Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary

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)

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Herbert Ross directs Whoopi Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore in this drama where a lesbian and a woman with a secret go on a road trip together, picking up a chaotic younger woman who gets them in trouble with the law.

Nineties melodrama buzzword bingo! This movie is a soft filtered hot mess. Scenes go wildly off beam. I wonder if the Thelma & Louise echoes were welded on after studio notes. Pre-fame Matthew McConaughey rocks up looking like a Lego man come to life. Drew flashes her abusive boyfriend at one point. Those two seconds of make all the forced mawk somehow worthwhile.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)

Michael Curtiz and William Keighley direct Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and Claude Rains in this classic Technicolor swashbuckler.

A joyous lark. Keeps things light, keeps things moving. Errol Flynn struts and peacocks through this with absolute insouciance. It is so consummately entertaining and out of time (even for the thirties) that the whole romp proves irresistible.

8

Perfect Double Bill: The Sea Hawk (1940)

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

Bradley Cooper directs Will Arnett, Laura Dern and himself in this drama about a divorcee who discovers open mic stand-up.

Loosely based on John Bishop’s early steps in comedy (but transplanted from Liverpool to New York), this has all the authenticity of car boot sale Labubu bong. People don’t interact like this. Comedy doesn’t work like this. How do these people even know each other? The one genuinely good scene is when his 10 year old sons find his notebook and ask him why he writes such sad shit. The one genuinely genuine scene is when his parents find out and knee jerk shit all over his little victory of booking a 10 spot. (Editorial: This character as presented would never get a 10 spot offered to him based on his inconsistent 2 chuckles a set batting average). The director casts himself as a recurring (non stand-up) comic relief but comes across as an annoying middle class, middle aged Floyd from True Romance. Cooper and Arnett are visually so similar I thought they were playing brothers. There is a hatefully written black female character that doesn’t pass muster. I think it is swell that the very earnest stud, who is only famous because of The Hangover franchise, has decided to become an auteur. It has become clear over three wildly indulgent projects that his passion is to represent the arts as a noble, life affirming endeavour in various forms. But he is an irredeemable pretentious, tone deaf darling. Tracing over the sorta movie Noah Baumbach used to make ain’t going get you your Oscar. And as awkward as this all is… Is This Thing On? is somehow his best movie to date. I laughed at it a lot less than A Star Is Born.

4

Perfect Double Bill: A Star Is Born (2018)

Christophe Gans directs Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson and Robert Strange in this third film in the horror video game adaptation telling the standalone tale of a man who receives a mysterious letter from his lost love and is drawn to Silent Hill.

No… I haven’t seen The Bone Temple yet?! But I have gone to see this. I had a soft spot for Christophe Gans’ original Silent Hill flick from 2006. In my book it still is the best console to big screen adaptation. There are moments in it that are genuinely totalitarian nightmarish. Dread inducing and extremely disgusting. This hits those peaks around five times… briefly. There are transformations and apocalyptic stalking scenes that truly amp up the Lynchian / Yuzna atmosphere. But the story is very rote, naively blatant and once the big twist becomes obvious you still have 90 minutes of the movie ramming it down your throat like it is some transcendently mind blowing revelation. If you can switch off from everything but the icky creature moments then this is Fangoria worthy. There are very few multiplex releases this digitally ugly I’ll give a pass to. Memorably hellish.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Silent Hill (2006)

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Park Chan-wook directs Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin and Park Hee-soon in this Korean neo-noir where a recently laid off family man decides to assassinate his competition for a new opening at a paper plant.

Magisterial, wicked. A patient, coiled thriller with some of the most insane virtuoso visuals of the last 10 years. There’s that mordant sense of humour. That plotting which feels somehow both randomly squirrelish and fatefully composed. You can’t tame chaos, the best laid plans… etc. Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin put in two of my favourite performances of this Oscar season. Expressing emotions, frustrations and schemes that ironically go unsaid but are viscerally felt. I would have liked to have seen both nominated. As with all Park Chan-wook, this will infest my brain until the next watch.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Parasite (2019)

Brian Yuzna directs Jeffrey Combs, Jason Barry and Elsa Pataky in this third flick in the H.P. Lovecraft inspired body horror saga.

West is in prison. And back to re-animating he goes. Almost everyone else involved is Spanish. It is a cheap limited production with some hilariously full on gore. This franchise deserved better sequels but this just about hits the spot as a one watcher.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Bride Of Re-Animator (1990)

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