Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) is a conflicted Wife Guy, frustrated by his realisation of his wife as a sexual being and simultaneously unable / unwilling to consummate his abstract sexual desire with any of the women (or men) who throw themselves at him as he descends into Dantean circles of dream. His libidinal fantasies—a beautiful and eager sex worker; a nymphet child—become completely unmoored from actual sexual desire at the dream’s deepest level with an orgy of anonymous vanilla sex free from blemishes, sweat, or any of the gritty humanness that actually makes sex exciting. His inability to consummate with anyone but his wife turns this into a nightmare as his mask literally falls away and the crowd threaten to strip him bare. Tom Cruise’s subsequent career has been a long affirmation of Kubrick’s casting as he has lost himself in dreams—cinema, endless blockbusters, a cult—while still retaining the tortured sense of inadequacy behind his eyes that we see here.

Steven Spielberg adopts the tropes and tone of John le Carré novels and Cold War thriller films and contorts them to fit a conflict with a wildly different power differential. As the film develops, the violence of the Israeli-sanctioned assassins expands in scope ultimately turning into a grotesque numbers game with Hans (Hanns Zischler) reeling off numbers of terrorist atrocities and deaths as if that can justify their state power’s campaign of ‘righteous’ revenge. The dialogue of violence becomes more and more one-sided and Spielberg doesn’t flinch from showing how broken, mad, and hollow that violence makes a person. The absence of Palestinian voices from the film is unfortunate but speaks to Spielberg’s understandable personal focus which is how Israel’s perpetual avenging violence drives a wedge between Jewish people and the nation they can no longer call ‘home’. The final shot of the World Trade Center dates the film as firmly early-’00s but emphasises the overall sense of despair at the prospect of peace.

A Hitchcock-inspired thriller complete with a Hitchcock Blonde named Rebecca. There’s an unusual tone but, like Anne Hathaway’s Rebecca, there’s a strange seductiveness to the whole thing even while you begin to wonder if the shoe is ever going to drop. It’s one of those films where there’s a very specific vibe and the success of the film depends on keying into that vibe. In that way, it reminded me of Paul Feig’s A SIMPLE FAVO(U)R and while that film leapt over the edge of sheer ridiculousness, EILEEN dances on the precipice but doesn’t quite fall.

The titular ghoulies don’t do anything! Jonathan (Peter Liapis) summons the ghoulies to serve but all they do is hang out in the background chuckling menacingly. They’re so ineffective, he summons two actual servants later in the film. Even when it all kicks off, the ghoulies barely attack anyone or cause any mayhem. The untransformed mogwai in GREMLINS are more active and mischievous than the ghoulies are throughout the entire film. Stay to the end for Jack Nance the secret warlock.

It’s such a shame that THE CREATOR’s script isn’t strong enough to support its weighty themes because it’d be great to see a good high-concept sci-fi blockbuster that is as resolutely anti-American as this. As it is, the film’s themes around US imperialism and Western xenophobia get lost in weak narrative convolutions.

The insensitively-titled WHITE SETTLERS is a low-budget representation of how culturally afraid the English are of the Scottish. Released during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, director Simeon Halligan spoke in an interview about “a sense that there is an intolerance or a lack of understanding from both sides” and that bland centrism comes across in the film’s confusion about what point it wants to make, if any, about Anglo-Scottish relations. The Scots are depicted as barbaric pig-men, the English as pretentious cowardly dullards.

Emerald Fennell follows up her debut with another black comedy dealing with a vector of privilege: this time, the British class system. However the satirising of the upper class never feels as precisely incisive as PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN’s examination of abusive men and “nice guys”. There’s a funny visual gag involving Harry Potter but the portrayal of the upper class family too often pivots into caricature.

Deliciously tense and delightfully staged, the uncharacteristically wobbly camerawork and rapid-pace dialogue all build tension so well.

A lot of flashbacks, early-’00s montages, and repetition to hide the fact that there’s really not much to this movie. It’s desperately aspiring to be SEVEN but lacking the care and attention to character that Fincher brings to that film. Instead it focuses on SEVEN’s final scene attempting to craft enough twists, inversions, and narrative convolutions to evoke the idea of a satisfying narrative twist. Cary Elwes is a good actor and so it’s a little strange how poor he is in this especially in the third act. Is the involvement of the puppet explained in a subsequent one of these or no?

A deeply strange kaleidoscopic caricature of the culture clash between Lynch’s deep-rooted Americanness and his Francophilia. Comes very close to the comedic tone of a proto-Twin Peaks.