Moana

2016, US, directed by Ron Clements and John Musker

Pete's Dragon

2016, US, directed by David Lowery

Moonlight

2016, US, directed by Barry Jenkins

La La Land

2016, US, directed by Damien Chazelle

The Young Offenders

2016, Ireland, directed by Peter Foott

A very funny first feature from Peter Foott that captures some of the same blend of comedy/affection of the British TV show/films The Inbetweeners infused with a very mild dose of the pathos of Adam and Paul, the film focuses on a pair of ne'er-do-wells who concoct an outlandishly naive get-rich-quick scheme. It's essentially a road movie, on bikes around West Cork rather than in cars across the American West, and while the script is often extremely amusing, it's the chemistry between the leads that really elevates the material; it's no surprise to discover that the film has spawned a TV series in an attempt to re-capture the magic.

The Accountant

2016, US, directed by Gavin O'Connor

Eyes in the Night

1942, US, directed by Fred Zinnemann

An early Zinnemann, featuring a blind detective and his duo of assistants -- one canine, one wisecracking 1940s character actor -- solving a very of-its-time wartime murder caper with a dash of Nazi spy intrigue. Despite the unusual detective trio, there's little memorable on offer here -- this looks and feels like a straightforward programmer.

Inferno

2016, US, directed by Ron Howard

Seen on an airplane journey, and awful on every level.

Tumultes

1932, France/Germany, directed by Robert Siodmak

The French-language version of Siodmak's Stürme der Leidenschaft, starring Charles Boyer rather than Emil Jannings. This is very early Siodmak, though it has some of the darkness and melancholy of the American films that brought him to greatest prominence in the 1940s, and it shows that he was already an assured hand with narrative. Visually, it's not overly distinctive, though several brief passages in the final third are more obviously Siodmakian. 

Jigsaw

1962, UK, directed by Val Guest

This is a contribution to the 2017 vintage of the Late Films Blogathon, hosted, as ever, by David Cairns at his wondrous blog Shadowplay. 

It's perhaps a bit cruel to suggest that Jigsaw belongs in Late Films company given that Val Guest was only halfway through his lengthy and eventful life when he filmed the picture, but his career often teetered on the edge and took an undeniable nosedive shortly afterward, so we'll say that this marked the beginning of the end, and a very long final phase it was. There's not much to redeem you once you're stuck helming Confessions of a Window Cleaner, though. 

Jigsaw is much more solid stuff, and like Guest's Hell is a City, made two years earlier, makes for a revealing glimpse into provincial Britain of the early 1960s; the films function as a fascinating north/south Manchester/Brighton diptych, with some compelling moments of local colour, perhaps especially in the earlier film. Structurally, Jigsaw is a fairly straightforward procedural, with Jack Warner playing the lead detective, and like many a later TV show the focus is resolutely on the professional rather than the personal lives of the cops -- there are brief mentions of offscreen lives, another contrast to Hell is a City, in which Stanley Baker's home life plays a critical role (interestingly, both films give prominent thanks to the local police forces, though the Mancunian force hardly benefits from Baker's portrayal). 

Warner is already well advanced in years here, well over the usual retirement age for the average copper -- not that it stopped him playing the lead in Dixon of Dock Green until 1976, a most remarkable feat given that the character was shot dead on his first appearance in 1950. The gravitas of age works rather well here -- unlike a younger detective, Warner has no need to get himself all hot and bothered over each and every lead, proceeding instead methodically through his inquiries, with Guest playing up shoe leather much more than forensics. He orchestrates a clear, compelling march through the exploration and elimination of leads, married to an intriguing depiction of the back-streets of Brighton and surrounds. We're not quite on the seamy side of the tracks, and yet the setting is always something just a little short of respectability, too -- as though the town's true colours come out in the off-season. 

The film also plays with the permissible when it comes to sex and violence in a way that feels of a slightly later era -- though Guest is careful to avoid anything truly gruesome, preferring to have our imaginations add the most ghoulish touches, and the point-of-view shots lack the truly terrorizing quality of, say, Peeping Tom. As David himself has written elsewhere, such modest pushing of the envelope was characteristic of Guest's work at the time, though there's no hint of the lurid on this occasion -- there's a dour, even sour, quality to the depiction of the sordid crime that has at least as much in common with the more domestic dramas of the era as it does with Guest's lively work for Hammer.

While Warner remained highly visible on television for another fifteen years, this was close to his swansong on the big screen, and I must confess that I've always found his bluffly English stolidity rather appealing -- there's not even the hint of a surprise in his depiction and yet it's low-key and effective, grounding the film in a sense of the real that complements the location shooting. The support is generally good, too -- Michael Goodliffe is very well-cast slightly lower down the class spectrum than we usually see him, which of course immediately makes him rather louche, as though he's done something vaguely disreputable and can't get better work than as a hoover salesman; the same might be said of the character played by John Barron, an actor who usually had a more military bearing, often as something of a martinet. There's also a glimpse of Ray Barrett, a key presence in many films of the Australian cinema revival of the 1970s and 1980s, although unlike Goodliffe and Barron he's entirely straight-laced here, in contrast to his most memorable roles back home.  As is sadly too often the case in films where women serve as victim, there are far less notable roles for female actors, though Guest does assign a key smaller part to his wife, Yolande Donlan, who turns the part into something far more memorable than the script probably deserves. 

The poster above seems to have little in common with the actual film -- I'd say the producers were disappointed that Guest delivered such a solid piece of work, not well-suited to the exploitation advertising that the poster suggests. For better or worse, Guest would give them what they wanted with most of the rest of his oeuvre...

Logan

2017, US, directed by James Mangold

It Always Rains On Sunday

1947, UK, directed by Robert Hamer

An atypically downbeat Ealing film, set over the course of the titular day with some brief flashbacks, and centered on a manhunt/criminal back on his home turf. The picture of British domesticity is very carefully and precisely undercut, with the crowded London streets seen to harbor a good deal more than they seem, while the East End’s market-sellers and Jewish businessmen (both legitimate and somewhat less legitimate) get an extended onscreen airing. Unlike in Hell is a City, which I watched immediately before this, there is a certain air of doomed romance, and while some commentators link that atmosphere to pre-war French films, I thought it equated at least as closely with some of the cynicism and sourness of immediate post-war French film.  

Hell is a City

1960, UK, directed by Val Guest

An excellent, unusual British crime film set in Manchester and centered on a manhunt/man-to-man battle of wits between a criminal back on his home turf and an experienced, hard-bitten detective (Stanley Baker), marred only by a score that is rather intrusive at times. There’s nothing romantic about the criminals here, and indeed there’s a brutality in the depiction of the central crime and its aftermath that I don’t usually associate with the time period. In addition to a wonderful gallery of mostly northern character actors, there are some very fine bits of location business: pubs, backstreets, and moors and, in one extended sequence, wasteland used for a game of coin-tossing of the kind we see some years later in Wake in Fright – oddly enough another film featuring Donald Pleasance. The picture was made with the cooperation of the Manchester police, notable mainly because Baker’s character is less than entirely positive, particularly with respect to his home life. 

Grand Central Murder

1942, US, directed by S. Sylvan Simon

A very efficient programmer that functions in some ways like an extended Agatha Christie unmasking: after some brisk early business, all of the suspects and several cops are gathered together to unravel a knotty mystery, with the lead detective in competition/collaboration with a wiseguy private dick/possible suspect (Van Heflin). There’s a breezy blend of tones -- murder, family dynamics, running jokes, banter -- that works very well, and the budget stretches to a good deal of location shooting that makes for an atmospheric and unusual backdrop. The camera movement is also quite creative in the cramped room where most of the action takes place, the camera roaming from one person to another as conversations evolve. 

13th

2016, US, directed by Ava DuVernay

Ava DuVernay’s documentary about, primarily, the ways in which black Americans have been systematically criminalized by the political/social system, with emphasis on the ways in which this has been used to subsequently disenfranchise vast swathes of the black population. It's a very effective assemblage of interviews, archival footage and, especially, statistical data, often depicted in imaginative and striking fashion, and underlines the ways in which the legacy of slavery is still very much with the United States when it comes to the daily lives and (restricted) political participation of the country's people of colour. The various talking heads are generally informative, and occasionally surprising, none more so than Newt Gingrich bluntly discussing the failures of policies past. 

I Am Not Your Negro

2016, US, directed by Raoul Peck

I had seen several of Raoul Peck’s earlier films, most notably his diptych focused on Patrice Lumumba, but his prior pictures, however interesting, didn't fully prepare me for the richness of this film, a remarkable work of both documentation and reconstruction that uses James Baldwin’s own notes for an unfinished project as its backbone, interspersed with carefully-selected footage of Baldwin himself. Entirely appropriately, the film is often deeply concerned with the ways in which filmed images were and are perceived by both blacks and whites, a theme to which Baldwin returned with some regularity in his writing (both fiction and non-fiction). If one or two moments are perhaps a little on the nose – images of the events in Ferguson, for instance – that may also say a good deal about how little has changed in the decades since Baldwin was writing, which lends his words a hauntingly prophetic air. As well as hearing Baldwin’s words quoted at length (his texts are spoken by Samuel L. Jackson), there is extensive archival footage of him in full flow, most notably from an appearance on the Dick Cavett show, in which Baldwin eviscerates a Yale professor, and there’s equally electrifying film of an appearance at an Oxford debate. The very idea that a late-night show might engage in discussion of that caliber is, of course, an impossibility in 2017. 

Madagascar

2005, US, directed by Tom McGrath and Eric Darnell

The boys loved this, and while it’s certainly not painful I found it had little of the unforced charm of something like Zootopia, and certainly lacked the multi-layered, multi-generational aspect of the best recent animated films. In other words, a middle-of-the-road animated feature that underlines how challenging it is to really knock it out of the park.

Last Cab to Darwin

2015, Australia, directed by Jeremy Sims

Thoroughly enjoyable road movie, with a very fine, and largely unsentimental, central performance from Michael Caton. There’s a good deal to savour in the depiction and deconstruction of various aspects of Aussie masculinity, which presumably comes from the original stage play, though the film version is in addition quite stunning from a visual perspective. The picture is also notable as a fairly benign depiction of the country’s vast interior, at least from the white perspective – there's little of the threatening aspect that is explored in other Aussie films dating back to the 1970s, while it provides glimpses of Aboriginal life that are quite rare in films not explicitly geared at such themes (it surely owes some debt to Backroads in that respect). 

Confirm or Deny

1941, US, directed by Archie Mayo

Very enjoyable Don Ameche-starrer set in Blitz-era London, and while it's obviously a "preparedness" picture for an American audience it's also rather well done, with a decent sense of time and place and some very enjoyable character turns (Eric Blore, Arthur Shields -- whose Irish accent isn't hard to detect); the emotional climax is well-earned, with Ameche doing a fine job with an unusual kind of soliloquy. The budget goes to good use, too -- there are several highly convincing scenes dealing with the aftermath of various bombardments. 

Gas-oil

1955, France, directed by Gilles Grangier

A fine Gabin/Gilles Grangier collaboration, with some dialogue from the pen of Michel Audiard (Gabin gets a few pearls, very nicely delivered). Gabin is a truck driver -- as in the following year's much bleaker Des gens sans importance -- who inadvertently comes to the attention of some gangland figures, with Jeanne Moreau as his love interest. Gabin's role hearkens back to some of his most iconic working-man parts and it's not hard to see his character as an evolution of that of La Belle équipe, while the overall picture of the trucker's life is filled with enjoyable vignettes of working class/small town life in central France. 

Train to Busan

2016, South Korea, directed by Yeon Sang-ho

Korean genre fare, occasionally quite inventive and witty, though ultimately not as distinctive as I had hoped even if it's a decent addition to the voluminous recent series of zombie entries. Still, it makes intelligent use of its effects budget in combination with some decent storytelling skills. Based purely on the content of the film, my sense is that Korean audiences might be more comfortable with syrupy tones, which seemed more amusing to a Western audience in the dramatic/action context – watching it with a US cinema audience the slightly nervous laughter tended to break up the overall effect. 

Ixcanul

2015, Guatemala, directed by Jayro Bustamante

A striking film from Guatemala that blends an often blunt, earthy realism with occasional hints of something more mystical. Set among a group of indigenous people scraping together a life on the side of a volcano, it reminded me at times of several African films in its blend of domestic detail and spirituality (except with a good deal more sexual frankness) -- parts of Idrissa Ouédraogo's early films, as well, of course, as those of Ousmane Sembène, though with a very different visual approach than the Senegalese director.

La Prochaine fois je viserai le coeur

2014, France, directed by Cédric Anger

Directed by former Cahiers critic Cédric Anger, the film deals with a bizarre and brutal true-life episode in the 1970s in which a series of murders/assaults was committed by a police officer whose role on the investigation team caused delays and misdirection in bringing events to a conclusion. Guillaume Canet plays the lead, and he's pretty good in an absolutely buttoned-down role, while the northeastern setting is very well-used, echoing, at times, Bruno Dumont’s earlier films. One of the French reviews I read suggested it had something of Zodiac about it, which whatever the film's other characteristics isn't true at all in plot terms -- although we follow the real-life chronology this isn't a procedural, rather a character study, albeit one that doesn't suggest much at all about the character's psychology, simply presenting him as a blank slate.

The Prisoner of Zenda

1937, US, directed by John Cromwell

While Selznick’s high-end picture is a ripping yarn in the best tradition of the 1930s studios, I had forgotten the extent to which this is rather more of a drama/romance than a straight swashbuckler -- there are some wonderfully odious villains, and Ronald Colman, C. Aubrey Smith and David Niven all look like they had loads of fun on set, but the action – in stunt terms at least – is compressed into the final ten minutes or so, with a good deal of fairly complicated back and forth in the lead in. As tales set in invented Mitteleuropa locations go, I still prefer the more comically-inclined TheLady Vanishes, or even Night Train to Munich...

Ant-Man

2015, US, directed by Peyton Reed

After the large-scale destruction of the various other Marvel movies we consumed recently, Ant-Man was refreshingly smaller in scale -- and while the film shows some development executive fingerprints it still retains at least some of the less conformist approach taken by its original script team. Whatever their origins, there are also several highly enjoyable set-pieces, notably those that play with onscreen/offscreen narration, as well as a sense that there is at least a superficial level of character development.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

2015, US, directed by Joss Whedon

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

2014, US, directed by Anthony & Joe Russo

Captain America: Civil War

2016, US, directed by Anthony & Joe Russo

Lost in La Mancha

2002, UK/USA, directed by Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe

One of those films where you wonder at the sheer volume of self-incriminating material committed to tape/film at the time -- the filmmaking process here has a kind of dual aspect, with the actual film accompanied by a filmed reflection on that film as it evolves or, in this case, fails to evolve. The sense of an unraveling dream is quite unnerving, though it's never entirely clear exactly how the plug gets pulled -- it just all somehow falls apart, just as it all somehow seemed to come together at the beginning with a variety of financiers and other players. Gilliam, for his part, is remarkably sanguine most of the time -- deeply committed to his vision, and infectiously enthused by the few moments they do manage to commit to celluloid, but perhaps naive that the whole thing could have worked at all.

Inside Out

2016, US, directed by Pete Docter (co-directed by Ronnie del Carmen)

Sing Street

2016, Ireland, directed by John Carney

Ghostbusters

2016, US, directed by Paul Feig

Le Chien jaune

1932, France, directed by Jean Tarride

Tarride's Maigret appearing the same year as Renoir's adaptation of La Nuit du carrefour, and the year before Duvivier's very fine La Tête d'un homme, and while it's not at the level of either of those it's certainly an interesting screen version of one of the most atmospheric and characteristic of all Maigret books -- the character himself had first appeared in print only the previous year, though given Simenon's prolific rate of production Maigret had rapidly become a ubiquitous figure in popular culture. The novel and film are set in Concarneau, in the rainy, desolate off-season, and the film makes excellent use of some limited location filming to add authenticity -- just as Chabrol did a half-century later for a non-Maigret Simenon adaptation. The film is a generally faithful adaptation of the source novel, and as much an examination of the local bourgeoisie as it is a murder mystery. Abel Tarride, the director's father, plays Maigret, though there's little of great note in his portrayal; Robert Le Vigan plays one of the local notables and, as so often, lingers much longer in the memory.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

2016, US, directed by Jake Szymanski

Just awful: even being trapped on a plane for seven hours was a poor excuse for a viewing choice like this.

Trouble with the Curve

2012, US, directed by Robert Lorenz

A counterpoint to Moneyball, valorizing the scout above the number, though its unsubtle in the extreme in both storytelling and characterization, and doesn't do much with a solid cast -- though the actors are professional enough to deliver right down the middle.

Big

1988, US, directed by Penny Marshall

As charming as it was on release, with Hanks' sweet, wonderfully physical performance the absolute center of the film. Also very much of its era, with eye-popping shoulder pads and New York a haven of crime -- though some things, notably the depiction of grasping business types, never go out of style.

The Nice Guys

2016, US, directed by Shane Black

Very much enjoyed this, for the performances by the principals and also for the sense that Shane Black finally managed to get down on film what he'd been trying to capture since Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Crowe and Gosling make for a remarkably well-matched pair, and Gosling's comic timing is very fine at times.

Dark Passage

1947, US, directed by Delmer Daves

The only Bogart-Bacall I hadn't seen, though it's less notable for that pairing for my money, lacking most of the crackle of their other appearances together. It's a good deal more interesting for the noir elements, and the sense of a deepening nightmare as the bodies pile up. Overall, though, I found it less satisfying than its parts: several sequences to be treasured, and a number of wonderful character turns, but somehow the final product lacked that ineffable magic. 

The Big Combo

1955, US, directed by Joseph H. Lewis

I haven't seen much of Joseph H. Lewis's output beyond Gun Crazy, but this was terrific -- gritty, and again perhaps a touch ahead of its time in terms of the depiction of morally compromised characters, though it's also very much a product of the noir era, and those characters feel very familiar from popular literature of the period. 

The Hitch-Hiker

1953, US, directed by Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino's terrifically sweaty, creative little thriller -- with the kind of tension of which Clouzot might have been proud, or indeed to which the French director owes a debt. The unusual setting in dusty Mexican backwaters adds a striking layer of authenticity, and the positive portrayal of Mexico and Mexican policemen is unusual, especially for the time period. The finale on the docks also provided a fine counterpoint to the car-bound earlier going.

Murder By Contract

1958, US, directed by Irving Lerner

A compelling picture with which I was completely unfamiliar to this point: an existential hit man makes a name for himself and then hesitates when his next, highly lucrative target turns out to be someone quite different to what he imagined -- though before that occurs, there's an extended, often comic, sequence that comes across as a kind of Waiting for Godot-in-LA. The photography, by Lucien Ballard, is terrific, and it feels like a film a good decade or more ahead of its time in terms of the approach to the material (while also functioning very effectively as a thriller). 

Seven Men From Now

1956, US, directed by Budd Boetticher

A well-crafted Western from Boetticher, like all those I've seen from the director -- generally lean, packing a great deal in, and raising some interesting moral questions. Randolph Scott is a good deal more interesting here than in most of his more generic fare, and the interplay between Scott and Lee Marvin is especially good. There's plenty of work for the bad guy supporting character crew too; they get to glower and growl more than usual. 

The Arsenal Stadium Mystery

1939, UK, directed by Thorold Dickinson

An interesting pre-war British entry, wherein the central murder is vaguely amusing, very much in keeping with the Golden Age novels of the period. The football backdrop, rare for the time, adds an element of intrigue, particularly since the actual footage came from Arsenal's last pre-war match. Leslie Banks is very good as both lead detective and comic relief, and as a procedural it's rather effective and, in that sense, a little before its time -- the details of forensic practice seem to be taken quite seriously, for instance, years and an ocean away from something like He Walked By Night. 

La Balance

1982, France, directed by Bob Swaim

A solid French policier, pretty good as a depiction of the gangster milieu of Belleville in the early 1980s but most notable for the strong performances by Nathalie Baye, Philippe Léotard, and Richard Berry, all of them playing compromised characters in one way or another (there's an interesting back story, too, in that Baye and Léotard had just ended a long relationship). However, I didn't find the direction to be inspired: Swaim films in pretty flat fashion at times, and his sense of rhythm that comes and goes, but the climactic gun battle is staged with a good deal of panache. 

The Wild Bunch

1969, US, directed by Sam Peckinpah

I finally had the opportunity to see this on the big screen, in glorious 70mm -- such that every exploding blood pouch gets the epic treatment. Although there are many memorable moments, Robert Ryan is mesmerizing as an unusually ambiguous hero, the kind of conflicted character whose checkered past would rapidly become more familiar in the 1970s. While the blood-soaked finale of this uncompromising film lodges deeply in the memory, I'd completely forgotten the fine interplay between William Holden/Warren Oates/Ernest Borgnine. It's both a resolutely male film and a rough-edged critique of American masculinity -- almost a farewell, too, to a much-beloved genre, which still turned out to have a little life in it. 

Toy Story

1995, US, directed by John Lasseter

I hadn't seen this since its release, but it turned out to be a perfect Friday-night outing with the boys -- as charming and energetic as I remembered, and with the scary bits judged just right for the younger set. It's also brief -- I note that the running time creeps up with each of the subsequent installments.

So Long At the Fair

1950, UK, directed by Terence Fisher and Anthony Darnborough

A film that might pair rather well with Gaslight, as a young woman visiting Paris in 1889 becomes embroiled in what seems like an utterly absurd situation where her brother and his entire hotel room appear to have disappeared. Dirk Bogarde's not at his best here, but the set-up is rather well-handled, and there's a real frisson of strangeness at times. 

Shaun the Sheep

2015, UK, directed by Richard Starzak & Mark Burton

As good as anything Aardman as produced, with their usual spectacular attention to detail -- on every level, from the physical world to the numerous jokes (some of them intended more for accompanying adults). The Aardman films sometimes occupy a world slightly out of time, and the stylisation here often reflects that -- the urban backdrops, the vehicles -- but in terms of electronic communication it's absolutely up-to-the-minute, creating an enjoyable off-kilter sense of time.

No Abras Nunca Esa Puerta

1952, Argentina, directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen

Based on Cornell Woolrich again, writing as William Irish, and this time adapted in Argentina -- a country previously unknown to me as a purveyor of noir pictures. The same director made another Woolrich adaptation around the same time and indeed the original intention was apparently to do a triptych but they expanded the third story leaving this film with just two entries, both very fine: the camerawork is spectacular at times, showing that noir put down deep roots elsewhere, too, and both stories have a strong twist in the tail. 

The Boys from Fengkuei

1983, Taiwan, directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien

Very much a film where we see Hou's style coming into being, in particular with respect to the measured pace and the careful framing -- especially in the urban sequences, where the use of doorways (and other openings) or balconies foreshadows his later use of space. However, he also manages to capture a good deal of the vibrancy -- both good and bad -- of urban life: the film is certainly not stately in its progression. The main distraction is a classical soundtrack that's without subtlety -- very obvious choices, though apparently this is a step up from the film's original pop backing.