TOP GUN MAVERICK (Paramount). Tom Cruise, who is 60 and doesn’t look it, returns to the role he created in 1986. He is still a captain. “It’s time to let go,” says his superiors. But that is not Maverick’s style. He is employed to train the best of the best combat pilots in an impossible mission to blow up a uranium target in the mountains. Fans will go for the aeronautics. Val Kilmer has one tiny scene, which is unexpectedly affecting.
THE DRIVER (Studio Canal). Two professionals battle it out. The Good Guy (Ryan O’Neal) is a virtuoso getaway driver, ultra-cool. The Bad Guy (Bruce Dern) is an arrogant cop, a nasty bit of work. Walter Hill’s stylish, classic, noirish crime thriller was underrated by the critics and the public in 1978; but nowadays it is, quite rightly, highly regarded. Dialogue is kept to a minimum. Hill relies on the personalities of the actors and action. There are three exciting car chases.
EXHIBITION ON SCREEN PISSARO Father of Impressionism (Seventh Art). Experimental, honest, versatile, open-hearted, mentor and an inspirational teacher, Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was the driving force of the movement and without him there would have been no impressionists. His landscapes, hung at eight impressionism exhibitions, are the very essence of land.
THE GUARD (YouTube). This good mini-Irish thriller was written and directed by John Michael McDonagh and released in 2011. Irish policeman (Brendan Gleeson) is forced to join forces with an American FBI agent (Don Cheadle) to combat and defeat an international cocaine drug-dealing gang in Western Ireland. Gleeson is in his element, perfect as the unorthodox guard. Is he really dumb? Or is he really smart? What do you think?
THE SLEEPING TIGER (StudioCanal) is interesting because it is the first time Dirk Bogarde and Joseph Losey (blacklisted by Hollywood) worked together on this cheap 1954 melodrama, an experiment in therapy, in which a psychiatrist takes a criminal into his home as his houseguest and his wife gets the hots. The psychiatrist needs a psychiatrist. The music on the soundtrack, dreadfully unsubtle, hams everything up.
THE TECKMAN MYSTERY (StudioCanal). The irony is that the bonus, two short films directed by Wendy Toye, are infinitely preferable to the main feature, a dreary, poorly written, poorly acted detective story. The Stranger Left No Card is much more sinister and interesting. Alan Badel is an eccentric magician seeking revenge. On the Twelfth Day, designed by Ronald Searle, is a charming Edwardian take on a well-known song. It’s good old-fashioned music hall fun. A maiden (Wendy Toye) is inundated with Christmas presents from her truelove (David O’Brien).
WE JOINED THE NAVY (StudioCanal). This 1962 British navy lark, with an officer in charge of three madcap midshipmen, is just a series of gags. It begins promisingly enough, but the childish script quickly gets unfunny and quite awful when the Brits join forces with the Americans in a silly skirmish. Kenneth More is cast as the officer, an honest bloke, who gets up the nose of his superiors. The film was not good for More’s career.
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