Judge, Juror #2, and Executioner

A most fitting tribute to the early days of the slasher film, writer/director Ti West’s X (2022), subtly pulls from Black Christmas, Halloween, while tossing in more liberal doses from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to bring the sub-genre back from the shadowy fringes of death and into mainstream theatres (though you could argue that this one is better suited for a classic drive-in screening). Opening with a really clever shot that pays homage to the traditional boxy 4:3 aspect ratio of years past, it actually isn’t... just some visual trickery to place us in Texas, circa 1979. Rather bluntly teasing a bloody conclusion, we then flash back twenty-four hours to our sex-crazed protagonists.

One has to wonder if all cinematic taxidermists have been painted with the same brush since the release of Psycho all those years ago in 1960. Well, that theory will be put to the test in the 1977 giallo Crazy Desires of a Murderer, directed by Filippo Walter Ratti (though titled in the credits as Peter Rush – his seventeenth and final film making credit). Welcome to the slowly crumbling manor home of the Baron De Chablais (Stuart Brisbane Colin), the dilapidated location echoing the poor health of its aged owner. . . after two heart attacks, rampant dementia has attacked the brain, leaving this supposed psychic (oddly, this pre-credits reveal will never be followed up on) in very rough shape.

A deep dive into 60s Swinging London, or should I say ‘dream dive’, Edgar Wright follows up his 2017 hit Baby Driver with another film that gets its title from a song – Last Night in Soho (a 1967 single by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mich & Tich – I know, quite the band name). Set in the present day, Eloise ‘Ellie’ Turner (Thomasin McKenzie – Jojo Rabbit) is a fragile, mousy young woman who has immersed herself in 60s culture... constantly listening to records of the time, her dream is to bring the swinging era’s fashion back. Leaving for fashion school in Soho, she is still haunted by her mother’s suicide – something that happened when she was just a young child (in fact, she sometimes sees her mother’s spirit in the mirror).

Fabled reverberations of distant past, a time when magic still filled the air... and men would quest to prove their knightly virtues, are brought to vivid life in writer/director David Lowery’s 2021 Arthurian era legend, The Green Knight. Almost ethereal in its nature – not due to some sort of fragility, but rather because it feels as if it is transcendent of this time... a wisp of lore echoing from distant past that ought be lost at the merest blink of an eye, it is akin to being transported back into a magic-tinged Medieval landscape. Lowery deserves much credit for brewing such a mythical auratic atmosphere. It is no easy feat being an Arthurian laureate, for you must know the earliest records dating back to Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century, through the long annals...

Riffing on the gumshoe detectives of yesteryear, 1994's Clean Slate, directed by Mick Jackson, is a bit like a comedic and much less complex version of Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000). Poor Maurice Pogue (Dana Carvey) has a lot going on in his life: a former LAPD detective, the private eye will soon be taking the stand. . . as he witnessed a murder by a notorious one-thumb-missing gangster, Philip Cornell (Michael Gambon) – who’s always accompanied by two menacing bodyguards (Mark Bringelson and Christopher Meloni); though the supposedly murdered woman, Sarah Novak (Valeria Golino), has returned looking for the PI’s help – or is she simply a well chosen lookalike

A very different type of Christmas classic, 1988's Ernest Saves Christmas, directed by John R. Cherry III, is where season’s spirit meets slapstick comedy, saving Santa comes by way of snakes, and a taxi driver can concoct a plan to salvage Christmas morning for millions of youngsters. The third movie of the Ernest (Jim Varney) franchise finds the man driving taxi in Orlando (in fact, this was the first film to be shot at the new Disney/MGM Studios). Akin to limo driver Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber, his heart and soul is bigger than his brain. A huge lover of the holiday season, Ernest is pleased to give a man claiming to be the real Santa Claus (Douglas Seale) a ride.