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The Doors (1991)   Oliver Stone’s mammoth, mythologising paean to Jim Morrison is as much about seeing himself in the self-styled, self-destructive rebel figurehead, and I suspect it’s this lack of distance that rather quickly leads to The Doors degenerating into a turgid bore. It’s strange – people are, you know, films equally so – but I’d hitherto considered the epic opus patchy but worthwhile, a take that disintegrated on this viewing. The picture’s populated with all the stars it could possibly wish for, tremendous visuals (courtesy of DP Robert Richardson) and its director operating at the height of his powers, but his

Doctor Who Nightmare of Eden   One of the more maligned stories in a much-maligned era of Doctor Who, Nightmare of Eden nevertheless has its staunch advocates. Outpost Gallifrey’s Shaun Lyon for one, who professed it his “favourite Doctor Who story ever”. It doesn’t quite reach that pinnacle for me, but I’m absolutely on the same page with regard to it being a gem. Tat Wood was also onside in About Time 4, at a stage where the critiques were increasingly divided into Lawrence Miles prosecutions and Wood defences (switching lanes with the subsequent era). For me, it’s one of the series’ very best scripts – even those

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)   You could reasonably argue Eddie Murphy was a phenomenon before Beverly Hills Cop, but following the release of Martin Brest’s 1984 box-office champ, the entire world now knew it. At about the same time, Bill Murray was making similar waves in Ghostbusters (no one was quoting Aykroyd and Ramis from that movie), so it must have been a particular rue to studios that both then dropped off the screen for a couple of years. With 1980s stars, in particular, there’s often a dissonance between the size of their hits and the actual quality (look no further than Tom Cruise).

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa   I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)   Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all

Bright Lights, Big City (1988)   A star’s quest to buck audience – and often studio – preconceptions is invariably a dangerous game. You can quickly flame out the very thing that made you an attractive prospect in the first place. Or you can plod on, entrenching yourself determinedly in a style that doesn’t suit you (Robert De Niro in most broad comedy, Bruce Willis in most straight drama). Michael J Fox wanted to be taken seriously – being adored for Family Ties, Back to the Future and, yes, Teen Wolf just wasn’t enough – and it took him three attempts to realise

The Night Before (2015)   It’s pretty much a given that any film featuring boorish oaf Seth Rogen will feature the consumption of copious quantities of weed – off screen and on – but he goes all in here, with a spouse-gifted pharmaceuticals bag (“It’s every single drug in the whole world”) and the chance to act off his moobs for most of the movie. And much as I have an allergic response to Rogen in all his hirsute glory, he does at times extract a mirthful response. The problem with The Night Before isn’t its potential – After Hours with a dose of Yule log – so

True Romance (1993)   The track record for others adapting Tarantino’s early screenplays isn’t so hot – the prosecution offers Natural Born Killers and From Dusk till Dawn – but Tony Scott’s envisioning of True Romance, made before the director went stratospheric with Pulp Fiction and after Quentin politely turned Tony down when he made it known how much he’d like to direct Reservoir Dogs himself, is nigh on perfect. Scott ironed the director’s tricksy structure into something linear and brought with it an upbeat ending, because he knew that, if you’re onboard with Clarence (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette), you don’t need bells and whistles and foisted

Stranger Things 3 (2019)   It’s very clear, by this point, that Stranger Things isn’t going to serve up any surprises. It’s operating according to a strict formula, one requiring the opening of the portal to the Upside Down every season and an attendant Demogorgon derivative threat to leak through, only to be stymied at the last moment by our valorous team. It’s an ’80s sequel cycle through and through, and if you’re happy with it functioning exclusively on that level, complete with a sometimes overpowering (over)dose of nostalgia references, this latest season will likely strike you as just the ticket. I

Mandy (2018)   Sometimes you’re left scratching your head over a movie, wondering what it was about it that had others rapturously raving while you were left shrugging. I at least saw the cult appeal of Panos Cosmatos’ previous picture, Beyond the Black Rainbow, which inexorably drew the viewer in with a clinically psychedelic allure before going unceremoniously off the boil in a botched slasher third act. Mandy, though, has been pronounced one of the best of the year, with a great unhinged Nic Cage performance front and centre – I can half agree with the latter point – but it’s further evidence of

Sicario 2: Soldado aka Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)   I wasn’t among the multitude greeting the first Sicario with rapturous applause. It felt like a classic case of average material significantly lifted by the diligence of its director (and cinematographer and composer), but ultimately not all that. Any illusions that this gritty, violent, tale of cynicism and corruption – all generally signifiers of “realism” – in waging the War on Drugs had a degree of credibility well and truly went out the window when we learned that Benicio del Toro’s character Alejandro Gillick wasn’t just an unstoppable kickass ninja hitman; he

Altered Carbon Season One   Well, it looks good, even if the visuals are absurdly indebted to Blade Runner. Ultimately, though, Altered Carbon is a disappointment. The adaption of Richard Morgan’s novel comes armed with a string of well-packaged concepts and futuristic vernacular (sleeves, stacks, cross-sleeves, slagged stacks, Neo-Cs), but there’s a void at its core. It singularly fails use the dependable detective story framework to explore the philosophical ramifications of its universe – except in lip service – a future where death is impermanent, and even botches the essential goal of creating interesting lead characters (the peripheral ones, however, are at least more fortunate).

Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)   Brawl in Cell Block 99 is most definitely cut from the same cloth as writer-director-co-composer Craig S Zahler’s previous flick Bone Tomahawk: an inexorable, slow-burn suspenser that works equally well as a character drama. That is, when it isn’t revelling in sporadic bursts of ultraviolence, including a finale in a close-quartered pit of hell. If there’s nothing quite as repellent as that scene in Bone Tomahawk, it’s never less than evident that this self-professed “child of Fangoria” loves his grue. He also appears to have a predilection for, to use his own phraseology, less politically correct content. With Bone Tomahawk, one might

Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)   Matthew Vaughn may have talked a good game when highlighting those successful follow-ups, and their winning ingredients, he aspired to for his first home-grown sequel, but unfortunately he falls prey to the worst excesses of typical bigger, baggier, more bloated studio fare. Kingsman: The Golden Circle is more Die Hard 2 or Iron Man 2 than John Wick Chapter 2 or The Empire Strikes Back. Not that I think trying for the latter kind of model works on this kind of movie anyway. Kingsman hews closer to the Austin Powers side of Bond than the Bourne, so pasting the beats of an earnest one over an essentially frivolous enterprise leads

American Made (2017)   This is definitely more the sort of thing Tom Cruise should be doing, a movie that relies both on his boyish™ charm and at least has pretensions of ever so slightly pushing the envelope of standard multiplex fare. You know, rather than desperately attaching himself to an impersonal franchise (The Mummy) or flailingly attempting to kick start one (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back); remember when Cruise wouldn’t even go near sequels (for about twenty years, The Colour of Money aside, and then only the one series)? American Made is still victim to the tendency of his movies to feel superstar-fitted

Trainspotting (1996)   It’s easy to understand Danny Boyle’s urge to revisit Trainspotting. After all, even given the Oscar garlands for Slumdog Millionaire, he’s probably naggingly aware that it’s where his career peaked creatively. Which isn’t to say he shouldn’t still have known better. How often does good come from returning to old stomping grounds, let alone zeitgeist-defining pictures? Does anyone remember Texasville? If he’d gone back to Trainspotting ten years on, it would likely have seemed as unnecessary and dismissible as a More American Graffiti or Staying Alive, particularly given the Irvine Welsh sequel novel (Porno) no one was really very fussed by. But having two decades

The Avengers 2.26: Lobster Quadrille   Not so much a damp squib to go out on as a slightly charred lobster. Quadrille is okay, but far from the best of season send-offs. It’s not such a spotlight episode for Cathy either, since she spends a good deal of time tied up, with much of the proceedings lent to Steed’s overt flirtation with Katie (Jennie Linden, Barbara in Dr. Who and the Daleks). It does, however, grant Mrs Gale a proper leaving scene, loaded with Bond references (or should that be innuendos?) Although, in fairness, the climax revolves around the question of who died in a

The Last Boy Scout  (1991)   I only became aware of the production nightmare that was The Last Boy Scout in the last few years. It didn’t come as that much of a surprise, however, as although the movie was an instant favourite, it was instantly obvious that some extremely choppy editing had occurred, even for a Tony Scott movie, which couldn’t always quite make elegant sense of the action. It also didn’t come as enormous surprise as the other Bruce Willis would-be blockbuster of the year, Hudson Hawk, had been a much documented (at the time) production nightmare. This was at the height of Bruno’s stardom

Strange Days (1995)   In 1998 – I know, I can’t stop mentioning it, but the opprobrium is deserved, really –  James Cameron rather infamously gave an Oscar acceptance speech in which, following a request that the assembled Academy members observed a minute’s silence in remembrance of those who lost their lives on the Titanic, he directly followed up with the invitation “And now. Let’s go party till dawn!” There’s a sense, revisiting Strange Days, which he devised and co-wrote with Jay Cocks, of eerie premonition, of similarly pat, consequence-free logic in a tale of rape, murder, racism, police corruption, voyeurism and

Meet the Applegates (1990)   A good few Michael Lehmann movies are probably best forgotten, but his first three aren’t among them. The in-betweener, Meet the Applegates, passed virtually unnoticed, missing out on the acclaim that greeted Heathers and the (undeserved) infamy reserved for Hudson Hawk. It has remained in an off-the-radar state, bereft of even a DVD release, making it something of a highly prized cult movie. Applegates is a broad, rambunctious satire of the American way of life, picking at the corrupting influences lurking beneath the idealised surface. Lehmann’s energy and glee at the task in hand are irresistible, and so he delivers a

Basquiat (1996)   Julian Schnabel’s directorial debut Basquiat unsurprisingly wallows in the world of the sensitive artist, being one himself (once, rather modestly, and elegantly, claiming he was “the closest thing to Picasso that you’ll see in this fucking life”). Indeed, he was part of the New York art scene he depicts in this biopic, personified in Gary Oldman’s character. The film’s a rather meandering, listless affair, as one might expect from a self-involved and cossetted creative sensibility, but it’s kept afloat by a sterling central performance from Jeffrey Wright as the titular force and a series of interesting supporting players, not

Sicario (2015)   Maybe Denis Villeneuve ought to call on his first language being French as an excuse for the script quality of his forays into Hollywood. First there was the overheated, ridiculous revenge picture Prisoners, masquerading as a serious exploration of the repercussions of child abduction, and now he’s taken a repeat course, plunging into the world of shadowy CIA operations and Mexican drug cartels, only to pull back and reveal that the movie didn’t really have important matters on its mind at all. It was just about a cool guy taking out the baddies. The acclaim both have received

Inherent Vice (2014)   I can quite see why Inherent Vice hasn’t been clutched to collective bosoms in the way some of Paul Thomas Anderson’s previous pictures have. It isn’t funny enough to be designated an all-out comedy (like The Big Lebowski), or intriguing enough to be termed a fully-fledged mystery (like Chinatown), too disinterested to be a commentary on any kind of times (like The Long Goodbye) and insufficiently whacked out to be celebrated as a intoxicated space ride (like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). But it’s definitely got something and, in Joaquin Phoenix’s Larry “Doc” Sportello, relishes a protagonist who may not be

Star Cops 5. This Case to Be Opened in a Million Years   Another superb title, but Philip Martin’s debut for Star Cops, despite a twisty narrative and a number of red herrings, can’t quite live up to it. This one goes completely overboard with the stereotypes, to such an extent you can’t quite believe this is supposed to be played straight, and not a commentary on such things (as with Martin’s excesses in the earlier Gangsters). Suffering the most are the Italians, completed with Joe Dulce-style ker-razee accents that wouldn’t be out of place if the “French” policeman from ’Allo ’Allo went

The Early Bird (1965)   With his frantic cry of “Mr Grimsdale!”, perpetual idiot-man-child act and insatiable appetite for slapstick, Norman Wisdom’s oeuvre is something of an acquired taste. He elicits similarly divisive response to his US counterpart Jerry Lewis, in fact. If Wisdom never achieved the full auteur multi-hyphenate status that made Lewis so beloved by the French (he had to settle for Albania), he nevertheless actively co-wrote his pictures and maintained a tried-and-tested line up of collaborators (Edward Chapman, Robert Asher). The Early Bird comes at the tail end of his big screen zenith and, in terms of career high points,

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)   Is Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me an unjustly maligned masterpiece? I well recall Kim Newman’s rave review in Sight and Sound at the time, and Mark Kermode has venerated it as “one of the greatest horror movies of modern times”. Both those guys love their horror, so they aren’t to be dismissed out of hand. I felt somewhere in between on first viewing; there were undoubted moments of brilliance in there – how could there not be, with David Lynch’s fingerprints on all over it – but it was telling a story that didn’t need telling and

Licence to Kill (1989)   Defenders of the Dalton era point to his second and final outing as the one that saw the shape of things to come. If only the public had been as receptive to its tone as they were seventeen years later. Such down and dirty, gritty 007 adventuring (in other words, Bourne-infused) would be feted when Daniel Craig grimaced his way into the role, encumbered by massive pectoral muscles while mistaking a pained expression for the heavy emoting. There’s something to this, but in silhouette form only. Licence to Kill is stricken on the rocks of flaccid editing and

Twin Peaks 1.8: The Last Evening   The Season One finale was written and directed by Mark Frost. He’s rarely strayed into the latter camp, with only two other credits to his name (one being 1992’s Peaks-lite Storyville). Frost has clearly been studying some of cinema’s greats at times, and he throws some nice flourishes in the mix, but the episode as a whole continues the trend of the last half of this first run in being solid but unspectacular. The first show of visual pizazz occurs near the beginning. Jacoby gets boshed on the head and lies prone. Frost tracks into

Twin Peaks 1.7: Realization Time   The weak link in an otherwise strong first run, 1.7 is still many times preferable to the nadirs of Season Two. But it’s victim to several humdrum plotlines that fail to grip, and even the visit to One Eyed Jacks isn’t what it might be. Agent Cooper: Audrey, you’re a high school girl, I’m an agent of the FBI. Chivalrous, morally scrupulous Coop diffuses the bedroom tension by asking Audrey to get dressed, of course (“Well, what I want and what I need are two different things”). He even has a clean hanky so she

Twin Peaks 1.6: Cooper’s Dreams   If not quite back up to first gear, Mark Frost’s script for the sixth episode includes a winning combination of the whacky and weird. It’s also blessed with considerable forward momentum. This is Lesli Linka Glatter’s first work on the show, and she’s a mainstay of some of the best TV series around (she started out on Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, and like Tim Hunter she has worked on Mad Men, but also on The Leftovers, Justified, and Ray Donovan). Glatter really gets on with the comedy, and there’s some lovely staging throughout. Agent Cooper: It just goes to prove the

Twin Peaks 1.5: The One-Armed Man   With the waves left in Albert’s wake subsiding (Gordon Cole, like Albert, is first encountered on the phone, and Coop apologises to Truman over the trouble the insulting forensics expert has caused; “Harry, the last thing I want you to worry about while I’m here is some city slicker I brought into your town relieving himself upstream”), the series steps down a register for the first time. This is a less essential episode than those previously, concentrating on establishing on-going character and plot interactions at the expense of the strange and unusual. As

Twin Peaks 1.2: Traces to Nowhere   Lynch passes the baton to Duwayne Dunham for the first regular episode (I should point out, I’m using the unofficial episode titles as a means of identification, although I don’t necessarily think they’re up to much) a director with little else of note on his CV, aside from a remake of The Incredible Journey. The transition is seamless, however, perhaps because Jimmy Stewart from Mars and Frost co-scripted both this and the next instalment. In terms of the elusive murder mystery, they take time to set up a selection of suspects, just as they knock several

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)   Jim Jarmusch’s instant vampire classic tastes entirely fresh, despite the surfeit of entries in the bloodsucking genre of late. I guess we should expect nothing less of the idiosyncratic auteur who previously delivered indelible takes on the western (Dead Man) and gangster genres (Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai). Only Lovers Left Alive is a gorgeous, luxurious, melancholy yet invigorating affair, draped with delectable performances and quietly boasting a distinctive and seductive take on the lore. If the likes of Twilight have done their best to dispel the mythos and drain it of fascination and lure, Only Lovers galvanises and

Space Station 76 (2014)   A 1970s space soap opera, actor turned director Jack Plotnick’s debut feature Space Station 76 is a casually kitsch idiosyncratic curiosity. It’s possibly too high concept, the visual affectation suggesting a capacity for comedy and camp that is never really made good. But Space Station 76 (1976, obviously) is undeniably well observed, balancing out the retro-indulgence with surprisingly strong characterisation and performances. The picture has little in the way of narrative trajectory, hence the concentration on soapy elements; characters work through their issues in a very ’70s fashion, which naturally includes period-appropriate drink, drugs, sex and psychoanalysis. The crew

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)   Dallas Buyers Club is almost, very nearly but not quite, your classic Oscar bait fare. Based on a true story (although loosely appears to be the more than operative word), it depicts a lone crusader struggling against an oppressive establishment. Even better, said crusader is required to suffer a debilitating illness (actor transformation=Oscar nomination) and a bona fide arc all the way from bigotry to compassion. What more could the Academy wish for? Maybe a little less masturbation (never a vote winner)? Otherwise, compelling as the telling of Dallas Buyers Club is, it bears all the hallmarks of

Lucy (2014)   Lucy is entertaining enough, but the inevitable salvo of comments, all repeating the refrain that if one uses less than one percent of one’s brain capacity, one might enjoy it, aren’t so wide of the mark. This is easily the dumbest movie claiming to explore intelligence and consciousness since… Transcendence, actually. Which this starts to resemble at points, particularly when the screen begins to fill up with cut-price CGI gloop and nano-cellular-gubbins. I’m sure there’s a place for a movie combining action and philosophy in equal measure; I’m fairly certain it’s one directed by the Wachoswki siblings. This most

The Prisoner 12. A Change of Mind   We want information. After two Villagers pick a fight with Six, which he wins, he is accused of anti-social behaviour. He is summoned before the Committee and is asked to confess his crimes, which he refuses to do. Subject to further investigation, Six is warned by Two that defiance of the Committee could be very dangerous. 86 has been appointed to guide Six through the process of public contrition, but he shows complete disinterest. He attends the Social Group where he ridicules those seeking help. Following this, the Committee classifies Six as

Spring Breakers (2012)   Harmony Korine’s latest has received a fair deal of critical fanfare. To be honest, it was the sole factor that eventually persuaded me to give it a look; I’m not an enormous fan of his oeuvre, but fair play to those who find his work rewarding and challenging. I probably should have trusted my better instincts, as this deconstruction of a youth culture transfixed and tranquilised by sex, drugs, and gun culture surprises only with quite how bereft it is of substance. To be highly cynical for a moment, Korine’s decision to manufacture this critique through the medium

Red Heat (1988)   Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sole buddy cop picture, from a director who had already delivered the genre’s defining article (48 Hrs, even though one of the buddies isn’t a cop). The formula is now well established; a mismatched pair, one is funny/crazy the other is the straight man. One was Eddie Murphy, the other was Nick Nolte. Here, one is James Belushi and the other is Arnie.  Casting Arnie as a Russian is the kind of bright idea to a Hollywood producer who thinks Austrian and Russian accents are interchangeable comes up with, but the actual stroke of genius

Savages  (2012)   Following the resounding failure of passion-project Alexander (a film that appears to be spawning an unending stream of director-endorsed alternative cuts), Oliver Stone has still managed to churn out a movie every couple of years. But something seems to have happened to him along the way. Maybe it happened long before. I might point the finger at his absurdly over-saturated take on Tarantino’s Natural Born Killers script as the first indication that Stone had run out of things to say, or to say passionately and provocatively. NBK, no doubt fuelled by Quentin’s sensibilities to some extent, is an adolescent’s idea of how

Altered States (1980)   Ken Russell goes mainstream Hollywood, with pleasingly demented results. The late ‘70s and early ‘80s increasingly looks like a never-to-be-repeated golden era for science fiction, when invention and originality were par for the course. It’s difficult to imagine something so based on experimentation, and so experimental, being made today. Russell was coming off several (unsuccessful) idiosyncratic biopics and was reportedly far down the list of choices for the film. Paddy Chayefsky had adapted his novel, based on the sensory deprivation work of scientist John C Lilly. Lilly’s experiments involved subjects spending periods of time in isolation