1969
***
A politician is assassinated but the corrupt establishment try to pretend that it was a car accident.
Pacey political thriller based on real events; after 40 years it may not have quite the power it once did, but there's still much to admire, including the snappy editing.
Dir: Costa-Gavras
Stars: Yves Montand, Irene Papas, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacques Perrin
ZACK SNYDER'S JUSTICE LEAGUE
2021
**
After a successful fan campaign, Zack Snyder was allowed to re-edit and lengthen his 2017 film Justice League (qv), including shooting some new scenes, and this was the result.
It's now less humorous, even greyer in look and four flipping hours long - while this gives it more gravitas and improves on a few bits of storytelling, it could be argued that this version is only really suitable for leisurely home viewing, which was its destiny: you wouldn't want to sit through this at the cinema; the original is better for that, despite what the fans might say (the epilogue in particular feels like too much content). Editors are there for a reason. Plus, is an air of general grimness really the best way to film a silly comic book? It's probably a matter of personal choice, but there's no denying the ambition of this project, and its qualities.
Dir: Zack Snyder
Stars: Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jason Momoa, Henry Cavill, Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Ciaran Hinds
ZAPPED!
1982
0
A high school pupil uses his telekinetic powers to tear girls' clothes off at the prom.
Tawdry comedy expressly designed to appeal to moist-palmed teenage boys.
Dir: Robert J Rosenthal
Stars: Scott Baio, Willie Aames, Robert Mandan
ZAPPERS BLADE OF VENGEANCE
1974
0
A female private eye thwarts a murderous swordsman.
A slight improvement on Big Zapper (qv) but not exactly good; the duelling sequences are particularly dull. There's no on-screen apostrophe in the title.
Dir: Lindsay Shonteff
Stars: Linda Marlowe, Alan Lake, Jason Kemp
ZARDOZ
1974
0
In the far future, a warrior infiltrates a land of quiet intellectuals.
Good-looking but laughably pretentious sci-fi which lasts far too long.
Dir: John Boorman
Stars: Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, John Alderton
ZEBRASKIE POINT
1970
**
A young man who has stolen a plane crosses paths with a young woman driving across Death Valley.
Antonioni's unusual film was not well received at the time but has grown in stature, at least with some: the way to approach it is not to treat it like an ordinary movie with a conventional narrative, but rather as both a snapshot of the attitudes of some folk of the time and as a sensory experience - the landscapes are beautiful (as is Halprin), and the traversing of them represents the freedom of youth in democratic, market-based societies, no matter what message the director may have intended. Don't judge it on the performances or even the script, judge it on the visions it captures in expressly cinematic fashion; the desert couplings and the final explosive scenes encapsulate its vibe.
Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni
Stars: Daria Halprin, Mark Frechette, Rod Taylor
A ZED & TWO NOUGHTS
1985
0
Two men examine life after both their wives die in a car crash.
High-brow fantasy whose pretensions become intolerable.
Dir: Peter Greenaway
Stars: Andrea Ferreol, Eric Deacon, Frances Barber, Joss Ackland
ZELIG
1983
***
Emerging into 1920s US society, a human chameleon goes on to great fame.
Fiendishly clever, unique fantasia, the result of a long stretch of painstaking creativity by the director/writer/star, and one of his finest achievements. The period - and the media's interpretation of the period - is just so immaculately recreated, with every element pitch perfect, including the ahead-of-their-time special effects that put Allen with personalities of the day; it can also be extremely funny, and of course makes deeper points about humans' need for acceptance.
Dir: Woody Allen
Stars: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow. Narrator: Patrick Horgan
ZENOBIA
1939
*
A small-town doctor can't lose the elephant he has treated.
Hardy without Laurel - but Ollie copes well with a different sort of performance in a film very different from one of theirs, a mild, pleasant comic drama with a message of goodwill.
Dir: Gordon Douglas
Stars: Oliver Hardy, Harry Langdon, Jean Parker
ZERO DARK THIRTY
2012
*
Following 9/11, American authorities search for Osama Bin Laden.
Too much like hard work: yes, it's well acted, yes, it's well shot, but this torturous (no pun intended), very long true-life drama makes you think 'okay, I'm glad they got him, but I really don't want to witness every step of the way.' There's certainly very little human connection on the journey; also, the viewer is never quite sure how much is true and how much is embellished.
Dir: Kathryn Bigelow
Stars: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Egerton, Mark Strong
ZERO DE CONDUITE
1933
*
Boys rebel against their boarding school masters.
Curious little semi-surrealist short with lots of odd little incidents. It's an acquired taste, and not helped by poor prints with unreliable subtitling.
Dir: Jean Vigo
Stars: Jean Daste, Robert le Flon, Louis Lefebvre
ZERO HOUR!
1957
*
A flight in bad weather is struck by food poisoning.
Air melodrama whose chief point of interest now is to see where Airplane got many of its ideas from.
Dir: Hall Bartlett
Stars: Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, Sterling Hayden
ZERO POPULATION GROWTH
1972
0
In the future, having children is illegal - but one couple break the law.
Undramatic sci-fi devoid of humour. The 'pollution-induced fog' attempts to cover up the low budget.
Dir: Michael Campus
Stars: Oliver Reed, Geraldine Chaplin, Don Gordon
ZETA ONE
1969
0
A race of female aliens visit Earth in need of human male specimens.
Softcore sci-fi with a couple of famous faces; it could not have been made at any other time or in any other place. Awful but incredible, it's like two films in one, one half a lackadaisical secret agent entertaining a blonde lovely, the other a crazy sci-fi adventure with eye-gobbling women and Justice and Hawtrey looking uncomfortable. The colourful sets and the racey costumes are just two aspects of this incompetent movie that make it a touch heart-warming.
Dir: Michael Court
Stars: James Robertson Justice, Charles Hawtrey, Robin Hawdon, Yutte Stensgaard, Valerie Leon
ZIDANE - A 21ST CENTURY PORTRAIT
2006
*
Documentary in which Real Madrid's Zidane is followed by 17 cameras during the course of one 90-minute match.
It's difficult to see who this arty experiment might appeal to; after a while the most avid football fan (particularly the most avid football fan) or devotee of quirky cinema might check to see what's on the other side.
Dir: Douglas Gordon, Philippe Parreno
Stars: Zinedine Zidane
ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS
1982
*
Documentary charting Bowie's last performance with his Spiders in 1972.
A great concert, but the behind-the-scenes stuff is a bit vacuous and the picture quality poor.
Dir: D A Pennebaker
Stars: David Bowie
ZIZEK!
2005
0
Documentary featuring the thoughts of a Slovenian Marxist philosopher.
An exhausting and unsympathetic low-budget film with a subject that barely appears worthy of laudatory treatment.
Dir: Astra Taylor
Stars: Slavoj Zizek
ZODIAC
2007
**
A newspaper cartoonist obsessively seeks the identity of the Zodiac killer, who is terrorising San Francisco in the 1960s and '70s.
Grown-up thriller concentrating on the tortuous and inefficient investigations - the scary bits are kept to a minimum but highly effective when they occur. Long and tangled but stylishly put together, if you don't enjoy the story you can at least enjoy the carefully recreated period detail.
Dir: David Fincher
Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr, Anthony Edwards, Chloe Sevigny, Brian Cox
ZOLTAN, HOUND OF DRACULA
1977
0
Soldiers accidentally unleash the canine servant of Dracula.
Low budget, low excitement horror.
Dir: Albert Band
Stars: Michael Pataki, Jan Shutan, Libby Chase
ZOMBIE AND THE GHOST TRAIN
1991
0
A man drifts in and out of a rock band but prefers to drink his life away.
Underwritten and inconsequential drama with no surprises, a sort of Finnish Bukowski, without the tang.
Dir: Mika Kaurismaki
Stars: Silu Seppala, Marjo Leinonen, Matti Pellonpaa
ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH
1980
0
Reporters and army men battle an ever growing band of zombies in the jungle.
Gloriously trashy horror flick which lacks power and sense but isn’t short of randomly inserted stock footage of African wildlife.
Dir: Bruno Mattei
Stars: Frank Garfield, Robert O’Neil, Margit Evelyn Newton
ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS
1980
*
A woman traces her father's disappearance to a zombie-infested island.
Formulaic zombie movie which, although better and more sanely shot than many Fulci films, doesn't deserve its lofty reputation that was partly earned by its eight-year British video ban. The air of doom and occasional highly memorable set-pieces (the shark vs the zombie! The splinter in the eyeball!) do lift it out of the mire, though, even if dull stretches and bland characters drag it back down.
Dir: Lucio Fulci
Stars: Ian McCulloch, Tisa Farrow, Richard Johnson
ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST
1980
0
New Yorkers travel to a remote island where cannibalism is rife.
Not just zombies, but cannibals and mad doctors too! An insanely trashy horror, with all sorts of similarities to Zombie Flesh Eaters, it's gory fun for those who like this sort of thing.
Dir: Marino Girolami
Stars: Ian McCulloch, Alexandra Delli Colli, Sherry Buchanan
ZOMBIE LAKE
1981
0
A lake full of Nazi zombies spells doom for various bathers.
A wonderfully terrible film which has had its ‘qualities’ picked over by bad movie fans: the spare, disconnected dialogue; the half washed off zombie make-up; the fact that a little girl loves a soggy undead Nazi; that it’s not sure whether it’s set in the Fifties or the Eighties; the extras who can barely take events seriously, and much more. Also brazenly sexual at times, it’s a brightly shot slice of lunacy that will likely attract more converts over the years.
Dir: Jean Rollin (as JA Laser)
Stars: Howard Vernon, Pierre Escourrou, Nadine Pascal
THE ZOMBIE WALKS
1968
0
A killer called The Laughing Corpse slays victims with a poisonous scorpion-shaped ring.
Convoluted Teutonic thriller with some eye-catching visuals, most notably the villain who is dressed up like a skeleton; otherwise it's fairly hard-going for those of us not into Edgar Wallace as much as the Germans were. London locations are nicely captured by the deep colour photography. Alternate title The Hand Of Power is possibly more apt - there are no zombies here (although 'The Laughing Corpse' would have been more apt still).
Dir: Alfred Vohrer
Stars: Joachim Fuchsberger, Hubert von Meyernick, Siw Mattson
ZOMBIELAND
2009
*
After America has been overrun by zombies, a nerdy student joins forces with a gun-toting nutcase to trek across the country.
Lively horror comic a little uncertain in tone but preferable to most other modern zombie movies; a negative view would be to say it’s very simplistic and possibly sponsored by Twinkies, but a more positive one that it’s slickly produced and snappily scripted.
Dir: Ruben Fleischer
Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Bill Murray
ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY
1945
0
Two press agents have to find a real zombie to star in a Broadway show.
Brown and Carney are a less amusing Abbott and Costello and Lugosi only has a small part in this doltish comedy which may have pleased a younger crowd at the time. The zombie make-up is actually quite effective.
Dir: Gordon Douglas
Stars: Wally Brown, Alan Carney, Bela Lugosi, Anne Jeffreys
THE ZONE OF INTEREST
2023
**
An Auschwitz commander lives in a nice house with his wife, right next to the camp.
'Arty' is the word that most comes to mind on watching this deliberately detached (it's mostly in static long shot), ice-cold film whose central idea is a chillingly fine one, although there isn't much else to the movie other than this idea - there's no proper plot; it has a self-limiting conceit. So while the camerawork and set design are impeccable - and the sound engineering, with the terrible workings of Auschwitz being heard in the background - you can only really feel admiration for its technical aspects and its genesis. Perhaps a second viewing is required, as is often the way with this director's work.
Dir: Jonathan Glazer
Stars: Christian Friedel, Sandra Huller, Johann Karthaus
ZONE TROOPERS
1985
0
During World War Two, aliens arrive on Earth to help some American soldiers.
A mix of sci-fi and war movie in which the cheapness really shows through.
Dir: Danny Bilson
Stars: Tim Thomerson, Timothy Van Patten, Art LaFleur
ZONTAR: THE THING FROM VENUS
1967 (TV)
0
A scientist foolishly helps an aggressive alien threaten the planet.
Remake of Corman's It Conquered The World (qv) that is roughly the quality that the title suggests. Technically very bad of course, it has a strange and unique feel to it.
Dir: Larry Buchanan
Stars: John Agar, Susan Bjurman, Tony Huston
THE ZOOKEEPER'S WIFE
2017
*
When Poland is invaded by the Nazis, a woman and her husband seek to save animals and Jews from them.
Schindler's List with some cute animals, a little too earnest and lacking in emotion or tension to keep one rapt.
Dir: Niki Caro
Stars: Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Daniel Bruhl
ZOOLANDER
2001
*
A male model unwittingly becomes involved in a plot to assassinate the president of Malaysia.
Comedy is a genre that dates quicker than most, and that's illustrated here, but was this film ever hilarious to begin with? If the viewer was in the right mood maybe, although Stiller's satire of the modelling industry really needed more bite and more - and better - gags. Some choice moments, including star cameos, keep it from flagging - just.
Dir: Ben Stiller
Stars: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Christine Taylor, Milla Jovovich
ZOOTROPOLIS
2016
**
A young female bunny moves to the city intent on becoming a high-achieving police officer.
While not quite as funny as hoped, this is another top quality animated feature from Disney, as sumptuous looking as usual, marrying a crime noir storyline with a positive message about fulfilling your dreams. Decent entertainment for the family.
Dir: Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush
Voices: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, JK Simmons
ZORBA THE GREEK
1964
0
In 1930s Crete, a shy writer meets a gregarious native.
Utterly unabsorbing drama that feels impossible to connect with - what is it, apart from a weird, pretentious, puzzling bore with an unpleasant streak of misogyny? Those who praise it appear to be unable to say why it's good.
Dir: Mihalis Kakogiannis
Stars: Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates, Irene Papas, Lila Kedrova
ZORRO'S BLACK WHIP
1944 (serial)
*
A female in a black costume, along with her associates, fight for statehood for Idaho.
As is always immediately noted, this serial doesn't feature Zorro: in the first episode a (male) Zorro lookalike dies and his sister takes over, which ensures a bit of hilarity as the beefy villains fail to twig that they're dealing with a woman. But this is an agreeable chapter play, full of genuinely impressive stunt work, particularly that involving horses and whips, and with some fun cliffhangers - the ones at the end of Take Off Your Mask! and Flaming Juggernaut are especially canny. Modern-day feminists might be shocked that back in the early days of Hollywood there were plenty of what they'd today call 'strong female leads'.
Dir: Spencer Gordon Bennet, Wallace Grissell
Stars: Linda Stirling, George J Lewis, Francis McDonald, Lucien Littlefield
ZORRO’S FIGHTING LEGION
1940 (serial)
0
Zorro fights for the independence of Mexico.
Slightly boring serial with lively music.
Dir: John English, William Witney
Stars: Reed Hadley, Sheila Darcy, William Carson
ZULU
1964
***
In 1879, British soldiers fight a vicious battle against Zulus at Rorke's Drift in Natal.
One of the best war films ever made, this is an epic and humane picture with thrilling battle scenes that come close to emulating the spectacle in a young boy's head as he plays with his toy soldiers. Replacing the bravery and diligence of the historical fighters we get the aptitude and professionalism of the movie-makers; the cinematography is splendid and the cast wonderful. So many Zulus!
Dir: Cy Endfield
Stars: Stanley Baker, Michael Caine, James Booth, Jack Hawkins, Nigel Green, Patrick Magee
ZULU DAWN
1979
*
The story of the British defeat at the hands of Zulus at Rourke's Drift in 1876.
Although this compares unfavourably with its predecessor, thanks to its long build-up and less than clear battle scenes, this is a decent, competent war film with a distinguished cast.
Dir: Douglas Hickox
Stars: Burt Lancaster, Denholm Elliott, Peter O'Toole, John Mills, Simon Ward, Nigel Davenport, Ronald Lacey, Freddie Jones
