Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary

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

Victor Kulle directs Heather Locklear, Robert Carradine and Ned Beatty in this psychological thriller where a woman, after suffering a nervous breakdown, moves into a new house but soon begins to suspect that her husband and his sister are up to incestuous foul play.

Tubi trash picked by my beautiful wife. Mental breakdown covers up a whole trough of narrative incoherence.

2

Perfect Double Bill: Body Language (1992)

Gillo Pontecorvo directs Marlon Brando, Evaristo Márquez, and Renato Salvatori in this historical epic where a British mercenary helps the revolting slaves of an Antilles island colony gain independence from Portugal.

Wow! One of Brando’s last proper acting lead performances. Not done for the paycheck or to shitstink the set of big production out with bad behaviour. One from the heart from Marlon. And he almost is star powered off the screen by a non-actor in a big part. Evaristo Márquez was just a charismatic labourer when he got cast to go toe to toe with the all-time god of method. Fucking magnetic “amateur” performance. You can only see this in shitty third gen copy formats. Our DVD looks like someone has wiped there arse with the reels before transferring it by UHF. Still, scarily accurate depiction of colonialism divide and conquer in action. Battles, education and danger.

8

Perfect Double Bill: The Battle of Algiers (1966)

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Phil Lord and Christopher Miller direct Ryan Gosling, Sandra Hüller and James Ortiz in this sci-fi adventure where an amnesiac science teacher wakes alone aboard a spaceship on a last ditch mission to save the Sun.

A magnificent piece of big studio entertainment. Beautiful, thrilling, intelligent and gets you in the feels. Gosling leans into his slapstick coward persona… keeping even the most doom fuelled moments light. The emotional connection built between him and Rocky the alien rock puppet is simply quite extraordinary. The space set pieces are beautiful and thrilling. Though bizarrely about a quarter of our screen broke away for a piss at the start of the most exciting sequence. The previous Andy Weir adaptation, The Martian, and this share so much source code. I’m glad in the current blockbuster ‘IP above all else’ artistic fascism that both original intergalactic survivalist romps now exist. Hard science, big love.

9

Perfect Double Bill: First Man (2018)

Gus Van Sant directs Bill Skarsgård, Al Pacino and Colman Domingo in this true crime drama where a man swindled by his mortgage company takes the owner’s son hostage with a booby trapped shotgun.

I’ve read a few reviews dismissing this as gun-for-hire (the irony) work from Van Sant. The resting director came on board after Werner Herzog pulled out at the last minute. Gus actually makes a seductive fist of splicing dramatic shots, with recreated news footage and black and white stills to give the recreation a sense of temporal place. Skarsgård is fine as a twitchy, angry man who somehow blindly trusts the system to a fault. Maybe the more interesting part of the story is the court case that followed. More focus there, maybe as a framing device, might have tipped this over from curio to classic.

6

Perfect Double Bill: 30 Minutes Or Less (2011)

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