I'm pretty sure I'd seen this before, a very long time ago - but my memory of it was only the car/train chase and something about 'picking your feet'. I finally got to this long overdue reacquaintance in memory of the much missed Gene Hackman. What struck me most about Friedkin's brilliant drug-crime thriller is the economy of it - not only in the run-time, but certainly that; but that somehow it's a film pared down to essentials. Nothing is…
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Alien: Romulus 2024
As good an entry in the Alien franchise as we've had in the series since after the second film - though not up to the impossibly high standards of the first two. A young group of miners are trying to sneak out of a mining colony via an abandoned ship, only to discover ... well, you can probably guess. There are many references to the first film - mostly they work well, with one weirdly unnecessary exception. Aesthetically and thematically…
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The Assistant 2019
Julia Garner is on-screen for the entirety of this film, playing the titular assistant to the head of film production company who is always off-screen and only occasionally (scarcely) audible. She's trying to make her way in the film business, and we follow her through her working day as she becomes steadily and inexorably more aware of the slow drip of repeated and varied abuses, insults, rejections, indignities and being patronised. Throughout it all, Garner's performance is a thing of…
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Predator 1987
The very definition of '80's action cinema, there are of course things about this that haven't aged well, especially when you rewatch this in the light of the excellent Prey. But John McTiernan knew what he was about, and it's still efficient, fun and doesn't mess around. It's inventively staged and I'd forgotten that there are lines in this which were the literal inspiration for the execrable The Expendables films. It's hard not to smile, though, and throwback to a…
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