Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary

Bart Layton directs Chris Hemsworth, Halle Berry and Mark Ruffalo in this heist thriller where a lone high end thief pulls a disrespected cop, an undervalued insurance broker and a psychotic wannabe into his previously ordered world.

Based on a Don Winslow story. They don’t make them like this anymore. Reviews keep comparing this to Heat but really Thief is the Rosetta Stone here. The takes are vibrantly intense yet the half hours in between prove rich with character details and clean visual storytelling. The movie is generous to Berry’s performance. This may very well be the most rounded and perfect role of her entire career. Whenever Barry Keoghan enter the mix the movie shunts away from its neat, cool lines. Again, this is (so far) his best work in a mainstream genre fil-lum, reminding me of Oldman’s chaotic villains of the Nineties. The resolution is a tad fantastical but all in all a movie worth going to see at the multiplex… that may even have that rare compulsive future rewatchability of The Fugitive or Speed. My meaning: whatever point you start watching it you may find it difficult to tag back out. All this and Nick Nolte too! Documentaries or narrative fiction, has Bart Layton ever directed an average, let alone bad, movie?

8

Perfect Double Bill: The Score (2000)

Julia Jackman directs Maika Monroe, Emma Corrin and Nicholas Galitzine in this fantasy fable about an unsatisfied bride, her storytelling servant and the man who has made a bet with her husband to bed her within 100 nights.

Dreamy visuals, feminist and queer positive messaging plus Maika Monroe is various erotically chaste costumes. Very watchable.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Gretel & Hansel (2020)

You can follow me on Letterboxd here https://letterboxd.com/ValVerdeNights/

Richard Linklater directs Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin in this behind the scenes comedy about the making of Breathless.

The casting is spot on, the movie handsome and it clearly is passion project. Yet I’m a Linklater stan who has very little time for Godard. His earliest films are easily his best by country miles. Were they revolutionary? Was he an insufferable prick? This movie accidentally makes the better case for the latter. Confirming my prejudices like a Rorschach test. Hard to care about really once it hits a petulant luvvy rhythm. Inside baseball.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Blue Moon (2025)

Joe Carnahan directs Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Steven Yeun in this action thriller about cops under siege in a stash house with a corruptive amount of money to count.

Someone has a red hot poker up these old cops asses and I wanna find out whose name is on the handle. The first Ben & Matt collaboration that plays out a bit meh. Not to fully exploit their chemistry. Carnahan is in his Narc wheelhouse but not going at it full pelt. Fine but could have been an all-timer. Just sits there on the screen inoffensively.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Sabotage (2014)

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

Nia DaCosta directs Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams and Ralph Fiennes in this post-apocalyptic horror sequel where Spike falls in with a bad lot.

There are two very different sequences in this where Ralph does some dancing that truly made the movie for me. His performance over the two recent releases has been quite wonderful. The marauding gangs of shell suited Jimmy Saville / Satan worshippers are a gory lark to begin with but they couldn’t sustain a whole film by themselves. Once you witness them threaten one cottage full of survivors with their presence, where further could it go? The whole movie feels like a doodle. A narrative expansion made up of subplots and side quests you may be more interested in than the standard run from the “zombies” story. And while The Bone Temple is a far more curious experience, it doesn’t quite hit the peaks of intensity of the first two films… nor the communal transcendence of its immediate sibling,

7

Perfect Double Bill: 28 Years Later (2025)

Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire directs Joe Cole, Vithaya Pansringarm and Cherry Miko in this “based on a true story” prison drama about a young British boxer in Thailand.

Nightmarishly oppressive and scarily disorientating, The first hour is a strong brew of extreme prison tropes. Almost told in POV. The second half settles into a more traditional training towards redemption arc. Joe Cole is impressive in a near silent lead role.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Starred Up (2013)

You can follow me on Letterboxd here https://letterboxd.com/ValVerdeNights/

James Watkins directs James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy in this thriller where a family travel to the Cornish countryside for a weekend with the seemingly nice but intense couple they met on holiday.

A one-watch movie. You see the storytelling bung a plethora of random objects and over emphasised “heads ups”. Blatantly so you can watch out for them all being caught in “clever” ways during the juggle of the third act Straw Dogs-esque finale. The whole movie pivots on how polite would you be when everything points towards your very genial hosts being psycho killers? And somehow the movie manages to spin this wobbly, fragile plate for a surprisingly long time. Too long for this ever to be worth a revisit. I mean we all grew up on the schlocky yuppie in peril potboilers back in the day. The positives are obvious. McAvoy’s full fat smiling villain turn. The fact that someone has cast Aisling Franciosi in a prominent role after she was so brilliant in The Nightingale. And that James Watkins is back in his Eden Lake stomping ground. The movie itself I can take or leave… at best I’ll hunt down the Danish original just to play spot the difference.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Eden Lake (2008)

Sandor Stern directs David Hewlett, Cynthia Preston and Terry O’Quinn in this weird incest drama with horror undertones about a mentally disturbed young man and his inanimate medical dummy.

A psycho biddy flick where the schizo is a clean cut young man!? Norman Bates, you say? Well, that is an influence. Hitch’s modern gothic permeates through this. The medical dummy is a creepy creation. Doling out sex advice blankly to the kids. At one point it is raped and later it has rubber skin added to it. Making it even ickier to look at. I didn’t realise an uncredited Jonathan Banks provided the voice until an internet scrub after. The narrative is very unpredictable. It is quite freeing to watch something so haphazard. But there aren’t really any suspense set pieces. It is all a big Freudian mind game. The acting can be wobbly, and we are often stuck in one location for long stretches. There are unsettling shots that will haunt you though. A mixed bag of VHS era strange.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Flowers In The Attic (1987)

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

Régis Wargnier directs Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Perez and Linh-Dan Pham in this epic about a French plantation owner watching Vietnam begin its journey towards revolution.

Another one off the “must watch” bucket list. A very beautiful film about an ugly period. A love triangle where all the characters markedly shift and are left changed by their shared desire. You can tell the filmmaker is a little too in love with naval uniforms and coolies working though. The story becomes quite entrancing in the second half but sadly Deneuve is shunted over in the sidelines for the juiciest chapters. Fans of David Lean will find much to savour.

7

Perfect Double Bill: This is enough movie on its own!

Eli Roth directs Bruce Willis, Dean Norris and Elisabeth Shue in this remake of the original revenge vigilante thriller.

Bruce Willis seemed to have given up over the last decade of his career. Phoning in franchise work for big salaries, and cameoing in a sluice of indistinguishable VOD dreck for day player paychecks. Then he retired and announced he was suffering from aphasia. One of the biggest and most charismatic A-List stars of the Nineties was finding lead roles near impossible. So he cashed in his fame to build up reservoirs of wealth for his family and self care while he could. Kept working as long as he could. Most of the films made in this final run are absolute dogshit. But there are glimmers of hope. Moonrise Kingdom. Looper. Motherless Brooklyn. This! And this got a drubbing on release. Written off with all the trash. But it actually does everything you’d want from a studio exploitation programmer. It looks good, moves at a pace, can be thrilling when the set pieces ramp up. While Willis might not be the sparkling, smirking charmer of Moonlighting or Die Hard, he does somehow manage (despite health limitations) to put in the right turn here. Death Wish deserves a reevaluation. It ain’t a classic but it is Willis’ last effective lead performance. Sits comfortable in the mid tier with Last Man Standing or Striking Distance. Now we know what he was suffering through and the reasoning behind the fire sale of his prestige, Death Wish is surely owed a smidge more love. It brings violence and suspense on a scale that the movie business ain’t all that interested in anymore. It is also Eli Roth’s most competent directing work.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Death Sentence (2007)

You can follow me on Letterboxd here https://letterboxd.com/ValVerdeNights/