This 1978 throwback to the all-star men-on-a-mission genre of the late '60s delivers a cracking carbine-load of ripe boys' own adventure, mainly thanks to the quartet of scenery-munching hambones (Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris, Hardy Krüger) cast as the eponymous squad of cigar-chomping Africa-bound mercenaries.
This one proves Tim Burton's an absolute master. Billy Crudup hears his dying dad (Albert Finney) recount his implausible life story. Ewan McGregor embodies the young Finney as these tall tales are realised with wow-factor wizardry: a giant, a war, a circus—it's Fellini with a colour box. The climax skilfully plays your scepticism off against your dreams, somehow allowing both to win. Small ponds of audience tears ensue.
The small transit town of Nouadhibou lies between the desert and the sea in the African state of Mauritania. Here, Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako explores the tug between modernity and tradition, adopting an image-heavy poetic style to examine themes of migration and exile, centred around the character of Khatra, a young man caught between two cultures.
Ten-year-old Paul (Harry Eden) is at home in a world of pimps and pushers, bargain basement hookers and fly-blown market cafés. He has to be—since his widowed mother traded mourning for a regular numbing dose of heroin, it's been Paul who has kept the family running, even if that means fetching Mummy her 'medicine'. Gillies Mackinnon's drama is admittedly bleak, but excellent performances and restrained direction make this a rewarding, if heart-wrenching, experience.
John Waters' first 'mainstream' film from 1988 was to be the last bow for underground star Divine, on epic form as the mother of the rebellious Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake, making her debut), who becomes a dance star on a teen TV show circa 1962 before transforming into a beatnik civil rights activist. Also featuring extraordinary cameos from Pia Zadora, Debbie Harry and Sonny Bono, this is an utter delight.
Stanley Kramer's star-studded 1961 version of the Nuremberg Trials sees Burt Lancaster as a German collaborator, Spencer Tracy as a US judge, and has cameos for practically everyone else: Marlene Dietrich, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland. The latter two, emaciated and tattered, provide unintentionally ghoulish viewing, but the flick itself is a tad worthy.
Neil LaBute had gone off the boil, but this low-budget version of his own stage play (with the same cast, including Rachel Weisz and Paul Rudd, who'd acted in London and Broadway) is a quite brilliant examination of the evil women do, a kind of flipside to In The Company Of Men. It's also a clever debate about the interface between creativity and love or sex. Weisz relishes the chance to be acid on legs.
This stunningly realised 1962 restaging of D-Day is the last great war epic. The stars include John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, Rod Steiger, Sean Connery and a wounded Richard Burton, but the greatest stretches come on the inclement grey Normandy beaches, where General Robert Mitchum tries to lead his beleaguered men up the dunes, and get his cigar to light.
Slow-moving account of the events leading up to the execution of King Charles I (Rupert Everett) and its aftermath, focusing on the stormy friendship of rebel leaders Oliver Cromwell (Tim Roth) and General Thomas Fairfax (Dougray Scott). Despite lavish period detail, a good supporting cast and an excellent performance from Everett, the leaden and historically dubious script renders this duller than the driest of documentaries.
Classic 'revisionist' western from '71, Peter Fonda's directorial debut is bookended by two acts of fumbling, clumsy yet brutally violent gunplay, but is otherwise concerned with the delicately evolving relationships between two wandering cowboys (Fonda and Warren Oates) and Fonda's once abandoned wife (Verna Bloom). The photography from Vilmos Zsigmond (McCabe & Mrs Miller) is worth the price of the DVD in itself.
