Cherry 2000 (1987)

A well-off Sam Treadwell (David Andrews) hires a soft-voiced but ballsy tracker (Melanie Griffith) to escort him into an outlying restricted zone. It's a dangerous excursion into a post-apocalyptic lawless wasteland, but Sam does it for love - the love of his Cherry 2000, an android companion (sex doll).
One of the film's strengths is its shot-on-location nature, utilising the natural lightning of the environment, because when shooting sci-fi on a budget you need all the help you can get to make it believable. The story's soft-core undertones are played knowingly, which is another way of saying it's self-aware cheese, but it at least tries to be better than the sum of its parts.

2 serene outlooks out of 5

Body Double (1984)

Things start out strange, but once you realise De Palma is doing for imagery what he did in relation to sound in Blow Out (1981) it looks promising. What follows, and where it ends up, will definitely and greatly split opinion.
At its best it’s a tense drama that mixes elements of Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958), but it’s only at its best about half the time. The rest is ridiculous, almost laughable nonsense that’s far below De Palma’s previous standards.
What I like about it despite its many failings and frequent lack of originality is that even during the stupid scenes the camerawork is amazing.
The Hollywood setting is an important factor; more than just backdrop it’s a place where everyone is false, trying to be something they’re not.

3 tight spots out of 5

Shade (2003)

A tricksy drama in which misdirection and sleight of hand are both a part of the plot and a technique employed by the director to keep his audience guessing. Damian Nieman filled both creative roles and for some reason it’s his only film to date. He did well. The characters occasionally feel more written than real, but that's often par for the course in drama.
It follows a trio of card-cheating hustlers as they attempt to win big on a very exclusive poker game. As you’d expect, it doesn't go smoothly.
Being a fan of poker meant I very much enjoyed it. If the principal actors had tried harder to make the role their own it could've been even better.

3 dangerous games out of 5

AUTOMATA [2014]

Writer/director Gabe Ibáñez's Automata can be best described as a mixture of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot theories and a drier version of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner aesthetics.
Like both worlds it can be compared to, Automata suffers greatly from it's lack of heart, where it could have heavily benefited from, inplace of it's lack of originality.  There's some interesting scenes set up and the second act is actually quite engaging but there's just so much wrong with it's logic everything else just seems to float on nothing.
Major flaws aside the film supplies some fine entertainment fluff for a boring Sunday afternoon but don't expect much more that.

3 nuclear batteries out of 5