Little Women

Year of Release:  2019
Director:  Greta Gerwig
Screenplay:  Greta Gerwig, based on the novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Starring:  Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet
Running Time:  135 minutes
Genre:  Period drama

Set in the 1860s the film follows the four March sisters:  Responsible Meg (Watson) the oldest of the four; stubborn and fiery Jo (Ronan), an aspiring writer; kind, shy and musical Beth (Scanlen) and the youngest of the four, Amy (Pugh), an aspiring painter. 

This is one of several adaptations of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel, which I have never read, and I have never seen any of the other adaptations of it, and so I cannot say how faithful or not this film is to it's source.  The film introduces us to the March sisters as adults, and moves back and forth between their childhood and their adult lives.  The film is beautifully made with some ravishing images, and impeccably played by a very strong cast.  After having made a splash with her directorial debut Lady Bird, this marks Greta Gerwig as one of the most promising new directors working today.  The film has a large cast of characters and moves between a number of different storylines and time frames, with nary a misstep.  It also successfully balances period detail with a contemporary relevance.

Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan and Eliza Scanlen in Little Women

The Ipcress File

Year of Release:  1965
Director:  Sidney J. Furie
Screenplay:  Bill Canaway and James Doran, based on the novel The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton
Starring:  Michael Caine, Nigel Green, Guy Doleman, Sue Lloyd
Running Time:  109 minutes
Genre:  Thriller

London, 1965:  Secret agent Harry Palmer (Caine) is assigned to a section investigating a rash of bizarre resignations and disappearances of top scientists.  He soon finds himself embroiled in a murky world of espionage, betrayal and a sinister brainwashing plot.

The Ipcress File was intended to be a more downbeat and realistic alternative to the James Bind franchise and uses several crew members from the Bond films, including producer Harry Saltzman, composer John Barry and production designer Ken Adam.  While James Bond was a suave, sophisticated, public school educated, playboy, Harry Palmer is a cynical, bespectacled, working class Londoner, who lives in a bedsit, enjoys cooking and classical music and has a criminal background.  The film eschews the glamorous locations for deliberately drab London locations, and lacks the gadgets, set pieces and sex appeal, although Palmer does have a romance with fellow spy Jean Courtney (Lloyd).  It depicts the world of spying as basically mired in bureaucracy, with endless red tape, inter-departmental squabbling and office politics, which Bond would never put up with.  It is still an entertaining movie, stylishly directed by Furie, who makes good use of unconventional framing and tilted camera angles, invoking a disorientating, skewed world.  While Palmer is a more vulnerable lead then Bond, he is still handy with his fists and a gun.  Michael Caine became something of a sixties icon with this, his first lead role.  In Len Deighton's 1962 source novel, and it's sequels, the lead character (Harry Palmer in the film) is never given a name.  Like Harry Palmer in the film, Deighton was an accomplished cook and clippings of cookery articles written by him decorate Palmer's apartment, and in a scene where Palmer prepares a meal, the hands seen in close-up are actually Deighton's.     

Michael Caine is Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File

24 Hour Party People

Year of Release:  2002
Director:  Michael Winterbottom
Screenplay:  Frank Cottrell Boyce
Starring:  Steve Coogan, Paddy Considine, Danny Cunningham, Shirley Henderson, Lennie James, Sean Harris, Andy Serkis, John Simm 
Running Time:  117 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, drama, music

Manchester, England, 1976:  Tony Wilson (Coogan), reporter for local news show Granada Reports and music show So It Goes, is inspired, after seeing a Sex Pistols gig, to open a showcase for local, unsigned bands.  Wilson's "Factory Nights" are a huge success, and he subsequently starts his own label, Factory Records.  Despite making a huge splash with the legendary group Joy Division and, later, the brilliant, but mercurial, Happy Mondays, as well as their own nightclub, The Hacienda, Wilson and his friends soon realise that the wild nights can produce some devastating morning afters.

This is the cinematic equivalent of a great night out:  Funny, wild, scrappy, sometimes weird, sometimes emotional, and leaving you blinking at the cold grey light of dawn.  I was kind of too young for the whole "Madchester" of the late '80s and early '90s but I do remember it being a thing, and I knew people who were really into it, also my Dad is from Manchester, so I enjoyed the film's celebration of the city.  The film is a heady mix of drama, documentary, comedy, music video and surrealism which doesn't as much break the fourth wall as throw a sledgehammer at it.  In one scene one of the real people depicted in the film cameos to dispute the film's version of events.  The film even breaks it's story to list some of the people who cameo in the film, including one whose scene was cut but, as the narration states, "I'm sure it'll be on the DVD" (I've seen the DVD and it is).  The film is certainly messy (the tragic real life suicide of Ian Curtis, although played respectfully in the film, feels at odds with the goofy comedy surrounding it).  Steve Coogan channels more than a little of his Alan Partridge character as Tony Wilson, a talented man who is so unapologetically and full-bloodedly a complete arse, that he becomes almost kind of heroic in a weird way.  Otherwise, the film is full of famous, or soon to be famous British stars, including Andy Serkis and Simon Pegg. I love music, but I'm not really a big music person and don't know a lot about it, however I loved this film.  It makes me feel a little nostalgic for the wild nights out and dazy, hazy mornings.   

Lennie James, Shirley Henderson and Steve Coogan are 24 Hour Party People   

Scream

Year of Release:  1996
Director:  Wes Craven
Screenplay:  Kevin Williamson
Starring:  Neve Campbell, Drew Barrymore, Courteney Cox, Rose McGowan, David Arquette, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard, Jamie Kennedy
Running Time:  111 minutes
Genre:  Horror, thriller, comedy

In the small American town of Woodsboro, teenager Casey Becker (Barrymore) is tormented by taunting phone calls from a mysterious masked killer, who brutally murders her when she fails his twisted movie trivia game.  As Woodsboro becomes a media circus, it becomes apparent that the killer is particularly focussing on Sidney Prescott (Campbell), whose mother was killed almost exactly a year before.

Some films seem to perfectly capture a particular time period, and Scream, to me, is one of the definitive films of the late 1990s.  The look, style and music really capture that period.  Horror was pretty much in the doldrums at the time, and slasher films in particular were as dead as if the genre had gone out at night to investigate a strange noise, until Scream brought it back.  The film's great idea is that, unlike most of the slashers that had gone before, the characters here are aware of slasher films, and are fully aware of the conventions of the genre.  Audiences sometimes watch horror films and scream in laughter at the stupidity of the characters, this film second guesses that audience by having the characters on screen do it for them (literally in one scene where a character is watching Halloween (1978) oblivious to the killer looming up behind him, and equally unaware that he is being recorded and watched in a TV news van, where the people watching are shouting the same things that he is saying to Jamie Lee Curtis).  The characters are frequently discussing horror films and enumerate in detail the rules of a slasher film.  However Scream is not just a spoof of horror, it works as a slasher film in it's own right, screenwriter Kevin Williamson  obviously loves and knows horror, and director Wes Craven was one of the great horror directors, cutting his teeth on the controversial The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977) before unleashing Freddy Krueger onto the world in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).  In fact Craven had explored similar post-modern territory before with Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), which I still think is the best of the Elm Street series.
The film's most recognisable star, Drew Barrymore, is killed within the first quarter of an hour, in a scene that quickly became iconic.  Star Neve Campbell was known for the TV show Party of Five (1994-2000) and Courteney Cox, who starred as tabloid TV news journalist Gale Weathers, made her name in the hugely popular Friends (1994-2004).  The characters are well-drawn and, crucially, Williamson and Craven seem to genuinely like them, so it is affecting when they are in danger, they are not just there to be sliced 'n' diced.  The fact that the film is not just a gory slasher, but it has humour, teen drama and mystery, meant that it's appeal moved beyond the horror fans.
To date, the film has spawned three sequels, and a TV series.    

Courntey Cox, Jamie Kennedy and Neve Campbell in Scream

The Sweet Hereafter

Year of Release:  1997
Director:  Atom Egoyan
Screenplay:  Atom Egoyan, based on the novel The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
Starring:  Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Maury Chaykin, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Alberta Watson, Caerthan Banks, Arsinee Khanjian
 Running Time:  112 minutes
Genre:  Drama

In the small rural town of Sam Dent, British Columbia, a school bus crash kills fourteen children.  Lawyer Mitchell Stevens (Holm) arrives in town to persuade the grieving townspeople to hire him to represent them in a class action lawsuit against the town and the bus company.  While some people accept his offer, others are more reluctant and some overtly hostile, as the town's various dark secrets come to the surface.  Meanwhile Stevens is haunted by his troubled relationship with his estranged drug-addict daughter, Zoe (Banks).

This is a deeply powerful and genuinely moving film.  As with many Egoyan films, it uses an unconventional structure, moving back and forth in time, with crucial events and information revealed out of sequence.  Ian Holm gives a devastating performance as the lawyer, who is revealed to be much more than just a sleazy ambulance-chaser.  The heartbreaking scene where he tells a story from his daughter's childhood is possibly the best moment in Holm's distinguished career.  The film has a large ensemble cast all do well, particularly Sarah Polley as troubled fifteen year old Nicole, who survives the crash but is left disabled.  The tone of the film, despite it's subject matter, is more like a dark fairy tale than gritty realism, with repeated references to Robert Browning's retelling of The Pied Piper of Hamlin, and a haunting, medieval-influenced score by Mychael Danna.

      Sarah Polley and Ian Holm face up to The Sweet Hereafter

Ghostbusters

Year of Release:  1984
Director:  Ivan Reitman
Screenplay:  Harold Ramis and Dan Ackroyd
Starring:  Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, Harold Ramis, Annie Potts, Ernie Hudson, William Atherton
Running Time:  107 minutes   
Genre:  Comedy, fantasy, horror

Scientists Peter Venkman (Murray), Ray Stantz (Ackroyd) and Egon Spengler (Ramis) are fired from their position at Columbia University, due to their dubious research and conclusions.  The trio decide to go into business for themselves as professional ghost-catchers.  Initially dismissed largely as a joke, the Ghostbusters soon find themselves fighting to save the world.

This hugely successful blend of comedy, fantasy and supernatural horror is one of the most beloved film of the 1980s.  It's funny throughout, with some still enjoyable, albeit dated, special effects.  It's also just scary enough to avoid upsetting children.  Much of the humour depends on the juxtaposing the cynical, workaday realities of 1980s New York, with the supernatural.  Bill Murray dominates the film with his delightfully deadpan performance as the slightly disreputable, cynical, wisecracking Venkman, although he gets sterling support from the rest of the cast, particularly William Atherton as the film's main human antagonist, an oily EPA representative.  The film was followed by a sequel in 1989, several animated TV series (most notably The Real Ghostbusters (1986-1991)), and a remake in 2016.   

Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis in Ghostbusters.

"Growing Things and Other Stories" by Paul Tremblay

Year of Publication:  2019
Number of Pages:  476
Genre:  Horror, short stories

This is a collection of nineteen short horror stories: Two sisters struggle to survive in a world choked by lethal ever-growing plants; a school class have their lives ruined by a shocking video; a meth addict kidnaps her child while her town is seemingly destroyed by a giant monster; an aspiring journalist gets more than he bargains for when he interviews a cult author; a woman is haunted by her childhood ghosts in a Choose Your Own Adventure story; a horror writer soon regrets hiring a dog walking service and more.

As with all anthologies it's a mixed bag, although when it works it is genuinely creepy and unsettling. I have never read anything by Tremblay before, and I do think that I missed out on elements in some stores that tie in to his previous books, although I still enjoyed them.  If you like stories that answer all the questions and tie up all the loose ends, then this book probably isn't for you. Much of the horror is kept very ambiguous, with the more conventional "horror" elements happening in the background or just hinted at.  It is certainly recommended for anyone who wants a good scare.