Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary

Rob Reiner directs River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton and Corey Feldman in this period teen classic.

1959. Four lads walk through the woods over a summer weekend to get to see the dead body of another kid everyone is looking for. Like Star Wars and Ghostbusters, this movie always seemed to just exist in my house as a child. A mainstay, a lodestar. As familiar as the dining table and the mesh fire guard. Probably helped that my parents loved Motown and my sister fancied the boys. Maybe just River… Who knows? He acts his socks off in this one. Tough and tender, jaded and calm. It is a very morbid film even without the spectre of its rising star’s congruous young passing. Death and grief and finality looms over every interaction. An end-of-childhood movie we used to enjoy for the swearing, the train tracks, the pie eating contest and the leaches. Now it feels so much deeper and humane. A weepie for Gen X boys and Smash Hits girls. It has that Norman Rockwell meets The Great American Novel vibe that Stephen King gives when he takes a step away over to the soft edges of horror. Reiner helped define what a Stephen King drama should taste like. No one has jumped the rails on the visual simplicity and honest lived in nostalgic detail he established here. Possibly Darabont improved on this model in The Shawshank Redemption but that behemoth has the advantage of scale and maturity. After Stand By Me it is fair to say all Stephen King adaptations were informed by Reiner’s totemic vision, undeniably in debt to its texture and atmosphere in a way that De Palma, Kubrick and Cronenberg never laid out.

10

Perfect Double Bill: Explorers (1985)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/ and my own Substack https://substack.com/@edinburghlaughterbulletin

Stephen Chbosky directs Vince Vaughn, Linda Cardellini and Susan Sarandon in this comedy about a grieving son who invests all his assets into a start-up restaurant where old grandmas cook food like ‘Nonna’ used to make.

Saccharine sweet movie. There ain’t much to it to fill two hours but a good cast and a slather of lustre on top of the true story that inspired it. Without this particular ensemble (Sarandon, Bracco, Shire, Vaccaro… hell… even Drea de Matteo) it would be definitely be quite dull. Don’t watch it hungry or cynically. Also, while I haven’t searched the internet to confirm, I’m betting a crisp twenty there is a porn parody of this. And if such a thing does exist I bet another twenty it is only a sensible 90 minutes in length.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Delivery Man (2013)

Craig Brewer directs Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson and Ella Anderson in this unlikely biopic of Lightning and Thunder, a Milwaukee husband and wife Neil Diamond tribute act.

Craig Brewer is one of the unsung highlights of modern American cinema. His movies are bawdy, silly, hard hitting and set in the real world. He understands the right combination of grit and glitter, tears and triumph. He is almost an anathema to what the streamers and the wide releases want to churn out… yet his tough little melodramas are crowd pleasers. He also seemingly adores musical performance. Brewer hadn’t made a dull flick yet even as gun-for-hire. This is his best work so far… the utterly unpredictable true story is glued together by Jackman and Hudson’s insane chemistry and those Neil Diamond tunes. I’m not going to lie, I have been humming Forever In Blue Jeans for days since. Also middle aged Hudson is a revelation. Never rated her before but she looks and plays grand in this. I have a sneaking suspicion that this might just “Green Book” the Oscars this year. I’d be happy with that. I’m all for heart and humour.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Almost Famous (2000)

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Noah Baumbach directs George Clooney, Adam Sandler and Laura Dern in this insider comedy drama where a Hollywood movie star heads to Europe when he realises nobody really cares about him as a person.

No idea who this is really for, apart from admirers of gloss. It isn’t particularly funny nor dramatic. The less famous speaking parts have an unctuous sitcom energy but I think Baumbach is reaching for Fellini. Just feels misguided, flat, overbearing. It was silly to watch this straight after Sentimental Value when they are set in the same milieu but the outcomes are so chalk and cheese. The train scene is particularly cringe. This is not how Europeans would react if someone that famous got on their carriage. Real life is very different from a film premiere.

4

Perfect Double Bill: Sentimental Value (2025)

Joachim Trier directs Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning in this Norwegian drama where a distant director father attempts to cast his up-and-coming actress daughter in his semi-autobiographical tragedy.

Rich, deep performances anchor this fragile melodrama. Trier is a brilliant actor’s auteur and allows his leads the space and grace to lose themselves in the moments . Not quite as impactful, horny and funny as The Worst Person In The World but of similar literary quality. Sexy knitwear heaven.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Jay Kelly (2025)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/ and my own Substack https://substack.com/@edinburghlaughterbulletin

Ringo Lam directs Jean-Claude Van Damme, Natasha Henstridge and Zach Grenier in this action flick where a French cop pretends to be his long lost, recently deceased, twin brother to solve his murder.

This Christmas my wife told me she prefers Steven Seagal to JCVD!? I don’t have much truck with that. Though unintentional nonsense poems like this don’t help my case much. There are two good practical Euro car chases that bookend the “story” that match anything that happened in Ronin the year previous. Natasha Henstridge rewards those who stick with the proceedings with some brief nudity. Lam makes a good stab at pairing Van Damme off with combatants who at least feel like a challenge. It all washes over you though. Very little landing as the plot is so slapdash yet also formulaic… This is a movie that edges rather than excites the viewer.

4

Perfect Double Bill: Double Team (1997)

John Woo directs Ti Lung, Leslie Cheung and Chow Yun-Fat in this Hong Kong action flick where a gangster returns comes home from jail to find the wrong boss in charge.

Nobody has burned up the screen in a supporting role quite like Chow Yun-Fat does in A Better Tomorrow. He doesn’t just steal focus in scenes, he isn’t merely handsome and cool. The entire movie shifts around him whenever he has a scene. And as good as Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung’s “brothers on opposite sides of the law” melodrama is this is the flick that made Yun-Fat and Woo action icons. The trademark two handed gunplay came about from Woo’s practical desire for his protagonists not to run out of bullets every five seconds. Heroic Bloodshed was born here… though The Killer and Hard Boiled were the more readily available titles in my local rental shops in the early Nineties. This made it to me just a little later during the Tarantino boom. Rewatching these first confident steps of the sub genre after all these years is undeniably exhilarating. Manly tragedy, volcanic emotions, slaughterhouse violence.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Hard Boiled (1992)

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Andrew Niccol directs Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried and Cillian Murphy in this sci-fi thriller love story where people stop ageing at 25 and die at 26… with the last year of their life as the only currency they have to trade to survive.

A strong anti capitalist message powers a neo-noir future that looks minimalist and seductive. The plot wrapped around the intriguing concept is basic and unsurprising. Logan’s Run meets your overdraft. Seyfried is scrumptious in this. She makes the otherwise mixed bag experience wholly worthwhile.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Minority Report (2002)

Stéphanie Di Giusto directs Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Benoît Magimel and Benjamin Biolay in this French historical true tale of bearded lady trying to make her arranged marriage work.

An obtusely sexy, romantic tale of prejudice and acceptance. Quite beautifully lensed by Before Midnight’s Christos Voudouris. Di Giusto progresses the unusual story in a pleasingly natural, unforced way.

7

Perfect Double Bill: The Dancer (2016)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/ and my own Substack https://substack.com/@edinburghlaughterbulletin

Dan Curtis directs Jack Palance, Simon Ward and Pamela Brown in this adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic horror where Dracula is searching for a woman who looks like his long dead wife.

Solid, unfussy period adaptation. Very Hammer but made for American telly. Is Palance a good Count? He brings an alien energy to the role. Often he seems confused but there is a gruff macho gravitas to how he steamrolls through it. There isn’t a generosity of “horror” per se but this would make fine “York Notes” if you can’t be arsed reading the book for school. You aren’t going to get caught out writing “…then he showed up sporting a goatee and cool little red sunglasses…” in your exam after this one.

5

Perfect Double Bill: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1968)