A double header, featuring two of David Lean's finest directorial efforts. Hobson's Choice (1954) sees Charles Laughton's magnificently overbearing Lancastrian patriarch butt heads with his equally stubborn daughter Brenda de Banzie, while John Mills is splendid as her husband, the worm who turns. The Sound Barrier (1952), in which Ralph Richardson attempts to devise the first faster-than-sound plane, sees stiff upper lips wobble as his efforts come to grief. It's also notable for some fine aerial sequences. Bravo, chaps!
Commendably lurid directorial debut from Asia Argento—international soft-porn horror princess and Vin Diesel's way-cool goth-vamp co-star in xXx. Dario's daughter not only writes and directs but also stars as a thinlyveiled version of herself, shagging and fighting her way through a sinister, male-dominated, sex-driven film business. Demented, narcissistic, monstrously self-indulgent—all the qualities, in fact, of the very best cult cinema.
James Coburn's last film is a well-meaning but hardly unforgettable drama about a father's search across America for the owner of the gun that killed his daughter. The narrative structure is contrived, and although it's only 86 minutes long, you feel yourself growing old watching it.
