Thelma (2024)

I would usually be upset by an action movie that didn't have a decent amount of full-on action in it, but Thelma is an exception to the rule. It's a film that makes great use of some action movie tropes, delivering laughs and genuine tension throughout, and proves wholly satisfying, despite also making time and space for some moving commentary on the pros and cons of growing old.

June Squibb plays the title character, a 93-year-old woman who ends up giving thousands of dollars to a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, Daniel (Fred Hechinger). Not only does this affect her finances, it starts a conversation about whether or not she is still able to live on her own. Determined to prove that she isn’t ready to be placed in a nursing home, Thelma embarks on a quest to retrieve her stolen money, reluctantly accepting the assistance of Ben (Richard Roundtree) on the way.

Written and directed by Josh Margolin, making his feature debut, this is a film full of unexpected delights. Whether it’s a chase sequence involving mobility scooters or a Mission: Impossible style mini-heist showing an elderly woman dealing with a carpeted set of stairs before trying to reach the top of a wardrobe, the juxtaposition of action movie elements with the advanced age of our main character makes for wonderful entertainment. The film manages to deliver much more than that one joke though (and it should be noted that the joke is about the genre standards, not about our main characters). What Margolin does with the messaging of the movie is intertwine it deftly in a way that makes it all very clear and obvious without it ever feeling unnecessary or unwelcome. The fun and the commentary are like two strands on a firmly bonded double helix.

It helps that Squibb is such a delight in the lead role. She may not completely convince as a badass, but she does enough to get by, and she absolutely convinces as someone unwilling to let her lifestyle be dictated by her advanced age. Her body may not always act in the way she wants it to, but her mind is almost as sharp as ever. Roundtree does very well alongside her, also struggling with his situation, albeit in a different way, and showing a vulnerability that is accompanied by his much less vulnerable essence of the macho man we've seen him play in films over many decades. Hechinger is very sweet and likeable as Daniel, Parker Posey and Clark Gregg are Thelma's daughter and son-in-law, respectively, and both spend a lot of the movie being very concerned about an old woman they seem to constantly underestimate, and there's a fantastic role for Malcolm McDowell by the time we get well into the third act.

As long as you know that this is going to be more Moderate & Agitated than Fast & Furious then you should find a lot to enjoy. It shouldn't really work as well as it does, I certainly didn't expect to sometimes be tensing up or to feel so satisfied as the final scenes played out, but Margolin shows that thrills and set-pieces don't need big budgets or global stakes. They just need to have the right character in the middle of everything, and that will guarantee that you will be seriously invested in how they navigate the perils around them.

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: Shaft (2019)

You know the name. Shaft is the cool cat that we've been digging since he first appeared in cinemas back in the early 1970s. Richard Roundtree played the role, and memorably. A reworking of the bad mother (shut your mouth . . . but I'm talkin' 'bout Shaft) appeared in 2000, with Samuel L. Jackson taking on the main role. And now we have a film that features both of those actors playing the role, although the former isn't onscreen for long, while introducing a new member to the family (played by Jessie T. Usher).

Usher is JJ Shaft, a young man who hasn't seen his father in many years. That's because his mother (Maya, played by Regina Hall) decided to leave, in order to keep her son safe from the kind of trouble that his father would attract. But when JJ needs help to investigate the death of a good friend, he ends up tracking down his father, John Shaft (Jackson). Bones are broken, bullets fly, women start to find the danger arousing, and Shaft and Shaft Jr hurtle towards a grand finale that will require the help of someone equally capable. Grandpa AKA John Shaft, Sr (Roundtree).

Shaft is an enjoyable comedy, with some decent action beats that don't skimp on the gunfire and bloodshed, but that is something that will upset a lot of fans. It's not something that bothered me, however, mainly because the main incarnations of the character that we have seen before were rarely the butt of any jokes. Usher plays a man brought up in a very different world, and with a very different attitude, but the secret to getting things done is usually adding on a bit of that patented Shaft badassery. And it's fair enough to highlight the fact that the classic traits of the character wouldn't necessarily be as appreciated today as they have been in previous decades (although they're only really unappreciated here by other people who have not spent a decent amount of time in Shaft's world).

Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow have put together a decent script, allowing the leads to have some very entertaining moments together, and peppering many scenes with dialogue that both works for the characters and also proves amusing enough. It feels like a good pairing, with Barris having a few more movies under his belt and Barnow having a decent selection of TV shows under his.

As just mentioned, Jackson and Usher work well together. The former is his usual persona, Usher spends a lot of the movie playing catch up (although he does have one or two tricks up his sleeve, and has more skill than is immediately apparent). Roundtree still has his full serving of charisma, which makes his limited screentime all the more frustrating. The villains are decent enough, and Titus Welliver delivers a great little turn as The Man, the immediate boss to JJ who doesn't ever give him an opportunity to reach his full potential. The ladies may be sidelined for a lot of the runtime, but that doesn't stop both Hall and Alexandra Shipp (playing Sasha, a good friend to JJ) doing their best with what they're given. Both manage to stand out in a fill overflowing with testosterone, as does Luna Lauren Velez, in the role of a potential lead/criminal named Bennie Rodriguez.

Director Tim Story keeps everything moving nicely. This is a 110-minute movie that whizzes by. There's a great soundtrack (although it's missing one classic cut), some entertaining set-pieces, and a central investigation with a couple of twists and turns, despite the fact that most viewers will be able to point to at least one of the main villains within their first few scenes. And Shaft is still also very much Shaft. As is Shaft. JJ, on the other hand, well, he needs a lot of work. But he might be able to find his own Shaftiness by the time the end rolls around.

There are already mixed reviews appearing for this, and just as many advising viewers to stay away. Don't listen to The Man. Give it a watch and make your own mind up.

7/10

Get yourself a funky soundtrack here.
Americans can get a Roundtree triple-bill here.

City Heat (1984)

Perhaps they weren't at their highest height, but in the early '80s you would struggle to find two cinematic superstars more iconic than Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds. Don't get me wrong, we still had plenty of cinematic icons alive and well, but they weren't seemingly at the peak of their powers, whereas Burt and Clint absolutely were. One was The Bandit, and also just Burt, one was Dirty Harry, and so many other memorable characters. Which makes the idea of City Heat a no-brainer.

This was Tango & Cash five years before Tango & Cash, with the added move of making it a period piece, for reasons I still can't quite fathom (although I admit that a couple of fun gags stem from the whole prohibition-era restrictions).

Eastwood is Lieutenant Speer, Reynolds is a private detective named Mike Murphy. The men used to be partners but it's clear from the opening scenes that there's no love lost between them. Murphy has a partner who has unwitingly gotten himself in too deep with some mobsters, Speer is keeping a detached eye on the situation, mainly by keeping an eye on Murphy.

Directed by Richard Benjamin (who I knew as an actor, mainly from the Saturday The 14th films, but was unaware that he has been behind some fun movies, including The Money Pit, Mermaids and My Favourite Year), and written by Blake Edwards and Joseph Stinson, City Heat is a film symptomatic of many that want to pair up two superstars without really knowing how best to use them. There's simple fun to be had just watching any exchange between the fast-talking Reynolds and the much more laconic Eastwood, and there are some good gags here and there (a running joke about hidden alcohol being one, the other involves Eastwood having a supply of larger and larger firearms), but that's about all this has going for it, which is a great shame for all involved. The script should have been full of better lines, the plotting didn't need to seem so convoluted, and there should have been more thought given to creating set-pieces that could involve the two leads.

Eastwood and Reynolds both do very well, and both are much better than the material they have to work with. Jane Alexander and Madeline Kahn are also very good, playing two women who may be inadvertently dragged into the whole dangerous mess. Tony Lo Bianco and Rip Torn play the two mob bosses at odds with one another, and Richard Roundtree, Irene Cara, William Sanderson, and Robert Davi are among the other familiar faces joining in.

Having not seen City Heat since I first watched it on VHS when it was released in the 1980s, I wondered if it would be better or worse than I recall. It turns out that, despite the age of the film and the much older age of myself, I feel pretty much the same way about it as I did way back then. I'll be interested to hear how others view it.

5/10

Having never really been given any special treatment on disc, I recommend picking City Heat up with this set.

American fans can pick it up on Bluray here.

Q (1982)

AKA Q: The Winged Serpent.

Writer/director Larry Cohen has given fans a lot of great little movies over the years. Films with no delusions of grandeur that often just manage to punch above their weight thanks, usually, to Cohen's ability to knock out fun scripts that are peppered with cool dialogue.

Q is one of his best, a film all about a giant bird winged serpent that terrorises the good people of New York. Yet it's not really all about the giant, winged beastie because Q is equally a character study, focusing on a small time crook named Jimmy Quinn (Michael Moriarty). Jimmy bemoans his lot in life but it's really all his own fault, as is shown by how unappreciative he is of the love of a good woman (Joan, played by the wonderful Candy Clark). When he's involved in a robbery that doesn't go according to plan, Jimmy has to scarper and he stumbles upon the nest of the titular serpent. When the police (David Carradine and Richard Roundtree, amongst others) get a hold of him and take him in for questioning, Jimmy starts to think that his luck may have finally changed. He hears talk of some flying creature that's been killing people and he knows that he has information that could save the day. At a price.

The main character of this movie is not a nice guy. No, Jimmy Quinn is an ungrateful, cocky, cowardly, crude, pathetic excuse for a human being. Thankfully, the script and Michael Moriarty's performance also make him into someone that you want to keep watching, even if it's only to see if he'll get his comeuppance. The support from Clark, Carradine, Roundtree, James Dixon, Malachy McCourt, Larry Pine, John Capodice, Tony Page and a few others also keeps this movie being watchable and very entertaining from start to finish.

Q himself isn't fully shown very often, for obvious reasons. Thankfully, there's enough aerial photography and trickery with shadows to ensure that viewers never feel shortchanged. Even for the many moments when the beast isn't directly involved, it always seems to be hovering over everything. Which is most appropriate, of course. To be fair, when it does finally come to the "money shots" then it's not all that bad either.

As already mentioned, Cohen crafted another winner with this one - that great character study mixed in with part monster movie and part serial killer film (the beast may have been summoned by someone flaying people alive) - but he really lucked out when he snagged Michael Moriarty for the lead role. The man gives, perhaps, a career-best performance.

I easily recommend this film to lovers of smart b-movie fare. Grab a beverage, put up your feet and spend some time up in the clouds with Quetzalcoatl.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Q-The-Winged-Serpent-DVD/dp/B0009JJY40/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352672133&sr=8-1

Amityville: A New Generation (1993)

I don't know if I am just getting easier to please after enduring the awful fourth and fifth movies in this franchise or whether things genuinely picked up slightly in the early 90s but this is another Amityville movie that I actually quite enjoyed. In fact, it was pretty good and I'd even consider rewatching it.

Directed by John Murlowski, and written by Christopher DeFaria and Antonio Toro (who also wrote the instalment before this one), Amityville: A New Generation once again uses the plot device of an object from the old house ending up elsewhere and causing a lot of trouble. This time it's a mirror.

Ross Partridge plays Keyes, a young photographer who ends up being given the evil mirror by a homeless man that he photographs. Of course, he doesn't know that it's an evil mirror. It's just a mirror with a strange, ornate frame. Perhaps a number of bizarre deaths that occur to those in contact should raise suspicions but, of course, it still takes a while for Keyes to realise the truth, a truth that reveals how Keyes coming to own the mirror was more than just random chance.

It's standard nonsense, really, but it benefits from some good pacing between each of the set-pieces, a finale that is as loony as it is surprisingly interesting and a cast full of genre movie favourites - David Naughton has a decent role, Robert Rusler plays an asshole, Richard Roundtree is good to see but doesn't get much screentime, Terry O'Quinn is the man investigating the strange circumstances and Lin Shaye puts in another of her small but memorable roles in this kind of fare.

The death scenes are decent and the ridiculous plot developments are teased out in a way that makes them a bit easier to swallow. Take a moment to think about it all, however, and it quickly becomes apparent just how silly it all is. Thankfully, that doesn't need to happen until the end credits roll because Murlowski keeps things moving along nicely from start to finish. There's some fleeting nudity, decent effects, a flashback or two and a recurring surreal nightmare for the main character. Which makes it hard to hate.

6/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amityville--New-Generation-Ross-Partridge/dp/B00006IXBM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348043184&sr=8-1