The Squeeze (1977) - Michael Apted

The Squeeze is one of those diamonds of 70s British cinema just begging to be unearthed and rediscovered. On paper the plot sounds like something you’ve seen a hundred times before, nothing special in fact. Nasty types kidnap a wife (Carol White) and daughter, but the husband (Edward Fox) decides rather than coughing up the ransom he’d rather team up with his wife’s previous husband (Stacey Keach) and try and sort it out that way. Problem is that despite being ex-police, Keach is an alky and really not up to the task of sorting anything out other than ordering a drop of Sherry to steady his nerves.

As I say on paper it’s nothing special, but director Michael Apted brings a hell of a lot to it. Apted was already an old hand at shooting from the hip having worked in TV for years, most famously on the Up series. So The Squeeze massively benefits from his style of shooting on location rather than being set bound, plus the cameras are mainly hand-held rather than dolly mounted, all of which injects a fair amount of energy into what ends up on the screen. Then there’s the fact that The Squeeze is British, not just British but post Sweeney British. It’s a sweaty nylon shirt stuck to the faux leather seat of a British Leyland car, bags of rubbish in the streets and boarded up houses type of film. More than that though The Squeeze is aces because of it’s cast. Keach is actually a real find, I’m not sure if he was overdubbed (it doesn’t look that way) or if he could actually manage a decent accent - either way he sounds genuine enough, and is convincing as a soak. So much so that you can almost smell his stale breath at points. Edward Fox is his usual fantastic self, looking at all times as if he’s trodden in dog shit, his face fixed in a perma-scowl. Both he and Keach’s introductions are superb, Fox bursts into Keach’s home demanding to see his wife and for once has a real air of menace about him. Whereas Keach is introduced stumbling along through a London Underground station and eventually takes a nasty tumble down an escalator.

Just as good are the supporting cast, Carol White who had shone as the lead in two key Ken Loach films (Cathy Come Home & Poor Cow) is so very, very good. It’s a tough role, involving plenty of crying and nudity but she does a bang up job. Then there’s David Hemmings playing totally against character as one of the main villains. What at first feels like a huge piece of miscasting quickly reveals itself to be a bit of a masterstroke. Same goes for Freddie Starr as Teddy, in his only attempt at serious acting he plays a light fingered Scouser who helps Keach out throughout the film. It shouldn’t work, but Starr is actually pretty good and manages to reign in any urge to do his usual shtick. Add to that Alan Ford in his first screen role and you're onto a winner. I should also give a quick shout out to the Johnny Harris score which is a blinder, it's never been made available but two of the tracks appear on his genuis album - Movements. It's up there with the best of Roy Budd's scores. That good.

What little plot there is revolves around Keach and Fox squabbling, and Starr trying to keep Keach off the sauce long enough to rescue his ex. It’s grim, and not very action packed by todays standards but it is very dramatic and strangely earthy. Which is something that British crime films seem to lack nowadays, in the rush to look glossy and try and compete with the fluff that fills our multiplexes from across the pond we’ve forgotten about the things that made our crime films unique. It’s there in Get Carter, both of the Sweeney movies, Villain, The Long Good Friday, Robbery and a whole stack of other films. It’s that ordinariness mixed in with the criminal aspect, scenes used to take place inside a boozer rather than a club. Maybe I’m just being overly nostalgic for the past but it’s definitely something I miss in British crime films, which when done well can hold their own against anything Hollywoodland cares to throw at us.

This is a bit of a pain to get hold of, having not had a DVD release despite being owned by Warners. Hopefully someday this will be rectified, but until then just do what you have to do to see this. You won't regret it.

The Purge (2013) - James DeMonaco

In the nearly future, America has managed to get its crime and unemployment down to a record low. How? By having a yearly purge whereby for one continual 12 hour period all crime is allowed. The emergency sevices get to stay home and put their feet up for the duration. There are certain rules worked into this notion, mainly so that no nutter can set off a nuclear device and claim it as part of the festivities. If you can buy into that idea then you might quite enjoy The Purge. Now as far as I can tell film wise this could have gone in two very different directions, depending very much on the budget. It could have been a Tom Cruise actioner with Tom battling his way across a ravaged cityscape in order to save his daughter who for some reason or other is outside when the purge begins. He’d be a cop who'd lost his wife to some street scum in an earlier purge, and had pledged her never to kill anyone during the blah blah blah. Which of course would be a bit yawnsome, and fairly pedestrian Hollywood fare.

Luckily we end up with the second option, smaller budget, less star power but a film that only has one writer credit, and in one of those moments that sets the heart racing, that writer is also the director. So far so good. James DeMonaco’s script centers around one family and one location. James Sandin (Ethan Hawke) is a top salesman for a home security firm, home security obviously being big business in a day and age when it’s possible that your neighbour can legally take your head off with a machete because your dog barks too loud. Now let’s just say James is doing aright, he can afford enough high tech stuff to make sure that his family - wife Mary (Lena Headey) and two kids Charlie (Max Burkholder) and Zoey (Adelaide Kane) - can ride out purge night without any trouble. Except that would make for a very boring film, so when a guy runs down their street screaming for help little Max decides to let him in. He’s not just an ordinary guy though, he’s black! A black man loose in white suburbia, you can see where it’s going already can’t you? The shit hits the fan when an angry mob turn up at the Sandin’s front door and demand the guy be sent out to them so they can kill him. It’s a moral quandary. The Sandin family are given two options, send him out and be spared, or hold onto him and the mob will break in and kill them all.

It’s not really anything you haven’t seen before, especially if you grew up with John Carpenter films such as Assault on Precinct 13, the remake of which had a screenplay by none other than (drum role) James DeMonaco. The Purge is set up more as a moral dilemma film than an all out action siege thing though, and for the first third works fairly well. DeMonaco is no great shakes as a director, he’s not awful but he’s not very interesting either. Luckily his two leads are top notch and felt believable as a couple. The kids are just generic American white teeth and good hair kids. In other words - boring. DeMonaco piles on things that you know are going to come into play during the last third of the film, the son has a medical condition, the neighbours are jealous etcetera.

Around the half way point The Purge turnes a corner and becomes quite ordinary, lots of shooting and all the typical tropes you’d expect from a bad home invasion film. The ethics of killing people is adressed throughout the film, but not in a very good way. Which is a shame since it could have been a taught little film, maybe not quite up to the standard of Ils, but something more along the lines of Cherry Tree Lane. In the end though, you won’t care what happens. Once the bullets start flying your brain will start to wander. Worth watching once, if you’re bored and have nothing better to watch. But how often does that happen?

Trance (2013) - Danny Boyle

Oh dear. I wanted to like Trance, I really did. And for the first ten minutes or so I did. The art heist that kicks the film off and sets the story in motion is a thrilling piece of cinema. Typical Danny Boyle, looks gorgeous, booming soundtrack and very very fast paced. But then for some reason the voice over narration disappears (always a bad sign), if you’re going to use something like that (voice over) then at least have the grace to have it throughout the film, otherwise it feels like what it is - tacked on to explain things to the audience, information that a director of Boyle’s stature should be able to convey via images. But the voice over being given the heave-ho is the least of Trance’s problems. Where to begin?

Well let’s start with that wonderful beginning. Danny Boyle films have always had a strong start, think about how Trainspotting and Shallow Grave sucked you into the film straight away. Then consider probably his most audacious opening, that of 28 Days Later. Which is still just mouth open, jaw on the floor, how the fuck did they do that astounding. When it comes to endings Boyle isn’t quite so strong, he tends to slap a huge anthem on the soundtrack and over-egg everything a bit, not always but sometimes. Sunshine started well but around the halfway mark became something entirely different, same with 28 Days Later. Trance suffers the same fate but almost from the start of the film.

Simon (James McAvoy) is an art auctioneer with a gambling problem, Franck (Vincent Cassel) is a heavy type who is going to steal a Goya painting from the auction house that Simon works at, with Simon’s help. So far, so ordinary. Except Simon manages to swipe the picture before giving it to Franck and thanks to a bump on the head, can’t remember what he’s done with said painting. Deep sigh, it get’s worse. Enter Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) a hypnotherapist who is hired to find out just what the hell is going on by talking softly to Simon. Now apparently she can not only make him remember things, but also make him forget other things, oh and shuffle around his memories. Cough, cough. By this point you’re already being asked to suspend an awfully large amount of disbelief. This isn’t the Inception world of Science-Fiction, this is supposedly set in the here and now of London. Basically things get weirder, and initial opinions about characters change as the film progresses, as does the whole tone of the film. There are huge chunks of the running time where you will not have a clue what’s going on, is he hypnotized now, or is this actually happening sort of stuff. And that’s all well and good, but you need a damn good ending to explain away everything that’s happened. Trance doesn’t have that ending. Everything (well almost everything) is rattled off in a monologue towards the end of the film, and it doesn’t work. It’s too insane, too far out to make any sort of sense. And after all that Boyle has the nerve to try the Inception spinning top ending. Sorry Danny but you haven't earnt that mate.

Trance is a film that demands to be watched multiple times, so that when you know the story you’ll be able to sit back and nod as it all unfolds second or third time around. Unfortunately it’s simply not a good enough film to ever want to watch again. The three main leads are all perfectly fine, like all of Boyle’s films it’s well edited and looks impressive (Anthony Dod Mantle is still on DoP duties so no huge surprise there). It’s well directed too, there’s lots of glass and reflections underscoring the theme of duality, and it’s got a nice huge electronic score (by Underworld’s Rick Smith). But the story is just too silly, and by the time it’s over you’ll be thinking about how Breaking Bad's going to end or what to have for dinner, anything but the nonsense you've just finished watching.

At the end of the day I still love Danny Boyle, I love him for trying things, for never getting stuck in the rut of making the same film over and over, for not being scared of being British and embracing the American glossiness that most British directors do so badly. I love that his films are pure entertainment, for someone that claims Alan Clarke and Nic Roeg as two of his biggest influences he couldn’t make films any further away from their output if he tried. Boyle makes films to be watched on a Saturday night when your plans have fallen through, and you’d still rather be out. For all his faults, his films are watchable and fun and always interesting. There’s no deep message, like Tarantino it’s all surface, and there’s nowt wrong with that. It’s just that Trance is the worst film he has made in a long time. And I haven’t even mentioned Rosario Dawson’s totally out of place full frontal scene, and the way it’s explained away in such a pathetic way. Please don’t fuck up Porno Danny. Please.

The Satan Bug (1965) - John Sturges

I love a good cold war conspiracy style thriller, especially when there’s a chance that whole populations could be wiped out due to some evil genius. The 60s was full of these sort of things particularly after the ’62 Cuba missile crisis and the rise of a certain Mr. Bond. So with all that in mind I thought The Satan Bug would be right up my street. It is after all the film John Sturges decided to make straight after The Great Escape, which is a film that I have watched at least once a year or so for as long as I can remember. So it couldn’t be bad could it?

Well surprisingly for a film that would describe itself as a thriller it lacks quite a bit in the thrills department. In fact I’d go one further and say it was actually dull. A bit on the boring side. It has it’s moments, but could have done with being trimmed a little to bring the running time down to a lean 90 minutes, rather than the flabby two hours it is now. The thing is there’s a good film in there but for some reason it just didn’t find its way onto the screen.

The plot is quite simple, a deadly man made virus (The Satan Bug) is stolen from a secret American military base and our hero Lee Barrett (George Maharis) has to figure out the who, the why and the how and get the germ weapon back before it is used to wipe out the entire planet! Will he manage it? Will he figure everything out? Of course he will since this is from the time before that golden Hollywood era of downbeat endings, Vietnam hadn’t really hit Americans as a huge catastrophe yet and Nixon was still a few years off of souring Americans on politics forever. So why doesn’t it work then?

Well for starters there is a really uncomfortable mix between really drab sets, all muted colours and no set dressing and the gorgeous location footage from the Californian deserts. Which clashes like an episode of Columbo and a John Ford western. The acting matches the sets, drab and by the numbers, the lines are spoken but they never convinced me they were being uttered by humans. Worse than that though is the total lack of any sort of tension. It’s explained to us just how deadly this virus is, but at no point does it ever feel like anything other than a clear liquid in a bottle. People bark orders to each other down phones, cars tail other cars, heads are scratched and questions answered but it all just feels so pedestrian. It’s also a fairly confusing plot, with characters previously thought dead turning out to be not quite ready to be buried, and then there’s a 'Clay Shaw is Clay Bertrand' bit of subterfuge that makes you feel like you might have to rewatch the film again from the start, just to see if you could spot what was coming. Except like I said earlier it’s far too dull for that.

Which is odd since Sturges is one of the great journeyman directors of this period, he made good solid E X C I T I N G films. It’s like his heart just wasn’t in this. Which is a shame. The Jerry Goldsmith score is a gem though, sounding like a precursor to his Planet of the Apes score but with added synth blasts. It’s almost watching the film for this alone. Almost.

Small Time (1996) - Shane Meadows

From little acorns…

After years of knocking together short films, Shane Meadows secured enough funding to make the huge leap into feature film territory with Small Time. As debuts go it’s not the strongest I’ve ever seen, but with hindsight it’s easy to pick out more than enough of Meadows’ tropes to make this well worth a look. What little story there is revolves around a group of ne'er-do-wells in a suburb of Nottingham, who basically steal, drink and smoke themselves through life. Meadows plays Jumbo, the gang’s leader and hard man. Once you get used to the comedy wig (which must have helped massively with continuity) you'll find that he’s not too bad as an actor. His next door neighbour and fellow gang member is Malc (Mat Hand), who’s under pressure from his girlfriend Kate (Dena Smiles) to ditch Jumbo and move on with his life.

For the most part it all works well, the acting is a bit all over the place at times but the dialogue has a crackle to it that makes up for any actorly shortcomings. With a budget of just £5,000, it’s not that surprising to find that it’s not the most beautiful film you’ll ever see either. However Meadows works at his best when on a tight budget, and manages to turn this to his advantage. It’s all location, no sets, and hand held rather than dolly shots, all of which inject some life into the film. Just look at the scene towards the end of two robbers running away from a botched heist. It's lifted wholesale from Reservoir Dogs, a film that seems to have had a hold on Meadow's around this time - his short Where's The Money, Ronnie? being hugely influenced by it too. It's the most exciting scene in the film and has a real kinetic energy to it. As does the hilarious car boot sale montage, where our heroes distract stall owners just long enough to swipe anything they can get their mitts on.

Small Time’s biggest flaw is the balance between it's comedy and violence. Jumbo knocks his girlfriend Ruby (Gena Kawecka) about, but this is never really addressed as much as just accepted. There’s a running gag about Ruby using a vibrator that falls a bit flat, but it’s after one of these scenes that Jumbo lays into her. Meadows doesn’t give the audience time to adjust to the sudden switch in tone, and it becomes a bit of a mess. Within three years though he would nail this particular idea with A Room for Romeo Brass, which successfully managed to shift from comedy to domestic horror without any warning to great effect.

The core idea running through Small Time is the influence that violent people can have over others. It’s a theme that runs through most of Shane Meadows’ filmography. It’s there in A Room for Romeo Brass, Dead Man’s Shoes and more recently This is England. Another constant in his work is Gavin Clarke’s music which is all present and correct here. Pretty much all of the above crop up again and again in Meadows’ work, the Nottingham setting, the working class characters, the music, the humour, the hand held camera work - it’s all there in abundance in every film he makes. Over the years he has refined all this and managed to make it his own thing. Almost twenty years later Shane Meadows has become the closest thing we have as a successor to Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke. Now who would have thought that when watching this all those years ago?

Ministry of Fear (1944) - Fritz Lang

   Right from the ominous opening music and image of a pendulum slowly swinging back and forth you know that Ministry of Fear isn’t going to be a comedy. Of course it isn’t, it’s a Fritz Lang adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene how could it be anything other than a nourish thriller? And yet despite those credentials Ministry of Fear does have a gloriously dark streak of humour running through it. In that way (and a few others) it’s the most Hitchcockian Fritz Lang film I’ve ever seen, an innocent man on the run, a league of evil wrong doers operating within plain sight of ordinary society, a blonde love interest and of course the all important McGuffin to propel the film ever forwards. It’s all so Hitchcock in fact that you almost keep an eye out for the great man’s cameo. Almost. But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit here, so let’s wind back to that opening pendulum and pick it up from there.

   It turns out that said pendulum is attached to a wall mounted clock (Lang does love his clocks), which is being stared at intently by our films hero Stephen Neale (Ray Milland). As it strikes six o’clock someone enters the room and informs Neale that he is free to go, and offers up the advice that in future he should try and steer clear of the police. So far so mysterious. It turns out Neale is leaving an asylum, although why he was in there we don’t find out just yet. This opening scene of Ministry of Fear really sets the tone for the rest of the film with it's long dark shadows. Lang is always one step ahead of his audience, it’s a mystery which we are encouraged to try and solve as the film progresses and as such it works extremely well.

   Anyway poor old Neale leaves the asylum determined to head for the bright lights of London. Before he even makes it to the train station though he spots a fete and the first of many suspension of disbelief moments begins. Maybe I should have mentioned that the film is set during WWII, since a fete at six in the evening seems a little unlikely. But as it turns out that’s the least of this films lapses in logic. So where was I? At the fete Neale ends up winning a cake (don’t ask), which becomes Ministry of Fear’s McGuffin. You see due to a mix up involving a palm reader (like I said, don’t ask), Neale has been given a cake that was meant to go to a Nazi spy. Oh yes it’s 1944 and the bad guys are all Nazis don’t you know. Anyway to cut a long story short Neal hops on a train to London, gets attacked by a blind man en route, who then nicks his cake and runs off across what looks like no mans land (but is in fact an obvious sound stage outdoor set) during an air raid, dodges bullets and bombs, gets accused of shooting someone at a seance and becomes that innocent man on the run that I mentioned earlier.

   All of the above happens within the first thirty minutes of Ministry of Fear. So to say it’s fast moving would be doing it a disservice, it rattles along at a cracking speed and at a few minutes shy of an hour and a half is over before you know it. There’s no title card at the start of the film informing us when and where the action is taking place, instead we get constant references to life during wartime. The cake is praised as being made with real eggs, which would really be something during those heavily rationed times. Black drapes hang everywhere too and there is constant chatter about the blackouts that were a nightly occurrence during the Blitz. A whole section of the film even takes place in one of the London Underground stations which doubled up as air raid shelters back then. All of the above works supremely well and grounds the film in the period in which it is set. Of course London is never actually shown being bombed, that sort of thing just wouldn’t do. There was a war on after all.

As is well documented the villains of this film in real life had an affinity for Fritz Lang's films. So much so that according to Lang he was approached by Joseph Goebbels to become the head of UFA (Universum Film AG) which would have resulted in him being a huge part of the Nazi propaganda that was churned out during WWII. Lang baulked at the idea and fled that night to Paris, and then later to the safer shores of the U.S. I can’t say for sure but I’m guessing Goebbels wasn’t so keen on Lang’s American output, which during the early forties was chock-a-block with Allied propaganda. Manhunt for instance starts with an assassination attempt on the Führer. For Lang it must have been incredibly important to distance himself from the insanity that his countrymen were wreaking across the globe, especially since he had settled in the U.S.A. a country that despite being founded by European immigrants was well known for it’s intolerance of anything other then the American way of life.

   Anyway back to the film, Ray Milland is pretty darn good as a the man on the lam, able to switch between wry one liners delivered with a raised eyebrow to running and jumping style action at the drop of a fedora. The sort of thing that Cary Grant always made look so easy. Of the rest of the cast Percy Waram as Inspector Prentice really stands out and makes a great foil for Neale during the last third of the film. Marjorie Reynolds is the love interest and doesn’t really get all that much to do sadly, she’s mainly there as a crutch for the men in the film. Far more interesting is Hillary Brooke who gets the full five star noir introduction walking out from darkened shadows into the light.

   The most obvious thing this film has going for it and probably the reason you’re reading this now is of course Fritz Lang. By this time in his career he was already a master director with enough classics under his belt to ensure he’d always be remembered. His American films may not hold a candle to his earlier German output but they were always well directed. He was a real master with shadows and light, the final rooftop shoot out in Ministry of Fear for instance where a darkened stairwell is lit fleetingly by gun blasts is one of the best looking things you’ll see in a film from this period. The same can be said of the seance scene which takes place in a gigantic room with a circular table and chairs in its center. Once the lights drop Lang gives each of the people at the table a spotlight, visually it’s reminiscent of Ken Adam’s war room set for Dr. Strangelove. Which of course was a full twenty years away from being filmed.

   It’s impossible to write about Ministry of Fear without mentioning Graham Greene and his famously sniffy attitude to Hollywood adaptations of his books. I can see why, since quite often they jettisoned back story and motivation for characters and delved straight into the story. I haven’t read the Greene novel this is based on so I can’t really comment on how it differs. What I can say though is that Greene’s prose doesn’t have any real zip to it. Whereas this film really is the cinematic equivalent of a page-turner, it’s episodic with Neale being thrown from one situation to another leaving the audience with almost no time to work out just who the villain is.

   Talking of villains the two things the audience have to work out during the course of Ministry of Fear are the identity of the head of the Nazi ring and just what was in that 4lb 15oz cake? Anyone familiar with the language of cinema will be able to spot the chief Nazi straight away. How? Just by the way he/she holds a cigarette since all screen Nazis hold their cigarettes in a weird way. As for the cake, well it’s not so much what was in it that is the mystery as much as how did it not get blown to kingdom come when the police were finding bits of the guy holding it scattered all over the show? But as always with these films it’s not so much the destination as the journey.

   Ministry of Fear falls into a strange place in Lang’s oeuvre, it’s not anywhere near his best work and yet it’s nowhere near bad enough to be dismissed or forgotten either. It falls somewhere in-between those two camps, and is best viewed as such. There’s little point in pouring over why characters do what they do, or even what happens to certain people once their value to the story has run dry since logic seems to take a back seat at times. It’s best to just go along with it all a-la Hitchcock and enjoy the ride.

Made in U.S.A (1966) - Jean-Luc Godard

Of all the feted directors of yesteryear, it’s Jean-Luc Godard that I just don’t get. I quite like a few of his earlier efforts (Bande à part and Le mépris), but the majority of his mid to late sixties films just leave me cold, and Made in U.S.A (no full stop after the A for some reason, a deep political reason I’m sure) is one of those films. It’s not that it’s impenetrable, since I can deal with that. It’s more that there is nothing within the film for me to hold onto, so despite the short running time (85 minutes), I found myself checking to see how long was left of the film every fifteen minutes or so. Which can’t be good can it?

So plot wise we have Paula Nelson (Anna Karina) trying to find out how her boyfriend (?) died. Maybe. Or maybe not. She wanders from scene to scene spouting a kind of cut and paste dialogue, bits of a pulp novel here (the film is supposedly based very very loosely on Richard Stark’s novel The Jugger), some philosophy there. After a while I found my brain was just unwilling to try and process any of what was being said. To add insult to injury the audience is bombarded with the distorted voice of Godard ranting on about various Maoist theories via a reel to reel tape machine. Characters are named after political figures and film stars/directors. Can you hear that? That’s me clapping really slowly in an empty room. Just. For. J-L G.

Now whereas certain films by David Lynch or Luis Buñuel require a degree of decoding by the viewer, it feels worthwhile and at least the directors give their audience some sort of story to hang onto while they try and figure out just what's going on. Godard meanwhile is very heavy-handed with his messages, which are firmly rooted in the times and subsequently dated and of no consequence to anyone now. Vietnam, the state of sixties France blah blah blah, I couldn’t care less.

Still on the plus side we get Marianne Faithful singing an a cappella version of As Tears Go By, and the playfulness with the format that you associate with Godard is still present, he always manages to do things that are at the very least interesting, but it’s not enough. The real hero of the film for me is cinematographer Raoul Coutard who makes the whole shebang a sumptuous viewing experience. His colour palette is made up of vivid blues and reds against warm yellows and oranges. His camerawork is second to none and goes a long way to explaining why he was the most in demand cameraman of this period in France.

Maybe the thing I hated most though was the dedication at the start of the film to Nicolas Ray and Samuel Fuller. Godard looks up to these two legends as teachers, and yet by slapping that dedication at the start of this film shows that he hasn’t learnt a thing, since neither of them would ever make a film as arse numbingly dull or as self-absorbed as this piece of trash.

I, Anna (2012) - Barnaby Southcombe

Great slow burning London set crime drama that for once doesn’t involve gangs of hoodies talking in a language that no English speaking person over the age of thirty can understand, nor does it involve shooters, there’s no tart with a heart, no swearing, no Danny Dyer and no silly action scenes. Instead we get that old fashioned thing of actors, for want of a better word - acting.

Charlotte Rampling is middle aged lonely heart Anna Welles and Gabriel Byrne is D.C.I. Bernie Reid investigating the murder of George Stone (played by the always value for money Ralph Brown). Anna and George meet up at a singles night and by the next morning George is dead. Bernie clocks Anna and being recently separated himself decides to try his chances with her. Throw into the mix Hayley Atwell as Anna’s daughter and Eddie Marsan as one of the flatfoots working the murder with Bernie and you have a seriously decent cast.

Written and directed by Rampling’s son Barnaby Southcombe this is a slice of modern noir set in and around London’s Barbican. The acting is top notch, not at all showy, with Rampling in particular giving a note perfect performance. At it’s heart I, Anna is a murder mystery, but an old fashioned one without the yawnable multiple twists we’ve become so accustomed too. In fact the ending feels right on the money, well earned if you like. Southcombe directs the whole thing with a keen eye but never allows his camera to take center stage, everything is geared to serving his script and allowing the cast to do their stuff.

It’s always a treat to see actresses over a certain age up on the screen in an interesting role. It seems to be that in Hollywood once the wrinkles set in then for some reason there’s no work for actresses as a leading character. It’s all mad aunts and grandma’s, which is a pretty tragic state of affairs and one that probably goes quite a way to explaining just why so many of them feel the need to have the dreaded plastic surgery. Anyway I’m drifting a little here, so to get back to the film I’d say this is a must see. Unpredictable in a way so few films are nowadays, if that sounds like your cup of tea then I'd say it's well worth taking a punt if you get the chance to.

Compliance (2012) - Craig Zobel

For the past ten years or so phones and films have not been happy bedfellows. I’m not talking about the whole cinema experience being ruined by people not being able to stay off the fucking things during films. Cinema patrons constant need to check what’s happening on Facebook or Twitter seems to have become more important now than sinking into the film they’ve just paid money to see. No that’s not what I’m talking about here (lucky you). It's more that since mobile phones have become so commonplace film scripts have had to deal with them and the problems they can cause a script. In the pre mobiles world tension could be ramped up by something as easy as someone being stuck in a room at work after everyone else had gone home. Nowadays tech savvy audiences won't stand for any nonsense. Phones are the ultimate get out of jail free card for most of the uncomfortable situations that a film character might find themselves in. So sometimes now the tension can come from something as mundane as trying to get a working signal or the old forgot to charge the phone chestnut. It’s a brave new world for certain, but it can be a bugger if you’re trying to write a thriller.

Sometimes a film comes along though that incorporates our friend the phone as a major plot point. Buried or the original Scream flick for example, both of these films used phones to build the unease the audience were (hopefully) feeling. Compliance is one such film. Set in a fast food place on a typically busy day, short of staff and thanks to a recent balls up with a fridge causing certain items to not be on the menu, it’s going to be a tougher than usual day at work. But for Becky (Dreama Walker) it’s going to be particularly tough, since half way through the shift her boss Sandra (Ann Dowd) receives a phone call from Officer Daniels (Pat Healy) informing her that Becky has stolen some money from a customer. He tells Sandra to hold Becky in a secure room until he can get there. And that’s your lot plot wise, since any more would spoil what is a cracking film.

Writer-director Craig Zobel does a stellar job at creating a convincing environment in which this nasty little film plays out. Although not strictly a Horror film (despite being pretty grim), it does that great thing that Horror flicks do - putting the audience in the characters shoes. All the way though the ninety minute running time you’ll question exactly what you would do in either Becky or Sandra’s situation.

It’s a faultless film, it’s not flashy (but still looks good), the acting is naturalistic in a way that American films rarely are. The cast are impeccable, and this really is one of those films where the words spoken are far more important than the visuals. Most of the action takes place in one room with the majority of the dialogue being between people that aren’t even sharing the same screen space.

I wish I could say more, but I can’t. Just see it. One thing I can promise is you’ll be straight onto Google afterwards since it’s a true story.

The Game (1997) - David Fincher

I saw The Game when it first hit British cinemas back in October ’97. As it turns out it was one of the last films I saw before moving to Sweden, but that’s neither here nor there so forget that bit. Truth be told I found it underwhelming and since then have only caught bits of it on TV. Which is weird since like so many others I love David Fincher, and up until 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button had this film earmarked as easily his worst. So I was quite excited to sit down all these years later and watch it again with fresh eyes. And you know what, it holds up pretty well, so much so that it made me wonder why I’d given it such a wide berth for so long. Well at least that’s what I thought until the last ten minutes, then it all came flooding back to me - like a drowning man's memories - just what the problem with The Game is.

Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is a riff on Gordon Gekko, an investment banker who seems to have no pleasures in life beyond his work. Which is much the same as his late father, who ended it all on his 48th birthday by jumping to his death. Van Orton is totally alone, cocooned in the world he’s built around himself. His brother Conrad (Sean Penn) is the polar opposite and seems to have done enough living/finding himself/experimentation (man) for the both of them. For Nics 48th birthday Conny gives him a gift certificate for a company called CRS. The ever cautious Nic ponders about using it for a while before finally giving in and taking the plunge. He contacts CRS, takes the tests, asks the questions (what is CRS, what do they do?) and really only receives one answer; CRS creates games, games which are individually tailored to each client. However later Nicolas is told he didn’t pass the test, so his game won’t happen. Or will it…

What follows is every bit as visually rich as you’d expect from Fincher who was still on a roll from the much lauded Se7en. For the first two hours it's a top notch thriller, thundering along with all the energy of an Indiana Jones film, never giving the audience the opportunity to digest what’s going on and more importantly question and pick holes in what they’ve just seen. Which is totally essential for this type of film. It's always one step ahead of the audience and keeps you guessing throughout the whole running time.

The acting on display in The Game is as good as any of Fincher's visual flurries. Michael Douglas (who’s in every scene of the film), is particularly on fire. It reminded me that I actually really like him and that on a good day he’s up there with any of his Hollywood peers. He manages to go from arse Gekko to humble bum in under two hours very convincingly. In between he gets to give his acting chops a good workout. The supporting cast (i.e. - everyone else) are all top notch too, be it a reigned in Penn or the full on James Rebhorn or the underused Deborah Kara Unger.

What I noticed this time around that the younger me missed was just how much this film is a nod towards films and film making in general. So we get Van Orton plunging into the San Francisco Bay (Vertigo), an overflowing toilet (The Conversation) and a stiff exchange of words between Van Orton and a desk clerk which recalls Jack and Delbert Grady in The Shining, to name but three. Then there’s the fact that it’s really as much a black comedy as a thriller. Which I wasn’t expecting first time ‘round.

Then there’s the whole pulling the curtain back - as Van Orton says at one point, in reference to The Wizard of Oz, see those pesky film quotes keep on coming. Hell even the canteen scene at the end is lifted wholesale from Blazing Saddles. Deborah Kara Unger gets a great moment at the end where she makes it crystal clear for the audience that the whole film has been Brechtian in style, and that the game was actually being played on us the audience and not Nicolas Van Orton.

Ah yes the end. Well it’s still the films big problem for me, just as it was all those years ago when I first saw it. It’s just not good enough, it’s like a bad punchline to a well told joke. You see you can have dodgy sections in films, but you can never have a bad ending. That’s the bit people remember as they walk out of the cinema. It’s been the downfall of many an otherwise great film. Which is a shame since this is a really really solid film for the first two hours. However it’s that ending, it just does not work, and no matter how good the rest of it is, the chases, the wonderful one liners, Michael Douglas losing his shit and looking as stressed as you’ll ever see him, even seeing Nicolas Van Orton rising from the dead - reborn in a white suit doesn’t save the film from that ending. Shame.

Into the Abyss (2011) - Werner Herzog

It's well possible that future generations will look back at Werner Herzog as being a documentarian first and foremost, and a film director a distant second. His films (both documentary and fiction) can be frustrating at times but are always interesting. Throughout his fifty year career he's managed to juggle both features and docs with surprising ease, and is a fascinating person to boot. His best films almost always deal with extremities, quite often man against a hostile environment. Don't forget it was Herzog who hauled a paddle steamer over a mountain in what could easily be argued is his masterpiece - Fitzcarraldo, he also so the legend goes, walked from Munich to Paris to visit a friend, and let's not forget he directed legendary madman Klaus Kinski in not one but five films. So it's fair to say that he lives on the outskirts of the very insanity that he often tries to capture on film. At the heart of all of his work though is a genuine search for answers, as crass as that sounds it truly is the case, and Herzog unlike most other directors on the same path knows which questions to ask and just how to get the answers out of his subjects.

Into the Abyss is a documentary about two convicted killers (Michael Perry and Jason Burkett), who killed three people in order to steal a car. Both received separate trials ending up with Perry landing on death row and Burkett receiving a life sentence. Both blame the other for the crime and proclaim their own innocence. Herzog doesn't get caught up with the trial or ponder if they are innocent or guilty, in fact I think he chose this case because it feels so obvious that they are in fact guilty of their crimes. Instead via a series of interviews Herzog cuts through everything to get down to the rawness at the heart of the crime, the victims families are interviewed as are friends and family of the killers. Herzog's interview technique is incredible, he can be quite brusque but he really manages to drag the best out of people.

Take the priest at the start, who for the first few minutes babbles away with the usual stock church gumph, until Herzog focuses in on something that feels like an offhand quip and verbally pushes the priest into a corner, which results in the films first highlight. His real trump card, the thing he has that no one else has is his voice, his wonderful rolling vocal tones. It's very soothing even when retelling the goriest of stories.

Into the Abyss was compiled from a mere eight hours of interview footage, which makes what you watch feel just all the better. At times it's possible that Herzog steers things in a certain direction by asking very leading questions, but isn't that what all the best interviewers do anyway? Plus when the gold he gets it's as good as it is it seems churlish to complain.

As you can probably tell I thought this was an astounding documentary, and I can't wait to check out the Death Row TV series that Herzog has just made. With mainstream cinema becoming so bland and safe now we're going to find ourselves relying more and more on people like Werner Herzog for anything vaguely interesting. The subtitle for this documentary is 'A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life', and that is really what is at the heart of the film - life & death, death & life. Despite what Perry did I would never wish him dead, and hopefully anyone who is pro death sentence will at least question their beliefs after seeing this. Although as it turns out it's too late for Perry as he was executed eight days after his interview for this film.

So what next for Herzog? After making a string of well received documentaries, being shot at during an interview and directing Nicolas Cage in a bonkers remake of Bad Lieutenant, we'll next see him playing the main villain in the new Tom Cruise film. You gotta love him, you really do.

Kill List (2011) - Ben Wheatley

Ben Wheatley? Ben Wheatley? I recognised the name, but I couldn't place it back when everyone was arguing over whether Kill List was any good or not. So I IMDB'd him (like you do) and it turns out he'd directed the last film I ended up watching in 2011 - Down Terrace. That was on New Years Eve, right before going out for the night, and it was God awful. A real pile of rubbish. Now it's not often I think something like that about a film, since all films no matter how bad take time and a heck of a lot of effort to put together. But it has to be said Down Terrace was painfully bad.

So you can imagine how low my expectations were going in to see Kill List can't you? Let's say they were non existent, and leave it there. It turns out Kill List is the film I've watched most this year (three times so far), it's a triumph of modern film making and a truly nasty little horror flick to boot. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, first a quick plot synopsis. Gal (Michael Smiley or Tyres from Spaced to you and me) and Jay (Neil Maskell) are a couple of hit men, employed to bump off people from the titular list. Jay's a family man and his wife Shel (MyAnna Buring) sets up the hits for them. It sounds like a typical genre film that you've seen a hundred times at least, but director Wheatley manages to spin it in directions that make it feel fresh. For a start he wrong foots you by making you feel like you're watching a Mike Leigh suburban drama, the first twenty minutes of the film being set around a typical Leigh style dinner party. However once the boys get off on the road and on with the mission things start to get weird. I can't really write much about what happens other than you'll leave the film with the feeling that you need to sit down and watch the film again.

This film has really made people get hot under the collar, some dismiss it as utter rubbish (which it really isn't), while others seem to think it's the best British horror film since Christopher Lee tricked Edward Woodward into spending the night on Summerisle. Like I wrote earlier I thought this was wonderful, and when watched again it becomes apparent that Wheatley and co-writer Amy Jump (who are a real life couple) have fashioned a clever tale that on the surface can feel a little slight, but when looked at a little closer reveals hidden depths. It actually has a decent structure with elements at the start being repeated at the end of the film.

The sound design is great (although the dialogue is mixed too low), scenes that would normally feel ordinary are full of menace thanks to Jim Williams' creepy humming  soundtrack. The whole cast are so much better than you'd expect too, everyone manages to make their characters into believable living breathing people. Best of all though it has a great ending, not one that everyone will love since you'll need to go away have a pint, mull it over, have a chat with some friends about it and then watch the film again. But that's a good thing, it really is. In fact it's probably this that Kill List has going for it most, you have to put your brain in gear and do a little work. I think I've finally figured out just what the hell is going on, and that's taken three viewings.

I really can't recommend this enough, it's not for the fait hearted since it's brutal in places, but if you like a bit of mystery in your films and if you miss David Lynch then this might be the film for you. Best British horror since The Wicker Man? No, but it's up there with Eden Lake and that's praise enough I think.

Pitfall (1962) - Hiroshi Teshigahara

Yet another entry in what feels like the bottomless pit of genius Japanese 60's cinema. Despite having owned this film for years, it's taken me forever to get around to watching it for some reason. Pitfall (or Otoshiana to give it's Japanese title), is one of those films that packs an awful lot into it's brief (97 minutes) running time. Flitting between disparate genres - ghost story, murder mystery and gritty union drama to name the main three, it somehow manages to stay cohesive, never veering too far off the path it started out on. Add to that doppelganger characters, murders, twists and moments that will make you gasp for air, all set to one of those great atonal jazz scores that never turn up to buy anywhere, and you know you're in for an interesting evening. Teshigahara lays everything out in such a way that the audience should have no problem following the story. Understanding what they saw is another thing entirely though. It's not as tricksy as say Usual Suspects, it just stays with you, rolling around your mind while the undertones of it become apparent. So here goes…

Well right from the opening credits it's obvious that this is going to be a stylish affair, the first image we see is that of two adult men and a small boy running and hiding. They're obviously on the run from something or someone and look like they are wearing everything they own. I'm not sure if we ever really discover just what or who they're running from, but it turns out they are drifting from town to town (or mine to mine to be precise), trying to find work and some sort of stability. What the men don't know is that they are being shadowed by a man in a white suit. The boy clocks him straight away, but says nothing to his father. None of these three characters is given any sort of name, but the third cog disappears from the story when the father and son head off to a remote deserted mining town (which we later discover is literally a ghost town), when he is given a note and map saying that there is work for him there if he wants it. All the while the white suited man is close behind.

And to be honest that's where I'm going to leave the synopsis since anything more would spoil what is a brilliantly scripted film. On the surface the film is a equal parts murder mystery/ghost story, underneath though it's about the modernisation and economic boom that Japan was going through at that moment, and the effect it had on those that weren't swept along by it. Or at least that's how I read it. It's very much a film about duality (it reminded me a lot of Performance in this way), the white suited man (capitalism personified), pitted against the worker (who dreams only of working in a mine with a union). This dualism is carried over in the cinematography, which is the starkest black & white rather than black & grey as is so often the case. Teshigahara's blacks are as black as coal (just look at the mountains that surround the small town), while the whites burn into your retinas, making it difficult to forget what you've just seen.

Teshigahara doesn't take the easy route though, there's a constant refusal to focus on just one persons story, even though ultimately all the strands come together. Pitfall (great pun title by the way), has almost every character secretly observing another character doing something despicable, so much so that it brings to mind those other two great voyeuristic classics The Pornographers and Peeping Tom. That's the kind of company this film is keeping. There's an ambiguous rape scene that is filmed so tightly on the bodies that it becomes claustrophobic and confusing, it's hard to tell just what is going on. I'd say it's one of the best of these types of scenes I've seen in a film, since it's so uncomfortable to watch. Which brings us back to that voyeuristic element again.

Teshigahara obviously thinks through his camera positions carefully since every angle feels perfect. He also films in a variety of different ways, so there are really long takes and typical dolly shots mixed in with hand held camera, sudden whip pans and crash zooms. At one point there is a huge pulsating growing liquid circle superimposed over the film, it feels experimental without the painful viewing that 60's experimental films can sometimes be. It doesn't feel as obvious as someone like Godard say, who seems to have more fun with these kind of things. Teshigahara seems more considered in his approach, more Japanese I guess. I like the way that once the characters in the film become stuck in the town, so do we. It's almost like a genius Japanese version of British oddball TV show Sapphire & Steel, that has been shot through with a social conscience worthy of Ken Loach. The last shot of the film (the boy running) not only brings the film full circle but is reminiscent of the last shot of 400 Blows.

Of course like all subtitled films it's hard to gauge how good the vocal acting is. I mean I can't tell if a line is delivered well or not, it all sounds fine to me, but then I can't think of a time when I've ever bemoaned a foreign film for this. The physical side of the acting is superb, Hisashi Igawa in particular is stunning. He plays three characters (sometimes two in the same scene), and not once are you in any doubt just which of them he is. I love the icy cool of Kunie Tanaka too as the man in the white suit, but best of all is Kazuo Miyahara as the son in what would be his first and last film. Kids are always a huge obstacle to overcome for any director I can imagine, Miyahara has quite a bit to do, although not much to say. Just like Antoine Doinel at the end of 400 Blows you can't help but wonder what happens to this poor little guy who has been through so much. Of course we know what happened to Doinel, but this kid has stayed with me since the film ended, in much the same way that the smell of a fire lingers long after it's been extinguished.

A word of warning for those (like myself) that are sensitive to animal cruelty, you see a frog being pulled apart, it's not on the screen for long, but it's real and you'll never forget the image once you've seen it. I don't mean that in a good way either.

Having only ever seen Teshigahara's documentary about Gaudí before this, I had absolutely no idea of just what I was in for. I have two other films by him along with a handful of shorts sitting on a shelf just begging to be watched. Plus I have the whole of Saturday to myself. What would you do in my shoes?

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) - Sam Peckinpah

Pretty much the last of Peckinpah's essential films, this nearly western from '74 is famous for Peckinpah having final cut, making it one of the few films that was released the way the man intended. Just like Orson Welles before him, producers and studios loved to chop about Sam's films. Thankfully a fair few of his greatest flicks are now back to the way Sam entended them to be. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia has always been just the way Peckinpah envisioned it though.

In some Mexican backwater local gigolo Alfredo Garcia has managed to get the local mob boss's daughter up the spout. So being a typical mob boss he demands Garcia's head, with a huge cash sum for whomever manages the task. Peckinpah regular Warren Oates plays ivory tinkler Bennie, who thanks to his girlfriend having recently had a bit on the side with Alfredo happens to know what no one else does - that Garcia has just shuffled off this mortal coil. So off he sets, girlfriend in tow to decapitate the corpse and earn enough money to quit the rat race for good.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia scores instant points with me for being so unique, I can't think of another film that is like this. It's part road movie (but then again maybe not, since how many road movies end up where they began?), and part gutter romance. The whole story feels like it could have been ripped straight from the grooves of Dylan's '76 album - Desire. Everyone in the film looks like they could do with a hot bath and a bowl of soup. Oates' Bennie is a throwback to the sort of character Bogart would have inhabited back in the 40's, in fact the film has a distinct touch of the John Huston's about it. Oates makes Bennie totally believable despite the fact that he's on one of cinema's strangest journeys. He starts off being a loveable rogue type but ends about as far away from that as you can get, without it ever feeling forced. I guess it's that old adage about having a good script and good actors being half the battle. It would be hard to imagine Steve McQueen (another Peckinpah regular) as Bennie for instance. In fact I'm hard pressed to think of anyone other than Warren Oates in this role since he made it so much his own, in much the same way that Nicholson did with R.P. McMurphy. Peckinpah peppers the rest of the film with a cast of unknowns (to me anyway), Isela Vega as Bennie's woman Elita is the only person who comes close to the amount of screen time allowed Oates. It's very much him and Peckinpah that dominate the film. Plus we never even get to see the title character.

Every town looks really run down, but once we're out on the road we get to see the real beauty of Mexico, it looks totally lush. Normally road movies make quite a big deal out of their cars, think of Sailor's '66 Ford Thunderbird in Wild at Heart, or Bullitt's 1968 mustang fastback. Not here though, the cars in this film look shittier than any you have seen on screen before. Welcome to planet Peckinpah. Now if the perma-sweaty people or bloody action scenes aren't enough to let you know that you're watching a Peckinpah film, then the editing surely is. It's that great thing he does during action scenes, slowing the action down and filming it from multiple cameras so that you can see exactly what happens. Even his dodgier later films have these great moments.

That's not to say that this is only blood and gore slo-mo action, because the best moments in the film also happen to be the tenderest. My favourite is the five minutes we spend with Bennie and his gal making plans for the future under a tree in deepest Mexico, although the wonderful little scene in a shower comes a very close second. Of course being Peckinpah we get two girls having their clothes ripped off (one of them even gets a busted arm thrown in for free), and Kris Kristofferson attempting to rape Elita.

From the moment Bennie desecrates Garcia's grave things tumble downhill fast for him, and anyone with even just a basic knowledge of Peckinpah will know how the film has to end. It's structured in such a way that scenes mirror each other. Using the digging up of Alfredo Garcia's grave as the cutting off point. Once the grave has been opened the film essentially runs backwards, repeating each scene until it finishes right where it began. Things change so much for Bennie during his mission/journey (his whole life philosophy alters), which means the same set up takes on a different hue, such as that shower scene, or the meeting between the heavies and Bennie in their hotel room. It's a perfect structure in that way, something I'd first noticed in a Melville film.

I don't think 'bloody' Sam gets the props he deserves because of the controversy surrounding many of his films, coupled with the fact that he managed to overshadow them by being such a larger than life figure. If you love the man then you've seen this numerous times already and probably have drinking games to go with it. If you're not up to snuff with yr Peckinpah films however then this is as good a place as any to start. Be warned though, you'll want to see everything Peckinpah made after watching this. Yep even Convoy.

The Lady Vanishes (1938) - Alfred Hitchcock

It's easy to see why this film over almost all others from Alfred the great's British years, still manages to enrapture generation after generation. It has a certain charm to it that is lacking in a lot of the fat mans other work from this era. In fact I wouldn't be sticking my neck out too far, if I said that it's by far and away the best film he made before upping sticks and moving across the Atlantic.

Set in the fictional European country of Bandrika on the eve of WWII, a rag tag bunch of Europeans are homeward bound on a train. Amongst the various types making the journey are Michael Redgrave as Gilbert, who despite looking like a typical boys own type is actually quite an odd character, a sort of proto-beatnik if you will. Then there's Margaret Lockwood as Iris, who's also nicely unique being quite firey and independent. After all she's all the way out in the heart of Europe by herself, that sort of thing never normally happens in British films from this time, young women are almost always chaperoned by someone or other. Of course these two are bound to end up together by the end of the film, it's Hitchcock after all. As per usual in films of this ilk they don't hit it off immediately, and only really start to get it on once Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) goes missing.

The film actually kicks off with the whole cast being stranded in a hotel overnight due to heavy snow. It's an odd way to get the film rolling, and feels like an excuse for the ace writing team of Sidney Gilliat & Frank Launder, to fill some screen time with a succession of gags mainly centered around their most successful creations Charters and Caldicott. Who themselves would go on to appear in numerous films and even their own TV series, after the success of this film. However like so much else in this film, all is not what it seems. So the whimsical opening scene is actually pretty essential, since not only does it introduce us to the principal characters, but it contains information vital to understanding what transpires later in the film.

The pace of the film really picks up once the train journey begins and doesn't let up until the final beautifully framed shot. It's here that it really feels like a Hitchcock film, especially once Miss Froy goes missing. It's also at this point of the film that it becomes obvious that The Lady Vanishes isn't so much about bumbling Englishmen trying to find out the cricket result, or even old ladies disappearing, but is rather an allegory of the imminent war. People that once seemed perfectly normal and friendly, suddenly seem less so, and of course the Italian's are in league with the German's.

My favourite section of the The Lady Vanishes is towards the end of the film. One of the train cars has been uncoupled in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by the enemy. There's a shoot out, but it's not that that endears the scene to me. It's also where we find out just what the film is about, but it's not that either. It's more to do with the fact that the carriage represents Britain, which itself is of course cut off from mainland Europe. Britain would stand it's own ground against the threat from across the Channel, in much the same way that the Brits in the carriage pull together for the first time in the film (except Eric Todhunter, but I'll get to him in a minute), and stand up for what's right. As a piece of propaganda it's second to none, but the thing that makes this so good is that it's also great film making. You don't feel like you are being force fed a message like in so many other films made during the war years. Charters and Caldicott step up to the mark, as does almost everyone, except as I said Mr Todhunter (Cecil Parker), who strangely for someone who doesn't believe in violence carries a gun. Hmm.

Anyway I've rambled on plenty about this film, it's definitely essential viewing for anyone who loves Hitch, or for that matter films. Plus there is so much more to it than what I've written, a nun in heels, a wrapped up body, a wonderful scene using magicians props, lashings of romance and derring-do all filtered through the genius eye of Alfred Hitchcock. As I say essential stuff.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) - Robert Aldrich

It's noir, but not as we know it. Mickey Spillane's mega selling novel is given a complete overhaul by A.I. Bezzerides (the scribe behind Sirocco & Thieves Highway), to become a bonkers cross between the pulp noir of prime Sam Fuller, and a particularly bizarre Twilight Zone episode. Right from the off it's obvious that things aren't going to be straightforward. For a start there are those opening credits that roll up the screen instead of down.

The film opens with Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) picking up Christina (Cloris Leachman), a female hitch hiker on the run from the police. As it turns out she's seen or heard something she shouldn't have, and has a bunch of local heavies on her tail too, who quickly nab our pair and in a memorably nasty scene, torture Christina to death. Then they bundle our ill fated couple back into Hammer's car and roll them off a cliff. It's this that sets the plot in motion, as Hammer tries to figure out just what the heck is going on, who killed Christina and more importantly why?

Luckily Hammer is a private detective, so he knows how to grub around the seedier side of L.A. for info. Meeker is a fantastic Hammer, playing him in a deliciously nasty way, flying off the handle and dishing out backhanders as soon as anyone crosses him. He's one of cinema's great anti heroes, just look at the half smile that appears after he slings one guy down a set of steps, or the way he slams a mortician's fingers in a desk drawer. It's vicious powerful stuff, and must have been shocking at the time. I can imagine '55's other great bundle of anger Jim Stark loving Kiss Me Deadly at the cinema, maybe even seeing some of himself in Hammer.

The film rattles along at a healthy pace and keeps the viewer in the dark about what is going on, we only find things out as Hammer does. The dialogue is rugged hard boiled stuff, as are most of the characters. Aldrich makes great use of L.A.'s fleapit underbelly, shooting plenty of the exteriors in daytime. That's not to say that there isn't an abundance of long dark shadows, rest easy there's plenty of that, it's just not your typical back lot shoot. I love that shot where Hammer drives under this strange elevated tramway. Weirdsville. By the time the ending rolls up you'll have forgotten just how Hammer ended up in a beach house with an atomic mcguffin. That doesn't matter though since this is one of those 'it's not so much the story, as the journey' type affairs. A Maltese Falcon for the atomic age if you want.

Kiss Me Deadly has had a huge impact on cinema, you can see shards of Meeker's Hammer in Connery's Bond for instance, then there are the far more obvious references in Pulp Fiction (the contents of that case) and of course Repo Man which not only aped the Pandora's Box schtick but also half inched the reverse credits. The style of Kiss Me Deadly seems to have influenced greater directors too, it's there in Seijun Suzuki's & Jean-Pierre Melville's gangster flicks for example. What higher praise could one ask for than that, eh?

Art School Confidential (2006) - Terry Zwigoff

I was in a DVD store in Copenhagen yesterday glancing through the bargain bins (well you never know what might turn up), when something caught my eye. It was a sleeve illustration that was unmistakably by cartoonist Danny Clowes. Back in the day I used to adore Clowes, but for some reason he's dropped off my radar during the past fifteen years. In fact it was only when Ghost World was released that I even started to think about him again. Now for whatever reason Art School Confidential had totally escaped my attention, which is odd since just like Ghost World it was written by Clowes and directed by Terry Zwigoff. So me being me I took the chance, handed over my coins and watched it when I got home.

Along with the above talent is a cast of firm favourites such as John Malkovich, Jim Broadbent, Anjelica Huston and Steve Buscemi. So Art School Confidential should be a perfect 'quirky American indie comedy drama', the type of film that would appeal to Noah Baumbach fanboys. And for the first half of the film at least that's exactly what it is. Jerome (Max Minghella) makes the big leap from the suburbs to the big city to go to art collage. Jerome's class is populated with typical Clowes grotesques, the greasy haired girl and the pretentious white guy with a 'fro called Eno, being the two that spring to mind most readily. Best of all though is Malkovich as the art teacher who never made it. It all feels a little cliché ridden but being Zwigoff you go with it, after all he's not exactly Mr Hollywood.

Jerome has never been much of a hit with the ladies, so much so that he's still a virgin. So when he meets Audrey (Sophia Myles) he falls head over heels despite the fact that she's well out of his league, it's this storyline that carries us through the first half of the film. Which is all well and good, except that what at first feels like a unimportant sub plot (someone killing off students) soon takes over and becomes the focus for the rest of the film. It's an uncomfortable shift and Zwigoff doesn't manage to pull it off. Leaving Art School Confidential feeling unbalanced and a bit of a mish mash. Plus considering the film is 98 minutes long it's strange just how underdeveloped the characters are, it feels like there was a lot left on the cutting room floor. I don't want to make out that this film is awful, because it's far from that, I laughed a fair bit. It's just that, well…

Maybe it's the fact that the original story (which appeared in Eightball issue 7) was just a few pages of filler, and as such possibly shouldn't have been expanded to a feature length. Maybe it's the complacency that comes with success. Who knows what went wrong? All that matters is that this film is flawed, which is a shame since this really does feel like it should work, but that bolted on murder story really does distract from the original premiss. By the time it's all finished you'll just be happy to get the film out of the DVD player and back onto the shelf, hopefully it'll improve with a second viewing rather than becoming another dust collector. File under coulda been a contender.

Shock Corridor (1963) - Samuel Fuller

Sam Fuller at his pulpy best. Shot in a Cormanesque 10 days on just a handful of sets, on the surface this is an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents spun out to feature film length. The story is pretty simple - a patient (Slone) is murdered in a mental home, three patients witnessed said murder and Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) a journalist with an eye on wining a Pulitzer, feels that if he can smuggle himself into the hospital by acting crazy he can interview them and solve the crime. As I said it's Fuller at his pulpy best. It's never explained why the police haven't interviewed the witnesses, or even how Barrett knows about them in the first place, and let's not even start to question the fact that the testimonies of three mental patients would never stand up in court.

Of course all of the above is just what you see if you watch the film, but you don't have to look so very far under the surface to see that the mental hospital is actually post WWII America in microcosm, or at least the problems that America was going through at the time. So as Barrett moves his way through the film trying to solve the mystery, we get monologues about Communism, the after effects of war, life during the nuclear age and something that crops up in Sam's work fairly regularly - racism. In fact it's Trent played by Hari Rhodes who is the highlight of the cast for me. He gets some real choice lines and believes that he is the founder of the KKK, despite of course the fact that he's black. It's a champion idea and Fuller runs with it.

Of the rest of the cast Peter Breck as Johnny Barrett is massively over the top as characters sometimes are in Fuller's films, he's watchable but it's not such a surprise to see that he never really made a career in films and drifted back to TV work. I'd love to have seen Richard Widmark play Barrett instead, but that's just me I guess. Constance Towers as Cathy was also pretty good, she's the only female in the film really, but she gets quite a lot to do and manages to make her scenes memorable. It's the background actors that are the real joy of the film though, there's a fair bit of dribbling & screaming 'I'm fucking nuts me' type acting, but there are also some great little moments in there too.

Of course Sam Fuller was a journo before becoming a director, so I can imagine the story kind of wrote itself once the initial idea had been formed. I don't think the script is really where this film soars though, it's much more the way it's shot, all faces in half shadow, or just a strip of light across the eyes and noirish shadows in every background. Which isn't all the surprising when you see that it was lensed by the Godlike Stanley Cortez. There are shots towards the end of the film that look like they have been lifted by Kubrick for The Shining - which is after all another film about mental illness. Not important that, but interesting to me at least. As is the fact that there's always a crooked picture in the doctors offices, the film even begins with a picture being straightned. It's not too hard once you've seen the film to see what connection they have to the story, but it's a cool little touch.

You'll see the end coming a mile off, but that doesn't spoil the fun of the film. After all you get the 60's equivalent of the fight between Roddy Piper and Keith David from They Live, it just seems to go on forever. Oh and there's the best line of the film too - Nymphos!

Key Largo (1948) - John Huston

Edward G. Robinson going head to head with Bogart and Bacall in a noir directed and co written by John Huston. What's not to like? It's a real corker of a film that easily lives up to what you'd expect from it. Robinson is deliciously nasty as Johnny Rocco a gangster very much in the mold of those he spent his early years perfecting. Major Frank McCloud (Bogart) is at a loose end after WWII, and Nora (Bacall) is the widow of one of the men that died under him in Italy. So when Bogie turns up at the Key Largo hotel run by Bacall and her dead husbands Pa, to find it over run with Chicago's nastiest you know things aren't going to be smooth. Throw into that a subplot about some on the run native Americans and the police snooping around trying to find them, and just to up the ante there is the imminent arrival of the Miami mob. What more could you want for a tension filled hour and a half? Did someone say hurricane? Well there's one of them too.

This was the the third time round for Huston and Bogart, and the fourth and last film together for Bogie and Bacall. Edward G. gives Bogart's leading man status a run for it's money, the scene where he destroys Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor) is my favourite moment of the film. Just horrendous to watch. Despite having two huge actors like Bogart and Robinson, Huston manages to keep the film on an even keel. Robinson is kept out of sight for the first twenty minutes or so, when he does turn up he tears through the film in much the same way as the hurricane. The tension between him and Bogart builds slowly but surely throughout the film. The banter between them is as good as it gets in these type of affairs. Of course you know good will triumph, Bogie will get the girl and rid the world of Johnny Rocco, just as sure as you know James Bond won't die no matter what predicament he finds himself in.

The whole film is studio based, with just a smidgen of location second unit photography at the beginning just to set the scene. Everyone gets their close up, but as I said earlier it's the battle between the world weary Bogart and the O.G. of Robinson that's the real meat of the film. Key Largo builds and builds to the eventual show down between the two of them. It's one of those films that you never tire of watching, Huston was a man on fire during these years, knocking out classic after classic. This one (just like his others from this time) looks beautiful, just witness that last shot of Bacall opening the shutters and being engulfed in retina burning sunlight. Gorgeous.

Män som hatar kvinnor (2009) - Niels Arden Oplev

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo my arse, that makes this sound like it's going to be some kind of female action film, in the same vein as Tomb Raider, Resident Evil or even (shudder) Catwoman. No the original Swedish title hits the nail squarely on the head - Män som hatar kvinnor, or for those that can't use Google translate - Men Who Hate Women. Perfect title for a less than perfect (but good nonetheless) film.

A male journalist and a computer hacking tomboy find themselves thrown together to solve the mystery of a girl who went missing thirty years ago. That's the high and low of it. It's your above average murder mystery, the sort of thing Morse or maybe since it's a bit darker than that Cracker would have had a stab at back in the day. I say a bit darker with my tongue firmly lodged in my cheek though since this is pitch black in places, just witness the scene where Lisbeth (that aforementioned tomboy), boots (and I do mean boots) a dildo up the back passage of a rapist, after first tattooing the legend "I am a sadistic pig, a pervert, and a rapist" on his torso. As I said Men Who Hate Women is a perfect title.

So anyway what initially appears to be your usual run of the mill murder mystery quickly becomes something much better than the sum of it's parts. For a start it's set in the wilds of middle Sweden, a perfect landscape in which to set such a harsh tale. Then we have the crusading journo who it turns out is a damn good central character, full of flaws and a pretty normal bloke. The thing that really sets Män som hatar kvinnor apart from all the other run of the mill thrillers most though is Noomi Rapace's career making portrayal of Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth is a young pierced and tattooed cyber savvy woman, she's brash, rude and exudes hostility. You warm to her as the film progresses and that's down to just how good Rapace is. She also takes the traditional male role in the story, she saves the day and figures out the clue that sets the ball rolling in the right direction.

Okay so that's the good stuff, now for the bad. Well top of my list would be the fact that despite having a huge running time, not once do our duo end up going in the wrong direction. One clue leads to the next and each time they figure something out it's totally correct and they can continue on to solve the next piece of the puzzle, very Dan Brown that. I just expected more from this side of the story. Other than that though it's a well directed (nothing too flash), little film. It's a little disorientating at the start when the viewer is just thrown into the action, but that blows over quickly enough.

It's a shame I've heard such bad things about the other two films in this series, since I now want to watch them even though I get the feeling I won't like them very much. Still I try never to judge a film before I've seen it, unless it's yet another Nicolas Cage actioner. Or a big bucks Hollywood remake of course. Why do they do it? Still, however Fincher's reimagining (or remake or whatever the hell the marketing department comes up with), turns out, it won't be able to take anything away from this. Small mercies and all that.