Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Movie franchises are ten-a-penny nowadays, but few come with more expectations and built in hype than Star Wars. The seventh chapter, The Force Awakens, goes some way to correcting the horrors of episodes 1 2 and 3, and introduces some new exciting and original new characters alongside familiar faces, and some even more familiar plot points.

Set some time after the events of Episode six (Return of the Jedi) that saw the Rebellion defeat the Empire and Darth Vader, a new threat has arisen in the shape of the mysterious First Order, who seem set on the same sort of Galactic conquest. The Rebellion’s legendary hero Luke Skywalker has long since vanished, but a young scavenger, Rey (Daisy Ridley) and a droid may hold the key to his whereabouts. Pursued by the evil Kylo Ren, she teams up with Finn, a First Order Stormtrooper who is having second thoughts, and a couple of smugglers.

Ultimately the film plays it safe, giving the fans what they want, in the shape of gun fights, lightsaber fights, battles in outer space, a rousing John Williams score, a bad guy in a mask, and some snappy dialogue courtesy of Lawrence Kasdan. It also suffers the problem that any sequel suffers to some extent, in that being one part of a bigger story may limit how satisfying it can be as a standalone film. 

The most successful and memorable parts for me are the new elements and characters. Rey follows the Luke Skywalker model of a lowly youngster who has to grow up and learn some new skills pretty quickly, although she is distinct enough to not feel overly familiar. The real breakthrough character for me is Finn, as I liked the idea of subverting the trope of Stormtroopers being faceless mindless clones, and having one seems to suffer some sort of shellshock that makes him question his role in life.

Having said that, the familiar elements are there for a reason, and are integrated into a pacey and well thought out story, so the film can appeal equally both to fans, and people who just like exciting action packed films.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

James Bond is one of the most enduring characters in cinema and undoubtedly one aspect of the longevity is the producer’s willingness and ability to keep the films relevant to contemporary audiences and tastes. The Man with the Golden Gun is an example of this, reflecting the tastes and attitudes of the target audience and popular culture of the time. Along the way however it needlessly complicates the story, wastes potentially one of the greatest Bond villains of all time, and relies too much on cringe-worthy comedy and weak supporting characters.

The hunter has become the hunted as Bond becomes the target of Scaramanga, a mysterious assassin, who charges one million dollars per job and always uses gold bullets on his targets. Scaramanga is also linked to the death of a scientist working on the "Solex Agitator", a powerful solar cell. How is this linked to the price on Bond's head – and will 007 live long enough find out?

Although the 70s Bond films were still using the original novels as source material, this was increasingly confined to the title, and basic plot, and The Man with the Golden Gun is no exception.  Producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman moved the action from the Jamaican setting of the book to the Far East, which, as Enter the Dragon had been released the previous year, allows the film to incorporate elements from the Kung Fu movies which were all the rage. This was neither the first or last time this sort of cash in would happen as Live and Let Die and Moonraker came out within a short time of Shaft and Star Wars respectively, and incorporated many of the tropes of those films as well as playing to the public hunger for them.  However in The Man with the Golden Gun, rather than incorporated, these elements feel clumsily shoehorned in, leading to scenes that are baffling and insulting to the intelligence (why does Hip, Bond's man in Hong Kong, bring his teenage nieces on a mission? So they can beat up bad guys. Because they're Kung Fu experts).

The race and gender depictions are very much also of the time, with the Asians presented as both mysterious and exotic, or simply there to serve the British.  Women come off just as badly, although this is not unusual for Bond films. They range from the helpless and doomed Andrea (played by Maud Adams), who, in a jarring break from Moore's wisecracking smoothie portrayal, gets several smacks round the face from Bond as he tries to get information from her. At the other end of the spectrum we have helpless and stupid in the form of fellow British agent Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland), a character who might have worked as a comedy relief dizzy blonde, but here is someone so stupid, incompetent and grating, that it actually insults the intelligence of the audience.

The goofy broad humour reaches a low point with the character of Sheriff J.W. Pepper, the two dimensional Southern Sheriff who had previously appeared in Live and Let Die. Bizarrely, and completely improbably (even in the improbable world of James Bond films) he is on holiday in Thailand, sat in a car at a showroom at precisely the moment Bond requisitions a vehicle for a chase. To make us believe that an overtly racist character like Pepper would holiday in Thailand is too much, never mind the idea that he would visit a car dealer at the same time

This leads to the most famous scene in the film, the corkscrew car bridge jump, and spectacular though this is, it, like the Sheriff, the Kung Fighting and the Solex Agitator, it adds nothing to the story telling and could have been left out without compromising the plot, or could have been inserted just as arbitrarily into any other film.

This is the crux of the problem with The Man with the Golden Gun, the simple initial premise of two men hunting each other needlessly complicated by these elements. The best Bond films, such as From Russia with Love take a simple plot with clear goals and make everything that happens, a clear and logical part of that. A duel between Bond and a worthy adversary should have been such a premise, and even if this takes in multiple locations and characters, they can all serve this. Sadly and unforgivably, the filmmakers (given this is a franchise, it is perhaps not always clear how much of the final product is down to producers, writers or directors) waste what could have been one of the greatest and most unique Bond villains of all time.

Christopher Lee rose to fame playing Dracula as a suave, charismatic, but ruthless and overtly sexual predator, qualities he brings to Scaramanga and, arguably, qualities that somewhat define the character of Bond. Certainly he is every bit as suave, charming, dangerous as Bond, almost like a mirror image of him, and while he does have a lair, gadgets and, in Nick Nack, played by Herve Villechaize, a sidekick (the 6ft 5 Lee  and Villechaize make a great odd couple, like Kramer and Mickey Abbott in Seinfeld), his focus on assassination and personal enrichment put him in a different league to Blofeld and SPECTRE.

Death Wish II (1982)

Despite my hopes of some trashy amoral action packed fun, Death Wish II is a joyless test of the viewer's patience. The star (Charles Bronson) and director (Michael Winner) can do better, certainly in the context of the vigilante genre, as shown in the first film of the franchise.

In the first Death Wish, Paul Kersey (Bronson) hunted down the scummiest scum of New York City, following the murder of his wife and rape of his daughter Carol. Now, several years later, he is working as an architect in Los Angeles, and living with Carol and new girlfriend Geri Nichols (Jill Ireland). After chasing down a gang who stole his wallet, Kersey finds himself followed back to his apartment by his attackers. The gang proceed to beat him unconscious, rape his Mexican housekeeper and kidnap his daughter, who falls to her death trying to escape. For Kersey, that leaves only one course of action - pick up his gun and hunt them down, one scumbag at a time.

The original Death Wish was a slickly made piece of emotional manipulation, which at least kept the viewer interested and tried to provide some justification for Kersey's actions. Here, nobody seems that bothered about putting that much thought into the script, or the direction (making violence boring is an art, but not one to be admired)

The real surprise and disappointment is the star of the film. Bronson, while never in the slightest bit convincing as an architect, is one of the great movie tough guys, with genuine screen presence and charisma, at his best when exuding an impassive and implacable sense of purpose and menace. Here he just looks stiff and dull, a robot going through the motions.

By having the gang made up of scum of different ethnic backgrounds, Winner does go some way to offsetting charges of racism, but there is no getting away from the unpleasant treatment of women. They only exist to be abused by men or to provide reasons for the men to act, although this is not an unusual situation for this genre.

Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (1982)

Reviewing sequels can pose a problem - should the film be looked at as a standalone piece, or as part of a series? Thankfully, Halloween 3 largely solves this particular problem by ignoring any of the Michael Myers mythology of the previous two (or subsequent seven) entries in the franchise, and what we are left with is a flawed but still interesting film. The delirious tone and subject matter make it feel at times like a modern day suburban fairy tale, and it mixes an X-Files/Kolchak type story with an uncompromisingly cruel streak that touches on an uncomfortable taboo.

When one of his patients is murdered in hospital, Dr Daniel Challis, played by Tom Atkins (Maniac Cop, Night of the Creeps) teams up with the dead man's daughter to investigate. Their search takes them to the mysterious Silver Shamrock toy factory in California, owned by Conal Cochran, played by Dan O'Herlihy (Robocop), a place that also has links to an incessant toy commercial, a sinister child-based pagan ritual, and a certain day of the year.

After Halloween 2, which followed on directly from the events of the first film, John Carpenter expressed an interest in turning the franchise into an annual event, releasing a different film every October 31st, each unrelated beyond the Halloween moniker. This is the first, and, thanks to disappointing box office results, only result of this experiment.

The main criticism that can be levelled at Halloween 3 is the script, which feels messy, and badly constructed. We get some intriguing situations and plot twists, such as a murderer calmly getting into a car and setting himself on fire, but because the main premise of the factory owner's evil scheme feels half thought through, the big revelation at the end is a baffling, and slightly silly let down.

The first draft of the screenplay was written by Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale, but, according to him, was heavily reworked. It certainly lacks the sharp internal logic of the Quatermass stories, where baffling and intriguing premises are set up but clearly explained by the end, and the whole thing feels a lot goofier than anything Kneale ever put his name to. For example, I can see a Stonehenge-type plot element being in the original (Kneale, in the final Quatermass TV serial three years earlier had explored similar themes) but the idea that one of the stones could be transported from Wiltshire to California without anyone noticing is just ridiculous. At the very least, a writer of the calibre of Kneale might have been able to exploit the potential in the storyline to satirise the commercialisation of the Halloween holiday or the small businessman being squeezed out by a big industrial corporation, opportunities overlooked here.

On the plus side, Atkins is great, and completely believable in his role as the macho, hard drinking Dr Challis. He pulls off the same trick he managed in Maniac Cop, that of keeping a straight face in bizarre situations, and bringing a bit of gravitas to some rather silly lines. The rest of the acting is a little more broad, especially the townsfolk and their "oirish" accents. This eventually starts to grate, but is in keeping with the over the top, EC Comics feel of the film. Aside from Challis, there is no real characterisation as such, with people existing largely as elements that provide us with some mystery or exposition before they are bumped off. There is the plenty of portentous dialogue and scenes, so of course, anyone as garrulous and well liked as Cochran MUST be evil.

The oft-repeated Silver Shamrock TV commercial is as catchy as it is irritating but its daily countdown to Halloween takes on more sinister significance as the movie progresses, and provides a deadline that helps crank up the tension. I also could not help but chuckle that a film that centres on an evil corporation using television to destroy the nation's youth was released in the same year that MTV went on the air.

There is no shortage of blood and gore, which puts it closer in tone to the second Halloween film than the original. However, instead of the grim but realistic violence of that first sequel, we get a slightly more fantastic over-the-top approach, with sights such as bugs and snakes pouring out of a skull that has cracked open, and the emphasis here is on the gruesome rather than the suspenseful.

There are some in-jokes for cinema buffs too, some of which work better than others. Repeated TV adverts in the film for the original Halloween, are jarring and distracting, if for no other reason than it reminds us how good the original is. I could do without the "Landis Pet Store" too, with Carpenter presumably following on from Escape from New York, where two minor characters were named Cronenberg and Romero. A more subtle gag is naming the town Santa Mira, the same as in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which also has a small town doctor trying to convince people of a deadly and fantastic threat, and which also has an ambiguous ending.

Not totally successful, mostly due to the script deficiencies, but carried mostly by another great turn by Atkins, and some imaginative twists and turns, and kudos to the filmmakers for at least trying something different.

Halloween 3 was not a smash at the box office, leading to the switch back to the Michael Myers storyline for part 4 onwards. One possible reason for the failure is the lack of Myers, but another thought occurs. The premise is half thought out, but the half that is thought out touches on something of a taboo, that of child murder, and mass child murder at that. Horror films often revolve around murder, and while there is room for debate on some of the issues, such as gender, that arise from this, the murders are usually of adults or, at the youngest, teenagers. If the films do involve children, the norm is for them to be Omen-style evil protagonists. Child murder, or at least the threat of it, is a theme that crops up in literature, particularly Fairy Tales, and even the Bible, but it is tough to think of a great number of films that deal with it, certainly not on the scale proposed by Cochran, almost as if child murder is a taboo that even the most "daring" filmmaker seems reluctant to break.