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Year of Release:  1994

Director:  Spike Lee

Screenplay:  Joie Susannah Lee, Cinque Lee and Spike Lee, based on a story by Joie Susannah lee

Starring:  Alfre Woodward, Delroy Lindo, Zelda Harris, Spike Lee

Running Time:  115 minutes

Genre:  Drama, comedy, coming of age

This semi-autobiographical directed by Spike Lee, and co-written by Lee and his siblings, Cinque and Joie Susannah.  The film is set over the spring and summer of 1973 in a tough but close-knit neighbourhood in Brooklyn, New York, and focuses on nine year old Troy Carmichael (Harris) growing up with four rowdy brothers and her troubled by loving parents:  Strict school teacher Carolyn (Woodward), who holds the family together, and ambitious but naive musician Woody (Lindo), who had some success with pop music covers in the past but now wants to concentrate exclusively on his own music.

The film is colourful, lively and is unusually light for a Spike Lee film, however there is still plenty of grit.  The neighbourhood is populated with eccentric characters, children play on the stoops and the street, everyone knows what is going on with everyone else and more often than not look out for each other, but it is tough, and there is always a threat of violence, although having said that, it's more likely to be a light punch rather than a gunshot.  The film is visually inventive.  Troy goes to stay with relatives in the South, which she finds very disturbing and disorientating, and these scenes are filmed in widescreen without anamorphically adjusting the image, which gives it a strange elongated look.  The performances are great, Alfre Woodward, Delroy Lindo and Zelda Harris are all superb, and the Carmichael family do feel like a real family, and your left wondering what happens to them after the film.  Spike Lee has a part as the neighbourhood glue sniffer Snuffy.  It's a loose film, without a strong plot, and feels quite baggy and episodic.  It's warm, funny, gritty and real, with a fantastic soundtrack of early '70s soul music.

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Freddy vs. Jason

Year of Release:  2003

Director:  Ronny Yu

Screenplay:  Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, based on characters created by Wes Craven and Victor Miller

Starring:  Monica Keener, Robert Englund, Ken Kirzinger, Jason Ritter, Chris Marquette, Kelly Rowland, Lochlyn Munro, Katharine Isabelle

Running Time:  93 minutes

Genre:  Horror, action, comedy

The spirit of child-killer Freddy Krueger (Englund) is trapped in Hell and can't get out.  The children of Springwood have forgotten about him, thereby denying him the ability to enter their dreams.  Krueger decides to recruit the aid of serial killer Jason Voorhees (Kirzinger).  Posing as Jason's beloved mother, Freddy convinces him to go to Springwood and start murdering the local teenagers, in the hope that the residents will start to remember, and fear, Freddy again, and thusly give him back his power.  The plan works perfectly, but now that Freddy doesn't need Jason anymore, he realises that he hadn't thought how to stop Jason.  Didn't think that one through, Freddy!  For his part, Jason is too busy enjoying his favourite pastime, and has no intention of returning to Hell.  Meanwhile, a rapidly diminishing group of teenagers have to work out how to survive and stop both of them.

Back in the 1980s, Freddy Krueger (of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films) and Jason Voorhees (of the Friday the 13th films) were the titans of screen horror, as the number of sequels in both franchises mounted up, alongside TV shows, video games, books, comics, and a deluge of other merchandising, fans were keen to see them both go head to head, and initial plans for Freddy vs. Jason were discussed as early as 1987.  However, at the time, the characters were owned by different studios, and they couldn't agree on a story, as well as the fact that both franchises started to decline in popularity.  The resulting film is fairly mediocre, with most of the best scenes being before the titular showdown.  The problem is that neither of the characters can really be hurt.  They stab, slash, punch, burn, kick and drown each other, as well as being thrown around like ragdolls, without apparently being hurt much at all, for what feels at times like an eternity.  Also it's kind of hard to care.  Robert Englund, as ever, seems to have a great time as Freddy Krueger, and adds some much needed vest to the proceedings.  Ken Kirzinger as Jason (taking over from Kane Hodder the actor most identified in the role) has little to do but shamble around.  The teen characters (which include Monica Keener from Dawson's Creek, singer Kelly Rowland from Destiny's Child, and Katharine Isabelle from Ginger Snaps (2001)) are given some attempts at backstory early on, but by the second half of the film are little more than spectators.  The performances range from passable to abysmal.

This is really aimed at fans of the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street films, and they probably will enjoy it.  Newcomers, however, are likely to be completely lost. To be fair, it has a few cool scenes and special effects, and some of the jokes are quite funny, if you are in the right frame of mind for it, you can have fun with this one.  It's a bad movie, but is kind of fun in a bad "B" movie way.

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Happy Death Day

Year of Release:  2017

Director:  Christopher B. Landon

Screenplay:  Scott Lobdell

Starring:  Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine

Running Time:  107 minutes

Genre:  Horror, comedy, slasher

Obnoxious college student Tree (Rothe) wakes up on the morning of her birthday in a stranger's dorm room.  She goes through the rest of a pretty miserable day, being as horrible as possible to everyone around her.  Until the evening when she is murdered by a masked killer.  However, Tree wakes up in the stranger's dorm room, and soon realises that she is being forced to relive the day of her murder, over and over again, until she can stop the killer, and survive the day.  And you thought your birthdays were bad!

The obvious comparisons to make are with the 1993 comedy Groundhog Day (which has the same concept of a person being forced to relive the same day over and over again - and which is namechecked in the film) and with the 1996 film Scream (with which it shares a similar sense of humour).  The film starts slowly and it takes some time to really get into it, but once it gets there it is funny and exciting.  Jessica Rothe gives a fantastic performance in a difficult central role.  She plays a very unlikeable character, but gives her enough depth, so that the audience goes along with her through her journey. There are elements in the film which are introduced but not really followed through on, such as her relationship with her father and what happened to her mother.  Some horror fans may be disappointed because it is neither particularly scary or particularly gruesome, but there are plenty of shocks and an intriguing mystery.  The film does a good job of building and maintaining the mystery, and the scenes were Tree conducts her investigations are very funny.  The killer's creepy baby mask is memorable, and it's a good film for people who may enjoy the odd scary movie, but are not big horror fans.      

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The Goldfinch

Author:  Donna Tartt

Year of Publication:  2014

Number of Pages:  864

Genre:  Literary fiction

In New York City, thirteen year old Theo Decker, cared for by his devoted single mother, visits an art museum with his mother, when they are caught up in a terrorist attack on the museum.  Theo's mother is killed in the attack, but Theo is physically unhurt.  Naturally however he is deeply traumatised by the experience and, almost without realising it, leaves with the famous 1654 painting The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius.  The novel follows Theo throughout the next fourteen difficult years of his life.  As he moves back and forth from New York to Las Vegas to Amsterdam, the painting remains a constant in his life, his one connection to his beloved mother, it becomes his touchstone, his obsession, his salvation and possibly his nemesis.

This is the third novel by acclaimed American novelist Donna Tartt, who made a huge splash with her debut book The Secret History in 1992.  It is written in beautiful descriptive prose, and is an intriguing coming of age story, which also blends in elements of a thriller, as well as an examination of the healing and redemptive power of art.  However, as you would expect from a book of this length, it doesn't all work.  The plot hinges on a number of quite fantastic coincidences, and some elements of the book don't seem to fit in with the rest of the novel at all.  However, despite this it is a fine, important novel.      

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Vivre sa vie

Year of Release:  1962

Director:  Jean-Luc Godard

Screenplay:  Jean-Luc Godard and Marcel Sacotte

Starring:  Anna Karina, Sady Rebbot, Andre S. Labarthe, Guylaine Schlumberger, Gerard Hoffman

Running Time:  83 minutes

Genre:  Drama

This French film tells the story of Nana (Karina), a young Parisian woman, dreams of becoming an actress, but is stuck working as a sales assistant in a record store.  Struggling financially, she decides to start working as a prostitute.

Released as My Life to Live in North America and It's My Life in Britain, this is one of the greatest and most accessible works of prolific director Jean-Luc Godard, one of the founding members of the French New Wave.  The film is constructed as twelve very short episodes in Nana's life (each preceded by a title card).  It uses point of view shots, captions, experiments with sound and narration, and a semi-documentary feel.  The depiction of sex work is not glamorised or celebrated, but neither is it explicitly judged.  Despite some very bleak subject matter the film is lively, and always exciting.  There can be seen to be some criticism of the consumerism of 1960s Paris, where everything can be bought and sold, including human beings.  However, the film really works due to the luminous performance of Anna Karina, who was married to Godard at the time.  Appearing in nearly every scene of the film, frequently staring directly at the camera, she gives a startling performance that you will remember for a very long time.    

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Everybody Wants Some!!

Year of Release:  2016

Director:  Richard Linklater

Screenplay:  Richard Linklater

Starring:  Blake Jenner, Zoey Deutch, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin, Glen Powell, Wyatt Russell

Running Time:  116 minutes

Genre:  Comedy, drama

The film is set in September, 1980, at a Texas university and is set over the three days before class starts.  Freshman Jake (Jenner) arrives on a baseball scholarship and movers into the house that he will be sharing with other members of the baseball team.  Over the course of the resulting few days, they banter, bond, insult each other, play pranks, party, get stoned, get drunk and try to pick up girls.

Richard Linklater is a talented and prolific filmmaker who successfully moves between experimental films such as Waking Life (2001) and mainstream studio fare such as School of Rock (2003).  However, he is possibly best identified with meandering, dialogue-driven films such as Before Sunrise (1995) and the award-winning Boyhood (2014).  Everybody Wants Some!! can be seen as a follow up to his 1993 film Dazed and Confused, which is set over the last day of high school in 1976, and the two have a very similar feel.  Linklater has also said that he considers it a "spiritual sequel" to Boyhood, with Everybody Wants Some!! picking up from where Boyhood ends.  Nothing much really happens in this film, and there isn't really any story, it's guys partying and having a great time.  There is a strong nostalgic feel to it.  Linklater wrote the script based on his own experiences of playing baseball in college, and the film unambiguously celebrates these jock frat boys and there are no real consequences to any of their actions, and they are depicted throughout as loveable japesters.

It is worth pointing out the film's depiction of female characters.  There is only one prominent female character and she doesn't really appear much until towards the end, and women are depicted mainly as love interests, or for the guys to hit on, and it has to be said that some of the guys don't really have great attitudes towards women, to put it mildly.  

It is maybe not one of Linklater's best, but it is a funny, warm and amiable film, with a great soundtrack, full of classic rock.

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The Ritual

Year of Release:  2017

Director:  David Bruckner

Screenplay:  Joe Barton, based on the novel The Ritual by Adam Nevill

Starring:  Rafe Spall, Robert James-Collier, Arsher Ali, Sam Troughton

Running Time:  94 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Five middle-aged friends, Luke (Spall), Hutch (James-Collier), Phil (Ali), Dom (Troughton) and Rob (Paul Reid), meet up in a London pub to plan a guy's holiday.  Immediately afterwards Rob is killed in a liquor store robbery.  Six months later, the other four friends are on a hiking holiday in Sweden, partly as a tribute to Rob.  However, the group are unprepared and inexperienced with wilderness survival.  As tempers fray, the weather takes a turn for the worse and one of the group suffers a twisted ankle.  The guys decide that, instead of continuing with their planned two day hike, they will take a shortcut through a thick, dark forest.  Now, anyone who has ever seen a horror film knows that this is a big mistake.  The men soon realise their mistake when they get hopelessly lost and discover a freshly killed animal carcass suspended in the trees, and strange runic markings carved into the tree trunks.  Spending the night in a run-down cabin in the forest makes the bad situation a whole lot worse.

Based on a successful novel from British horror author Adam Nevill, this film never really works, mainly because the four central characters are all pretty unlikeable.  There isn't much backstory given to them, and they spend most of their time bickering and trading apparently jokey insults at each other, but it is hard to see how they became friends in the first place, because most of the time they don't even seem to like each other.  It does have something to say about how men find it so difficult to open up about their problems and anxieties even among their closest friends, and also how male friendship often works, with an apparent superficial, light and sometimes almost cruel surface, but with a lot of deeper undercurrents hidden beneath it all.  It also deals with the very real but inevitable horror of simply getting older.  It's worth pointing out that this is almost an entirely male film, the only women on screen appear very briefly towards the end.  After a brutal pre-credits robbery sequence, the film moves into a quieter tone of a Blair Witch-style lost in the woods film, until kicking into high gear for the climax.  The thing that stalks the group is mostly hidden, you hear it's roars and see the trees shaking, alongside the occasional dismembered corpses of it's victims strung up in the trees, with occasional half-seen glimpses of a large creature, until it's revealed in all it's CGI glory towards the end.  The climax feels kind of rushed.  It's not a very scary film, and it is kind of frustrating because despite some good sequences and ideas, the whole just didn't really work for me, and it felt like it should have been so much better.

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Sleeping Beauties

Year of Publication:  2017

Number of Pages:  715

Genre:  Horror, fantasy

One day all the women in the world start to fall asleep as normal, but they do not wake up.  Instead, as soon as they fall asleep they grow a web-like cocoon , and react with mindless, murderous violence if the webbing is cut or broken.  In the small town of Dooling, West Virginia, a strange woman appears who has superhuman powers of strength and healing, has knowledge about people that she could not possibly possess and, most of all, can sleep and wake as normal.  As a rapidly decreasing number of women stay awake to combat "Aurora" (as the mysterious syndrome is called), men face up to a world without women.  Meanwhile, the women wake up to a strange world, entirely without men.  Can the women find their way back?  More to the point, do they want to?

This is a pretty gripping novel, it focuses mainly on the small town of Dooling, and the women's prison in the town.  It comes from a simple, but quite fascinating premise:  How would men be in a  world without women?  And what would a world without men be like?  It's a timely novel, which does not shy away from contemporary resonance (some books wear there politics on their sleeves, this one pretty much has it on the front of it's tee-shirt).  However while it is thought-provoking, it also succeeds in being fun.  despite it's length it keeps you reading.  It's dark, funny and suspenseful with a range of interesting and mostly likeable, although there are a fair few straight-forward villains.  Of course, Stephen King is the most popular writer of our time, and here he teams up with his son, Owen, although the novel's voice is pretty consistent, and reads throughout like a Stephen King novel - however I have never read any of Owen King's other works, and so I do not know what his style is.  Some of the storylines in the book are unsatisfying, and there are a few plotlines that seem to be building up early and are then abandoned.  However, this is a good book and well worth your time.

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Blade Runner 2049

Year of Release:  2017

Director:  Denis Villeneuve

Screenplay:  Hampton Fancher and Michael Green, from a story by Hampton Fancher, based on characters from the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Starring:  Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Dave Bautista, Jared Leto

Running Time:  163 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction

This is the long-awaited sequel to Blade Runner (1982), one of the most influential science-fiction movies of all time.  The film is set in 2049, where a series of environmental disasters have made the use of biologically engineered artificial humans known as "replicants" a necessity for humanity's survival.  However some of the older model replicants have not integrated and they are hunted down and executed (or "retired") by police "Blade Runner" units.  The film focuses on K. (Gosling), a Blade Runner, and I won't say anything else because it would be something of a spoiler.

This is possibly one of the most visually stunning films that I have ever seen.  It is absolutely beautiful, moving from neon-drenched cityscapes to desolate, grey wasteland, to burnished orange deserts, all swathed in mist, dust, rain and snow.  However, as with the original film, this is a demanding watch, because it is very slow, and long.  It moves at it's own rhythm, and if you can go along with that and surrender yourself to it's spell then it really works.  As with the original the characters tend to get washed out in the visuals.  Ryan Gosling plays his lead role in a similar manner to his role in Drive (2011), Ana de Armas gives the film some much needed heart as Gosling's hologram girlfriend, and it is worth pointing out that, while Harrison Ford does reprise his role from the first film, he does not appear until very late in this film and has little more than an extended cameo.  In fact, Harrison Ford's appearance is something of a spoiler, but he is featured very heavily on the poster and all the publicity for the film.

In many ways, I prefer this to the original, the storyline is intriguing, with an interesting central mystery, and it still tackles the Big Issues about the nature of humanity.  While the length and pace might put off some viewers, I think that this film will find it's audience sooner or later, and there are images and scenes that I think will become iconic in the future.  

See this film, and see it on the biggest screen possible. This is dark, beautiful and intelligent science-fiction.

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Goodbye Christopher Robin

Year of Release:  2017

Director:  Simon Curtis

Screenplay:  Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Simon Vaughan

Starring:  Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Kelly Macdonald, Will Tilston, Alex Lawther, Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Running Time:  107 minutes

Genre:  Period drama, biopic

Playwright AA Milne (Gleeson), traumatised by his experiences in the First World War, has difficulty relating to his socialite wife Daphne (Robbie) and his young son Christopher Robin (Tilston as a child, Lawther as an adult).  He also has trouble restarting his writing career.  Moving to a rural area in southern England with his family and Christopher Robin's nanny (Macdonald).  Milne becomes inspired by his son playing with his stuffed toys and starts writing the "Winnie-the Pooh" stories.  However the success of the books comes at terrible personal costs for Milne and Christopher Robin.

This film about the creation of the beloved "Winnie-the-Pooh" stories is not such a sickly-sweet confection as it might have been, and as it might look from some of the advertising.  This is actually quite dark, AA Milne suffers from severe post traumatic stress disorder, he and his wife cannot really relate to Christopher Robin (it's hinted that Daphne didn't really want a child, but thought that a baby might cheer up her husband) and it is really his nanny that raises the child (although I think, at the time, that was fairly standard for families of the Milne's wealth and social status).  Most of all, Christopher Robin really suffers from the immense fame that the huge success of the "Winnie-the Pooh" stories conferred upon him.  However, this is a very beautiful film, full of summer meadows and dappled sunlight shining through trees, and does manage to capture some of the magic of Milne's work.  The performances are good from all concerned, with Will Tilston in particular affecting as the young Christopher Robin.  In the end, the film becomes incredibly moving.

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Flatliners

Year of Release:  2017

Director:  Niels Arden Oplev

Screenplay:  Ben Ripley, based on Flatliners written by Peter Filardi

Starring:  Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, Kiersey Clemons, Kiefer Sutherland

Running Time:  110 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Medical student Courtney Holmes (Page) convinces her reluctant friends to take part in an experiment during which she will be clinically dead before they resuscitate her, so that she can learn first hand what happens after death.  After the experiment Courtney finds herself with a new lease on life and astonishing powers of memory.  After seeing the effects, Courtney's friends all want to undergo the experience.  However, it soon turns out that flatlining has some much darker side effects, as the students begin to be haunted by bizarre and disturbing visions.

Although referred to as a sequel to the 1990 film Flatliners, this 2017 film is really a remake.  Keifer Sutherland, who starred in the original, does appear in this, although as a different character.  This is a fun film, with a good cast.  Despite being a horror film, it's really not scary at all, and suffers from being too long.  The characters aren't particularly explored and are more or less cliched.  It also suffers from having too pat a conclusion.  There is plenty of humour, the characters manage to rise above the material, and it is exciting, and the flatlining sequences are well executed.

I can't really say how fans of the original Flatliners will take to the remake, because I've not seen the original in years, and can't remember much about it.  

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The City & The City

The city is Beszel and the city is Ul Qoma, two cities in two different countries, but each occupying the same geographic space.  The cities are built in and around each other, however anyone in one city (resident or visitor) is forbidden to take any notice of anyone or anything in the other city.  Any failure to do so incurs the wrath of the mysterious and all-powerful "Breach".  When the body of a murdered student is found in Beszel, it seems like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad, but the investigation proves more complex and dangerous than Borlu could have imagined, leading him from one city to another and to the even more mysterious places in between.  

This 2009 novel from British author China Mieville works as a complex and intriguing fantasy tale in a well-realised world, the rules by which the two cities exist together and function are well worked out and believable, but this also works as an exciting detective novel, and it delivers anything you might want from a crime novel.  A gruesome murder, investigation, no shortage of suspects, action, chases, and a likeable and troubled protagonist.  It also makes a point about how people deliberately ignore the more troubling aspects of where they live.  

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El Mariachi

Year of Release:  1992

Director:  Robert Rodriguez

Screenplay:  Robert Rodriguez

Starring:  Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gomez, Peter Marquardt, Reinol Martinez

Running Time:  82 minutes

Genre:  Action

This 1992 movie is the debut film from writer/director Robert Rodriguez.  An unnamed musician (Gallardo) travels from town to town with his guitar to pursue his dream of becoming a mariachi like his father and grandfather.  Arriving in a small town, the Mariachi is mistaken for a criminal, Azul (Martinez), who has broken out of jail and is being hunted by the local crime boss, Moco (Marquardt).  Like the Mariachi, Azul dresses in black and carries a guitar case, only Azul's is full of guns.

Reputedly produced for a budget of only $7000, which Rodriguez raised mainly by taking part in medical tests, this is funnier and more exciting than many bigger and more expensive action films.  Carlos Gallardo is winning as the Mariachi, and Consuelo Gomez is affecting as the bar owner who he falls in love with.  Some of the acting can be politely described as  overly enthusiastic, the low budget is obvious in many scenes, and also there are several scenes that seem to be there just to pad out the run time, but by and large this is a fun, stylish movie, with well choreographed action.  It was followed by two sequels:  Desperado (1995) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003).      

By the way, Robert Rodriguez's book on the making of the film, Rebel Without a Crew (1995), is worth tracking down for anyone interested in low-budget film-making.

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Performance

Year of Release:  1970

Director:  Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg

Screenplay:  Donald Cammell

Starring: James Fox, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, Michele Breton

Running Time:  105 minutes

Genre:  Crime, drama, fantasy  

This film was produced in 1968 but not released until 1970.  In London, Chas Devlin (Fox) is a brutal gangland enforcer, who genuinely enjoys his work.  When he disobeys direct orders from his boss and kills a rival for personal, rather than business reasons, Devlin becomes targeted by his own gang.  He decides to hide out in the vast mansion of reclusive rock star, Turner (Jagger), who lives with Pherber (Pallenberg) and Lucy (Breton).  In Turner's surreal, erotic, decadent world of drugs, sex and mysticism, Devlin finds the boundaries of reality and fantasy collapsing.

This is a film that, if you see it once, you will never forget it.  It's very much a film of two halves.  The first half is, in terms of plot, a great if conventional gangster film (in terms of style and technique it is a million miles away from an ordinary gangster film), and in the second it becomes a surreal fantasy of sex, drugs and identity.  It utilises a fragmented, stream of conscience style, using almost every cinematic trick in the book.  James Fox is perfect as Chas Devlin, someone who is, in British criminal slang, a "performer" (a gangster with a special talent for violence and intimidation), he frequently tells people "I know who I am", he lives in a pristine apartment, and is always immaculately groomed and dressed in sharp suits, and is always in control.  Mick Jagger's Turner is another type of performer, a rock star who has retired because, as he says "I lost my demon".  Devlin, a man who needs to be in control, suddenly finds himself, in Turner's house, in a situation where he has no control, where all the old rules just don't apply.  Very much a product of it's time, and full of references to Jorge Luis Borges and William Burroughs, this is still genuinely shocking and disturbing.

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White Heat

Year of Release:  1949

Director:  Raoul Walsh

Screenplay:  Ivan Goff and Ben Robert, based on the story White Heat by Virginia Kellogg

Starring:  James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien, Margaret Wycherly, Steve Cochrane,

Running Time:  113 minutes

Genre:  Crime, thriller, film noir

This is one of the quintessential Hollywood gangster movies.  Tracing the violent life of psychotic robber Cody Jarrett (Cagney) who despite being married to Verna (Mayo),  has a deeply unhealthy bond with his equally ruthless mother (Wycherly) who is the only person that he seems to have any real feelings for.

This is an exciting, influential film and is widely regarded as one of the best films ever made.  It has aged well, and the almost documentary style film-making is still in evidence today.  The ending of the film has become one of the iconic scenes in movie history, and the prison cafeteria sequence is startling.  James Cagney turns in a gripping performance as the savage, but strangely sympathetic Jarrett, and Virginia Mayo is impressive as Verna, who Jarrett cruelly ignores, but has her own capacity for extreme ruthlessness.   Edmond O'Brien makes less of an impression, however, as the square-jawed hero.  This is a must see for thriller fans.

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I Am Behind You

This 2014 horror novel is the sixth book from Swedish stand-up comedian turned author John Ajvide Lindqvist to be translated into English.  Four families on caravan holidays wake up one morning to find the rest of their campsite has vanished. In fact everything has vanished, they are totally alone in the middle of a seemingly endless blank, flat field, where, despite clear bright blue summer skies, there is no sun, and the grass is the exact same height.  Where are they?  How did they get there? Why are they there? and, more importantly, how can they get back?  Running low on food and supplies, their situation is desperate, but there is something else out there.  Something that knows their worst mistakes and deepest desires, and will confront them with their darkest dreams and worst fears, and something even worse.

Lindqvist is still probably best known for his debut novel, Let the Right One In (2004) which was  adapted as an acclaimed Swedish film in 2008 and a successful US remake, Let Me In (2010).  With Let the Right One In and his subsequent books, there can be little doubt that John Ajvide Lindqvist is one of the most interesting modern writers working in horror.  The characters in this book start off wondering where they are and how they got there, and are little the wiser by the end of it.  For every question that is answered, another is posed, and it really seems to just stop dead.  However, this is the first volume in a planned trilogy, so presumably we'll find out what happens later.  The ending, though is a fairly minor issue when this is such a chilling, gripping novel and genuinely disturbing.  It's full of dark humour and often graphic gore.  The frequently surreal happenings in the book work because the  characters are interesting and well-drawn, with their past lives depicted in flashback.  Lindqvist is frequently compared to Stephen King, and this has a lot of King-like elements to it, with the disparate collection of ordinary people having to band together against horrific adversaries, although it's more like if Stephen King had ever collaborated with Ingmar Bergman, because it has a very strong philosophical element to it.  Lindqvist his a particular gift for writing about children and one of the child characters, six year old Molly is one of the most terrifying characters you're likely to read about this year.  This is definitely recommended.

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A Legacy of Spies

This 2017 novel is by John le Carre, one of the greatest British writers working.  Moving between past and present, the novel follows Peter Guillam, retired British spy and former right-hand man of legendary spymaster George Smiley, living peacefully on his family farm in Brittany, until he is summoned back to London by the Secret Service who are investigating an operation Guillam was involved in over fifty years ago.  Forced to rake over his murky past in Cold War espionage, Guillam is forced to reckon with the consequences of a life of personal and professional betrayal.

This fine novel returns to the world of Cold War spying that made John le Carre's name and features the return of his best-loved character, tubby, bespectacled, soft-spoken, but ruthless spymaster George Smiley.  The novel is a kind of follow-up to le Carre's 1962 breakthrough novel The Spy Who came in From the Cold, and also calls back to his other best known book Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1973).  Written in spare terse prose, this is nevertheless complex and emotionally devastating.  As with many le Carre novels, this deals with the psychology of a spy, and the moral and psychological consequences of that lifestyle.  This is John le Carre at his best.