The definitive Hollywood western, George Stevens' Shane has inimitable narrative momentum, rolling effortlessly from the introduction of Alan Ladd's buckskin dandy to the initial saloon tensions ("You talking to me?") and the epic punch-up, through the homesteader murder and the final confrontation with Jack Palance's beguiling assassin. Magnificent.
Insane collision of thriller and farce, with a kidnapping plot played at volume 11 and cast by a person on amyl. Kevin Bacon and Courtney Love are the bad couple, Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend the goodies. Charlize attacks Kev with a scalpel hidden down her knickers, but is still less raving bonkers than Courtney. Gloriously dreadful.
Terry Gilliam's epic 1991 fable has both admirers and detractors: it now seems ambitious, unique and charming. The superb Jeff Bridges is a burned-out DJ who's at first irritated then revitalised by oddball visionary tramp Robin Williams and his hallucinatory Arthurian quests. The latter's hyper-babbling (like the director's flourishes) holds because Bridges is so magnificently solid and believable.
Cracking old-school account of the Norwegian resistance's WWII attempts to destroy the Nazi factory responsible for developing Germany's atom bomb. Rousingly directed by Anthony Mann with the visual sweep typical of all his later productions (EI Cid, the first hour of Spartacus). Watch out for the curious sight of Kirk Douglas, in his prime here, acting brooding hambone Richard Harris off the screen.
With untenable Leone motifs and broad comedy caricatures, this final part of Shane Meadows' "Midlands Trilogy" (after Twenty-Four Seven and A Room For Romeo Brass) is a disappointment. Robert Carlyle is solid as the Glaswegian rogue determined to win back ex-partner Shirley Henderson. Yet, despite a re-shot 'dramatic' ending, it feels slight.
Burr Steers' debut as writer-director is perhaps a little too self-consciously off-kilter, but the film's humour is satisfyingly sour and the performances of a large ensemble cast are impeccable. Pitched somewhere between the macabre and the merely eccentric, Igby stars a convincingly debauched Kieran Culkin as the film's eponymous rebellious teen.
William Wyler's 1955 suspense classic, later remade by Michael Cimino, finds Humphrey Bogart frowning and sweating as only he can (in a role first played on stage by Paul Newman). Three on-the-run cons hold a family hostage in their home, but after plenty of mind games, the suburbanites outfox them. Humph had done it better in Key Largo, but it still crackles gamely.
Bizarre variation on The Phantom Of The Opera, with Vincent Price as a deformed musician seeking revenge on the doctors who accidentally killed his wife, and achieving it by murdering them in a spectacularly imaginative series of set-pieces. A truly mixed supporting cast (Joseph Cotton, Terry-Thomas) and a memorably stylish approach, with Price on monstrously hammy form.
This sequel to 2001's The Fast And The Furious delivers the same brand of out-and-out nonsense as the first instalment without ever pausing to miss Vin Diesel or Rob Cohen, the breakthrough star/director combo who went on to deliver the less entertaining XXX. Shaft director John Singleton is on hand to whip up some hip hop flavour. Enjoyably brain-dead tripe.
Taking apart their original monster hit, piecemeal, including smart cod-philosophy, brain-teasing story-twists, set-piece kung fu spectaculars and final-reel resurrections, and then reassembling it with a much bigger budget and a greater dollop of hubris, the Wachowski brothers here prove that limitless resources plus final cut can be a volatile mix.
