The Girl in the Spider’s Web (2018)

They told me I’d have control over it but they lied. Fired from the National Security Agency, Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant) recruits infamous computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) to steal FireWall, a computer programme he has created that can access codes for nuclear weapons worldwide and he wants to disable it before it falls into the wrong hands. The download soon draws attention from an NSA agent Edwin Needham (Lakeith Stanfield) who traces the activity to Stockholm where he’s warned off interfering on arrival by Gabriella Grane (Synnove Macody Lund) deputy director of the Swedish Security Service. Further problems arise when Russian thugs take Lisbeth’s laptop and kidnap a math whiz who can make FireWall work. When Frans is murdered and his young autistic son August (Christopher Convery) is kidnapped Lisbeth must race against time to save the boy and recover the codes to avert disaster but a series of violent obstacles lead her to ask journalist ally Mikael Blomkvist (Sverrir Gudnason) for help and he understands that the roots of her problem lie within her own family and the sister Camilla (Sylvia Hoeks) whom she says is dead … I think you are scared of what would become of Mikael Blomkvist if there was no Lisabeth Salander. It’s not really about Mikael, actually, because it’s about family and the violence within and what Lisbeth left behind. Adapted by director Fede Álvarez, Steven Knight and Jay Basu from the eponymous novel by David Lagercrantz, a sequel to the Millennium Trilogy by the late Stieg Larsson, this forms a sequel of sorts to David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo whose audience reception apparently caused him to lose interest in continuing the series and there’s a total change in casting and emphasis. It starts with a flashback to sex abuse in Lisbeth’s family, with a pervert father and an abused sister who cannot reconcile Lisbeth’s crusade against men who harm women:  Lisbeth left her behind and Camilla has pursued her father’s career with Russian gangsters. The jeopardy with the kidnapping of August produces emotional resonance but everything else is rather by the numbers considering the depth of backstory and Foy’s performance, supplanting earrings and bodily markings with characterisation in what is a kind of origin story. The sisters’ face off (literally – involving S&M and stopping Lisbeth breathe) is one of the film’s highlights, another is a motorcycle escape across an icy Swedish lake and there’s a nice turnaround featuring techie expert Plague (Cameron Britton) working in cahoots with Edwin, but otherwise it’s quite a muted and unenergetic thriller with a rather silly plot, seemingly shot in Stockholm’s yellowy grey mornings at dawn, and not exactly an advert for the tourism business.  I bet you can’t wait to write a story about all this

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The Goonies (1985)

Kids suck.  A band of adventurous kids from the Goon Docks in Astoria Oregon take on the might of a property developing company which plans to destroy their home to build a country club. When the children discover an old pirate map in the attic of Mikey (Sean Astin) and Brandon (Josh Brolin) Walsh, the brothers and their friends Mouth (Corey Feldman), Data (Ke Huy Quan) and Chunk (Josh Cohen) follow it into an underground cavern in search of lost treasure but come up against plenty of dangerous obstacles along the way as a dangerous gang of criminals, the Fratellis, Mama (Anne Ramsay) and her sons (Robert Davi and Joey Pantoliano) have the treasure in their sights … You’re in the clouds – we are in a basement.  Steven Spielberg wrote the story and produced, Chris Columbus did the screenplay and Richard (Superman) Donner directed. You want pirates? Treasure? Storytelling? And kids trying to save their home? Here it is. The classic 80s kiddie film gets a re-release and if it has all these great things it also has flaws, principally the screamfest style that irritated me in the first place. Will they ever just … shut up?! There are too many kids too but if there were any fewer we wouldn’t have the girls and no awkward and possibly inappropriate romantic moments. Ramsay is her hatchet-faced best as the crooked mama and there is even a guy who looks like Stephen King (Keith Walker) cast as the father of Brolin and Astin because if there’s something this resembles in an homage assemblage it’s It – but also the Our Gang movies, Ealing comedy and Spielberg’s own oeuvre, particularly the Indiana Jones films (and Quan is a veteran of Temple of Doom) and kids on bikes, single moms and absent dads. The score by the prolific Dave Grusin (whom I more or less just about tolerate by and large) actually manages Steineresque heights in the piratey last sequences (there’s a clip from Captain Blood on the TV) and there is terrific production design by J. Michael Riva, the late grandson of screen goddess Marlene Dietrich. When Astin finally meets One-Eyed Willy – well, it works for me. It’s notable for a performance by NFL star John Matuszak as the Fratelli’s deformed brother who Cohen befriends. All well and good  – but does everyone absolutely positively have to be so loud?! I mean you, Josh Cohen! He’s just like his father

Kissing Candice (2017)

I don’t know if I’m dreaming or I’m awake. Lonely and bored small-town teen Candice (Ann Skelly) dreams of a more exciting life and is rescued from an epileptic episode by a stranger Jacob (Ryan Lincoln). Becoming obsessed with this young man who has materialised from her vivid dreams and into her real life, she finds herself being drawn in and entangled with a dangerous local gang he’s in which is led by Dermot (Conall Keating) whom her policeman father Donal (John Lynch) suspects when local boy Caleb (Jason Cullen) disappears… It was a lot safer here during the Troubles. Written by first-time director Northern Irish Aoife McArdle (who has a background in music videos and commercials) this Irish film has plenty of imagination and a hallucinatory style but is an untethered narrative with no real logic. The dreamy ambience is strained by the social realist setting on a grim border county housing estate where Candice’s fantasies provide an escape valve from the bleakness while her friendship with Martha (Caitriona Ennis) allows for some barbed humour. The writing unravels, careening between the real world gang plot and the abstract coming of age/mental health line, but it has a kind of sleepwalking atmosphere. Now the mad ones have the run of the place

The Tribes of Palos Verdes (2017)

I can’t believe we moved to a town where women wear green tennis dresses on purpose. When the Mason family moves to idyllic Palos Verdes, California, heart surgeon father, Phil (Justin Kirk) loves it but stay at home mom Sandy (Jennifer Garner) feels out of place among the fake tans and tennis skirts. Teenage daughter Medina (Maika Monroe), is a loner and outcast at school, while her charismatic twin brother Jim (Cody Fern) is effortlessly popular. When Medina and Jim take up surfing, they must prove their right to share the waves with the tough Bayboys gang that monopolises their stretch of beach but when their father announces that he’s going to shack up with his lover, their realtor Ava (Alicia Silverstone) and her son Adrian (Noah Silver), the family is left reeling without him …  They don’t own the waves. Adapted by Karen Croner from Joy Nicholson’s 1997 novel, this is a movie that wears its heart on its very gorgeous sleeve. It’s jarringly true about relationships, rivalries and the difficulties of growing up in a family centred on a depressive narcissistic mother (hands up if this is familiar…) whose fragile ecosystem falls apart when her husband’s philandering finally results in an irreparable schism. Her overdependence on Jim leads to tragedy. Australian actor Fern is tremendous as the outwardly social guy: he is overwhelmed by anxiety and vulnerability, stunningly exposed when Medina falls for Adrian. Monroe and Garner are tender and pensive, unhinged and dangerous, respectively, in this revelatory film about how people affect each other and lives fall apart without anyone caring about the impact of their selfishness. Moving? Hell yeah. But the satirical undertow strengthens the narrative with its depiction of the social setting, Medina’s voiceover and the upwardly mobile tropes hinting at the inevitable outcome. Star spotters will be interested to know that surf dude Chad is played by Mel Gibson’s son Milo; while another Aussie, Thomas Cocquerel plays his mate Mildew –  anyone looking for a new Bond? Look no further than this cast! Directed by Brendan Malloy and Emmett Malloy and beautifully shot by Giles Dunning. Everybody doesn’t get to go bonkers

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Oh, come on. If I’ve got to watch my language just because they let a few broads in, I’m going to quit. How the hell can you run a goddamn railroad without swearing?  In New York City, a criminal gang disguised as Groucho Marx and led by the ruthless Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), all boarding the NYC subway at different stations, hijacks a subway car and threatens to start shooting one passenger per minute unless they receive a million dollars in cash from the city within an hour.  They separate the front car from the remainder of the train. On the other end of the line, crusty veteran transit policeman Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau) has his hands full dealing with the mayor’s office and his hotheaded fellow cops, while also trying to deliver the ransom before the deadline expires and they start killing the 18 hostages … Look, I got my rights! This is my home! I just want a little peace and quiet. Now, just do me a favor, willya? Get the hell out of here!  Adapted by Peter Stone from the novel by John Godey (aka Morton Freedgood), this is one of the most sensational thrillers from the Seventies. Stone fillets and fries the story so that we have the bare bones, a race against time, two blistering characters in the shape of Mr Blue and Zachary, plus a cross-section of that fabled city’s great and good heightening the drama. With Martin Balsam as Green, Hector Elizondo as Grey and Earl Hindman as Brown, the fast-moving stage is set for internecine trouble. James Broderick as the conductor lends his customary gravitas while under pressure. Brilliantly written by Stone who was in his element here in the realm of identity, an ongoing theme throughout his oeuvre (he liked a pseudonym or three himself.) The action is perfectly paced and this literally doesn’t let up until the chaotic crew runs out of track. Screw the goddamn bastards. What do they expect for their thirty-five cents, to live forever? Made entirely without the assistance of the NYC Transit Authority and directed by Joseph Sargent with superlative photography by the great Owen Roizman and a stonking score by David Shire. Matthau is fantastic and his hangdog look was never so adeptly deployed. Shaw is equally good as the villain du jour.  Ladies and gentlemen, it might interest you to know that the City of New York has agreed to pay for your release

Where There’s a Will (1936)

A merry Christmas, girls and boys / I’ve brought you jewels, instead of toys / In spite of what you think / it seems to me I’ve earned a drink. A bumbling incompetent solicitor Benjamin Stubbins (Will Hay) is tricked by some American gangsters into helping them pull off a robbery …  Hardly the jewel in old school Brit comic (and pilot and astronomer…!) Hay’s crown (that’s Oh, Mr Porter!), this saw him team up with a good team but it’s a blink and you’ll miss it affair, aside from a few edits to produce visual payoffs on lines.  There’s fun with the office repartee between him and the truculent youth he employs (Graham Moffatt) and it’s an opportunity to see former Ziegfeld girl Gina Malo as a wisecracking moll. She spent the better part of her film career in operatic musicals in Britain.  It all ends as you think it might at a Christmas party and guess who’s Father Christmas? The screenplay is by Sidney Gilliat and Leslie Arliss with additions by Hay, director William Beaudine and Robert Edmunds.

Hell is a City (1960)

Do you know how long it is since you made love to me?  World-weary police inspector Harry Martineau (Stanley Baker) waits in Manchester for an escaped killer Don Starling (John Crawford) to return for his loot and when there’s a violent jailbreak followed by a street robbery which winds up with the murder of a young woman and her body is found dumped on the moors he thinks his man is on the loose…. This police procedural has a lot going for it, not least the location shooting in Manchester, Stanley Baker’s performance (did he ever give a bad one) and the obsession that drives him. Then there are the women – a louche bunch who don’t mind him at all but he’s got a nagging bored wife Judith (Maxine Audley) who’s basically frigid and wonders why he can’t call her every morning despite being up to his oxters in murder. As Martineau works through his contacts to find the gang and locate Starling he encounters the febrile women in Starling’s life –  randy barmaid Lucky Lusk (Vanda Godsell), unfaithful Chloe Hawkins (Billie Whitelaw) who’s married to Gus Hawkins (Donald Pleasence) who’s been robbed, and deaf and dumb Silver Steele (Sarah Branch) the granddaughter of antiques dealer Doug Savage (Joseph Tomelty) who may know more than he’s saying … This is an astonishingly powerful genre work, gaining traction from the toughness, the sadism and the brittle knowing dialogue which goes a long way to explaining the relations between thuggish men and dissatisfied women.  Martineau will say or do anything to stop the carnage. There’s a harrowing mano a mano fight to the near death on the rooftops of this drab city. Adapted from Maurice Procter’s novel by director Val Guest, who is responsible for so many great cult films of the era. There’s a great team here – Hammer producer Michael Carreras, composer Stanley Black and cinematographer Arthur Grant. You’ll shiver when the girl is left on the moors. Manchester. So much to answer for.

Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)

I should have read my horoscope this morning. Maindrian Pace (H.B. Halicki) is an insurance investigator by day and a professional car thief by night. When a South American drug lord offers Pace $400,000 to steal 48 cars in five days, the assignment seems like an easy week’s work for Pace and his gang until he’s sold out and one car – a 1973 Ford Mustang codenamed ‘Eleanor’ – remains. After he steals it in Long Beach, Calif., the police are suddenly on his tail, tipped off by his boss following a business dispute. Pace ends up in a desperate car chase across Southern California, from Long Beach to Carson… The chase lasts forty minutes of screen time and is justly famous, not least for wasting 93 vehicles through five cities. The plot is rudimentary and not very logical or well directed or acted. But it’s the feel for steel and chrome that raises this cult item above the usual muscle car poetry, rather like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos it’s when it’s just flesh on metal this makes most sense, disconnected shots of parts and wheels. Although the opening sequence – a mostly point of view series of shots from behind the steering wheel on the highway to a jazzy track (by Philip Kachaturian) with five pairs of tinted shades on the dash – is pretty awesome. The title gave rise to another film many years later but we won’t mention that. Written, produced and directed by the star, H.B. ‘Toby’ Halicki, who sadly died absurdly young at the age of 48 thirty years ago while carrying out a stunt for this film’s proposed sequel.

The Return of Frank James (1940)

I can’t talk without thinking, not being a lawyer. When Jesse James’s murderers the Ford Brothers are set free, his brother Frank (Henry Fonda) who’s been lying low farming, vows revenge and, accompanied by his gang, sets out to track them down. To fund his manhunt, he robs an express office and is subsequently wrongly accused of the clerk’s murder, but an aspiring newspaper reporter Eleanor Stone (Gene Tierney) is determined to find out the truth… Sam Hellman wrote a sequel to the earlier Henry King film and it was directed by renowned German director Fritz Lang, his first colour film and his first western. Notable for also being Tierney’s acting debut, she was appalled at her voice and thought she sounded like an angry Mickey Mouse:  she remedied the problem by developing a lifelong smoking habit. She plays nicely opposite Fonda who returns from the earlier film and has several great scenes, including the theatre episode when he’s watching a dramatic ‘re-enactment’ portray his brother’s murder by the Fords while he runs away – the Fords play themselves – and registers his disgust, drawing their attention to him and commencing a chase with Bob Ford (John Carradine). There’s a very funny scene when he and young brother Clem (wonderfully characterised by Jackie Cooper) imprison a nosy Pinkerton detective who’s alerted Stone to their true identities. When justice is finally seen to be done after a trial, Clem steps in to help and the final scene between them is very touching. Wonderfully staged and played, this is a consummate, straightforward revenge western, well told.

 

Topkapi (1964)

I’ve just had a great idea – something I’ve been looking for a long time… a very long time. Beautiful thief Elizabeth Lipp (Melina Mercouri) and her ex-lover, Swiss criminal genius Walter Harper (Maximilian Schell) put together a plan to steal an emerald-encrusted dagger from Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace with the assistance of larger than life Heath Robinson-type mechanical genius Cedric Page (Robert Morley). As part of their amateur acrobatic crew, they hire small-time con-man Anglo-Egyptian Arthur Simpson (Peter Ustinov) as their driver and fall guy. When the Turkish secret police capture Simpson at the border with a dodgy passport, they persuade him to spy on the gang, mistakenly believing that they’re Communist agents plotting an assassination… French-American director Jules Dassin had already perfected the heist movie with Rififi but everything here is played for laughs even if the scenes with the dubiously tranny charms of his wife Mercouri as the jewel-obsessed magpie are a little more on the forced side and overlong. The pitch is different from the Eric Ambler source novel The Light of Day where Simpson’s voice prevails but the heist itself has been enormously influential, viz. Mission:  Impossible and it was one of the top Sixties crime capers. Gilles Segal is terrific as the mute human fly whose super abilities charge the theft and Akim Tamiroff amusing as the cook. At this distance it all looks a little fake, rather like the team itself – and the recording parrot! Ustinov is very good as the stool pigeon whose intelligence notes to the police need decoding. At the end it seems this is all about a squawking bird. Dassin himself appears as the proprietor of the travelling show intended to transport the dagger across the Turkish border at the conclusion and there are some diversionary oily homoerotic wrestling scenes in an arena which should appeal to the Putinesque. Written by Monja Danischewsky.