films come to life on the big screen, and seeing this again was a delight. The effect haven't aged, this still looks cutting edge and impressive, there's no 'uncanny valley' going on here. the flying sequences on the dragons is truly vertiginous. The lush look of the environments and the multitude of flora is staggering, less so the rather stupid six-legged creatures, but regardless the look of this film and the special effects are without a doubt note-perfect. 

The story, is boys own adventure and at times very cringey, but boy this looks good. Great action and with the glorious over-the-top baddie, played by Stephen Lang to give us someone to boo and hiss at. 

The 3D becomes warring very quickly and I still contest brings absolutely nothing to the table, because you so quickly get used to it and forget, plus it darkens the whole film and makes it rather murky. 

I feel enthused now for the new film, which I'm sure was the reason for this re-release.

8/10

#45: DON'T WORRY DARLING

Starring Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Olivia Wilde, Chris Pine, KiKi Layne, Gemma  Chan and Nick Kroll. Written by Katie Silberman, Story by Carey Van Dyke, Shane Van Dyke and Katie Silberman. Directed by Olivia Wilde. Music by John Powell. Budget $35 million. Running time 123 minutes. 

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT.

It's the 1950s, that golden golden age of America, and in an undisclosed California desert location newly-weds Alice and Jack Chambers (Florence Pugh and Harry Styles) are living in a specially-built, company town in the headquarters of a super secret program called the Victory Project.

Each morning the husbands, all immaculately-dressed, set off in a range of immaculate classic 50s styled cars, while their immaculately made-up women folk wave them off from the front gardens of their immaculately maintained, ethnically diverse cul-de-sac. The men are all working for the Victory Project on a super-secret project involving 'progressive materials'. The wives live under one golden rule - 'Don't go into the desert' - spend their days as house-wives cleaning, cooking, shopping and looking after their husband's every need, arranging pool and dinner parties for their husband's boss, Harry (Chris Pine) and his wife Shelley(Gemma Chan).

The weather is always perfect, Alice and Jack are very much in love, and seem to have sex at every opportunity, and everything seems fantastically rosey in Alice's world. So why does she have niggling doubts, and why is she having strange flashes or weirdness, and why has one of her friends just killed herself and just what's out there in the desert?

Directed by Olivia Wilde, who also plays Bunny (Alice's best friend) this is good looking and well mounted movie with a very troubled production, which involved falling-outs, walk-outs, sackings, recasting, romance and reshoots.

The cast is excellent, particularly Florence Pugh, who carries this film, and Harry Styles shows he can do more than just sing nice. Likewise, Chris Pine in a supporting role, brings a terrific sense of menace and malevolence to proceedings. The production design is terrific, the costumes, the sets and the music are all note perfect, Wilde directs with determination and mounts it well, and yet all this is a given, it's the literal icing on the cake, because the proof is in the pudding. 

This is a film that you know going into has to have a sting in its tail, a twist, a M. Night Shamalama-ding-dong moment, if you will, upon which the entire edifice, like a house of cards, has been precariously built. But will it be worth the 123 minutes running time wait to get to, or will you somewhat groan having sort of guessed what was going on well before the end. 

The secret at the end of this just about works, although you'll be left with many unanswered and somewhat frustrating questions. It shouldn't come as any surprise to learn that the plot of this film, is fuelled by masculine toxicity and is a reworking of the classic 1972 SF thriller The Stepford Wives, although with a 21st Century wrinkle in the reveal. There are hints of something else going on at the edges of the story, a sense of intrigue, but these are never developed any further. 

It works because Pugh gives it her all, she really carries this film and her relationship with Wilde is superb, but sadly it fails because it's a tad too obvious. When you are finally told what's actually going on it's all a bit too 'ooh' when it should have been 'Oooooh my god!'

It's certainly not dull, it looks good, actually it looks great! The wind-up to the knock-out punch is exciting and gripping, but sadly it ultimately fails to land a knock-out punch and overall feels just a little too on the button for its own good.

7/10 

#44: SEE HOW THEY RUN

 

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, David Oyelowo, Ruth Wilson, Reece Shearsmith, Harris Dickinson, Charlie Cooper, Shirley Henderson, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Pearl Chanda, Paul Chahidi, Sian Clifford, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Lucian Msamati and Tim Key. Written by Mark Chappell. Directed by Tom George. Running time 98 minutes.

Sam Rockwell is great in everything he's done. Indeed I would contest he's never made a bad film. He may have appeared in a bad film, but I put it to you, m'lord that he wasn't bad in that film. Unless of course that film is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when he was badly miscast as Zaphod Beeblebrox. But I digress and I'm only in the second paragraph. Actually the worst bit of casting in THGTTG wasn't Sam Rockwell but Mos Def as Ford Prefect, but that's another review for another time. 

ANYWAY.

See How They Run. The first Hollywood film to attempt to duplicate the success of the vastly superior Knives Out, and desperate to cash in on the cinema public's apparent appetite for whodunnit murder mysteries fuelled by the likes of the inferior remakes of Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile .

Set in London's theatre land in 1953, SHTR sees arrogant Hollywood writer Leo Köpernick (Adrien Broody) murdered backstage at the after show party honouring the 100th performance of Agatha Christie's The Mouse Trap - the world's longest running theatre show. His body dumped on stage. 

Enter stage right, world-weary Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and plucky, eager, but inept sidekick Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) on the case and hunting the killer. Using every device in the whodunnit playbook including flashback, split screen, narration, misdirection, multiple points of view, and foreshadowing all told with the comedy dial cranked up to 11. Each of the cast is interviewed and briefly held up to be the possible murderer, but as the bodies pile up the actual reveal is impossible to guess through deduction. I guessed it because it couldn't be anyone else.

Sadly it's the comedy that provides the film's undoing. Because it's played as a broad comedy, almost as theatrically as The Play What Went Wrong, the film has nowhere to go, no peril, no jeopardy, no drama and absolutely no stakes. That coupled with the fact that several of the characters are actual real-life people, Richard Attenbough (Harris Dickinson) and Agatha Christie (Shirley Henderson) all conspire to give the film a strange, somewhat clumsy feel. And overall it never really engages, it feels a little flat and when Rockwell and Ronan are off screen a tad dull.

While the film looks superb, and the cast lead by Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan are all good, although sadly due to the size of the cast, none of these extremely gifted actors are given nearly enough screen time to shine. 

Murder mysteries only success on the strength of their lead heroes and this is where See How They Run delivers in spades! Rockwell and Ronan have great chemistry together and their characters give this film a real heart, despite finding this film somewhat disappointing I'm hoping they get another crack at solving a murder, they deserve it. But only if the excellent Tim Key comes back as their boss.

I doubt this will run and run, but it was kinda fun.

7/10

#43: JAWS

 

Starring Roy Scheider,  Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gray and Murray Hamilton. Written by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Music by John Williams. Budget $9 million. Running time 124 minutes. Originally released in 1975.

The plot sees Police Chief Martin Broody start a new job on Amity Island on the very day a rogue 25 foot long Great White, or Carcharodon Carcharias if you prefer, starts using the costal town as his own personal all-you-can-eat buffet bar. 

As the body count starts rising, sea-phobic Brody aided by marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and fisherman Quint (Robert Shaw) set out in a boat to bag themselves a shark. 

What follows, without a shadow of a doubt, is one of the best films ever made and one of, if not, the best films of Steven Spielberg's illustrious career. And if you love the cinema and this film isn't in your top ten movies of all-times then you're not a film lover. It's note-perfect, has a perfect three-act structured, no soggy middle and still feels daisy fresh and exciting even after 47 years. It's been copied, studied and repeated but never bettered. Plus it's acknowledged as the first summer blockbuster, so you can legitimately blame every single crappy summer blockbuster that's followed on this and Steven Spielberg.

Filmed exclusively on location and with no sets, Jaws has a realistic, almost documentary feel about it and the three lead actors, all of whom weren't the first choice for their roles each give outstanding career defining performances. The night-time galley meal conversation onboard the fishing vessel Orca as the three men bond over battle-scar stories is a masterclass in acting, writing and directing.  

If you've never seen it then now's the time to go! Because this new 4K 3D print is superb and actually enhances the film and I'm not a fan of 3D.

First released back in 1975, I was 12 when I first saw it one New Year's Day and I've lost count of the number of times I've seen it since. This is another film that I cannot fault in anyway and even after all these years I still found myself tensing up at certain moments and telling Charlie to swim faster! That plus the legendary crash zoom still makes me gasp. 

They truly don't make films like this anymore. More's the pity. Drop everything and go see it now!

10/10

#42: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

 

Written and directed by David Cronenberg. Starring Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydox and Kristen Stewart. Music by Howard Shore. Budget $27 million. Running time 107 minutes.

Welcome to Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg's first cinema outing since 2014's Map to the Stars, and his fourth to star Viggo Mortensen.   

It's the near future and thanks to advances in biotechnology, humans have begun evolving in new and surprising ways to such an extent that pain is now a thing of the past, as is infection. Meanwhile machines/human interfaces are so common that most people sleep in organic beds and eat in special body-hugging chairs that interface with the digestive process. Meanwhile, the streets are filled with groups of people performing unsanctioned street surgery, or visiting visceral performance art installations. 

It's through Viggo Mortensen's character Saul Tenser, a world-renowned performance artist, that we are introduced to this strange new world. Saul Tenser suffers from a medical condition called Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, which means his body is constantly growing new internal organs, that are then removed by his lover, partner and video biographer Caprice (Lea Seydox) in sold-out out underground art shows. As you can imagine, this has made Tenser something of a legend in the world of internal organ growth and for two representatives of the National Organ Registry Timlin (Kristen Stewart) and Wippet (Don McKellar) in particular, who are keen to get him to register each new growth as it happens.

What they don't know is that Tenser is actually an undercover cop working with Detective Cope (Welket Bungué) to expose a radical group of radical evolutionists lead by Lang Dotrice (Scott Speedman).

Throw into that mix a televised child autopsy, a beauty pageant for the insides, and a couple of murderers armed with cordless power drills and what you have is the most unsettling film of the year. 

Unfortunately, despite a game cast, a superb sound track by Howard Shore, some truly impressive practical effects, and Cronenberg's exceptional eye, this is a film that sadly fails to either engage or ignite. It feels like Cronenberg, but it also feels like we've been here before and that he's already explored some of these ideas far more interestingly in films like Rabid, Videodrome, The Brood, The Fly and eXistenZ. And nothing here feels as shocking or disgustingly or as compelling as those previous tour-de-forces.

It's so wonderful so see Cronenberg making films for the big screen and it's a thrill to watch one of his unique body horror genre movies up there 10 metres tall, so it's disappointing when the film abruptly ends leaving you with more questions than you had going in. 

A shockingly visual experience that asks the big question: What if edible plastic came in toxic chocolate bars, but then fumbles the answer by tattooing the answer on the inside of someone's liver.

All that said it's still so goddam freaky and nasty that it truly deserves an 8/10  

#41: BODIES BODIES BODIES

 

Starring Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Myha'la Herrold, Chase Sui Wonders, Rachel Sennott, Lee Pace and Pete Davidson. Weirrten by Sarah DeLappe from a story by Kristen Roupenian. Directed by Halina Reijn. Running time 94 minutes.

A great trailer hooked me and reeled me in for this black, social-satire, comedy horror film featuring a group of over-privileged millennials gathering at a parent's deserted country mansion to ride out a hurricane. 

Things take a seriously bad turn for the worse when, after a game of 'bodies, bodies, bodies', played in the dark, the group start dying one-by-one and as tensions rise the 20 somethings, and Lee Pace fall out quicker than a nang hit. This group of stoned, pissed, toxic-frenemies, all with back stories, too much money, and way too many issues bicker, and fall-out all the while triggering each other as the tension and the body count rises. The cast of mostly strong females offers another satisfying variation on this type of horror film, and while the gore is gruesome, the violence isn't.  

This was a surprising and entertainingly horror film that built to a satisfying and funny ending. Filled with topical buzz words, it played with current social norms and the social and emotional banter between the group of fracturing 20-somethings fills the comedic core of the film.

8/10

   

#40: HATCHING

 

Starring Siiri Solalinna, Sophia Heikkilä, Jani Volanen, Reino Nordin and Saija Lentonen. Written by Llja Rautsi. Directed by Hanna Bergholm. Budget 3.95 million euros. Running time 91 minutes.

Gosh. What a film.

Tinja (Siiri Solanlinna) is a 12 year-old gymnast, part of a seemingly perfect family, and yet desperate for her mother's love, although her mother's only really got time for her popular Vblog called: 'Lovely Everyday Life', where she presents the vision of a perfect family documenting every meal and, it seems, every second of a seemingly perfect life. That's when she's not shagging the handyman. When Tinja finds a bird's egg in the forest late one night, she brings it home and incubates it in her bed. The egg grows to almost human size before hatching a hideous half bird/half human hybrid that's somehow's emotionally bonded with Tinja. As the bird creature grows larger it starts to take on a more human form until it starts to resemble Tinja, unfortuantely it's also seems to feed on the negative energy that Tinja has and exacts a terrible price from all who upset her. 

This was one of Cineworld's secret screenings meaning you have no idea what you're going to watch. And I've got to say that's the best way to see a film like this, because nothing can prepare you for it. Filmed in Finland, the film has an almost otherwordly quality, the interior sets have a strange dream like feel and the pace is unlike the usual Hollywood or UK fare, which helps to create a feeling of sinister unease. Image the unease dream-like quality of a David Lynch movie crossed with the body horror obsessions of David Cronnenberg and you'll be in the right zone. A gripping and thoroughly entertaining movie, which plays out like anything you could could get. Tinja and the girl creature are both played by Siiri Solalinna and she is simple exceptional in both roles, and once again the fact that the actors were all unknown to me only helped to enhance the feel of the film. I think we're going to see a lot more of Siiri in the future.

This is a disgusting, creepy, intriguing and geniunely satisfying horror film that worked extremely well.

8/10    

#39: STAR TREK 2: THE WRATH OF KHAN

 

Starring William Shatner, Lenord Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Ricardo Montalban, James Doohan, Walter Koening, George Takei, Nichelle Nicholas, Bibi Besch, Merritt Butrick, Paul Winfiend and introducing Kirstie Alley. Music by James Horner. Written by Jack B. Sowards, based on a story by Harve Bennett and Jack B. Sowards. Directed by Nicholas Meyer. Budget $12 million. Running time 113 minutes.

Forty years old and still as fresh as a daisy. Time has left this extraordinary, note-perfect, movie utterly untouched, revealing no rough edges, plot holes or bum notes. And if you think different, then sod off. 

It's 2285 and James T. Kirk, who's celebrating his 51st birthday, is finding getting old somewhat problematic (to wit this 58 year-old says 'pfff, man up, bitch.'). Desk bound, he spends his days bragging about his past exploits and indulging in a spot of work-place bullying by intimidating raw recruits with the dreaded Kobayashi Maru simulator. Meanwhile off in deep space, the crew of the USS Reliant are looking for a lifeless planet in the Ceti Alpha system to test a new device called the Genesis Device. Instead they stumble across a group of exceeding pissed off genetically enhanced survivors of the Botany Bay, a spaceship crew left on the planet 15 years previously by Kirk, as seen in the classic TV episode Space Seed. Led by the genetically enhanced super-man Khan Noonien Singh (played expertly by Ricardo Montablan, reprising his TV role) this group of super humans are looking to get off the wind blasted desert planet and ride the spaceways again. Wasting no time, Khan and his crew escape from their banishment and with Kirk in their sights sets off in the Reliant to have his revenge and the rest is ST:TWOK, not only the best film of the Star Trek movie pantheon, but in my opinion one of the best-ever science fiction films of all times. And if you want to make something of it, then why don't you step outside, through the airlock and we can discuss it in the space shuttle park.

Learning from past mistakes, or at least Star Trek: The Motionless Movie, Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer shunted Gene Roddenbery off to pasture and took Star Trek back to basics and in the process created this utterly thrilling, exciting and downright emotional sucker-punch of a movie! With not a single wasted second of screen time, this movie is an utter delight from beginning to end. It gives Shanter a chance to actually act and prove that he's got some chops on him and isn't the slab of ham everyone jokes he is. There are two stand out moments of acting from him, the first his rage at Khan, and the second his moving eulogy at the death of his friend at the end of the film, where we see Kirk literally choke back a single tear before it can roll. This is a masterclass in acting and Shatner deserves serious credit for it. Likewise, this film would be nothing without the death of Spock, which gives his character a deeply moving send off, his -'I have and always will be your friend.' line still chokes me up. Damn it, this film is good. Packed with superb lines of eminently quotable dialogue. 

It's interesting to note that this is the second classic science fiction film I've seen in as many days and both are exceedingly enhanced by their respectively spectacular soundtracks, the first, E.T. by the incredible John Williams is matched here by James Horner and his nautical themed soundtrack brings real drama and depth to this film. 

I used to watch Khan almost on a weekly basis when it first came out on VHS and find myself often returning to it ever since, so I know every beat and every word, but once again seeing it up on the big screen the film reveals its mastery, seeing the Enterprise glide past, as big as a house is a joy to behold. Films come alive in the cinema in a way that watching them at home can never match, perhaps one of the reasons I enjoyed E.T. more this time.

As of ST:TWOK, I adore it. It has a perfect three act structure, no plot holes and great performances from everyone. It's a film that's most certainly in my top ten of all-time favourite movies and I have lost count of the number of times I've seen it. 

I love this film. 10/10

#38: E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL

Starring Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, Dee Wallace and Peter Coyote. Written by Melissa Mathison, directed by Steven Spielberg. Music by John Williams. Budget $10.5 million. Running time 114 minutes.

Ah, they don't make films like this anymore, and by 'like this anymore', I mean films with practical special effects and compositing, rather than flat, lifeless CGI, cos that's how they'd do it if they remade this today. 

Released originally in 1982, this was a phenomenal success grossing nearly $800 million at the box-office. It cemented Spielberg as the greatest film maker of his generation and torpedoed the vastly superior The Thing at the box office, but that's another story.
 
The story sees the E.T. of the title getting marooned on planet Earth, when his spaceship leaves him behind. I like to think it was deliberate choice on behalf of his crew-mates, as none of them liked him and took the first chance they could get to leave him behind. It's only when the sneaky little turd manages to 'phone home' and alert the extra-terrestrial authorities that he's been marooned by his shipmates, that they have to go back and, grudgingly, pick him up. I recently discovered that later those shipmates popped three caps in E.T's fat head and dumped him out of an airlock, at least that's the scene that Spielberg shot, which was later cut out.

Anyway, after getting left behind the brown, stumpy-legged, little stool, hobbles to the nearest urban conurbation, gets ripped off his tits on M&Ms, junk food, and booze and starts grooming a bunch of impressionable kids, including a vulnerable 9-year old kid called Elliot Taylor (Henry Thomas), his sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) and their old brother, Michael (Robert MacNaughton), and before you know it, the sneaky alien shit has mind-melded with the Elliot, who's not copping too well with the divorce of his parents, getting him drunk and forcing him to act all too inappropriately with a female classmate. E.T. bonds with, or grooms, the rest of the family until they're all running round answering his every beck and call. All the time managing to avoid the kid's mum (Dee Wallace), who's trying to hold down a job while bringing up three emotionally damaged kids. 

Just then, the authorities, led by Agent Keys (Peter Coyote) who've been hunting the dreadful little nonce since he first set down on Earth manage to track him down to the Taylor household, forcing the alien deviant to use his mind control powers to aid him in his escape, in the middle of the night, leaving behind children who he's managed to touch and probe with his glowing digit. 

Or that's the take I took away from the film. I've not seen this film since 1982, when it first opened, when I originally took an ex-girlfriend, who cried through it, although to be fair, I cried too, when the bastard federal agents didn't shot the alien paedo when they had a chance.

The fact this film works is a miracle, on paper it has no right to work, and yet it does, and I think that's down to the extraordinary child cast, who are all excellent, particularly Henry Thomas, who almost single handedly carries this film, that is when Drew Barrymore's not on screen, damn she's just so adorable! And yet despite all that, all the good stuff, I still can't like it. I admit it's well made, how could it be otherwise? But I just don't like it, it's too mawkish, too sentimental and just too downright nice, there are unanswered questions it leaves, the creature's powers are ill defined and altered to suit the situation and the use of kid's toys to manufacture a wind-powered distress signal still irks me.

If this film was made today, it would use CGI and that's why it would fail, using an actual puppet, Spielberg's cast get to interact with it and that closeness and eye-line means they sell the concept perfectly. Spielberg directs brilliantly, using skills he learned with Jaws to sell ET and reusing some of his favourite camera trickery, including a slow reverse zoom crash. 

And special praise indeed to the utterly superb soundtrack by John Williams, it's a thing of awe.

As I said, I hated this film the last time I watched and this time, I marvelled at the skill and artistry of Spielberg and the the performances he milked from the cast. This is a film, with a great sense of humour, and a real sense of child-like innocence and it was an utter treat to see it back on the big screen, and yet despite all of that, if I never see it again, I'll be fine.

 I think in my old age I'm getting kinder and more loving, which is a shame because I was going for cantankerous and belligerent.  

8/10