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Ambush

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Aaron Eckhart as General Drummond

Starring Aaron Eckhart, the blurbs for Ambush proclaim. Also starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, they trumpet. Not true, either of them. Connor Paolo is in fact the star of this potentially rather good Vietnam war movie hobbled by a plot lacking sparkle. A Vietnam war movie? In the 2020s? A boldly unfashionable move by Mark Burman, who directs, co-writes and produces, so presumably made the phone call that brought Eckhart and Meyers on board. Eckhart, in what is probably a “one and done” deal in terms of days worked, plays a general ordering a team of rookie engineers into Vietcong tunnels to retrieve a vital document containing the names of agents working for the … Read more

On the Run

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Chui Pai and Heung Ming aim guns towards the camera

A clever, stylish and refreshingly inappropriate Hong Kong thriller from 1988, On the Run throws a beta-male together with the alpha contract killer who killed his wife and then stands back to ask whether they could ever have a relationship – the killer is a female, before you ask, this is 1988 after all. It’s the odd plot turns, the beautifully choreographed fights and the high-style 1980s Hong Kong looks that are the selling point here. Fighting to get himself ahead of all that is Yuen Biao as decent cop Heung Ming, a man pitied by his colleagues because his wife, a minxy homicide squad somebody, has left him and is now playing … Read more

The Death of Robin Hood

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Robin lets loose an arrow

Can Robin Hood even be killed? Writer/director Michael Sarnoski thinks he can, and approaches the immortal figure of legend from two different directions in The Death of Robin Hood. Errol Flynn, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe and Daffy Duck (yes, really), stand back. First up, a dark, wind-blasted and grungy cavalcade of extreme bloodletting. In Sarnoski’s telling, the hero of ballad and folk tale is demythologised and presented as an old yet vicious killer. Stow all memory of Errol Flynn in wrinkled tights of Lincoln Green, Hugh Jackman’s grizzled, white-haired Robin is already despatching a young woman in the film’s first five minutes, but not before informing her that the old stories about brave … Read more

His Kind of Woman

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Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell look at each other

Witty, pretty, slick and desperately all over the place, His Kind of Woman throws Jane Russell and Robert Mitchum together for an adventure down Mexico way. Starting out as noir, it goes into a strange, almost existential holding pattern for its curiously satisfying central section before eventually deciding on a comedy finish, helped along by Vincent Price’s amiable buffoonery. Mitchum plays Dan Milner, a teetotal (clearly an industry joke) gambler on his uppers who’s persuaded by some heavies to go to Mexico and await further orders. In exchange Milner will have his debts wiped out and get a nice payout on top. What Milner doesn’t know is that he’s been chosen for the … Read more

Wasteman

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Taylor and Dee face to face

Wasteman is a particularly ingenious prison drama, though in many respects it ticks the usual boxes: hyper-masculinity, bullying, drugs, a top dog bossing the show with the tacit assent of the authorities, a rookie prisoner falling foul of said top dog. And this being the 21st century, drones and phones very important. Since the high concept seems preordained, the emphasis on detail is massively important. And casting is crucial – think of Jack O’Connell, remarkable in Starred Up. Or the equally important Tahar Rahim in A Prophet. And Shawshank, of course. Here there are really only five roles that matter. David Jonsson as Taylor, a meek prisoner on the last leg of a … Read more

The Lady Vanishes

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May Witty as Miss Froy

Hitchcock and trains, Hitchcock and trains – even the words seem to run on rails. The Lady Vanishes is the British director’s take on the 1930s craze for the murder mystery on the move. And though Hitchcock could have lent on Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express – published in 1933 to instant acclaim – he was in fact working from Ethel Lina White’s The Wheel Spins, a 1936 best-seller from a fellow British writer who hasn’t weathered as well. But White has something here – the notion of gaslighting. The Wheel Spins turns on the determination of its central character to resist the dominant narrative while everyone around her, for various … Read more

Minions & Monsters

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One-eyed James behind a movie camera

You know a film’s struggled a bit when the end credits are the best bit of it. Minions & Monsters is a case in point, a collection of individually brilliant scenes in search of a plot, exemplified by those end credits, which are the one-damn-thing situation distilled. Does anyone not know who the Minions are? This is the third outing for the little yellow animated servants away from their master, despicable supervillain Gru, whose own Despicable Me franchise has racked up four iterations, all of them also featuring the Minions. So that’s seven movies in all. Remarkably, all of the Minion movies have been written by Brian Lynch, and Pierre Coffin has directed … Read more

Number Seventeen

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Vagrant Ben and cop Barton

So here’s Number Seventeen, a Hitchcock film that’s almost never mentioned when Hitchcock is up for discussion. “A disaster,” is how the man himself described it, having been forced into directing it by his studio. But then who remembers Rich and Strange (great title) which came before, or Waltzes from Vienna, which came after? In the silent era Hitchcock had already hit his stride with The Lodger, but when the talkies came in it’s as if he had to re-learn everything. By 1934 and The Man Who Knew Too Much, the process was complete. But here, in 1932, he’s only halfway there. That said, there’s lots of good stuff here. The opener, for … Read more

Supergirl

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Supergirl and Ruthye

Green kryptonite at the box office, Supergirl is standard superhero fare juiced with Deadpool-style wit and smarts. Well, that’s the intention. In fact, the wit is a bit strained and the smarts are a touch familiar. Everyone is trying just a bit too hard. Put it down to nerves. DC realised their DC Extended Universe (2013’s Man of Steel to 2023’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom) had lost whatever mojo it had ever had and so decided to reboot it as the more streamlined DC Universe – “Extended” was possibly a hostage to fortune. As part of all that, out went Sasha Calle, a perfectly fine Supergirl in The Flash, and in came … Read more

The Trouble with Harry

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Little Arnie, with his toy gun, finds the body

A wag rather than a humourist, Alfred Hitchcock generally ran into trouble when he tried to make a funny film. Case in point: The Trouble with Harry, an arch confection notable for two things: it was the first time Hitchcock worked with composer Bernard Herrmann; and was also Shirley MacLaine’s screen debut. There are two conceits at work in this movie. Number one is the body that won’t stay buried. Number two is the nonchalance of the citizens of a white-picket American town who stumble across it, one way or another. That starts with Arnie, a boy roaming the countryside near his home who hears a commotion and a shot and then discovers … Read more