Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary

Oliver Stone directs Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas and Daryl Hannah in this drama set around the world of stock prices, hostile takeovers, insider trading and Faustian pacts.

Expose as advert. I wanna say this is Stone’s slickest, most mainstream film. It sells a lifestyle it hates, it moves like a thriller with no peril. It works as Sheen is every inch the movie star incarnate yet he lacks the vulnerability, like-ability and humanity of a Cruise / Hanks / Emilio. If Charlie Sheen started his career today… you’d think he was AI. Douglas on the other hand was born to play this tailored devil. A bastard man, corporate evil on two legs, who you can’t help but love. How dare these corrupted, venal souls betray Gordon Gekko!?

9

Perfect Double Bill: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

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

François Ozon directs Benjamin Voisin, Rebecca Marder and Pierre Lottin in this adaptation of Camus’ existential classic where in 1930s Algeria, the daily life of an indifferent Frenchman is shaken by the death of his mother and a fateful encounter on a beach.

I have read The Stranger a couple of times and this is a very straight adaptation. And I say that recognising the queer coding in a few interactions plus the attempts to at least acknowledge that the Arab killed is a human being with a name and a life. Let’s not dust down the parade floats just yet. This is still very much focussed on Meursault’s ennui and nihilism. It isn’t like the murder victim is given any sort of depth or external life. Just a name on a tombstone. That aside, the first half is lush and horny. Ozon casts this with a lot of the beautiful young talent he has brought up over the last ten years. Marder and especially Lottin are incandescent. The second half is a bit more of a slog. We don’t gain any deeper insight into Meursault’s rejection of life and the justice system scenes become repetitive. Where did all those gorgeous monochrome sex scenes go?

7

Perfect Double Bill: Summer Of 85 (2020)

Kristoffer Borgli directs Zendaya, Robert Pattinson and Alana Haim in this dark comedy where the perfect romance between two soon new to be weds is ruined when one reveals a disturbing confession from their youth.

Kristoffer Borgli directs high concept movies set in the zeitgeist like nobody else. Two of the biggest stars in Hollywood go for broke in something that is simultaneously awkward as fuck but also incredibly accessible. Moony, abrasive and glib often in a single moment. It is a sticky enough dilemma and compulsive enough execution that you want to revisit it straightaway. Shout out to co-editor Joshua Raymond Lee as the opening 15 of this is spellbinding fast work storytelling. And Alana Haim has cornered the market for rage filled Jewish hotties. Is she Gen Z’s Susie Essman?

8

Perfect Double Bill: Licorice Pizza (2021)

Roger Spottiswoode directs Mel Gibson, Robert Downey Jnr and Nancy Travis in this action comedy based around the CIA’s illegal air network of death wish pilots who flew cargo around Asia in the Sixties.

Has all the ingredients of a Saturday Night sizzler. The end product proves a better VHS rental trailer than a fully fledged movie. It doesn’t congeal. It needed to stew up to work. There just isn’t enough wisecracking buddy comedy explosion peril. Not as much you would desire, or were promised. Riggs and Iron Man are at the peaks of their respective addictions but let’s assume the energy they bring is from pure A-List star power. What if Good Morning Vietnam had some kick ass flying stunts? A one-watcher with some memorable pyrotechnics, extraneous subplots and a wimpy goody two shoes wrap-up.

6

Perfect Double Bill: American Made (2017)

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Phil Joanou directs Sean Penn, Ed Harris and Gary Oldman in this gangster thriller where an undercover cop tries to infiltrate the New York Irish mob he grew up around.

Stellar cast. This one has always been on my bucket list. We watched it on St Patrick‘s Day. Which shows you how far I am behind with the movie diary at the mo. A dog’s dinner of cliches that wriggles about in tone unconvincingly. The action is operatic but the plot is looser than the ocean. Are any of these actors of actual Irish descent? Oldman is in scenery chewing mode playing a heterosexual version of Eric Roberts in the superior The Pope Of Greenwich Village. Robin Wright puts in the best shift and makes more out of a part that only needs her to look sexy, worried or sexily worried. Ed Harris replaced Bill Pullman after the first week of shooting. He phones it in but Pullman would have been horrifically miscast. The action is filmed like an art gallery installation which makes the big operatic tragedy largesse play very, very daft.

5

Perfect Double Bill: The Departed (2006)

Blake Edwards directs Peter Sellers, Elke Sommer and George Sanders in this sequel to The Pink Panther made on a quick turnaround.

I used to love Inspector Clouseau movies as a kid. “Not now, Cato, you fool!” This one introduces all the running gags but is a bit of a drag otherwise. There is a nudist colony sequence where nothing particularly daft happens, for example. George Sanders and Elke Sommer don’t bring it like Niven and Cardinale did. I hope the later, trashier entries are a bit zanier when we revisit them. Written by William Peter Blatty!?

5

Perfect Double Bill: The Pink Panther (1963)

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

Jafar Panahi directs himself, Hana Saeidi and Nasrin Sotoudeh in this found footage mockumentary where banned from making movies by the Iranian government, Jafar Panahi poses as a taxi driver and assembles a movie about social challenges in Iran.

If your government forced you to stop doing what you were great at would you become a taxi driver? And would you film your interactions with passengers? And what if many of those conversations happened to just naturally be about justice, censorship and cinema? Cute in the face of a regime.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Ten (2002)

Bob Fosse directs Dustin Hoffman, Valerie Perrine and Stanley Beck in this biopic of acerbic 1960s stand-up comic Lenny Bruce, whose groundbreaking, no-holds-barred style and social commentary was often deemed by the Establishment as criminally obscene.

Lenny is a strange choice to watch with your father-in-law on a Sunday afternoon. But he chose it, with all its grimness, druggy paranoia and boobies, so here we are. All encompassing performance from the brilliant Hoffman, he actually makes Bruce’s best routines somehow funnier. And Fosse truly understands show business and the live environment better than anyone. He is smart enough to wallow in the highs and lows. Imagine a modern stand-up biopic where a nepo kid toils astounds in hacky sell-out schtick poorly before finding his groove years down the line. Faces not enjoying it even at his apex. Bruce’s obsessive need to be right is his ultimate downfall. You were right, you are right, Lenny. They don’t need to acknowledge it. Sad and sleazy. Not a celebration. But it transports you into the audience and also into the ultimate comedy disruptor’s mindset. Not an easy watch but a great movie.

9

Perfect Double Bill: All The President’s Men (1976)

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James Hawes directs Rami Malek, Laurence Fishburne and Rachel Brosnahan in this espionage thriller where the CIA’s nerdy IT expert decides to go out in the field to avenge his lover’s murder.

My sort of movie – but uninspired and with a non-entity protagonist.

4

Perfect Double Bill: The Rhythm Section (2020)

M. Night Shyamalan direct William Hurt, Joaquin Phoenix and Bryce Dallas Howard in this chilling mystery flick where a series of events tests the beliefs of a small isolated countryside village.

The Village is still a strange experience. It features all that is adorable and all that is repellant about a Shyamalan joint. The twist is very guessable but the build-up is atmospheric despite itself. It doesn’t truly work as a horror but the imagery can oft be sinister. The 21st century The Crucible political allegory is ripe for the picking but it no longer feels like part of the conversation about 9/11 fuelled cinema. What it does have is a wonderful breakout performance from Bryce Dallas Howard and a genuinely shocking moment involving a subdued Joaquin.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Unbreakable (2000)

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