New In The USA: CONGO
Frank Marshall's big 1990s blockbuster where everything seemed to just fail to gel into anything had a lot of pedigree. A Michael Crichton novel, a swell cast of great character actors (Laura Linney, Ernie Hudson, Tim Curry, Bruce Campbell and Joe Don Baker) and a fair bit of cash.
But the jungle set story featuring smart apes, industrial grade super diamonds, and other bits of silliness never quite captured the imagination like Jurassic Park or Independence Day. It has its fans, even if popular culture has nearly wiped its existence away.
New In The Canada: CONAN THE BARBARIAN
James Earl Jones with blue eyes. John Milius' hard 'R" take on Robert E. Howard's iconic character, with a screenplay by Oliver Stone, has aged remarkably well, not the least of which due to Basil Poledouris's bombastic score and the titanic figure of Arnold Schwarzenegger filling the frame.
The film keeps popping up and disappearing from Canadian Netflix, and I I am happy to see it return, waiting patiently for when that very particular mood strikes me.
New In The UK/Mexico: ARCHER (Season 1)
Comfortably easing in to its 4th season, the FX Network Original Cartoon series has a rabid cult following in The US and Canada.
Set at ISIS, the International Secret Intelligence Service in New York City, suave and incredibly self-centered master spy Sterling Archer deals with global espionage; his domineering, emotionally-cold mother and boss, Malory Archer; his ex-girlfriend (and fellow ISIS agent), Lana Kane; and his other ISIS co-workers. Racy, saucy and occasionally quite silly, it nevertheless never fails to entertain.
New In Ireland: OVER THE TOP
Slice yourself of a big hunk of 1980s cheese as Sly plays a blue collar trucker (named "Hawk".) He tries to bond with his young son after his ex-wife becomes too ill.
With some kidnapping shenanigans and The World Arm Wrestling Championship as well, you can see this wasn't exactly Oscar bait at the time, but it still clings on in the awareness of those who lived through this period of 'Action-Drama' in the Me-Decade.
New In Brazil: THE PROPOSITION
John Hillcoat's sweaty fly-encrusted western down under from 2005 remains a pretty singular experience. It ain't a happy tale, in fact it is stuffed from end to end with suffering and pain in an unquestionably harsh land at a particularly rough and tumble time period.
Guy Pearce and Ray Winstone headline (the titular proposition is also between them, with Emily Watson, John Hurt, Danny Huston, David Wenham, David Gulpilil and Noah Taylor providing a top shelf supporting cast. Biblical and lawless, It's amazing just how translatable the Australian desert in the nineteenth century was to the frontier American West.
New In The Netherlands: THE ROCKETEER
After Joe Johnston worked as visual effects and art director on so many Steven Spielberg films but before he directed his nostalgic Americana via Captain America: The First Avenger, he made what is, to me anyway, the best live-action Disney movie ever made. 1991's The Rocketeer is a pulp, old-fashioned adventure yarn which is also a reflection on Hollywood in the 1940s, Nazi plots and dirt-under-the-fingernails aviation enthusiasts.
It has a handsome hero, several Oscar winners including curvy Jennifer Connelly and charming Alan Arkin, a former James Bond in the villain role, and just for kicks Howard Hughes. Made on the cusp of digital effects, the film is one of the last (along with its polar opposite, Paul Verhoeven's not-nostalgic, decidedly satiric and totally violent Total Recall) to do everything the practical, in-camera way and as such, is nostalgic on yet another level. It's too charming for words, so if you haven't seen it, check it out.
New Denmark/Sweden/Norway: THE BIG COMBO
Up there with its more famous noir and detective brethren (and just behind Joseph Lewis' other great B-picture, Gun Crazy), The Big Combo recently got the full remaster treatment for Blu Ray and now pops up in Scandinavia in all its glory.
Featuring a jazzy score, tough guys and pretty dame - and that above shot one of the masterful images of the genre, where glorious silhouettes' drowned in fog on an air-strip.