Winner gets… me.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

(2006)

(SPOILERS) Alternatively known as The Fast and the Furious Six, if you follow the chronology (on account of a key character here dying and then showing up in subsequent F&F masterpieces. Which means I ended up catching this in very nearly the correct order (I have yet to see the actual the officially monikered Fast & Furious 6. This is the only one in the series that doesn’t feature either Paul Walker or Vin Diesel (well, almost the latter; he is wooed for a cameo, prior to his triumphant return in Fast and Furious (or, Fast Three, if you will). There are those who argue this is the underappreciated peak of the disposable franchise, but that’s a bit of a leap; it’s as laden down as ever with clunky plotting, spinning wheels, macho stand-offs and raptastic montages featuring scantily clad girlies ((the latter abjectly failing to disguise the auto- and homoerotica dripping from every shiny hood and protracted bout of male bonding).

This time out, Lucas Black’s (who first found fame as a child actor, starring in the one-season wonder American Gothic) Sean is so much darned trouble to his poor mum, getting up to all sorts of mischief with his racing delinquency, that she packs him off to Tokyo to live with his Naval father (Brian Goodman). He quickly falls in with Han (Sung Kang), who has a business relationship with the nephew of a Yakuza kingpin D.K. (Brian Tee). He even finds a bit of time to romance D.K.’s girl (big mistake!) Neela (Natalie Kelly) when he’s not bromancing.

Arguably all this auto-fetishism is more age-appropriate to Black’s teenager than Vin’s 40 year old, but it makes the high school meets organised crime plotline seem more ludicrously adrenalised than any other installment in the series. This culminates in Black’s young punk standing up to uncle Shin’ichi Chiba, effortlessly persuading him to permit a race with his nephew to settle matters. I mean, as if any self-respecting gangland boss wouldn’t take him out the back and have a rusty screwdriver lodged in his ear. These are fantasy wish-fulfilment flicks, of course, and director Justin Lin knows that very well; he would go on to direct three ever-more hyperbolic sequels. But the other problem here might be that Black is too good an actor for all this nonsense. His homespun southern drawl suggests a sincerity that doesn’t really fit with all this motorised silliness.

There’s subtext spinning off every fender in this one, though. Sean is so all-American it’s not true, and he arrives in Japan ready to teach the nation a thing or two about honour; it’s just like WWII all over again! Or like Tom Cruise in Last Samurai; a land known for its codes discovers that the foreigner has even stronger core values! If anyone can show the Yakuza how things really are, it’s a teenager from the Land of the Free. With a little help from his dad (US military might goes with its citizens wherever they are in the world).

Miraculously, when Sean stands up to Uncle Yakuza, he can suddenly speak fluent Japanese! It’s amazing! The movie is careful not to give Sean a Japanese best friend, girlfriend, or mentor (they’re all expats); all the better to accentuate those national divisions! It even throws in a bit of Star Wars while it’s at it; Lucas (Luke Skywalker), sounding all the world like a farm boy, must battle the “evil empire”, and is aided in this by an Obi-Wan who teaches him how to use the force (“the drift”) before Kenobi exits stage left (yet manages to live on through a number of sequels). The only difference is old Ben didn’t pull 360s around ladies’ cars in order to convince his young padewan that he really is heterosexual, really.

Han was best pals with Vin’s Dom you see. When Sean and Dom meet, they discuss their mutual pal. It’s a conversation purportedly about models of automobile, but I think it’s quite clear what’s going on.

Sean: I didn’t know he was into American muscle.

Dom: He was when he was rolling with me.

Sean will be rolling with Dom in Fast & Furious 7. My testosterone nozzle is full to burstin’ in anticipation.

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

People still talk about Pandapocalypse 2002.

Turning Red (2022) (SPOILERS) Those wags at Pixar, eh? Yes, the most – actually, the only – impressive thing about Turning Red is the four-tiered wordplay of its title. Thirteen-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang) finds herself turning into a large red panda at emotive moments. She is also, simultaneously, riding the crimson wave for the first time. Further, as a teenager, she characteristically suffers from acute embarrassment (mostly due to the actions of her domineering mother Ming Lee, voiced by Sandra Oh). And finally, of course, Turning Red can be seen diligently spreading communist doctrine left, right and centre. To any political sensibility tuning in to Disney+, basically (so ones with either considerable or zero resistance to woke). Take a guess which of these isn’t getting press in reference to the movie? And by a process of elimination is probably what it it’s really about (you know in the same way most Pixars, as far back as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc . can be given an insi

I can’t be the worst. What about that hotdog one?

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) (SPOILERS) It would have been a merciful release, had the title card “ The End ”, flashing on screen a little before the ninety-minute mark, not been a false dawn. True, I would still have been unable to swab the bloody dildoes fight from my mind, but at least Everything Everywhere All at Once would have been short. Indeed, by the actual end I was put in mind of a line spoken by co-star James Wong in one of his most indelible roles: “ Now this really pisses me off to no end ”. Or to put it another way, Everything Everywhere All at Once rubbed me up the wrong which way quite a lot of most of the time.

We’ve got the best ball and chain in the world. Your ass.

Wedlock (1991) (SPOILERS) The futuristic prison movie seemed possessed of a particular cachet around this time, quite possibly sparked by the grisly possibilities of hi-tech disincentives to escape. On that front, HBO TV movie Wedlock more than delivers its FX money shot. Elsewhere, it’s less sure of itself, rather fumbling when it exchanges prison tropes for fugitives-on-the-run ones.

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

He's not in my pyjamas, is he?

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) (SPOILERS) By rights, Paul Mazursky’s swinging, post-flower-power-gen partner-swap movie ought to have aged terribly. So much of the era’s scene-specific fare has, particularly so when attempting to reflect its reverberations with any degree of serious intent. Perhaps it’s because Mazursky and co-writer Larry Tucker (also of The Monkees , Alex in Wonderland and I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! ) maintain a wry distance from their characters’ endeavours, much more on the wavelength of Elliott Gould’s Ted than Robert Culp’s Bob; we know any pretensions towards uninhibited expression can’t end well, but we also know Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice have to learn the hard way.

We could be mauled to death by an interstellar monster!

Star Trek Beyond (2016) (SPOILERS) The odd/even Star Trek failure/success rule seemed to have been cancelled out with the first reboot movie, and then trodden into ground with Into Darkness (which, yes, I quite enjoyed, for all its scandalous deficiencies). Star Trek Beyond gets us back onto more familiar ground, as it’s very identifiably a “lesser” Trek , irrespective of the big bucks and directorial nous thrown at it. This is a Star Trek movie that can happily stand shoulder to shoulder with The Search for Spock and Insurrection , content in the knowledge they make it look good.

I think World War II was my favourite war.

Small Soldiers (1998) An off-peak Joe Dante movie is still one chock-a-block full of satirical nuggets and comic inspiration, far beyond the facility of most filmmakers. Small Soldiers finds him back after a six-year big screen absence, taking delirious swipes at the veneration of the military, war movies, the toy industry, conglomerates and privatised defence forces. Dante’s take is so gleefully skewed, he even has big business win! The only problem with the picture (aside from an indistinct lead, surprising from a director with a strong track record for casting juveniles) is that this is all very familiar. Dante acknowledged Small Soldiers was basically a riff on Gremlins , and it is. Something innocuous and playful turns mad, bad and dangerous. On one level it has something in common with Gremlins 2: The New Batch , in that the asides carry the picture. But Gremlins 2 was all about the asides, happy to wander off in any direction that suited it oblivious to whet

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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