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Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)   The general failing of the prequel concept is a fairly self-evident one; it’s spurred by the desire to cash in, rather than to tell a story. This is why so few prequels, in any form, are worth the viewer/reader/listener’s time, in and of themselves. At best, they tend to be something of a well-rehearsed fait accompli. In the movie medium, even when there is material that withstands closer inspection (the Star Wars prequels; The Hobbit, if you like), the execution ends up botched. With Fantastic Beasts, there was never a whiff of such lofty purpose, and

In the Name of the Father (1993)   The trouble with the Troubles is that they tend to make for rather dreary, respectable, eggshell-treading fare. Unless, of course, they’re entering into full-blown genre territory (Hidden Agenda, ’71; there’s a film to be made about the funding of the various paramilitary organisations and their infiltration, but that puts you squarely in the kind of terrorism territory Hollywood wouldn’t want to touch). Barring the odd, unfathomable decision to make a Fiddy Cent movie, Jim Sheridan has mostly spent his cinematic career charting the Irish experience in various forms and settings, several of which

The Invasion (2007)   It would be entirely understandable for any on the lookout for ongoing relevance and refection of social trends and undercurrents to pass over Oliver Hirschbiegel’s take on Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers (Warner Bros’ fourth so far). After all, it underwent some brutal reshoots and wound up in such a mangled form that it was pronounce DOA. The Invasion’s a footnote no one much cares to exhume, less still re-evaluate, and for good reason; a decade and a half’s distance has done nothing to reposition it as a neglected gem. Nevertheless, the first half of the picture does withstand renewed

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)   The premise of Don Siegel’s anti-McCarthy – or is it anti-Commie? – SF paranoia movie is an evergreen. Hence it having been remade three times (so far). One of those came during a period when – whisper it – those refashioning ’50s B-movies were coming up with takes that were more resonant and richer than the originals. So much so, they have invariably supplanted them in first-port-of-call stakes. Over the course of less than a decade, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing and The Fly all succeeded in justifying and validating a cash-in process that has, generally,

Il Postino  aka The Postman (1995)   Il Postino’s success represented a triumph of marketing over substance. As one might have expected from the then-nascent Miramax, whose heft in that sphere had led to the likes of Sex, Lies and Videotape, My Left Foot, The Crying Game, Enchanted April, The Piano, Heavenly Creatures and – obviously – Pulp Fiction making a greater or lesser impact at both the box office and on the Oscars ceremony. Theirs was a battle strategy that would often have dubious relationship with actual merit. So what was new? Probably not a lot – while some of their favoured Academy contenders were deeply average, none

Z (1969)   It’s easy to see why Z received the attention it did, including a rare Best Picture nomination for a non-English language film. Quite apart from being a compelling if rather dry conspiracy thriller, its fictionalised events preceded the then-current military junta in Greece, and if there’s one thing Hollywood can be relied on for – providing of course they have retired to a safe distance, brave Sean Penn aside – it’s sticking it to the fascists. Ultimately, Z is framed against one great Hegelian conflagration of left vs right and military juntas vs democracy; when all is said and done, the

The Card Counter (2021)   A silly and contrived Paul Schrader picture, which shouldn’t be a great surprise coming off the back of the grossly overrated First Reformed. Once upon a time, Schrader penned an all-time-classic screenplay (turned into a all-time-classic movie) about a veteran who drove a taxi around scum-ridden NYC. Now, he’s penned a turgid-and-forgettable screenplay about a veteran who counts cards for a living, having spent eight years in military prison for crimes committed at Abu Ghraib, and who takes under his wing the son of another soldier, who was prosecuted and committed suicide; the son plans revenge

Turning Red (2022)   Those wags at Pixar, eh? Yes, the most – actually, the only – impressive thing about Turning Red is the four-tiered wordplay of its title. Thirteen-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang) finds herself turning into a large red panda at emotive moments. She is also, simultaneously, riding the crimson wave for the first time. Further, as a teenager, she characteristically suffers from acute embarrassment (mostly due to the actions of her domineering mother Ming Lee, voiced by Sandra Oh). And finally, of course, Turning Red can be seen diligently spreading communist doctrine left, right and centre. To any political sensibility tuning in

Alien Nation  (1988)   I’m not sure there was a way to make Alien Nation, coming as it did in the socio-politically conscious science-fiction lineage of Planet of the Apes, and not make its themes seem somewhat clunky, overbearing and even patronising. The alternative would just have been to make some slick nonsense like Bright. Of course, if Alien Nation worked as slick nonsense, that would be something. Instead, it has just enough going for it to see why it was quickly spun off as a (short-lived) TV show (with a subsequent long-lived string of TV movies), but not enough to see it clear of abundant

The Goodies 5.13: The End   The Goodies tended to be at their most inventive when they had very little in the way of resources at their disposal. Typically, come the end of a season, bereft of location work, guest stars or expensive props, and so forced to make hay from the central trio (themselves) and office set. Off-the-wall introspection and – curiously – apocalyptic ennui occurred more than once under such circumstances, and possibly the most successful of these, both creatively and in terms of viewing figures, was The End. Corbet Woodall: And finally, a service announcement. The BBC have announced a

Don’t Look Up (2021)   It’s testament to Don’t Look Up’s “quality” that critics who would normally lap up this kind of liberal-causes messaging couldn’t find it within themselves to grant it a free pass. Adam McKay has attempted to refashion himself as a satirist since jettisoning former collaborator Will Ferrell, but as a Hollywood player and an inevitably socio-politically partisan one, he simply falls in line with the most obvious, fatuous propagandising. Kate Dibiasky: You guys, the truth is way more disturbing. They’re not even smart enough to be as evil as you’re giving them credit for. Six years ago, McKay

The Assassination Bureau (1969)   The Assassination Bureau ought to be a great movie. You can see its influence on those who either think it is a great movie, or want to produce something that fulfils its potential. Alan Moore and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The just-released (and just-flopped) The King’s Men. It inhabits a post-Avengers, self-consciously benign rehearsal of, and ambivalence towards, Empire manners and attitudes, something that could previously be seen that decade in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (and sequel Monte Carlo or Bust, also 1969), Adam Adamant Lives!, and even earlier with Kind Hearts and Coronets, whilst also feeding into that

The French Dispatch aka The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021)   More a trifle than a Grand Bouffe, The French Dispatch is every bit as dry and distancing as The Grand Budapest Hotel was warm and welcoming, as if Wes Anderson’s set upon pushing as far as he possibly can in his studiously stylised direction, just to see how many are willing to come along for the ride. He’s done stories within stories before, but they’ve never been as conspicuously detached as they are here. Perhaps Wes watched The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and decided it was a good way to develop

Dark Blue (2002)   There are a plenty of positives to be found in Dark Blue, not least a first-rate performance from Kurt Russell, but it’s fatally undermined by the attempts of David Ayer (adapting James Ellroy’s original story written for film) to reposition events against the backdrop of the Rodney King verdict and the LA Riots. The result reads as your typical ivory-castle manoeuvre of striving for real-world resonance but succeeding only in drawing attention to the artifice of the genre, the characters, the plotting, and the big-name actors. Positioned as another police corruption drama from the writer of L.A. Confidential, it’s

I’m All Right Jack (1959)   I don’t think I previously recognised quite what an incredible performance Peter Sellers gives in I’m All Right Jack. There are others for which he is better known – Clouseau, Strangelove, maybe Chancey Gardner – but none are as wholly immersive as this transformation. You can’t see Sellers in Fred Kite, waiting to corpse, even though, being Sellers at his best, the performance is very funny. Perhaps he rose to the challenge so immaculately because the Boulting Brothers’ satire is so perfectly sculpted. Every character, plot development and pointed barb is acutely judged; it remains

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)   I wasn’t going to watch globalist stooge Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. I’m not a fan of sub-Beadle’s About comedy cruelty generally, however “deserving” the recipients are, and I was even less keen to see another incarnation of this “public service” format where Cohen valiantly exerts every propagandising tool in the book to shame those who aren’t on the same page. Not square with the liberal Hollywood bubble/MSM spin on the world? Dare to speculate about conspiracy theories? Sacha will set

Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)   It’s little surprise this adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s science-fiction classic has drifted into obscurity. As director George Roy Hill’s follow up to his breakout hit Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and preceding the even bigger success of The Sting, it might be seen as occupying similar territory to, say, Peter Jackson misfiring with The Lovely Bones between Tolkiens (give or take a Kong). The Slaughterhouse-Five novel was only three years old when the movie came out, and if the audience reception was muted, it nevertheless garnered the Jury Prize at Cannes (so it was certainly better received than Jackson’s unloved effort). Vonnegut was profusive in

Da 5 Bloods (2020)   A sprawling, tone-deaf, indulgent mess of a movie from Spike Lee. So what’s new, right? At least BlackKklansman had a coherent screenplay at its core, undone as it was by typically scattershot direction and copious detours. Da 5 Bloods is shockingly inept on that score, likely the result of Lee overlaying his de rigueur didactic, windbag politicking over a shameless piece of exploitation cinema. It’s Three Kings meets The Treasure of the Sierra Madre meets Stand Up Guys meets (via some hilariously inept flashbacks) Platoon. But all of those influences – yes, even Stand Up Guys – are vastly superior. Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo were responsible

One Night in Miami… (2020)   “Inspired by true events” is a very loose term, invariably closer to “totally made up” than “Based on a true story”. In the case of One Night in Miami…, the veracity of a legendary encounter between Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke is probably more akin to Nicolas Roeg’s unlikely meet cute between Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein, Joe DiMaggio and Joseph McCarthy in Insignificance. Because while X and Clay were certainly sharing celebrations on the night in question, the only other definite is that Brown and Cooke were at the same hotel. Malcolm

Cold War aka Zimna wojna (2018)   Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “loosely inspired” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it. The canvas appears to unfurl organically at first, with an eye on the push-pull elements of

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)   I’m by no means a die-hard Frank Capryte. His particular taste in earnestly extolled values can easily rub one up the wrong way, and when that blends with his later more cynical tack, the results are sometimes alarming (It’s A Wonderful Life is justifiably esteemed as a classic, yet it’s also a deeply warped picture that finds cause for celebration in a man being resoundingly shat upon and manipulated by everyone he knows). Mr. Smith Goes to Washington saw the inception of this modified approach in the director’s work, where impossible goodness is pressed into service

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)   If The Trial of the Chicago 7 feels like the kind of fare that might once have been prestige Oscar bait, that’s probably because it was intended to be. Doubtless accompanied by numerous speeches about how its subject matter is more relevant than ever. And maybe Paramount and DreamWorks, after more than a decade of development hell, hoped it still had a shot. Maybe, in a year with as little competition as this, it does. The picture finished up on Netflix, of course, which is a good fit for Aaron Sorkin’s lightweight but engaging

Greed (2019)   Michael Winterbottom’s relationship with Steve Coogan extends back nearly two decades and has seen them essay biographical subjects Tony Wilson and Paul Raymond amid semi-regular Trips, although their best collaboration probably remains Tristam Shandy adaptation A Cock and Bull Story. Winterbottom’s nothing if not prolific – I count fifteen dramatic features since 2000 – which guarantees that occasionally he hits a bullseye. More frequently, his work is merely reliably, diligently “okay”. He’s also a singularly political filmmaker and the problem with Greed, a satirical biography of Sir Philip Green by another name, is that he just has too many targets he wants to throw

Bombshell (2019)   Reactions to Bombshell from some quarters of the online community are perhaps more interesting to analyse than the film itself, which is, after all, a fairly straightforward telling of the Roger Ailes sexual harassment case, just with the inevitable post-The Big Short-style stylistic tailoring seeking to make potentially unappealing material easily digestible. On one level, then, it’s yet another unwanted – as in, audiences aren’t going to show up for it; The Big Short was a one-off – back-slapping Hollywood dive into current affairs. On another, it’s dealing with an area that would evoke immediate sympathy for the parties involved, were

Long Shot (2019)   What the hell am I doing, watching Seth Rogen movies? This is the second one in two months, and I was I sure I’d sworn off the boorish oaf. Presumably, I’m not alone, since Long Shot may have been largely well reviewed, but it also flopped. Could it be that moviegoers just don’t see Rogen as a romantic lead? Even – or especially – in a gender-reversed ugly-duckling role? At one point, referring to Charlize Theron’s Secretary of State and presidential hopeful’s thing with his stoner schlub (he’s stretching himself there) journalist-cum-speechwriter, June Diane Raphael’s staffer tells him

The Report (2019)   It’s a recurring problem for today’s politically-inclined movies, and even more so for politically-inclined movies dealing with coverups and unconscionable establishment acts, that you can no longer surprise or shock the audience, let alone elicit anger. Which means they tend to function as mutual pats on the back of the privileged but cause-conscious Hollywood in-crowd, a vouching of just how decent and concerned for the welfare of us all they are, despite being safely ensconced in their ivory towers. The end products are usually the kind of ineffectual fare George Clooney puts his name to, and

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)   Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to

The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)   Joe Cornish generated such goodwill with Attack the Block – admittedly, I wasn’t its greatest fan – that I suspect no one really wanted to admit The Kid Who Would Be King, his belated follow up was a bit of a damp squib. This modern-day Arthurian retelling, but with kids in the key protagonist roles, may appear to have sufficient reconfigured cachet to appeal, but it’s mostly rather derivative. And that’s without even considering the patchy lead cast. Because with a kids’ film – and perhaps the box-office kiss of death, this is definitely a

Joker (2019)   So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you

Vice (2018)   It doesn’t bode well when you have to preface your movie with an admission that you know fuck all about your subject matter, even going as far as using the f-word jokingly as a means of saying you’re hip to this problem but you’re going to struggle on manfully anyway, as you’re telling an important piece of political history in a populist and accessible manner. You think. Underlined by repeating it at the end (“If you leave knowing Cheney no better than when you arrived, you’ll know how we feel”). Which only serves to emphasise that being

Miss Sloane (2016)   John Madden’s name as director might be a clue that this exploration of the world of political lobbying isn’t going to be altogether successful; one might give a pass to his inoffensive pensioner pictures (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and its sequel) but otherwise, he hasn’t delivered a truly satisfying feature since the Oscar glory that (rightly) greeted Shakespeare in Love. As usual, he’s only as serviceable as his screenplay, and this one is all sorts of uneven. Jessica Chastain’s title character is a too-familiar cliché, the workaholic career woman with no time for relationships (she hires male

Widows (2018)   Widows might have made a decent comedy. It’s certainly the only way its premise and ensuing plot wouldn’t have seemed ludicrous. Steve McQueen’s adaptation of Lynda LaPlante’s 1980s TV series (tellingly, he’d have been thirteen when it was first broadcast, a great leveller of an age in terms of accepting daft ideas at face value – see my love for Dempsey and Makepeace) has been mystifyingly venerated by critics, apparently wont to leave their faculties at the door when it comes to an art-house director brandishing content easily clutched to bosoms if it has even a whiff of political/progressive

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)   Sometimes, a movie comes along where you instantly know you’re safe in the hands of a master of the craft, someone who knows exactly the story they want to tell and precisely how to achieve it. All you have to do is sit back and exult in the joyful dexterity on display. Bad Times at the El Royale is such a movie, and Drew Goddard has outdone himself. From the first scene, set ten years prior to the main action, Goddard has constructed a dizzyingly deft piece of work, stuffed with indelible characters portrayed

Train to Busan (2016)   Perhaps I had my expectations raised too high, based on the praise lavished on Train to Busan, but this South Korean zombie flick, largely situated – surprise, surprise – on the titular train, is merely adequate. Sang-ho Yeon offers perfectly serviceable zombie action – albeit without the resort to freneticism so common in the US versions – but rather falls down when feasting on lumpen and obvious social commentary. I can see why some have compared it to the also-clumsy Snowpiercer, in that regard; both are set on a train, and both address socio-economic realities, although Busan at least

Isle of Dogs (2018)   I didn’t have very high hopes for Isle of Dogs. While I’m a big Wes Anderson fan, give or take the odd picture (The Life Aquatic just doesn’t do it for me), the trailers almost felt like they were designed as a patience-testing parody of his quirky tableau style. Plus, I wasn’t enormously keen on The Fantastic Mr Fox. Although, that may just have been a desire on my part for a respectful adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story, rather than one Wes’d up to the max. Yet this, his sophomore animation, is as a very pleasant surprise. Perhaps

Jeeves and Wooster 3.6: Comrade Bingo aka Aunt Dahlia, Cornelia and Madeline   PG Wodehouse wasn’t famed for his piercing political insights. Indeed, he was vilified for a lengthy period over his apparent obliviousness in that area. But Comrade Bingo, a 1922 short story collected in The Inimitable Jeeves, found him taking pot shots at the increasingly popular communist movement. Sprinkle in some Spode (just because, and to offer some groundwork for the final season’s unlikeliest of marriages), and you have the author’s ridiculing of twin political extremes in one melee. Oh, and there’s also a plotline involving Bertie stealing a painting from Jeeves

Black Panther (2018)   Like last year’s Wonder Woman, the hype for what it represents has quickly become conflated with Black Panther’s perceived quality. Can 92 percent and 97 percet of critics respectively really not be wrong, per Rotten Tomatoes, or are they – Armond White aside – afraid that finding fault in either will make open them to charges of being politically regressive, insufficiently woke or all-round, ever-so-slightly objectionable? As with Wonder Woman, Black Panther’s very existence means something special, but little about the movie itself actually is. Not the acting, not the directing, and definitely not the over-emphatic, laboured screenplay. As such, the picture is a

The X-Files 11.1: My Struggle III   Good grief. Have things become so terminal for Chris Carter that he has to retcon his own crap from the previous season, rather than the (what he perceived as) crap written by others? Carter, of course, infamously pretended the apocalyptic ending of Millennium Season Two never happened, upset by the path Glen Morgan and James Wong, left to their own devices, took with his baby. Their episode was one of the greats of that often-ho-hum series, so the comedown was all the unkinder as a result. In My Struggle III, at least, Carter’s rewriting something that

Dreamscape (1984)   I wasn’t hugely au fait with movies’ box office performance until the end of the ’80s, so I think I had an idea that Dennis Quaid (along with Jeff Bridges) was a much bigger star than he was, just on the basis of the procession of cool movies he showed up in (The Right Stuff, Enemy Mine, Innerspace, D.O.A. etc) The truth was, the public resisted all attempts to make him The Next Big Thing, not that his sly-grinned, cocky persona throughout the decade would lead you to believe his dogged lack of success had any adverse effect on his

The Post (2017)   The Post might be Steven Spielberg’s most prestige-lite filmmaking endeavour yet, a tick-box exercise that doesn’t do a whole lot wrong (until the last twenty minutes, at any rate), but feels like it has no true reason to be, and no real inspiration behind it (other than the evident boy-with-his-trains thrill of showing the workings of a good old-fashioned printing floor). Spielberg can churn these worthy, earnest based-on-real-events tales out, and they’ve been his bread and butter in fishing for critical and peer approval since the mid-80s, but they’ve only served to underline a mind that prioritises

Okja (2017)   I’d avoided Okja until now, mainly because, while I appreciated Snowpiercer up to a point, I found its on-the-nose political allegory borderline excruciating. And that was quite beside the absence of internal logic in respect of its premise. Okja promised more of the same, and indeed, Bong Joon-ho’s hammer-to-crack-a-nut approach is entirely less than endearing, such that I was frequently prone to wishing a fate worse than sausages on the adorably titular GM porker and be done with her. But Bong’s a fine filmmaker, if a much more variable writer (here helped out by Jon Ronson, who acquitted himself much more honourably when

The Foreigner (2017)   If nothing else, The Foreigner proves Martin Campbell is still more than capable of handling the action rigours of another Bond movie (please, Eon get someone in who can focus on what’s essential, like killing bad guys with wanton relish). Unfortunately, his tail-between-his-legs, six-year break from the big screen following the disastrously-received Green Lantern has been curtailed for a feature that only ever feels like two different ones spliced together, both of them beached from a different time. One is a mid-90s actioner in which a B-movie star attempts to flex his thespian muscles and doesn’t quite pull it off. The other,

The Avengers 4.21: A Touch of Brimstone   An episode that sings from start to finish, and certainly a contender for the all-time-best Avengers. Also one with a wee bit of infamy attached, as its sadomasochistic elements precluded it from a screening in America (it wasn’t banned), and ITV trimmed it slightly before showing it. It still carries a frisson, and not only because of Diana Rigg’s “Queen of Sin” costume; Brian Clemens’ teleplay is a perfectly formed descent into risky business, just suggestive enough without going over the deep end. As is more commonly the case than not, our duo are onto

Penda’s Fen (1974)   Confession time: I wasn’t even aware Penda’s Fen existed before reading a recent Fortean Times piece on haunted childhoods of the ’70s: curious in itself, as Play for Today wasn’t exactly teatime, Basil Brush and Doctor Who, viewing (I guess they’re taking in inquisitive teenagers). But it’s very easy to see why the piece, directed by Alan Clarke from a teleplay by David Rudkin, had an impact on impressionable young minds. It’s just the sort of fare, with its open countryside and occult undertones, that proves indelible, in the manner of Children of the Stones or The Owl Service (or Alan Garner generally). That, and simply the way that

The Company You Keep (2012)   You can absolutely see why The Company You Keep would appeal to Robert Redford’s sensibilities, draped as it is in a soft-radical banner and culminating in easy-positive affirmations that even the movie’s inveterate zealot is ultimately swayed by (family over changing the world). As such, it’s a cop-out on a number of levels, but it’s also his most satisfying directorial effort in a considerable time, and when putting its best foot forward, Lem Dobbs’ screenplay (adapting Neil Gordon’s novel) juggles thriller elements with a sometimes-insightful probing of moral imperatives and action over complacency. Redford’s ex-Weather Underground

War Machine (2017)   How many War on Terror movies have to be made – let alone War on Terror satires – before Hollywood realises it simply doesn’t have what it takes to interrogate the ongoing charade with any degree of acumen, diligence or (in this case) wit? This isn’t just true of that particular ongoing excursion into imperialism, of course; it’s largely the case with any would-be politically-attuned vehicles (see the recent Our Brand Is Crisis), that go for soft ineffectuality, or knowing aloofness, when something, anything would be preferable. Anger’s one mode. Insight’s even better. They’re both absent from War Machine,

Jeeves and Wooster 2.2: A Plan for Gussie (aka The Bassetts’ Fancy Dress Ball)   The cow creamer business dispatched, the second part of this The Code of the Woosters adaptation preoccupies itself with further Gussie scrapes, and the continuing machinations of Stiffy. Fortunately, Spode is still about to make things extra unpleasant. Sir Roderick delivers more of his winning policies (“the Right to be issued with a British bicycle and an honest, British-made umbrella”) and some remarkably plausible-sounding nonsense political soundbites (“Nothing stands between us and victory except our defeat!”, “Tomorrow is a new day; the future lies ahead!”), while Jeeves curtly

Truth (2015)   Two notable films on the subject of journalism were released in 2015, one concerning dogged reporters successfully exposing the cover-up of decades of institutional wrongdoings, the other about still-diligent reporters tripping up and having knives sharpened at the expense of their perceived shoddy workmanship. One went on to win Best Picture Oscar, the other received mostly tepid reviews and made only a couple of million dollars at the box office. Truth admittedly veers towards the tepid, truth be told, but it didn’t deserve such an unmarked interment. I’m just not so sure there’s any conspiracy theory to be fashioned

Norma Rae (1979)   What a dreary cartload of issue-led laboriousness. Worthy subjects may make for worthy movies (or they may not), but there’s absolutely no guarantee they’ll make interesting ones. And when you attach Martin Ritt to them (post-60s, at any rate), you’re almost guaranteed a comatose result. Norma Rae is one of those pictures that would be entirely, rather than just mostly, forgotten, if it weren’t for it bagging Sally Field an Oscar for playing the title character. And it isn’t even that “You really like me!” Oscar either. If you want to make starchy political subject matter riveting, give

G.I. Jane (1997)   In the late ’60s, Pauline Kael wrote a piece bemoaning (she was quite good at bemoaning) the state of US movie companies with regard to how they were turning to England for directors. She commented, “The English can write and they can act… but they can’t direct movies”. She proceeded with a list of examples, honourably exempting Hitchcock and Carol Reed (but unforgivably omitting Michael Powell). It admittedly included a string of fair comments, but also rather unjustly picked on several lights of the comedy genre, as if that was ever, anywhere, with very rare exceptions,

Our Brand is Crisis (2015)   Grant Heslov and George Clooney seem to have a knack for picking up fact-based fare on the grounds that it sounds vaguely interesting in a vaguely (or not so vaguely) political sense, and then attempting to work out a way of bashing it into some kind of semi-relatable narrative shape as a fiction movie. Occasionally they strike lucky (Argo, Good Night, and Good Luck), but more frequently they seem closer to having little idea, what with this and The Monuments Men and The Men Who Stare at Goats. Actually, I liked the latter, but it wore on its

London Has Fallen (2016)   Rightly deplored for its barefaced xenophobia, the real mark against London Has Fallen is that it’s relentlessly, inanely leaden. For a movie full of explosive fury and awash with head shots (Mike Banning never misses, even when he’s not trying too hard), director Babak Najafi does a very good job ensuring no one cares. Say what you will about the also-highly-objectionable Olympus Has Fallen, it at least had forward momentum, pace and – in all its neck snapping glee – attitude. This is closer to a bland, unfussy 24 knock-off, pushing the same kind of hasty made-for-TV approach but with

Doctor Who The Leisure Hive   The polarising positions of those pushing Season 18 (or JN-T/Bidmead) over Season 17 (Williams/Adams), or vice versa, have never really resonated with me. Probably because I rate them both. If push came to shove, I’d probably assert that the latter achieves what it’s aiming for more successfully than the former, stymied as the Fourth Doctor’s final year is by some unfortunate choices of companions and a lack of rapport between leads, but I have little time for the hand grenades at dawn lobbed about in About Time 4. One of the big failings of the

Suffragette (2015)   The sort of earnestly rote film that makes you long for Baz Lurhmann’s garish, musical extravaganza version, complete with a spangle-packed Lady Gaga cover of Suffragette City as Carey Mulligan backflips down a cobbled street, simultaneously bashing the Fuzz and sticking it to the man. All very commendable to make a picture about an epochal movement (I was particularly interested to learn the Swiss didn’t give women the vote until the 1971 – those ruddy Swiss!), less so if you broach the topic in the most obvious and least incisive of manners. Carey Mulligan is Maud Watts, a laundress

Missing (1982)   After seeing The Verdict a couple of months ago, and musing that it might be my personal choice for the Best Picture Oscar out of the 1982 nominees, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the lot. One of which, Missing, I hadn’t seen before. I was aware of the regard in which it was held, of course, as a feature of genuine political content that even elicited angry denials from the US State Department over its allegations of US involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup that saw General Pinochet topple the (democratically-elected, but socialist, so fair game) President

Zootropolis aka Zootopia aka Zoomania (2016)   The key to Zootropolis’ creative success isn’t so much the conceit of its much-vaunted allegory regarding prejudice and equality, or – conversely – the fun to be had riffing on animal stereotypes (simultaneously clever and obvious), or even the appealing central duo voiced by Ginnifier Goodwin (as first rabbit cop Judy Hopps) and Jason Bateman (fox hustler Nick Wilde). Rather, it’s coming armed with that rarity for an animation; a well-sustained plot that doesn’t devolve into overblown set pieces or rest on the easy laurels of musical numbers and montages. So credit is due to

Gandhi (1982)   Gandhi’s opening text references the importance of trying to find one’s way to the heart of the man in recounting his life, and unfortunately, though unsurprisingly, you couldn’t say Sir Dickie Attenborough succeeded in his enormous epic, duly crowned with the Best Picture Oscar (and BAFTA) for being an enormous epic. It’s a largely reverent, respectful, uninvolved film that mimics the tools of spectacle and canvas from that master of the enormous epic David Lean (who had planned his own version, with, naturally Alec Guinness in the title role; we saw how well that went down in A Passage

The Second Civil War (1997)   This satire of a White House in crisis mode, as Ohio threatens cessation from the United States, was originally to have been directed by Levinson. Who made the same year’s intermittently effective Wag the Dog. Intermittently effective also describes Joe Dante’s HBO movie, which offers occasionally sharp and never-more-topical things to say about the buzz issues of immigration, personal sovereignty and media manipulation yet finds itself rather inert dramatically, when it needs to be propulsive. It may be that Dante was the wrong guy for the task, or simply that the means of making this

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)   I well remember Irish poet Tom “I thought it was awful” Paulin’s defence of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. A regular talking head on pseudish through-and-through BBC2 show Late Review, Paulin, who hadn’t seen any of the other entries in the series, admired the acumen with which George Lucas unfurled a galaxy divided unto itself, led by a corrupt politician intent on perverting the ways of the Republic (as represented by the Jedi Council). It was, he thought, a metaphor for Bush’s America. While he may have overstated his case,

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)   To paraphrase Han Solo in The Force Awakens trailer, everything you’ve heard about the prequel trilogy is true. The surfeit of CGI and virtual sets, the paper-thin characterisation, the lumpen dialogue. The soullessness of it all, something even the best efforts of John Williams cannot dent. But I’m not one to cast them out into eternal darkness, any more than I do The Hobbit(ses). They’re not what they could be, they’re disappointments, and the first one in particularly is at times nothing less than a chore to get through, but I don’t feel Lucas

The Giver (2014)   Could The Giver be an unsuspecting polemic depicting the dangers of all that is left thinking; the final destination of those seeking to treat all equally and fairly (or progressivism, to use the four-letter-word)? If Sarah Palin thinks so, then most probably not. But who knows, perhaps well-known Hollywood liberals Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep, and Oz-man Philip Noyce, took leave of their senses, joined forces with Harvey Scissorhands, and gave the poor, neglected right the parable they most desired? Perhaps, but again, not likely. Certainly, it would be possible to single out a few elements as feeding

Gladiator (2000)   Ridley Scott’s Oscar glory. It must have left him feeling a little peeved, since he went away without the Best Director statuette. Was Gladiator’s winner deserved? How often are the Oscars actually deserved? Gladiator is solid, populist entertainment, the kind of picture that would have been wholly ignored if it hadn’t put bums on seats (which in some respects is a point in its favour). It wastes most of the ripe potential it has for commentary and self-reflexivity, as suggested by Russell Crowe’s general turned slave when he demands of the crowds “Are you not entertained?” Such lofty notions are never more

The Next Man aka The Arab Conspiracy aka Double Hit (1976)   In which Sean Connery plays an Arab. For the second time. His versatility when confronted by the challenge of portraying different nationalities and ethnicities is renowned, of course. Russians (The Hunt for Red October), Irish (The Untouchables), Greeks (Time Bandits), even Japanese (You Only Live Twice); they’re no problem for one of Sean’s calibre, all arriving fully bestowed with a recognisable Scottish burr. For some reason, this rarely matters (well, You Only Live Twice features an egregiously ridiculous makeover); Connery forces the world to reform around him by sheer dint

Dead Head (1986)   I missed Dead Head’s television broadcast, but I recall it as part of an era when BBC dramas were regularly courting controversy. The flat crudity of the title was provocative enough in itself, but the tabloids really cut loose over the welly boot sex scene. It’s debateable whether the serial would have gone down as an ’80s classic in the way Edge of Darkness or The Singing Detective have, even if the BBC hadn’t buried it (or chosen to forget it; it was never repeated). It’s quite self-consciously oddball, while being too overtly politicised to reach the hallowed heights of a

The Prisoner 17. Fall Out   We want information. Six is lead to a cavern beneath the Village, in which the President presides over a masked committee. Six is applauded for having passed the ultimate test; he is no longer to be known by a number. Six is enthroned and observes the trial of two lesser rebels; Number 48, the embodiment of motiveless youth, and Number Two, who has been resurrected following his demise. Both are convicted. Six is contrastingly venerated and asked to lead the Village. However, when he is asked to address his audience, his every word is

Promised Land (2012)   Matt Damon’s would-be directorial debut finished up helmed by old pal Gus Van Sant. Scheduling conflicts got the better of the man who was Bourne. It’s easy to see why Damon wanted in; he co-wrote the script with co-star John Krasinski, and this is the kind of socially conscious fare Matt and buddy George Clooney have a yen for. Politically alert entertainments that raise issues and provoke the audience, however gently. Both have in mind the cinema of the ’70s, but ultimately Promised Land is just too damn nice and well-meaning to get under the skin. Like it’s

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)   (I’ve enjoyed all three superhero movies this spring/summer, which appears to be one more than most devotees of the genre. So far, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has received all the venom (some of it deserved) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier all the accolades (most of them deserved). X-Men: Days of Future Past arrives burdened down by the memory of six prior X-films of variable quality. Consequently, it has its work cut out for it to surprise, impress, or simply be vaguely distinctive.  And yet, against these odds, it succeeds on all counts. Bryan Singer’s return to the franchise predictably takes

White House Down (2013)   I would count myself as something of a Roland Emmerich apologist. As dumb as his movies often (always) are, they usually come armed with a self-conscious glee (who can forget the limo outrunning the San Andreas fault in 2012?) And he’s a good, clean action director. You can tell what’s going on in his pictures, and such a skill set needs to be applauded. That said, I don’t have a whole lot of time for his biggest hit Independence Day. Conversely, Anonymous is a lot fun for the manner in which it strives to be smart but ends up exactly

Enemy of the State (1998)   Enemy of the State is something of an anomaly; a quality conspiracy thriller borne not from any distinct political sensibility on the part of its makers but simple commercial instincts. Of course, the genre has proved highly successful over the years so it’s easy to see why big-name producers like Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson would have chased that particular gravy boat. Yet they did so for some time without success; by the time the movie was made, Simpson had passed away and Bruckheimer was flying solo. It might be the only major film in

JFK (1991)   (Director’s Cut) Oliver Stone’s best work comes from a passionate desire to tell a story, having something he really wants to say and needs to get out of his system. Lapses in taste and judgement accompany even his strongest pictures, lurching imbalances, but his strengths more than counterweight them. Given the right material, he has the ability of a consummate storyteller and a master craftsman. JFK, his “alternative myth to the Warren Commission”, remains his high-water mark. It’s an extraordinary piece of work, one that operates both as a polemic designed to pull apart the veracity of the

All the President’s Men (1976)   It’s fairly routine to find that films lavished with awards ceremony attention really aren’t all that. So many factors go into lining them up, including studio politics, publicity and fashion, that the true gems are often left out in the cold. On some occasions all the attention is thoroughly deserved, however. All the President’s Men lost out to Rocky for Best Picture Oscar; an uplifting crowd-pleaser beat an unrepentantly low key, densely plotted and talky political thriller. But Alan J. Pakula’s film had already won the major victory; it turned a literate, uncompromising account of a resolutely unsexy

The Parallax View (1974)   As with a number of more self-evident candidates, The Parallax View was inspired by the spate of assassinations of prominent political figures during the 1960s. A particular spur was the 1968 shooting of Robert Kennedy. Brother John’s murder was a decade old when the film entered production and the web of conspiratorial theorising regarding that case was just as complex then as it is now, only a little fresher. Director Alan J Pakula, star Warren Beatty and writers Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Giler did not adopt the tack of a “straight” telling (seen with the 1973

Broken City (2013)   Mark Wahlberg has lately proved himself a shrewd judge of material, as both actor and producer. Perhaps he saw Broken City, for which he wears both hats, as a chance to transpose something of (a contemporary version of) the political intrigue and corruption found in his HBO series Boardwalk Empire to the big screen. Unfortunately, this private detective yarn is left flailing in a sea of clichés and undernourished plotting, both in terms of scope of Brian Tucker’s screenplay and the crude machinations of his antagonists. Wahlberg’s resurgence over the past few years has partially resulted from sticking to

The Prisoner 4. Free for All   We want information. Number Two persuades Number Six to run in the Village elections. Six is to be assisted by Number 58 (who speaks no English). He accuses the town council of mindless complicity and as is consequently forced to undergo the Truth Test. When he emerges, he begins to crack and mounts an escape bid. Following a stint in the hospital he begins running an effective campaign. Despondent again, he is led to a bar in a cave that serves real booze, where Number Two is having a tipple. Six is drugged again and

Clue (1985)   Any movie based on a board game that isn’t Battleshit instantly has something going for it. But I’m not sure Clue was received with any greater approval when it was released back in 1985. The general feeling was that director (and writer) Jonathan Lynn was slumming it (it was sandwiched between the series Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister). The broad, slapstick tone and predilection for crudity had more common with producer John Landis. If the film wasn’t a disaster, neither was it a big hit. That wasn’t the end of it, though. As with a later farce directed by Landis and also starring

The Prisoner 2. The Chimes of Big Ben   We want information. Number Six agrees to collaborate; if Number Two agrees to halt the interrogation of new arrival Number Eight. Six enters the Village Arts and Crafts Competition, but this is a cover for an escape bid he is planning with Eight. Six’s art doubles as a sailing boat, and he and Eight travel to London. Meeting with his bosses, Six is on the verge of discussing his resignation, but realises he is still in the Village when the chimes of Big Ben match the time on his watch; there

Coriolanus (2011)   I’ll readily admit that I don’t know my Coriolanus from my elbow but I suspect I have a glimmer of why it is one of Shakespeare’s less-staged tragedies. As proficiently mounted as Ralph Fiennes adaptation is, the problem could be down to the title character himself. On some level we need to be able to empathise with Coriolanus (played by Fiennes) in order to be involved with the fate he drives himself towards but, unlike certain of the Bard’s better-known tragic heroes, we are allowed little insight into his psyche. He’s a born and bred warmonger, with no sympathy

The Prisoner 1. Arrival   Where am I? Much has been written of The Prisoner over the years. Perhaps even more than comparable cult series, it’s very finite duration has encouraged fans to pore over its every nuance and quirk. I have to admit that, whilst I’d count it among my television favourites, I have tended to resist over-analysing the series or any impulses to weave together its disparate threads into a text providing clarity and definition. I don’t much care whether Number Six is really John Drake, why he resigned (it’s pretty much the series’ MacGuffin; unimportant except in that it

Air Force One (1997)   President Harrison Ford takes down the terrorist. This year’s “terrorists take over the White House” movies require the President to be saved by brave Special Forces types. Not so back in the ’90s, when Russkies assumed control of Air Force One. Back when Indiana Jones was a ‘Nam vet President and recipient of the Medal of Honour, more than qualified to kick-ass. Wolfgang Peterson’s Die Hard-on-the-President’s-plane was such a big hit (and not just in its core US market) that I wondered if I had missed something when I came away from seeing it nonplussed. I’m

Thirteen Days (2000)   Kevin Costner’s desire to return to the era that proved so fruitful nearly a decade earlier with JFK was understandable, and the Cuban Missile Crisis is a subject replete with so many opportunities for drama and tension that it would take some very clumsy hands to mess it up. It’s ironic, then, that the least effective aspect of the film is Costner himself. Which is not to say that he gives a poor performance. This is a typical Costner role, one that echoes the courageous family man type audiences have already seen several times (in the likes of The

The Year of Living Dangerously  (1982)   Peter Weir’s second (and most likely final) collaboration with Mel Gibson is also the last to bear his Australian heritage on its sleeve. It is a typically rich Weir film, resonating through performance and thematic content. But it could not really be charged as attempting to present a historical account of events in Jakarta during 1965; its preoccupations are less to do with specifics and more with the human condition (be it themes of western responsibility, personal morality, career versus ambition or fantasy versus reality). While Weir has continued to find inspiration in history, this

Killing Them Softly (2012)   A follow-up to the roundly-acclaimed The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, reuniting director Andrew Dominik and star Brad Pitt, was naturally highly anticipated. But the response to Killing Them Softly was generally muted, verging on mild disappointment. In particular, Dominik’s decision to set this adaptation of George V Higgins’ novel Cogan’s Trade at the time of the 2008 US presidential election was considered clumsy and lacking in finesse. As Dominik commented in an interview, his idea was for the microcosm of mob money problems to reflect the macrocosm of the global financial crisis. But did he

The Campaign (2012)   I’d forgotten that Jay Roach was responsible for this Will Ferrell/Zach Galifianakis pairing, assuming the director was Ferrell-regular Adam McKay (who gets a writing credit). It often is easy to forget who calls the shots on US comedies as stylistically they are so anonymous. Roach is as much of a journeyman as the rest; initial hopes that he might be another John Landis were dashed when he settled on the likes of Fockers. Nevertheless, he attracted plaudits for his Game Change TV movie (dramatising Sarah Palin’s running for VP). That might have suggested some political bite, but the satire in The Campaign is

Lincoln (2012)   Steven Spielberg’s latest prestige picture appeared to be Oscar frontrunner for a while; whether it can still take Best Picture remains to be seen, but it represents, possibly, the ultimate Oscar bait. As such, it displays both the best and worst traits of “worthy” films. At its best, it is commendably literate, probably more so than any film in the director’s back catalogue. I was continually impressed with the screenplay’s refusal to cut any slack to the viewer whose attention may have lapsed for a moment or two. At its worst, however, it is victim to the

Dirty Harry (1971)   Right-wing tract or a more ambivalent study of two extreme characters (as the tagline said, “Dirty Harry and the homicidal maniac. Harry’s the one with the badge“)? There is evidently an element of wish-fulfillment in terms of identification with the Callahan character; he is pro-active in a world where bureaucracy and injustice are endemic. As such he is presented, initially at least, with situations in which it is easy to be u unperturbed by his casual dispensation of violent justice (recounting how he shot a would-be rapist) or setting up iconic scenes of coolness (dealing with

Wrong is Right aka The Man With the Deadly Lens (1982)   For two of the last three decades, Richard Brooks’ media satire Wrong is Right was mostly forgotten. Then, in the wake of 9/11 and the wave of fear that followed, very gradually, a re-discovery began. Perhaps not on the level of a genuine cult following (although, hit and miss in tone and ramshackle in production, it is ideal fare for such protective endorsements) but certainly sufficient that multiple and audible gasps of amazement have been uttered at its  prescience and topicality. The extent of one’s cynicism over the West’s current