Neatly Arranged Rubbish

Feathers in the Wind (Song Il-Gon, South Korea, 2004)

Struggling to write his new screenplay, movie director Jang (Jang Hyun-sang) arrives on a remote island and books into a deserted motel run by the young and unfailingly cheerful Lee (Lee So-yeon). But what’s really prompted Jang’s arrival is that 10 years earlier he and his musician girlfriend stayed on the same island together and agreed to reunite there a … Read the rest

Yakuza Graveyard (Kinji Fukasaku, Japan, 1976)

Tough cop Kuroiwa (Tetsuya Watari) finds his investigations into a Yakuza group complicated by corrupt superiors and his own attraction toward gangster’s wife Keiko (Meiko Kaji). But after he befriends Iwata (Tatsuo Umemiya) – the man lined up to take control of Keiko’s gang – Iwata is murdered while Kuroiwa finds himself suspended, the result of the Chief of Police … Read the rest

One Cut of the Dead (Yuya Nakaizumi, Shinichiro Ueda, Japan, 2017)

A film crew shooting a low-budget zombie pic in an abandoned WW2 facility suddenly come under attack from real zombies.

Cleverly conceived movie-within-a-movie which kicks off with the zombie movie proper before flashing back to show how the crew and project came together and then reruns the whole movie again. This time showing us all the behind-the-scenes shenanigans as the … Read the rest

Devotion to Railway (Minoru Yamada, Japan, 1960)

After four years of work youthful train attendant Yajima (Katsuo Nakamura) sees no value in his job and wants to quit so he can marry girlfriend Kimie (Yoshiko Sakuma). She, however, thinks that job security is more important than a hasty marriage. So Kimie boards the Sakura – the Nagasaki bound express Yajima’s been assigned to – in order to … Read the rest

Cold Eyes (Jo Ui-seok, Kim Byung-seo, South Korea, 2015)

Gifted with exceptional powers of memory and observation, new recruit Ha (Han Hyo-joo) joins a hi-tech surveillance unit known as The Zoo whose agents are all named after animals. Codenamed Piglet and plunged into the hunt for a gang of bank robbers Ha immediately runs afoul of her tough boss Chief Hwang (Sol Kyung-gu) after taking direct action in contravention … Read the rest

The Devil’s Temple, Kenji Misumi, Japan, 1969)

In the middle ages nobleman turned bandit Taro (Shintaro Katsu) and his nymphet companion Aizen (Michiyo Aratama) seek refuge in an abandoned Buddhist temple in the mountains. When Taro’s ex-wife Kaede (Hideko Takamine) also arrives and tries unsuccessfully to win Taro back a bitter six month stand off ensues until a Buddhist priest (Kei Sato) turns up seeking shelter. Taro … Read the rest

When The Tenth Month Comes (Dang Nhat Minh, Vietnam, 1984)

In a small village housewife Duyen (Le Van) receives a letter informing her that her husband has died in battle. Unable to accept the truth Duyen persuades local poet Khang to write a letter in her husband’s name reassuring her infant son and ailing father-in-law that all is well. But after Khang reluctantly agrees to write further letters a personal … Read the rest

Fangs Of The Cobra (Sun Chung, Hong Kong, 1977)

Tang (Hua Tsung) returns home to take over his father’s farm and falls in love with the pretty Ah Fen (Yao Hsia). When the villainous Brother Hu (Hung Wei) attempts to ensnare Tang in the clutches of his glamourous but devious girlfriend Cousin Man-ling (Danna) he only succeeds in drawing Tang and Ah Fen even closer together. With marriage in … Read the rest

A Mongolia Tale (Fei Xie, China, 1995)

Bayinbulag (Ganghulag) and Somiya (Bayirtcya), two children from different families, grow up together under their adoptive Grandmother (Dalarsurong) in a Yurt on the Mongolian grasslands. At his Grandmother’s urging Bayinbulag agrees to marry Somiya but his education keeps him away from home for three years and when he returns it’s to discover that Somiya has become pregnant by the local … Read the rest

Execution In Autumn (Lee Hsing, Taiwan, 1972)

In an era when executions are only carried out in autumn by royal decree Gang Pei (Ou Wei), a spoiled and only son, is sentenced to death for murder. With autumn a year away and horrified at the realisation that Pei’s death means her family will have no male heir his doting grandmother Liao (Bi Hui Fu) arranges to have … Read the rest

Special Delivery (Park Dae-min, South Korea, 2022)

Ace girl driver Eun-ha (Park So-dam) accepts a job to pick up a father and his infant son who unknown to her are on the run from gangsters. But when Dad is killed Eun-ha finds herself saddled with the kid and hotly pursued by a corrupt cop, his brutally sadistic enforcer and South Korea’s intelligence agency, the latter of whom know a few things about Eun-ha’s mysterious past.

A simple and enjoyable action thriller with an agreeable lead, nasty villains, effective car chases (including a crackerjack opening that completely sells you on Eun-ha’s ability as a formidable and unusually observant street racer able to use her vehicle and its surroundings in ways her male rivals can’t match) and a briskly told story that fair zips through its 108 min runtime. I liked the scrappy friendship between Eun-ha and her old boss at the junkyard she works out of and her growing bond with the infant boy she protects proves engaging without being overly sentimental.

As standard with South Korean cinema this kid gets quite a tough time of it what with losing his Dad, finding out he has a bar club floozy of a mother who won’t admit to knowing him and getting viciously knocked around by the bad guys. All of this is effective in raising the dramatic stakes and when the villains trace our mismatched pair back to their junkyard home and wreak bloody havoc on Eun-ha’s friends it results in one thumpingly visceral showdown as our enraged heroine shows just how lethal a screwdriver can be in the right hands.

Still, despite the carnage it all ends happily for those we most care about. This is not a movie that breaks any new ground (and it’s not on the same level as 2021’s splendid Mission Possible) but by the same token it doesn’t make any major missteps either and after a run of recent South Korean action movies that left me unsatisfied – hang your head in shame Extreme Job, Midnight and Midnight Runners – I’m grateful for that.

Money Movers (Bruce Beresford, Australia, 1978)

Money Movers is really good, really violent pulp with a cast of sweaty, macho Aussie actors in their prime and an above average script by writer/director Bruce Beresford that just doesn’t go quite the way you expect. So many of the films in this genre concentrate on the mechanics of the heist but this is more concerned with the unexpected developments that threaten to blow a painstakingly planned operation apart.

A completely unrelated robbery that triggers an internal investigation by the security company as the bad guys gear up to strike, a criminal kingpin who wants in and doesn’t mind cutting off a few body parts in order to get his way, the dawning suspicion of an honest armoured truck driver that something isn’t right about his fellow drivers – director Bruce Beresford approaches all this from an oblique angle.

Rather than laying everything out at once he allows these events to simmer in a stew of crossed purposes and uncertain loyalties before bringing things to the boil in a truly savage climax. The violence here is brutally old school. None of this slow motion or Bourne-style fast cutting but up close and wince inducing fights in which the victims are punched, headbutted and kicked into submission.

That’s when car doors, concrete walls, sawn off shotguns and the ever reliable toe cutters aren’t also being pressed into service. And as an aside I think this film has more people being kicked in the nuts than any other movie I’ve seen (must be an Aussie thing). At any rate, damn good stuff.

Terrarium Locker Room (Rika Katsu, Japan, 2020)

A shy office worker named Momo (Micau Kamura) grows a terrarium in her locker. For Momo it’s a source of secret pride and happiness in an environment where she’s ignored or taken for granted.

Plants as metaphor for the human spirit, that’s what we have in this wise and charming 26 minute short film in which Momo’s encounter with a handyman who offers advice on how to make her plants grow while she fends off the unwanted attentions of an overbearing office Romeo result in both terrarium and owner flourishing. Sweet and charming stuff.

Peninsula (Yeon Sang-ho, South Korea, 2020)

The sequel to Train to Busan. In Hong Kong destitute survivors of a zombie outbreak that has ravaged South Korea agree to a mission offered them by local gangsters to return to the country to locate and collect millions in banknotes with the promise of a share in the proceeds if they survive.

A slick and entertaining zombie adventure with Gang Dong-won’s soldier, Lee Jung-hyun’s assault rifle toting mom and her two likable kids, all teaming up to rescue the cash after it falls into the hands of a former military unit whose members have gone berserk. Director Sang-ho orchestrates plenty of exciting action sequences within a post-apocalyptic Seoul.

I especially liked the one in which Dong-won is rescued by Jung-hyun’s kids from certain death on the street and there follows a madly speeded up chase through the city’s ruins as her teenage daughter turns the car into a whirling battering ram against the oncoming zombie hordes. The film walks a skilful line in sequences like this, exaggerating the pace and velocity of the action with its zombie bodies pinwheeling and ricocheting off the speeding vehicle, but stopping just short of the point where it would feel like you’re watching a cartoon.

Nothing wrong with the performances either. I thought Lee Jung-hyun as the mother was beautiful, capable and achingly vulnerable all at once (and with none of the condescending-to-men attitude which now seems par for the course from heroines in Hollywood action movies) while Dong-won is convincing as the brave but troubled warrior. Yet neither character feels much developed beyond the requirements of the plot.

That’s not to say you don’t have some interest in them but this is not on the same level – narratively or emotionally – as Train to Busan. No one here proves as compulsively watchable as Ma Dong-seok’s blue collar worker fighting to protect his pregnant wife and although there’s another cute kid on show she does not steal our heart in the way Kim Su-an’s brilliant performance in Train to Busan did.

Although good people die along the way their deaths don’t carry sufficient emotional weight and that’s a failure in the writing. And just considered in story terms, a mission about recovering some money is never going to compare to a pitched battle for survival between humans and ravening zombie hordes in the claustrophobic confines of a speeding train.

All that said, Peninsula is well paced, never boring and despite the inevitable echoes of other post-apocalypse/zombie films (the rogue army unit for example feels straight out of Romero’s Day of the Dead) the uneasy sense that either Dong-won’s military veteran or the Mom might go down in one of those shock moments we’ve come to expect from this kind of fare means we’re kept constantly on our toes.

I don’t mind admitting Sang-ho really got me with a climax that plays almost unwatchably grim until suddenly pivoting into the light with both a rousing turn of events and an unexpectedly resonant acknowledgment of the film’s theme, that even after a zombie apocalypse there really is no place like home.

A Killer’s Key (Kazuo Mori, Japan, 1967)

Raizo Ichikawa returns as the assassin with a needle in this sequel to A Certain Killer, with our anti-hero – going by the name of Nitta and day jobbing it as a dance teacher (a vocation that feels amusingly appropriate for the delicately featured Raizo!) – reluctantly agreeing to a hit on an accountant turned stoolie whose books can reveal corrupt payments to big city officials.

But after doing the business our hero finds himself betrayed by the mob and reliant on his star dance pupil (Tomomi Sato) to help him snare the villains and uncover the identity of the shadowy mastermind who ordered the killing. This is a noticeably better story than the original with tighter plotting, more action and a decent pace.

The uncertain relationship between Nitto and Sato’s ambitious dancer who seeks a sugar daddy and has hooked up with one of the prime villains (Ko Nishimura) means we’re never quite sure whether she’s following Nitta’s instructions or seduced by the money and happily leading him into a trap. So we’re quite interested to see what happens next and the climax is a modestly staged but effective showdown as Nitta gives the big villain the needle treatment in full view of the press.

Certain elements are repeated here from the first movie. There’s another hippy dippy trippy title sequence, Nitta is once again persuaded to kill by a dissolve to wartime images (a device that felt persuasive in the first movie but here just seems perfunctory) and the insistence on a crime does not pay ending is neatly staged yet also charmingly undercut by the simple fact that our aloof hero doesn’t seem to give a damn about anything as coarse as money anyway so saunters off quite happily.

It’s a shame there were no more movies in this series because after a patchy start this combination of an unbeatable assassin, greedy Yakuza and unreliable female entanglements starts to feel like a formula that could have gone somewhere.

A Certain Killer (Kazuo Mori, Japan, 1967)

In a grubby hotel located right next to a cemetery hitman Shiozawa (Raizo Ichikawa), unscrupulous gold digger Keiko (Yumiko Nogawa), and ambitious Yakuza hood Maeda (Mikio Narita) wait for the moment to pull off a heist that will make them all rich.

So lacking in suspense, thrills and pacing you could almost write this off as a failure and yet something about it keeps you watching. Maybe it’s Raizo’s smooth and contained performance as a hitman hired by the Yakuza whose preferred weapon of choice isn’t a gun or a sword but a needle through the back of his victim’s neck and so experienced he can react to a double cross by his two associates like a benevolent father amused at the behaviour of two errant children.

I liked that attitude, just as I liked the nonchalant front Shiozawa has – and indeed the film – to the spoils of crime. Although the story is sometimes hampered by an unnecessarily complicated structure that needlessly jumps back and forth in time, Kazuo Mori’s direction manages occasional moments of interest, especially when Shiozawa turns down the Yakuza’s offer of a hit only to reconsider after flashbacks to his wartime role as a pilot.

The suggestion here is that in dealing with modern day scumbags Shiozawa can somehow find the honour that eluded him in wartime. Also of note is the magnificently psychedelic title sequence and the presence of Nogawa’s amoral streetgirl, both of which channel a counterculture vibe a good few years before the female Yakuza subgenre took off.

Killing Angel Muhan (Katsuji Kanazawa, Japan, 1995)

Female assassin Muhan (Reiko Kataoka) finds herself unable to kill a child witness during a hit and can’t understand why.

A direct to video cheapie which despite a blistering opening in which Muhan turns a swanky beauty parlour into a blood soaked, corpse strewn abattoir in the space of about ten seconds flat isn’t really an action film so much as an effectively plotted, psychologically intense suspenser.

Will Muhan kill the kid like she’s been ordered? Or will the cop who’s protecting the child help Mulan realise just why she’s so unable to pull the trigger? The answer of course lies in Mulan’s past and her own origins as an abducted child turned brainwashed killer.

It’s a credit to how involving this film is that even though we know the answer early on, and even though none of the characters are all that well developed, we want to see Mulan do the right thing – maybe even get it together with the cop and child whose lives she saves when her own employers lose faith in her and send other killers to do the job – and the shocking, rousing climax proves worth the wait.

Annihilation (Alex Garland, US, 2018)

A strange phenomena from space arrives on Earth and begins to grow. People sent into the affected area disappear so a biologist (Natalie Portman) – whose husband is the only survivor of an earlier mission – and her team investigate.

Although thematically incoherent this is an interesting blend of thoughtful SF with the human heart that’s similar to, but overall less accomplished than, the likes of Arrival (2016) and Ad Astra (2019) and fuelled by horror licks as Portman’s team take a journey through alien contaminated swampland and discover that the mysterious force is recombining everyone and everything’s DNA into mutations both beautiful and horrific.

Garland’s film seems at its most sure footed in such moments (a scene in which one of Portman’s crew takes flight and transforms into a human shaped flower figure is a disconcertingly beautiful image) and the performances from the female cast (Jennifer Jason Leigh amongst them) are all very competent. But the film struggles to make sense of it all and seems unnecessarily ambivalent toward its alien presence.

When Portman’s character is ultimately reunited with the husband she feared dead the film momentarily snaps into focus – the alien presence as metaphor for human relationships and second chances – but then goes and completely undermines that with a schlock horror touch suggesting the entire world’s now in danger. This kind of schizophrenia speaks to the conceptual confusion at the heart of Annihilation. However, even if this isn’t quite as accomplished as the same director’s Ex Machina (2015) it’s still well worth a look for its ambition, performances and some beautiful production values.

Think Of A Number (Palle Kjaerulff-Schimdt, Denmark, 1969)

A dutiful bank clerk named Borck (Henning Moritzen) uses a failed Christmas robbery by a man in a Santa Claus outfit as cover to steal a large sum of cash from his employer. But when the understandably annoyed robber finds out he demands that Borck hand over the money which should have been his – or else.

If the synopsis sounds vaguely familiar that’s likely because this is the original screen version of the better known Canadian thriller The Silent Partner (1978). This replaces the nastiness of the remake (there are no severed heads in fish tanks in this one, indeed, there’s very little violence at all) with an air of subdued foreboding and an amusingly eccentric score embodying the film’s thematic point of a protagonist completely out of his depth.

Moritzen’s performance as the clerk who gives in to a moment’s temptation for reasons even he couldn’t explain – only to find himself left unsatisfied and outplayed by the villain – unfolds like some cosmic joke. The film’s ironic ending feels very Hitchcock-ian indeed. You might prefer the seedier and wilder remake but this has agreeable qualities all its own – engaging performances aside there’s a third act that is completely different from anything in the remake. Worth a look.

Thief (Michael Mann, US, 1981)

‘Thief’, aka ‘Back When Michael Mann Used To Make Great Movies’, is a thrillingly atmospheric crime yarn with that distinctively impressionistic fusion of image, sound and music (by Kraut synth rockers Tangerine Dream) one has come to associate with its director.

James Caan, whose tough guy screen persona always contained pleasing hints of vulnerability, is ideally cast as Frank, a professional jewel thief psychologically scarred by the brutal experience of an 11 year prison stint and whose desire to score one last job and then find himself a wife (comely Tuesday Weld, an excellent performance) and child he can retire with gets ensared with Chicago crime kingpin Leo (Robert Prosky) whom Frank’s unwisely agreed to do business with.

Frank thinks he’s in with Leo for just one job but when it becomes apparent that Leo has no intention of letting a master craftsman like Frank go free the latter’s nihilistic philosophy of life – essential as a matter of survival in prison – comes roaring back to the fore as Frank proceeds to take apart every aspect of his burgeoning personal life before descending on Leo’s home for a final showdown.

Mann’s film oozes authenticity and menace, from its meticulous depiction of Frank’s robberies to the thick Chicago patois and the corrupt cops who come on demanding a slice of the action which leads to one of my favourite lines in the film as Frank venomously snarls back at them, “No matter what, I will never, ever, take a pinch, from a greasy motherfucker like you!”

However, beyond all this enjoyable hard nut stuff is that Frank’s yearning to make a family gives the film heart and connects thanks to a sensitive performance from James Caan who really is on top form here. We empathise with this guy and Mann makes Frank’s tragic rejection of his wife and child simultaneously scary and exciting.

The climax is a stylishly brutal showdown (only Mann could get away with a momentary freeze frame of a guy having his brains splattered all over a wall because it looks so darn cool!) and the entire movie – but especially the climax – should be played with the volume cranked up to the loudest humanly possible… and then a few notches higher. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

You’ll Like My Mother (Lamont Johnson, US, 1972)

A fine slice of American Gothic with pregnant widow Francesca (Patty Duke) making a courtesy call on her hubby’s mother, Mrs Kinsolving (Rosemary Murphy) at her gloomy mansion in the snow, only to find herself talked into staying, then drugged and imprisoned by a sinister matriarch out to protect her psychotic son (none other than Richard ‘John Boy’ Thomas from The Waltons).

Tense, taut and unsettling stuff with excellent performances, a harrowing birth scene and most atmospherically shot on location at a Gothic pile in mid-winter (it also does the Misery thing 20 odd years before that movie came along). This is tough in that distinctive manner only early 1970’s American movies seem capable of and all the better for it.

I thought it would be good when I spotted the screenwriter was Jo Heims (Play Misty For Me, Breezy) and this is another of her strong portraits of obsessive women. Sian Allen as the simple minded servant girl Kathleen – who becomes Duke’s only friend – is also excellent. A gem.

I Start Counting (David Greene, UK, 1970)

Jenny Agutter is Wynne, a home counties schoolgirl infatuated with lodger Bryan Marshall even as her town is abuzz with the news of a sadistic rapist on the loose. But what do those claw marks she spies on Marshall’s back and the bloodstained jumper she knitted for him really mean?

Although this might seem like an exploitation number it’s actually an absorbing character study of a 14 year old girl who ends up harshly disabused of her dreams and infatuations. There’s no sex or violence in the film, the identity of the killer is pretty obvious once one character snarls at Wynne that her skirt is too short.

I wouldn’t call the sex killer aspect perfunctory but even though our heroine ends up menaced by him it is clearly secondary to this portrait of a girl infatuated with an older man but who hasn’t the first idea about adult relationships. A climactic confrontation between Agutter and Marshall is really powerfully acted with such raw pain from Agutter you don’t half feel sorry for her.

I particularly liked the sequence where Wynne comes back drunk and giggly in the middle of the night and attempts to sneak upstairs to bed unaware that her the home is swarming with police because the family are going out of their mind with panic at her absence.

The film is bound up with memories of the old house where Wynne and her family used to live so this is as much about a girl trying to hold onto her past as it is her sexual awakening and the film weaves this theme in with subtlety. Agutter’s family are affectionately drawn and reminded me a bit of a 1970’s version of Lean’s This Happy Breed (1944).

On the Edge (Herman Yau, Hong Kong, 2006)

After a decade posing as a Triad gang member undercover cop Harry (Nick Cheung) rejoins the force but his appearance provokes suspicion from his chief, Lung (Anthony Wong) and unease from uniformed comrades about his true loyalties.

A case of sympathy for the underdog here as Cheung’s cop increasingly resents chief Lung’s heavy handed attitude toward former underworld friends even as he finds himself persona non grata with his old gang. As the pressure builds, which way will he ultimately jump?

This is more of a character study than anything else and very well done. Nick Cheung, who was so good as the baddie in Ringo Lam’s overdirected Beast Stalker (2008), has a very effective rabbit-in-the-headlights quality as the man caught between two worlds.

Anthony Wong is superb and quite scary, here giving a very restrained and almost minimalist performance, one which totally fits his weary seen-it-all-before veteran copper. Pleasingly both he and Cheung’s characters end up confounding our expectations and the film’s framing device – reminiscent of Carlito’s Way (1993) – packs a punch. Very smooth, very satisfying genre fare from director Herman Yau.

Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, Hong Kong, 2002)

A police inspector (Anthony Wong) has an undercover cop (Tony Leung) in the Triad gang he’s chasing. But Triad leader Sam (Eric Tsang) has his own mole (Andy Lau) in the Inspector’s squad!

A thrilling cat and mouse game between cops and crooks with a muscular yet sensual visual style, a handful of memorable setpieces and a top notch cast. Hard to pick a favourite character but Tony Leung’s soulful performance as a rumpled undercover cop – a man slowly coming apart because of the psychological stress he’s under – gets me every time. Don’t even bother with the piece of shit Scorsese remake known as The Departed. Do yourself a favour and watch this vastly superior original instead.

Infernal Affairs 2 (Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, Hong Kong, 2003)

The death of several major characters in the first film proves no obstacle in the IA universe as the original cast return as their younger selves in a film filling in the backstories of assorted characters – especially Sam’s rise to power, his unexpectedly pally relationship with Anthony Wong’s Inspector (an audacious reversal of their relationship in the first film) and the events that made him capable of such murderous ruthlessness. Slick and so thoroughly absorbing you really don’t miss the visual swagger of the first film.

Infernal Affairs 3 (Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, Hong Kong, 2003)

Andy Lau’s position as the former Triad mole turned cop comes under threat from another undercover agent in the police department seeking to kill anyone who might expose him. Entirely of a piece with the trilogy’s Buddhist sentiments of Eternal Suffering for those souls who do evil, this devilishly plotted conclusion brilliantly wrongfoots the viewer en route to a startling climax. Once again the entire cast of the original return and it’s a joy not just to see them all but to marvel at the ingenious ways in which the writers have brought them back.

Harper (Jack Smight, US, 1966)

A California private eye (Paul Newman) investigates the disappearance of a millionaire whom nobody, especially his wife (Lauren Bacall), seems to like.

Something rotten in paradise with Newman’s affable and self-amused ‘tec investigating a kidnapping and confronted by a parade of shifty characters both rich and poor. Newman is splendid, the supporting cast (Shelly Winters and Robert Wagner amongst them) are great, ditto the production values and there isn’t a bad scene in the film. The witty (but never smug) script is by William Goldman who was clearly at the top of his game here. Great stuff.

The Killer Snakes (Kuei Chih-hung, Hong Kong, 1974)

Fantastically sleazy slice of Grand Guignol horror as unemployed loser Gan-Leung Kwok befriends an injured snake before using it and his slithery friends to exact revenge on the pimps, prostitutes and thug creeps tormenting him. Gleefully outrageous and cruel, a movie that couldn’t care less about the delicate feelings of its viewers. Snakes get sliced in two, set on fire and the humans don’t fare much better. It’s quite tough viewing but there’s a certain integrity to its depiction of a world entirely without hope or mercy.

Day of the Jackal (Fred Zinnemann, UK, 1973)

An English assassin code named Jackal is hired to kill French President Charles de Gaulle. But a determined French investigator, Lebel, is on his trail.

Meticulously filmed on location in France and the UK, the mechanics of organising a hit, the obstacles that must be overcome by the killer and the ensuing cat and mouse game between the Jackal (Edward Fox, whose handsome and charming persona gradually gives way to reveal a man entirely without conscience) and Lebel (Michael Lonsdale, racing against time to put the pieces together) are put across with an ease and a clarity that proves completely gripping. Aside from everything else this is one of those rare thrillers where you find yourself rooting for both the assassin and the cop hunting him. Really quite brilliant.

Last Scene (Hideo Nakata, Japan, 2000)

In 1965 arrogant and alcoholic supporting actor Mihara loses his job and his starlet wife as the movie industry craters under competition from television. 35 years later Mihara is hired to play a cancer patient but his return to his old studio means he must confront personal demons and work with a disillusioned prop girl who’s on the verge of quitting the business.

A lightweight but sweet love letter to Japanese cinema with a modest but humorously affectionate recreation of the old studio system. The good vibes here even extend to a resident ghost who merely wants to thank her former husband for the pleasure his screen performances gave her! The contemporary scenes comprising the bulk of the movie are however rather darker in their depiction of Mihara’s old studio as home to moron directors and penny pinching producers.

Indeed, despite suggestions of the supernatural the most unsettling moment here is the sight of the elderly Mihara without makeup. But the love for moving pictures – the wonder and beauty of it all – still burns in Mihara, in the prop girl who befriends him and the elderly crew members, all of whom rousingly rally to his side as the old actor struggles to deliver the titular last scene and in so doing reawakens in our heroine – whose hard work building props is treated with indifference – her love for cinema and determination to stay.

Blood for Blood (Yasuharu Hasebe, Japan, 1971)

The Akiba, Shimura and Udagawa crime families have always co-existed peacefully but the unscrupulous Seishinki gang plot to seize control by manipulating the families into war.

A pretty good Yakuza movie (from the writer of Hasebe’s Savage Wolf Pack) which feels as though it’s got one foot in the past (Jo Shishido’s stoic, only-gradually-roused-to-anger Akiba boss Tezuka feels like he’s subbing for a 60’s era Ken Takakura) whilst the other – with its big business villains and brutal bloodletting – is typical of the genre as it became in the 70’s.

If the characters are rather perfunctorily drawn (Shishido feels mildly ill-suited to a straightforward Yakuza drama like this while both Meiko Kaji, as the woman who carries a torch for Tezuka, and Makoto Sato as the Shimura boss get disappointingly little to do) they still gain our sympathy simply because – mobsters or no – all they want is peace.

But a series of gripping plot twists manipulates them into war. The ensuing mass brawls as dozens of guys go at each other with swords proves thrillingly visceral and amazingly bloody. There’s some great practical effects work as the stuntmen squeeze their blood bags resulting in great gouts of gore spurting out of them as they get sliced and diced!

Also, the bad guys come off strongly. The Seishinki gang’s fat cat leader Komine is bad enough but his Machiavellian henchman Hoshino is the real standout amongst the cast. He’s a chain smoking corporate thug (whose modernity is underlined by his use of a gun) and – in an encounter with a hostage he’s been ordered to kill – replete with his own twisted sense of honour.

Hoshino’s a compelling and charismatic villain and his comeuppance from Shishido in a frenzied close quarters showdown is excellent stuff. This is yet another movie from Hasebe which deserves to be better known.

The Happytime Murders (Brian Henson, US, 2018)

In a world where humans and puppets coexist, puppet private eye Phil Philips and a human cop (Melissa McCarthy) must work together to solve a series of puppet murders.

The Muppets for adults; an entertainingly crude crime comedy with sweary puppets doing drugs, having wild sex and getting shot to pieces, in a decently plotted mystery yarn. McCarthy contributes the same foul mouthed schtick she’s done in her other films but she’s way outshone by Elizabeth Banks who’s a hoot as Phil’s sweetly scatty secretary and Phil himself – embodied to perfection in the voice of Bill Barretta – makes for a likeably dishevelled tough guy.

There’s a warmth to the film in the relationships between the characters that I thought Team America lacked and the jokes here – such as the sight of a dog whipping its human slave while exhorting him to, “Bark for me, bitch!” – are so damn funny I had to pause the movie several times because I was laughing so hard I couldn’t hear the dialogue. Obviously it isn’t for everyone but more often than not I thought this was hilarious.

Absolute Power (Clint Eastwood, US, 1997)

A jewel thief (Eastwood) breaks into a mansion and witnesses the US President (Gene Hackman) murdering his mistress. Pursued by the Secret Service he plots to bring the President down.

A polished genre potboiler is this but for me also one of Clint’s least satisfying movies. That a jewel thief and a President are obviously never going to meet face to face means William Goldman’s script (adapted from a popular novel) has to contrive a surrogate for Clint (in this case E.G. Marshall’s grieving husband) so our hero can see justice done.

That’s a problem because audiences like to see Clint sort things out for himself but here he’s kept at a distance from the villain. The movie also feels overstuffed with too many underwritten supporting characters (Scott Glenn, Ed Harris and Judy Davis amongst them) who come in, make a favourable impression (in the scene where Harris and Eastwood meet for the first time both actors look like they’re having the time of their lives) but then drop out just as you’re getting interested in them.

The cat and mouse game between Eastwood and his pursuers supplies its share of thrills (especially an encounter between Clint and a sniper) but you get the distinct feeling its director/star is much more invested in the strained relationship with his daughter (played by Laura Linney) since those are the scenes which resonate most. That subplot actually proves warm and touching and builds to a much more powerful ending whereas the thriller stuff culminating in Hackman’s downfall feels mildly perfunctory by comparison. That said, Absolute Power is well made, has lots of good scenes and Eastwood’s regretful, absent father represents a thematic obsession that would crop up repeatedly in some of his best work from this decade.

A Day (Cho Sun-ho, South Korea, 2017)

A famous surgeon (Kim Myung-min) stops to help at the scene of a traffic accident. There are three fatalities – one of which is his daughter. Then he wakes up to relive the same event again and again and again. Can he change the outcome? Clever variation on Groundhog Day (or Happy Death Day for those under 40) with the twist that this time it’s multiple characters reliving the same nightmarish event over and over because of something in their past linking them all together.

Played for thrills and intrigue, with some scorching plot twists and compelling performances from the ensemble cast (Myung-min, Yohan Byun and Shin Hye-sun). But the momentum stalls two-thirds of the way through with too many overwrought scenes of its leads welling up with tears (a very South Korean trait but superfluous by this point because we already know how dreadful their situation is) before picking up speed again for a heartfelt, emotionally satisfying ending.

As with Groundhog Day this is ultimately about the dawning of a man’s better nature but here tied to an inspired revelation regarding the cause and intent of the time loop bedevilling our characters. Director Cho Sun-ho’s muscular visual style socks over the story with such visceral force it propels the film along even when plot and character motivation feel increasingly tenuous.

Juggernaut (Richard Lester, US, 1974)

A mysterious bomber holds an ocean liner to ransom. As the bomb squad parachute in to disarm the explosives the police set about tracking down the bomber. I watched this last week but completely forgot about it until I heard about the demise of Freddie Jones the other day. I’d seen it before but I thought it stood up really well.

This has a great cast with Richard Harris and David Hemmings as bomb disposal experts, Anthony Hopkins as a copper whose wife and children are on the bomb stricken liner, Ian Holm as the shipping boss, John Stride as an obnoxious minister who’s the film’s real villain, Omar Sharif as the ship’s Captain, Shirley Knight as his lover, Roy Kinnear as the ship’s hapless entertainments officer and of course Freddie J.

It’s very pacy stuff, very tightly constructed, one of those thrillers where every scene, every line, advances either the plot or our understanding of the characters. There’s not an ounce of flab here. The film is particularly good on the psychological pressures of working for the bomb squad. There’s a great little scene where Harris flies into a fit of rage at Omar Sharif’s Captain and yet we completely understand why, the need for this guy to decompress, as it were, before going back to his job.

Lester’s film also has a good eye for the trench humour of passengers socialising even as they wonder if they’re all going to be blown sky-high. The location filming with the stars on a real liner in the middle of a roiling grey ocean must have been absolute hell for cast and crew. None of this footage could have come easy yet some of the shots of this huge liner crashing through the waves or of actors weaving along the deck with the sea behind them tilted at a quite alarming angle are absolutely breathtaking.

Terrific suspense sequences too, every time Harris starts turning one of the bolts on those fucking drums you can feel your guts turn over no matter many how many times you’ve seen the film, all leading up to a classic bit of decision making involving a red wire and a blue wire. Anyone who’s seen this will remember what a great moment that was and seeing it again it’s still every bit as powerful. As for Freddie J, he takes what could have been a one dimensional villain and turns it into something both monstrous and tragic.

Special Section (Costa-Gavras, France/Ger/Italy, 1975)

1941; In occupied France the Vichy government is ordered to form special courts to deliver death sentences against innocent citizens following the assassination of a German officer by young Communists.

Typically bracing fare from director Costa-Gavras that’s both amusing and unsettling to watch as we follow ministers scrambling to placate the Germans by passing a new retroactive law enabling the death penalty to be applied to anyone while a horrified judiciary refuses point blank – at least initially – to have anything to do with it.

Well played by all concerned – with Michael Lonsdale the most recognisable face here as an unscrupulous Justice Minister angling for power – and displaying a sharp eye for the vanities and egos that make each judge susceptible to participating in what is in effect a monstrous perversion of justice. Yet it’s Bruno Cremer as an innocent journalist targeted for execution whose performance hits hardest.

Unlike his fellow captives who cling to the notion that it’s all a horrible mistake his character understands exactly the true nature of this judicial charade and that there’ll be no escape for any of them. Cremer’s quiet, dignified performance in a small supporting role is really moving. When he tells the judges to drop the pretence and just get on with sentencing him to death it’s such a stirring moment.

The film makes you hope these venal
judges got theirs come the liberation but an end title card informs us that not only were such courts widespread but that after the German occupation nobody involved in them faced any kind of repercussion. As ever with this director the State is seen to protect its own. It’s grim but most satisfying stuff with Costa-Gavras showing yet again that he’s a natural storyteller who never lets his message get in the way of a good yarn.

The Night I Swam (Damien Manivel/Igarashi Kohei, France/Japan, 2018)

In Japan’s snowy mountains a father who leaves home each night for a fish market in town is, unawares, followed by his six year old son.

This portrait of a single minded infant requires some patience on account of its observational style and deliberate pacing (there’s no dialogue either) but its evocation of a child’s voyage through an adult world of busy road crossings, game parlours and burger joints, his desperate shelter inside a stranger’s car in the middle of a fierce blizzard (in which the boy falls into a deep sleep to be delivered safely back home by the car’s startled but kindly driver) gives our pint-sized protagonist’s odyssey the quality of a dream. The final shots of the son fast asleep in his bed under the benevolent gaze of his father quietly stir the emotions in a way that’s well worth the wait.

Whose Baby is in the Classroom? (Inoue Umetsugu, Hong Kong, 1970)

A male teacher (Peter Chen Ho) finds himself saddled with a baby while teaching at an all girl school.

Sweet and likeable Shaw comedy built around misunderstandings between hapless teachers and mischievous schoolgirls. It’s funny, briskly paced, boasts a personable lead in Peter Chen Ho and despite a plot revolving around an abandoned baby and a schoolgirl pregnancy it’s all wholesome stuff with teacher and kids ultimately pulling together to look after the infant so their stern headmistress and one hilariously martinet teacher don’t find out.

A couple of scenes where the characters express their hopes and desires through song prove really charming. Chien Ting’s heartfelt performance as the suicidal schoolgirl mum who realises the baby is her own gives the film the little bit of grit it needs and there’s a feelgood ending for all concerned. All in all a pleasant change from the usual Shaw Bros rough n’ tumble.

Victim (Ringo Lam, Hong Kong, 1994)

A computer engineer (Lau Ching wan) is kidnapped and rescued from a supposedly haunted house but he emerges from the experience a changed man. His wife (Amy Kwok) and a cop (Tony Leung) are determined to uncover the truth.

Fascinating hybrid of crime and ghost yarn that doesn’t quite satisfy because not enough is made of the supernatural aspects and yet what remains is never less than compelling thanks to Lau Ching wan’s performance as the tormented victim. This terrific actor treads a perfect line between empathy for his suffering and chills at what he’s becoming.

The script adroitly balances the dawning horror of Kwok’s wife at the changes in her husband with Leung’s cop gradually ferreting out the details behind Ching wan’s abduction. As I say, not entirely successful but the chilling final image and what it implies does linger in the memory.

Cop Image (Herman Yau, Hong Kong, 1994)

An enjoyably daft action-comedy with Anthony Wong as a traffic cop who gets the chance to imitate his action movie idols when a cop friend (Bowie Lam) vanishes with a bagful of mob money and Wong attempts to track him down with the help of the man’s girlfriend (Linda Wong) and a gormless but good hearted street punk (Andy Hui).

It’s all very, very silly but under Herman Yau’s smooth direction the silliness is entertaining rather than irritating (Wong’s assessments of Mel Gibson, “Mentally handicapped, remember that!” and Clint Eastwood, “Always an Inspector, never gets promoted! No good!” are hilarious) and Wong shows yet again what an amusing and charismatic performer he is. The scene where he wanders unawares into a gay bar and reacts to the sight of two guys kissing is an absolute scream. By the time the end rolls around we’ve grown quite fond of our three misfits and are happy they all survive.

Almost Human (Umberto Lenzi, Italy, 1974)

Cracking genre piece with Tomas Milan giving a juicy, charismatic performance as the kill crazy rat who ropes two friends into kidnapping a rich heiress. What’s good about this is the sense that the brakes are completely off. The influence of A Clockwork Orange and its delinquent thugs feels strongly in evidence not least when the trio go completely kill crazy – massacring the affluent middle-class family their victim flees too (after a spot of rape naturally). Every time you think this is going to pull back in terms of its violence it doesn’t and even 40-odd years later it’s still a blast.

Henry Silva is the stone faced copper on the trail of the killers and Ernesto Gastaldi’s script throws in neat twists like Milan’s exploitation of a local gangster to give him an alibi that even Silva’s cop can’t break. The only letdown is the ending which cries out for Silva to just execute Milan’s scumbag like the savage he is but comes a cropper with the Italian censorship laws of the day and has to contrive a scene where Milan draws first thus giving Silva the right to take him down. That aside it’s a cracker and of its type one of the best in the genre. Highly recommended.

Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die! (Tonino Cervi, Italy, 1968)

Framed for a robbery he didn’t commit, an ex-con (Brett Halsey) recruits professional killers to form a gang to go after the man who framed him (Tatsuya Nakadai). Underwritten revenge western (co-scripted by Dario Argento) with rather colourless characters and workmanlike direction but compensated for by a good cast, fast pacing and regular bursts of decently staged action.

Watching Halsey’s gang – Bud Spencer amongst them – knock off the bad guys First Blood style as they lure them into a forest is good fun. It’s not too violent or cynical either and Japanese star Nakadai (here playing an Apache!) does his mad stare and sneer combination – as the psycho who doesn’t like Apache women mixing with Whitey – to watchable effect.

The locations are cold, muddy, foggy and miserable though (at one point there’s snow on the ground), it’s one of the least convincing western-looking westerns I’ve ever seen in my life and yet it’s all part of the charm. By the end of the film the sense of camaraderie between Halsey and his gang feels most welcome. It would have been nice to have seen them come back in a sequel.

Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski, UK, 2018)

A Polish music teacher named Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and his student Zula (Joanna Kulig) conduct a secretive decade long love affair after they become separated during the height of the Cold War in the 1950’s.

It’s a sly love story this, not so much about the love between two individuals as love of country and the gradual recognition that there’s no place like home. Kot and Kulig are both sympathetic and engaging as the lovers – the latter has a kind of sultry beauty with just a hint of threat so effective you can just picture Barbara Broccoli straight on the phone to her after this trying to sign her up for the next Bond movie.

The 4:3 aspect ratio and b/w cinematography are most effective at evoking the Communist states of Poland, Yugoslavia and Prague and the permissive lifestyle and swinging jazz clubs of Paris without coming across as arty or self-consciously retro. I particularly liked the Parisian scenes and the sense here of the old Cold War barriers dissolving even as our two lovers find themselves increasingly adrift in a country and a culture that really isn’t for them.

Brave Red Flower of the North (Yasuo Furuhata, Japan, 1970)

Second (or third, accounts vary) entry in the five film Tales of Chivalrous Women (1969-71) series starring Junko Fuji and frequent co-star Ken Takakura. She’s the sweetie returning to inherit her late father’s horse ranch in the north of the country circa the early 1900’s and he’s the ranger who bears a grudge against her Dad for selling the land. Both end up overcoming their differences and fighting together against corrupt local officials and Yakuza gangsters who want the lot for themselves.

Junko’s persona here isn’t much different than it was in the Red Peony Gambler series (1968-72) that made her such a huge star. She’s cute as a button, morally upstanding, always caring for the commoners in society and can karate chop and fire a pistol with the best of them. Even if the action scenes here, though vigorous, are never up to the level of something from Hollywood, engaging leads, the western style settings with gunfights and everybody riding around on horseback keep the usual mixture of heartfelt melodrama and action chugging along nicely.

Kidnap (Cheng Kang, Hong Kong, 1974)

An unexpectedly sombre drama from Shaw Bros with little of the usual Shaw silliness (at least until the end), more location filming and an all round grittier feel. Lei Lo is the good guy turned kidnapper who needs money to woo the manipulative woman he’s in love with. The script keeps piling up unexpected twists once the gang’s meticulously planned abduction starts going awry.

There are some neat touches such as one of Lo’s gang being a movie makeup artist who disguises himself so well he ends up hired by the police in thire search for the kidnappers! It all climaxes with the trio going to the gallows in an overextended and hilariously melodramatic coda as the men bid farewell to their wives and their wives all expire outside the prison gates! This isn’t on the level of something like Big Bad Sis but it’s not bad.

Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado (Stefano Sollima, US, 2018)

Audaciously conceived and thrillingly executed sequel which combines Islamic terrorism (in a brutally shocking opening) with Mexican drug cartels and a battle to save the souls of two teens whose lives and future loyalties depend on the actions of Josh Brolin’s American special forces op and a vengeance seeking Benicio Del Toro.

There are some amazing, shocking developments along the way and even though there’s a slight sense of disappointment that the all out war between the cartels never materialises this is, ultimately, all the better for focusing on the fate of two children who, dependant on the actions of our protagonists, stand to become either the enemies of society or its guardians. Also good to see Catherine Keener doing her stuff in support as Brolin’s ruthlessly pragmatic boss. The kid actors are terrific too. I hope to god there’s a third instalment because this was fucking great.

Violent Naples (Umberto Lenzi, France, 1976)

Energetic cops n’ robbers stuff with Maurizio Merli’s detective Commissario Betti up against animalistic criminal scum making the lives of the locals hell via a protection racket run by Barry Sullivan’s crimelord. John Saxon is in here too as a bent business rival. As gleefully sadistic (the poor woman who has her face shoved out of a train window so it rubs up against an oncoming carriage going the other way) as it is outrageously corny (cute kid with a gammy leg) and because of those qualities vivid and compelling.

A race against time through the centre of Naples between Merli in his car and a scumbag villain on a motorbike is a highlight and there’s a good little climax in which Sullivan’s suave villain finally gets his. Some inventive violence too. The bowling ball straight in the mush is something I certainly hadn’t seen before.

Before We Vanish (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 2017)

Invasion of the Bodysnatchers meets E.T. as an expeditionary force of aliens inhabit the bodies of three humans preparatory to an attack. The trio are here to understand human concepts such as work and home by reaping (removing) them from their subjects mind for examination. But when one of the aliens is introduced to the concept of love by his estranged wife (Masami Nagasawa) his (its?) loyalties to the mission are called into question.

A thoughtful and amusing film with its invasion theme given a typically idiosyncratic treatment by Kurosawa. Having no understanding of human concepts such as secrecy this trio of would be conquerors are amusingly open with everyone about their mission to destroy humanity. It promises much when the three aliens – each with their own divergent understanding of human nature – finally reunite.

But a subsequent setpiece involving a drone missile and a journalist, who for no obvious reason has sided with the invaders, feels not just an indulgence but a distraction from the film’s theme about the transformative power of love. It’s frustrating that our emotional involvement with characters we’ve gotten quite involved with is actually ill-served here by the director’s absurdist touches. And a coda regarding Nagasawa’s heroine is far too cryptic and ambiguous to satisfy.

Little Murders (Alan Arkin, US, 1971)

A New York photographer (Elliot Gould) who doesn’t believe in the value of life is disabused of his opinion by the love of a good woman (Marcia Rodd) but almost immediately tragedy strikes. This black comedy about two broken families can’t entirely shake off its origins as a stage play but its troubled characters are sincere and involving and it’s often very funny indeed.

Donald Sutherland turns in a riotous, scene-stealing performance as a counterculture priest and the depiction of a city so wracked by violence that both citizens and cops are slowly going insane trying to cope with it all means the film’s “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” ending feels perfectly logical.

The Outlaws (Kang Yoon-sung, South Korea, 2017)

A tough cop (Ma Dong-seok) and his squad pursue a brutal Chinese loan shark (Yoon Kye-sang) who has moved into their area and seized control from the local gangs by the simple expedient of chopping off limbs from anyone who crosses him!

A satisfactory action vehicle for Ma which recycles the same gruff persona the actor established as the husband of the pregnant lady in Train To Busan, even if one could have wished for a bit more ambition from the script. You get the feeling all involved were acutely aware of how much the audience loved Ma in Train and didn’t wish to challenge or subvert that persona in any way here.

That said, this is well-paced, the characters reasonably involving, it’s never less than entertaining, the worst of the violence is mercifully implied and the climax – in which our likeable hero confronts Kye-sang’s psychopathic narcissist – delivers the brute force smackdown we’ve all been waiting for.

The Chase (Kim Hong-seon, South Korea, 2017)

The crabby and elderly landlord (Baek Yoon-sik) of a grubby tenement block teams up with a retired detective (Sung Dong-il) to find out who’s killing his residents and save the life of a pretty young girl who’s been abducted.

An OAP serial killer movie – now this is why I love South Korean cinema. Both predictable and yet somehow original, funny yet scary, featuring some outrageous plot twists (including one stand up and applaud moment featuring a gun, trust me – you’ll know it when you see it) this boldly exploits the highs and lows of getting old and in the process infuses the tired serial killer genre with fresh blood. The film’s empathy for its hardscrabble characters – regardless of age – is most welcome. A U.S. remake would seem almost inevitable.

Century of the Dragon (Clarence Fok, Hong Kong, 1999)

A former Triad gangster gone legit (Andy Lau) and an undercover cop in his old gang (Louis Koo) find themselves fighting for survival when their leader (Anthony Wong) is gunned down and his ruthless son (Patrick Tam) begins plotting to seize control.

Unambitious yet thoroughly entertaining genre flick, confidently played, with briskly staged action and good pacing even if the cardboard characters, situations and plotting are all utterly familiar. That said, not entirely without surprise in the shape of Suki Kwan and Joey Meng as the girls in the men’s lives, both of whom turn out to be smarter and tougher than expected.

The Hand of Fate (Han Hyeong-mo, South Korea, 1954)

Margaret (Yun In-ja) – a North Korean agent in South Korea – seeks to make amends for her traitorous activities by lavishing money and attention on poor manual labourer Young-chul (Lee Hyang). At least that is until her boss finds out and orders the man killed. Can she go through with it?

Two excellent actors deliver the required emotional involvement here even if they don’t get a lot of help from the cliched script of this romantic propaganda piece. In-ja and Hyang have instant chemistry and the film features the first onscreen kiss between North and South Korean characters which must have been controversial given the Korean war had ended the year before.

From the moment Margaret saves Young-chul from a beating and invites him into her apartment his bafflement and her kindness are superbly and compellingly played. The emotional turmoil that subsequently ensues as each reveals their true selves compensates for the rather declamatory nature of the dialogue and director Hyeong-mo manages a few modestly effective suspense moments along the way.

Corpse Mania (Kuei Chih-hung, Hong Kong, 1981)

A necrophilliac targets the prostitutes at Madam Lan’s brothel. An agreeably lurid title promises much but only really delivers in the third act with a couple of shock twists and some laugh out loud splatter effects. Otherwise director Chih-hung seems to enjoy his shots of decaying bodies covered in writhing maggots but our investigating detective hero has little to do other than to stand around looking stern and the way he susses out what’s really going on seems entirely unsupported by anything he’s actually seen. A nifty kung-fu sequence also livens things up and I got a kick out of the moment an obviously dead cop (disembowelled, eyes open, staring sightlessly) is asked by one of his comrades, “Are you OK?”

Virgins from Hell (Ackyl Anwari, Indonesia, 1986)

A girl biker gang set out to take vengeance on a drug smuggler and his army. Lots of kick-ass Asian babes in boots, hot pants, bike helmets and machine-guns in this enthusiastically amateurish (the English dub sounds like it was recorded in somebody’s toilet) exploitation flick. It’s a hodge-podge of Commando-style action clichés with an S&M obsessed villain and done on a shoestring – although there are some impressive explosions. If there were stuntmen involved they’re well hidden.

Most of the time it looks like the cast are doing it all themselves which means the sight of tiny girlies knocking down huge burly guys is undeniably charming but hardly convincing. And a scene in which a faith healer stuffs the head of a snake into the gaping leg wound of our hero so it can extract the bullet (I never knew snakes were so helpful!) means that moments later the guy’s leaping around firing his gun at the enemy like nothing happened! That sort of sums up the film’s bonkers, anything goes aesthetic. In its own daft way it’s all rather fun.

Castle of Owls (Eiichi Kudo, Japan, 1963)

In the 16th century the Iga clan are all but wiped out by the Oda clan. An Iga ninja named Juzo (Ryutaro Otami) seeks revenge but his desire brings him into conflict with Gohei (Minoru Oki) an old friend who’s switched sides, as well as the female ninja Kohagi (Hizuru Takachiho) ordered to kill him but who secretly loves Juzo and implores him to run away with her. So which path will Juzo choose – death or life?

Thematically coherent, decently plotted ninja fare with a point to make about the soul destroying effects of violence. The one big weakness of the film is that both heroes and villains are very thinly drawn. The gory battles are well done, the film moves at a fair clip and the ninjas – sort of the black ops/special forces mob of their day – are fun to watch in action but the dull characters are a drag and make even the happy ending feel underwhelming.

Nine Lives (Arne Skouen, Norway, 1957)

The true story of WW2 resistance fighter Jan Baalsrud’s (Jack Fjeldstad) escape from the Germans over the snowy mountains of Norway and across the Swedish border to safety.

Strong physical production values and an amazing true story are the highlights here. Most everything looks to have been shot on location in deep snow and Baalsrud’s determination is something else. Hallucinations and then snow blindness get him early on but he still manages to navigate his way by ingeniously lobbing snowballs ahead of him and listening for their impact so he doesn’t fall to his death.

At one point exposure means he’s forced to amputate his own toes – sterilising the blade over a candle flame and using booze as an anaesthetic – to stop gangrene from spreading, Baalsrud gets lots of assistance from local villagers who hide him from the German patrols but his injuries mean a group of volunteers must literally hoist him in a cot up the side of a mountain.

Then, because of an impending snow storm and German searches in the town, leave him alone with the promise they’ll be back within a week. In the event Baalsrud survives terrible storms and freezing weather wedged into a tiny gap under an overhanging rock for over a month! The climax, in which a delirious and near suicidal Baalsrud is carried across the ice in the midst of a herd of charging reindeer (or moose, or whatever it is they have over there) is the standout spectacle of the whole movie.

I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything quite like it and as with almost everything else here it is filmed for real and not mocked up in a studio in front of a back projection plate. It’s a truly spectacular moment. None of the characters are deeply drawn but it’s impossible not too empathise with this thoroughly decent man’s suffering and the events are so gripping I’m not sure it even matters. This is a fine salute to the human spirit and the final shot of Baalsrud shaking off his nurses to walk unaided down a hospital corridor is genuinely stirring. God bless him is all I can say. I hope the real Baalsrud went on to live a long and happy life.

Hard Boiled (John Woo, Hong Kong, 1992)

A tough cop nicknamed Tequila (Chow Yun Fat) tackles gun smugglers led by psychotic boss Johnny (Anthony Wong) but is unaware that one of Wong’s gang, Alan (Tony Leung) is also a cop working undercover. More than 20 years on the visceral impact, manic energy and propulsive editing rhythms of Woo’s much imitated bullet ballet still pack an enjoyable punch.

If the story and relationships between the characters are about as simple and juvenile as they come (especially the comic relief romance between Chow Yun Fat’s copper and pretty Teresa Mo as Tony Leung’s contact in the police department) at least Woo has two charismatic leads doing the best they can with his efforts to channel themes of honour and friendship from the American action movies that inspired him, and a real ability to evoke, amongst the bullets, explosions and magnificently absurdist bodycount, a dreamy fatalism that’s really rather beguiling.

Air Doll (Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan, 2009)

An inflatable sex doll named Nozami comes to life and experiences both happiness and heartbreak in her contact with humans.

A charming performance by South Korean actress Bae Doona as Nozami is the chief attraction of this well made portrait of an innocent soul wandering in and out of the lives of assorted lonely hearts. And if there really isn’t enough here in the way of story, plot or theme to justify the hefty 116 min run time there’s certainly lots of good scenes and an effective sense of mood.

For starters, Nozami’s comic-romantic friendship with video store clerk Junichi (Arata Iura), as she struggles to help customers with their movie requests, is sweetly done. A sequence in which a puncture has Nozami visibly deflating in front of a horrified Junichi, something that could so easily have come across as risible and laughable in lesser hands, is transformed here into something unsettling and unexpectedly sensual.

Then there’s an encounter with Nozami’s Geppetto-like creator in his workshop that’s really rather poignant. Overall Air Doll is a fitfully effective evocation of the human need for connection but, much like its central character, a bit too insubstantial to really resonate. Doona’s performance as the doll with a heart is really moving though and for that reason alone the film is worth a look.

Possessed (Lee Yong-joo and Lee Yong-ju, South Korea, 2009)

In a decrepit apartment block Hee-jin’s younger sister So-jin vanishes and shortly afterward their neighbours begin to die hideous deaths. Hee-jin and a sceptical detective, Tae-hwan, discover that the deceased had all taken part in a ritual designed to save So-jin from the demon Hee-jin’s mother believed had taken possession of her.

With good performances and a real knack for generating chills and unease from its urban setting (somewhat reminiscent of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films) this promises much up until the demonic possession theme is unexpectedly sidelined in favour of one concerned with religious fanaticism (in the shape of Hee-jin’s devout mother) and it’s this which takes centre stage for the film’s climax.

As a suspenseful ending it’s well enough done on its own terms but it doesn’t satisfy because it never addresses any of the questions raised in the film’s first two acts; the nature of the demon, why it’s killing those (in gruesomely imaginative ways) who summoned it, whether or not So-jin is dead, just who was possessed… all is left either unanswered or vaguely hinted at.

But despite the lack of answers I liked this film a lot. Something about the combination of demonic possession in a drab, urban setting proves creepy and thrilling and quite gripping. One of my favourite moments here is when the shaman takes a palm print from So-jin’s hand only to see on it not a human hand but an animal claw. Brrrrr!

Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, US, 2014)

Why did I take so long to see this?! Absolutely gripping thriller/character study of a psychopath (a terrific performance from Jake Gyllenhaal) who lucks into a job videoing nocturnal LA crime scene accidents and then selling the resulting gory footage to a desperate for ratings cable news channel run by boss Rene Russo. Unnaturally calm, softly spoken, and with a vocabulary seemingly drawn entirely from corporate buzzwords and business courses Bloom is a figure entirely lacking in morality or empathy.

Yet despite all that the underdog nature of the character, the fact that most everyone else – with the exception of Bloom’s thoroughly decent assistant – is even worse, keeps us onside with him and hoping for the best. That is, until Bloom stops recording the news and starts actively rearranging crime scenes for his own benefit whereupon things begin to get very dark indeed.

Amongst the supporting cast Rene Russo is also excellent as the station director. Playing a woman in late middle-age, on the downside of her looks and vulnerable to the ratings her station must live or die on, she’s drawn into a symbiotic relationship with Bloom and ultimately proves every bit as unscrupulous as he does. The film boasts a climax that’s enough to tie your stomach in knots. American audiences don’t seem to have taken to this at all. Like Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)or Wilder’s Ace In The Hole (1951), it offers a sour, nasty vision of the American Dream but for all that it’s one hell of a debut from writer/director Dan Gilroy and for me one of the best American movies of its year.

Paju (Park Chan-ok, South Korea, 2009)

In the small town of Paju the tragic death of housewife Eun (Shim Yi-young) causes her sister Eun-mo (Seo Woo) to suspect Joon (Lee Seon-gyun), the dead woman’s husband, of her murder. Adding to Eun-moo’s misery some property developer gangsters want to buy her home and demolish it but she won’t sell so determined is she to preserve the memories of her sister. But when a well-meaning attempt by Joon to shield Eun-mo from the truth about her sister’s death backfires, it only fuels her suspicions that he’s got something to hide.

This all sounds like it has the makings of a thriller but Paju’s real interest is in a carefully controlled study of two people who, because they haven’t fully understood where the other is coming from, completely misread each other’s intentions. So does the viewer – at least initially – as writer/director Park takes her own sweet time in filling us in via flashbacks and flashforwards about the past lives of Eun-mo and Joon.

But if you’ve the patience then Paju is skilful in the way it finds a metaphor for their conflict in a parallel storyline that pits the town’s residents against property developer thugs who don’t mind who gets hurt so long as they get their own way and whom Eun-mo ends up using for her own advantage. But for all this and despite convincing performances the two leads never engage with us all that deeply so that as well made as the drama is one is ultimately left unmoved.

Ironically it’s Shim Yi-young’s portrayal of the decent, love starved housewife Eun who proves the real standout here. Poor Eun-su doesn’t survive very long and yet in her brief screen time her personal struggles as a devout Buddhist who marries Joon, only to learn that the scars on her back repulse her husband to the point he’s unable to make love to her, prove instantly affecting in a way none of Eun-mo or Joon’s travails come close too.

Vanishing Time (Eom Tae-hwa, South Korea, 2016)

Two children, Soo (Shin Eun-soo) and Seong (Lee Hyo-jee) become friends. He promises to always look after her but the discovery and opening of a strange egg deep inside a mountain leaves Seong and two of his friends frozen in time for over 20 years. However for Soo only a single night has passed and when she meets up with Seong the next day he’s now a fully grown man she doesn’t recognise, suspected by the police of murder yet begging her to help him.

With sincere, soulful performances from its juvenile leads, striking visuals during the ‘frozen time’ section in which the initial excitement of the boys in a world where everything has literally stopped dead in mid-flow gradually gives way to disillusionment and tragedy) it’s a shame that this is saddled with some seriously incoherent plotting. A climax in which our characters dangle from a cliff edge moments from death and Seong saves them all by cracking open a second egg doesn’t make any sense (none of the characters are frozen for two decades as Seong was) and you get the impression that director Tae-hwa is simply changing the rules around these mysterious eggs as the plot demands. That’s what they call a deus ex machina and it certainly didn’t impress me.

But as an evocation of children’s existence, complete with its own private language and an ability to perceive the world in ways stuffy adults can’t (I found the film vaguely reminiscent of Lewis Padgett’s SF classic, Mimsy Were The Borogroves) this is, ultimately, emotionally satisfying stuff and for that reason alone it deserves recommendation. It’s just a shame about some of the plotting.

The Shadow Within (Yoshitaro Nomura, Japan, 1970)

A salaryman named Yukio (Go Kato) trapped in an unsatisfying marriage meets and begins a friendship with a pretty widow named Taiko (Shima Iwashita) but comes to believe that the woman’s six-year old son Ken (Hisato Okamoto) not only resents his presence but plans to kill him. The mother of course can’t believe such a thing but as it turns out Yukio has more reason than most to believe a child capable of murder.

A modestly effective psychological suspenser with a twist-in-the-tale reminiscent of one of those Roald Dahl ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ episodes ITV used to show back in the early 1980’s. It’s all sort of discreet and tasteful, the kind of film that doesn’t want to do anything more than send a few very mild shivers up your spine. The cast are likeable enough and there’s an atmospheric sense of place thanks to some excellent widescreen cinematography emphasising sombre autumnal colours very much in tune with the film’s foreboding tone.

Tinted flashbacks to Yukio’s boyhood implicitly suggest there’s some sort of revelation in store but for this viewer the penny didn’t drop until about five mins before the end and by then director Nomura has managed to cast just enough doubt on the absurdity of a six year old harbouring lethal intentions that the climactic revelation seems less a gimmick than one of tragic inevitability.

The Assassin (Chang Cheh, Hong Kong, 1967)

Jimmy Wang Yu is Nieh Cheng, a swordsman in the warring states period of ancient China torn between obligation to family and the suicide mission of assassinating a Prime Minister whose brutal henchman are threatening the entire country.

This kicks off with the bad guys burning down Nieh’s training school, killing his master and forcing our hero into exile as a humble butcher. Shortly thereafter, gifts of gold and silver begin arriving at the family home after Nieh’s encounter with politician Yen (Tien Feng) and it’s his mother’s horrified realisation that the gifts are actually payment in kind for her son’s life that really packs an emotional wallop.

Nieh of course can’t wait to get going even though he doesn’t know what’s required of him. Despite the promising setup the only potent scenes in this 2 hour movie – and the only reason I think The Assassin worth a mention – are those between Wang Yu’s character Nieh and his family and girlfriend Xia (Chiao Chiao).

But when the film cuts to several years later, our hero having discharged his obligations to his family and reunited with Yen, his initial eagerness has given way to the sure and certain knowledge he’ll carry out his mission alright but he won’t be alive at the end of it. This adds a poignancy and melancholy to his farewells with both Yen and Xia, the girl who shares his bed for just one night knowing full well this is the last she’ll ever see of him.

Cheh doesn’t rush these scenes and the results prove emotionally affecting in a way nothing else in the movie comes close too. Given the 2 hour runtime there are only two big action scenes – the early raid on the training school and the climactic assassination in which Nieh has to fight his way through swarms of guards – and although Cheh likes to cram his widescreen frame with lots of stuntmen, the editing and fight choreography (lots of wild, theatrical slashing from Wang Yu that rather unconvincingly sends half a dozen soldiers flying at once) is not only very much in the style of the early martial arts stuff from Shaw but actually inferior to that on display in the same year’s Bells Of Death.

National Security (Jeong Ji-yeong, South Korea, 2012)

A really gruelling account of the 1984 imprisonment and torture of pro-democracy activist Kim Jong Tae (Park Won Sang), at a time when South Korea was under corrupt military rule and using the threat of its North Korean neighbour as the reason for brutal internal repression of pro-democracy demonstrators at home.

In Kim’s nemesis, an urbane, implacably ruthless torturer known as The Undertaker (Lee Kyeong-yeong), we come to understand not only why such protests were inevitable, but – in the film’s harrowing depiction of how to break a man physically and mentally – the impossibility of forgiveness by those who were tortured toward their tormentors.

It’s a very, very tough watch but all credit to director and co-writer Ji-yeong (adapting the real Kim’s memoir) for stating an unpalatable truth; that some things done by the State to its citizens can be neither forgiven nor forgotten.

Murderer (Lee Gi-Wook, South Korea, 2014)

Joo-hyeop (Ma Dong-seok), a serial killer hiding out in the countryside discovers that Ji-soo (Kim Hyeon-soo), the child he abducted and almost killed years earlier has moved into the house opposite. When his teenage son Yong-ho (Ahn Do-Gyoo), befriends Ji-soo she quickly recognises the father’s true identity and Joo-hyeop decides she must be killed to protect him and his son. But goaded by bullies Yong-ho begins to lash out with violence of his own and his actions not only strain his friendship with Ji-soo but increasingly convince him he’s fated to become like his father.

Offering a chill in its disturbing idea that violence is like a virus that can be spread from father to son this is otherwise standard SK genre fare revolving around broken families and traumatised kids menaced by a horrifically brutal serial killer. It’s all very bluntly presented but for all that undeniably potent. The film draws a nice contrast between the schoolkids whose combined spirit and resilience (both get little help from any of the adults) proves strong enough to overcome both Ma Dong-seok’s dead-eyed, practically catatonic knife murderer and the twists of fate suggesting son is destined to follow in Dad’s footsteps.

Competent performances from Ahn Do-Gyoo and Kim Hyeon-soo as the kids although not as much chemistry between them as I’d like (also not helped by a script that contrives to keep them apart too often) although Ma (the gruff, working class husband who won the hearts of audiences fighting off zombie hordes in Train To Busan) lends the drama real menace as the father who can barely hold his homicidal impulses in check. I like the way the film grounds its serial killer plot in the fraught relationship between father and son and shows events mostly from the perspective of the kids. Overall it’s a modest effort from its director (not least the 73 min runtime) and – appropriately enough – modestly effective.

The Red Detachment Of Women (Jin Xie, China, 1961)

On the island of Hainan in 1930’s China, Wu (Zhu Xijuan), a housemaid of cruel warlord Nan Batian (Chen Qiang), is freed by a female communist spy named Hong (Mei Xiang) and together the pair join a troop of women soldiers. After various misadventures the rebels, now commanded by Wu, capture and execute Nan Batian and his henchmen.

Although there’s an inevitable amusement value in the way the standard elements of a war movie are consistently rendered subservient to commie ideology (there’s a hilarious moment here during the climactic battle when our heroine staunchly refuses orders to leave the battlefield before she’s paid her party membership dues) this is an otherwise pacy, attractively played and engaging war film reminiscent of a 1930’s Hollywood adventure.

Which is to say the emphasis is on good-natured camaraderie amongst our heroines (the rebel HQ feels more like summer camp than boot camp), hissable villains and a rousing confidence in the righteousness of one’s cause. When Wu disobeys orders and is sent into confinement to ‘reflect’ on her actions the cheerful way everyone greets the news is almost enough to suppress the shiver at what such orders, in reality, invariably meant. The production values aren’t too shabby either with plenty of location filming and some moodily evocative studio sets.

Under the Shadow (Babak Anvari, UK/Iran, 2016)

A mother, Shideh (Narges Rashid) and her child Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) find themselves haunted by a malevolent ghost in their high-rise flat at the height of the 1980’s war between Iran and Iraq.

An impressive chiller with good performances from the small cast and an eye for twisting the details of life in a war zone – such as the tape used on the windows to stop the glass from shattering – into something distinctly more chilling. Somewhat reminiscent of Hideo Nakata’s fine horror Dark Water I thought, since not only does it share the same basic setup it too questions whether the mother is in some way imagining all this and therefore unfit to look after her child.

The shocks are extremely well executed too. There isn’t any gore here but with some nifty CG assists there are some terrific jump out of your seat moments (including one old school shocker I haven’t seen done so well since the heady days of the old slasher movies of the early 80’s). The film explicitly links Islam’s repressive attitudes to women by having our heroine tormented by a chador-wearing ghost (at one point the spirit literally smothers mother and child in that ghastly repressive garment).

The one criticism I’d make is that I found the ending a bit underwhelming but that’s only because the rich tapestry the writer/director weaves in the preceding 80 mins seemed to promise more. At any rate definitely recommended.

The Big Racket (Enzo G. Castellari, Italy, 1976)

Bluntly effective pastiche of American vigilante movies with Fabio Testi as the cop turned avenger putting paid to a particularly nasty protection racket with the aid of its victims. Somewhat hampered by dull scenes of Testi being admonished by his bosses plus there are nowhere near enough blood squibs for my liking, but otherwise boasting plenty of rough stuff (the scene in which Testi is rolled down a hill while inside a car appears to have been done for real) and bad guys who you really want to see suffer.

Anything For Her (Fred Cavaye, France, 2008)

A high-school teacher named Julian (Vincent Lindon) plots to break his wife Lisa (Diane Kruger) out of jail after she receives a 20 year prison term for a murder she didn’t commit. This engrossing drama keeps the brakes on for the first 2/3, immersing the viewer in ordinary characters plunged into the most nightmarish of circumstances before turning into a nail-biting ‘How-can-they-get-out-of-this?’ exercise in suspense as our two protagonists try desperately to escape the cops.

It’s a testament to the performances that once things kick off we’re completely emotionally invested in the success of Julian and Lisa. The small supporting cast make the most of their brief scenes with Olivier Perrier as Lindon’s Father and Hammou Graia as the dead-eyed investigating copper on the couple’s trail the stand-outs. I haven’t seen the American remake starring Russell Crowe (The Next Three Days) so have no idea which one stacks up best but I enjoyed this.

New World (Park Hoon Jeong, South Korea, 2013)

Rival gangster clans compete for power when the head of a corporate crime syndicate dies but an unscrupulous cop (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik) has two undercover men in the organization and intends to manoeuvre the succession his way.

Slick and brutal gangster movie with terrific action sequences but familiar plotting and a lead (Lee Jung-jae) who is never all that interesting (a fault, I think, not of the actor but of a script which paints the character as essentially passive until he’s forced to choose sides in the last act). Along with persistent echoes of other movies – everything from Infernal Affairs to Casino – this is in the second tier of recent South Korean genre entries.

Strong supporting performances though, especially Hwang Jeong-min as the flash employee of Chinese descent whose crude behaviour disguises a man of razor sharp intelligence and – unexpectedly – honour. A vicious knife fight between Jeong-min and half a dozen adversaries in the claustrophobic confines of a lift is a breathtaking and bloody sequence that epitomizes the old saw about how it’s not the size of the man in the fight that matters but the size of the fight in the man.

The Five (Jeong Yeon-sik, South Korea, 2013)

Paralysed, her neck broken and confined to a wheelchair following a brutal attack, former housewife Eun-ah (Kim Seon-ah) offers her organs to five equally desperate individuals in need of transplants if they first help catch the serial killer who crippled her and slaughtered her husband and 14-year old daughter.

Tough thriller-drama with more interest in the pain-filled lives of its characters than flashy technique or buckets of gore. Notable in that its heroine’s single-minded thirst for vengeance – so often the overriding theme of these things – gradually gives way to a shared humanism with the folk (not least a perky Christian lady whose religious faith turns out to be a fragile shield for an even more horrific past than Eun-ah’s) she recruits to help her.

The Five certainly hooks you emotionally yet the film can’t entirely escape the usual genre cliche’s such as characters who prove conveniently inattentive at crucial moments and its effective, yet cliched, androgynous, seemingly invulnerable killer (On Joo-wan). The climax is one of those overextended exercises in which everyone has to take their turn being pummelled by the killer. Despite this The Five’s good points do comfortably outweigh its weaker elements so it’s definitely worth a watch. Just be warned it is pretty gruelling in places.

Sleep Tight (Jaume Balaguero, Spain, 2011)

The Barcelona doorman of an apartment complex, Cesar (Luis Tosar) regards his residents with malevolent contempt and takes out his feelings on one of the flats’ happiest residents, Clara (Marta Etura).

From the director of Rec comes a creepy, compelling and convincingly acted thriller. The cadaverous Cesar struck this viewer as a distant cousin of Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu’s nutter in Sluzier’s The Vanishing (1988). He’s a sociopath who regards other people the way most of us regard insects and the ending of both films share a parallel in the way its protagonists attempt to empathise with the desires of normal people in a horrifically twisted manner.

The film isn’t quite able to explain why Cesar moves from torment in the first half to a desire to emulate Clara’s happiness in the second. It’s an awkward gear change which doesn’t quite convince. Despite all this – amazingly, actually – I didn’t find Cesar an entirely unsympathetic figure.

His irrational hatred for the eternally happy Clara – a sort of ‘How dare this person be happy while I’m not!’ – strikes a mordant chord and Luis Tosar’s performance is a subtly malevolent delight. Despite the humiliations he inflicts on Clara I don’t think he’s ever nastier then when he demolishes a lonely widow’s reason for living with a single, softly spoken monologue.

Investigation Of A Citizen Under Suspicion (Elio Petri, Italy, 1970)

A senior policeman (Gian Maria Volonte) murders his mistress (Florinda Bolkan) and leaves more than enough evidence to convict himself of the crime. But no matter how hard he tries his fellow officers stubbornly refuse to believe he could be the culprit.

A tour de force, blackly comic thriller with a downright mesmerising performance from Volonte whose pressure cooker combo of smugness, arrogance and masochism is most entertaining to watch. You don’t have to be a dyed in the wool lefty to enjoy this portrait of an authoritarian monster because Petri is equally attentive to both the thriller aspects and a skilfully maintained absurdist tone which stays just the right side of credibility. Strong contributions from Luigi Kuveiller’s dizzyingly fluid and dynamic camerawork and Ennio Morricone’s delightfully offbeat score. A slyly ambiguous ending is the icing on the cake.

The Dead Mountaineer (Grigori Kromanov, Estonia/Russia, 1979)

Police Inspector Glebsky (Uldis Pucitis) is called to a hotel in the Alps where a guest has been murdered. Glebsky thinks it’s the result of gang warfare but something more fantastical may be afoot. The question is whether Glebsky’s copper’s mentality can accept it.

Mildly engaging drama whose SF elements are used to turn a mirror on Glebsky, a Communist party functionary who regards everything outside his immediate experience as being at best irrelevant and at worst a menace to be destroyed. The outsiders, who come in peace to study mankind, end up manipulated by crooks, treated with suspicion by Glebsky and ultimately destroyed by the State.

Interestingly it’s not a conclusion the film treats with any sense of triumph and one senses here a subtle criticism of both Glebsky and his bosses. The script doesn’t make great demands of any of the actors but the performances are solid enough. It’s nicely shot too, with the Alpine hotel – all trendy 1970’s furnishings – coming across as an increasingly claustrophobic and menacing environment.

Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, US, 1949)

A security van guard (Burt Lancaster) plans to rob his own vehicle so he can be with the ex-wife (Yvonne De Carlo) he still carries a torch for. But the criminal he’s teamed up with to pull the job (Dan Duryea) has other plans.

An excellent crime thriller with noir/expressionist touches, an overriding mood of fatalism and some really clever use of back projection. I was struck here by just how handsome Burt was when he was younger but he in no way coasts on his looks. He’s superb in a drunken bar scene in which he winds up one of the locals. Duryea is as wonderfully slimy and untrustworthy as he always is in these kind of films and only De Carlo left me underwhelmed.

She’s not really playing a femme fatale ala Out of the Past’s Jane Greer so much as a self-centered bitch the men in her life go crazy for. But she doesn’t exude enough sexiness to really convince that a man would be as obsessive about her as Burt is. She’s very pretty but for me there’s a spark missing somewhere.

Still, it’s a minor criticism because this is taut, well paced, superbly acted and features a memorable climax which seems to transcend the standard crime and punishment scenario in favour of a dreamlike fatalism that pucks a helluva punch. And the final shot is amazing.

Manila In The Claws Of Light (Lino Brocka, Philippines, 1975)

A young man named Julio (Bembol Roco) arrives in the capital Manila to find out what happened to the love of his life Ligaya (Hilda Koronel), who three years before was lured away from their beach village with promises of education and employment.

Right from the off one anticipates a tale of sexual slavery but before the truth is revealed Brocka pulls an audacious switch on the audience by forcing the innocent Julio down a similar path to that of his beloved after he’s sacked from his construction job and robbed of his savings. Brocka’s depiction of urban squalor is easily on the level of something out of early Scorsese but unlike Scorsese he channels an intense compassion for the characters.

Because of this and because the director largely underplays the melodrama (the long awaited reunion between Julio and Ligaya is treated in a very matter of fact manner) one becomes increasingly attached to these characters and hoping for the best. But when the truth about Ligaya is revealed there’s a gut punch of a shocker in store and Julio’s journey from innocence and decency to alienation and rage is complete. The bloody climax, in which Julio finds himself caught in a literal and metaphorical dead end proves as powerful as it does inevitable.

The Killers Are Our Guests (Vincenzo Rigo, Germany, 1974)

A textbook example of what a talented cast and crew can do on a threadbare budget as a wimpy Doc (Anthony Steffen) and slattern wife (Livia Cerini) are held hostage in their own home by bank robbers Elisa (Margaret Lee) and Mario (Giuseppe Castellano). Aside from the the twin delights of investigating copper Luigi Pistilli’s ginormous sideburns (he looks the spitting image of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine) and Jack Regan lookalike Castellano as the brutish Mario, director Vincenzo Rigo absolutely socks over the character dynamics between hostages and captors.

As the threat of discovery by the police slowly builds and the pressure gives way to lust and violence Mario wants to kill the Doc and rape his wife. But Elisa appears not entirely unsympathetic to the Doc’s dilemma. Can she be persuaded to help? It’s a familiar setup but it works really well and so convincing are the performances that a plot twist right at the climax took me completely by surprise. Recommended.

L’Assassino, (Italy, 1961)

Antiques dealer Martelli (Marcello Mastroianni) is arrested on suspicion of murder and over the course of a gruelling interrogation the sordid details of his life spill out in Elio Petri’s feature debut.

Essentially a murder mystery wrapped around a character study this is a fine piece of work in which flashbacks that may or may not clear the suspect reveal Martelli as an unscrupulous chancer; a smoothie making a living conning the wealthy with expensive tat. He’s also a morally bankrupt individual who amongst other things seduces his best friend’s woman and then cruelly dumps her for a younger model.

As he always is, Mastroianni is utterly compelling as the picture of wounded innocence. He’s not the only player here – Micheline Presle and Cristina Gaioni are good support as the two women in his life – but he’s the only one in virtually every scene of the film and his portrayal of a weak, selfish man slowly buckling as he undergoes the proverbial Long Dark Night Of The Soul is terrific.

Equally impressive is Petri’s direction which is noticeable not for any flashy camera moves but for the skill with which its director moves the actors around within the camera frame. A sequence in which Martelli is harassed by two supposed killers in his cell who want him to confess is an exemplary piece of staging which really conveys the pressure Martelli’s under to make a confession even though it’s still far from certain he’s even the murderer.

Army In The Shadows (Jean Pierre Melville, France, 1969)

Impressionistic portrait of what it felt like for French resistance fighters during the German occupation of France. A stirringly heartfelt performance from Lino Ventura as a cell leader buckling under the strain of capture and excellent support from the likes of Simone Signoret as a fellow spy. Featuring an atmospheric score and really cold, bleak looking cinematography. The moments of camaraderie between Lino and friends merely highlight the agony of being trapped in an unending nightmare of betrayal, torture and death. One powerful experience.

Danger Pays (Ko Nakahira, Japan, 1962)

Daft as a a brush crime comedy in which assorted hoods with colourful nicknames like Slide-Rule, Joe the Ace and Dump-Truck Ken do battle for possession of an ace counterfeiter and a stash of stolen currency. This is another example of how far ahead the Japs were with cinematic trends as this is what used to be known as camp but what today they like to call ‘post-modern’and there are distinct echoes in this of swinging sixties stuff like The Avengers, Batman and Barbarella.

Actors like Jô Shishido, Hiroyuki Nagato and Ruriko Asaoka all play it with tongue firmly in cheek and the luridly lit sets look fantastic on BR. But it’s a rather loose narrative, consisting – as so many of these Japanese imitations of American crime movies of the period do – of little more than a string of sequences in which our heroes are captured, escape, get captured again, escape again, etc, etc. I can’t say I was blown away but the fast pace kept me watching and in the last third the film raises its game a bit with an energetic shootout between heroes and villains staged around a lift and a nice gag which closes out the show.

Magnum Cop aka Fearless Fuzz (1978)

A jolly action romp with likeable he man Maurizio Merli playing a former cop turned PI investigating a missing schoolgirl case. Like most every other Italian police thriller of the period the sordid revelation of what’s been going on comes as no surprise at all (at least if you’ve seen more than a few of these type of movies). But the film works because Merli can do a nice line in self-deprecating humour.

There’s a good running gag here between Merli’s broke PI and Gastone Moschin as a high-tech Austrian rival with the former indulging a spot of oneupmanship as he pretends to be the head of a huge international detective firm much to Moschin’s envy. None other than Joan Collins is also on hand and quite good she is too. Auntie Joan does a striptease, gets her tits out and turns out to be more involved with the missing schoolgirl than she pretends. This isn’t a movie trying to reach for the stars but it knows what it’s going for and delivers. I enjoyed it.

Convoy Busters (1978)

Also quite good was another Maurizio vehicle in which the star’s fondness for doing his own stunts – from hanging out of helicopters to being hauled up the side of an office block with nothing more than his foot in a rope noose – is very prominent. Lots of shootouts here but after two strong and promising acts weakened by a flabby and not quite satisfying third in which Merli is reassigned to a sleepy seaside town and uncovers a gun-running racket.

This is OK but it takes too long to go anywhere and more pertinently it feels like a distraction from the rest of the film in which Merli pursues a corrupt businessman being shielded by a bent prosecutor. One gets the impression the filmmakers realised they were on dodgy ground with the way that story was going and so cooked up the final third as a diversion to stop them getting into trouble with the censors. Shame really because most of Convoy Busters is very watchable with quite slick production values and a nice score.

Ms 45 (Abel Ferarra, US, 1981)

For me the outstanding female vigilante-rape-revenge tale with lead Zoe Tamerlis giving the most compelling performance as wide-eyed mute girl Thana, raped twice in a single day by two different men who then goes off on a killing spree targeting at first every man who makes a pass at her and then just any man she sees so much as kissing another woman.

Director Ferarra proves himself a dab hand at channelling the sleazy delights of the genre but its heroines anguish at her ordeal is downright palpable (in the scenes where Thana is penetrated Tamerlis conveys the shock and distress like few actresses have ever managed). As the bodies stack up the film transforms its vigilante themes into something resembling a twisted fairy tale for adults. Over 30 years later still a damn impressive film.

Dear Doctor (Miwa Nishikawa, Japan, 2009)

The resident Doc in a tiny country village turns out to be a fraud. But even if he barely understands the basics of medicine he does have a great bedside manner and that’s more than enough for the locals!

Nishikawa’s charming film is part character study and part mystery that ends up making a gently persuasive argument about the importance of empathy and not just impersonal clinical professionalism when it comes to dealing with worried patients. Miwa’s talent shows itself in her riveting mise-en-scene, especially the tension she generates when a patient with a collapsed lung turns up at the surgery and it becomes evident the Doc hasn’t a clue what he’s doing, plus the terrific performances she gets from the entire cast. There’s a scene stealing supporting performance from Kimiko Yo playing a widow suffering from what might just be stomach cancer but whose agony is curiously assuaged whenever Tsurube Shofukutei’s quack Doc comes to visit.

Bird With The Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, Italy, 1971).

There’s nothing here that disabuses me of the belief that this is one of Dario’s very best. The murder mystery of a maniac going around stabbing women revolves around a simple visual conceit in which the director plays fair with the viewer, laying out all the evidence in plain sight while slyly relying on our own prejudices to lead us down the wrong path. There’s a perfectly adequate performance from lead Tony Musante, while co-star Eva Renzi positively dominates in the film’s terrifically staged climax.

What with its blend of a murder mystery built around a subjective flashback, its scenes of computerised hi-tech detection and a string of consistently effective setpieces – even the sight of Suzy Kendall lapsing into hysterics fails to be as irritating as it might otherwise have been simply because Argento so powerfully socks over the sheer terror of being trapped in your own home as a killer tries to break in – all combine to make this a satisfying thriller.

And one thing I’d forgotten about early Argento was his habit of putting little gags into a scene every time a new character is introduced. They’re hardly subtle, much less sophisticated gags, but they are funny and never fail to put a smile on my face. I particularly liked the police Inspector dozing off in front of the tv cameras as he’s about to be interviewed.

Gate Of Hell (Teinosuke Kinugasa, Japan, 1953)

In 12th century Japan, a brutish samurai (Kazuo Hasegawa) develops an obsession for one of his lord’s married servants.

Ravishing colour cinematography from Kohei Sugiyama is the highlight of this otherwise stilted, lacklustre melodrama in which a good cast (amongst them Machiko Kyo, such a force of nature as the murder victim/ghost in Kurosawa’s Rashomon) are completely wasted. The sublime visuals so rarely connect with any of the emotions that ought to be – but aren’t – coursing through this tale of jealousy and revenge that if it weren’t for the gorgeous imagery and Hell’s historical status as the first Japanese colour film released internationally (although not the first film to be made in colour in Japan; that would be Kinoshita’s 1951 musical Carmen Comes Home) it’s hard to envisage this one being remembered at all.