The Instant Death & Disaster Show! Just imagine, if you will, the great Australian outback: mile after endless mile of absolutely nothing but dry red sands, and the occasional kangaroo. It’s hot. And empty. And vast. Through it cuts one, immeasurable ribbon of tarmac, leading from point A to nowhere, forever and ever. On it,…

Violent thoughts about a filmmaker are rare, and should be, unless that filmmaker is Rian Johnson. Why? What thoughts should you have if the dilettante manor-borne son of the elite without a tenth of the talent required to actually claim a chair amongst that elite were to take power and, say, set torch to everything…

Prince in Purple Rain (1984) I like some Prince songs such as Thieves in the Temple, Sign o’ the Times and a fair chunk of the mega-selling Purple Rain stuff. He had something, all right, but too often I find his music tinny and unconvincing. I also got embarrassed by the guy’s self-indulgent sulking, like…

Olivia Newton-John in Grease (1978) “Got any porno?” Debbie Harry asks in Videodrome. “Gets me in the mood.” Good line, but I doubt Newton-John ever said anything like it during her movie career. She might’ve been known as Olivia Neutron-Bomb after the release of the image-altering, multi-million selling Physical, but in reality, has any late…

Jagger in Performance (1970) & Ned Kelly (1970) Art and commerce have a weird relationship. On the face of it, it makes perfect sense to slap a pop star into a feature film, sit back and watch his or her fans gobble up the tickets. Who needs marketing when you’ve got a built-in audience? Such…

There’s an extraordinary scene at the end of the pretty good 1981 slasher Eyes of a Stranger in which Jennifer Jason Leigh’s blind deaf-mute character has just regained her sight after being sexually assaulted and beaten in her home by a serial killer. The teenager has managed to turn the tables and shoot the vicious…

The least conspicuous turd in Batman Returns (1992) I think I’m on record disliking superhero movies. No, hating them. In Batman Returns I’m supposed to buy into a deformed dwarf crime boss having been raised by penguins in a sewer. Oh, and the dowdy, timid secretary Michelle Pfeiffer is pushed out of a high window…

A mainstream pat on the back in A View to a Kill (1985) Not too many actors get to play a Bond megalomaniac, but Walken was happy to dye his hair blonde and give things a whirl. Did he do a good job? Hmm, well, he’s Max Zorin, the product of some WW2 Nazi experimentation…