Harry Kümel directs Delphine Seyrig, Danielle Ouimet and John Karlen in this softcore lesbian vampire horror where a pair of newlyweds share a deserted Belgian resort with an immortal queen of the night.
A lot of arty tease, very little actual sex and even less violence. Until the final five minutes when things kick into bloody overdrive. Seyrig makes the whole listless, wispy enterprise worth watching. Her class and outlandish wardrobe overwhelm the coy seductions and slightly queasy suggestions of the supernatural. As recommended in Mark Gatiss’ brilliant documentary Horror Europa.
Philip Noyce directs Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe and Donald Moffat in this Jack Ryan thriller where the CIA boy scout finds himself caught in a conspiracy involving a Columbia drug lord and a President sanctioning a secret war.
The best of the Jack Ryan adaptations. At its finest when teeing up the complex conspiracy and corporate confrontations. Although the action is pretty compelling when it interrupts the sinuous cable of subplots that bind the whole thing together. Probably telling that the most gripping moment in the entire franchise involves Harrison racing to refill his printer paper rather than sequences involving RPGs and smart missiles. Willem Dafoe has larks as the covert man of action, John Clark, and his bonus mini-movie captures the gung-ho flavour of one of Clancy’s massive timekiller tomes better than any other attempt. Ford eventually gets to be part of the fun in the final hour. Racing around behind enemy lines in a nice bit of Blue Harbour menswear and flashing his CIA business card like it is a Jedi mind trick. The mature, intelligent lead fits into the big finale organically without betraying his character’s less dynamic origins as a staid desk jockey. Ford then gets his true moment of triumph, and its a corker, when he faces down the dirty POTUS with grit and fortitude. What felt like a pretty standard summer studio release 25 years ago now feels like a type of blockbuster they just don’t bother with anymore. Shame that!
Henri-Georges Clouzot directs Pierre Fresnay, Micheline Francey and Pierre Larquey in this French thriller where a town is corrupted by a campaign of anonymous letters that reveals everyone’s secrets leading to deaths, accusations and lynch mobs.
A delightfully bleak pre-noir crime. Works perfectly well as a detective mystery or a damning allegory. Not only is the true story it is based around fascinating but the reaction to it from the Occupying Nazi forces at the time and the French government post-Liberation too. Even without knowing its twisted backstory, this is a compelling and acidic takedown of a community and humanity in general. Ginette Leclerc is memorable as a bedridden bad girl. The visuals are continually stark and playful. Genre delight for misanthropes.
Gore Verbinski directs Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley in this pirate adventure romp where a desperate Jack Sparrow tries to outwit and outrun a curse with the East India Trading Company also plotting his downfall.
Not as boring as I remember in the cinema. It goes on for way too long but Depp’s Jack is still fine value and the set-pieces he is actively involved in have a cartoonish physics to them. A threeway sword duel on a runaway miller’s wheel is particularly inventive. Every fifth or sixth scene seems to be a forced recap of the plot… almost as if Disney was already well aware the drooling masses who embraced this franchise were too dull eyed to keep up with all the triple crosses and mystic macguffins.
Philip Noyce directs Harrison Ford, Sean Bean and Anne Archer in this espionage thriller where former-CIA family man Jack Ryan angers a crazy IRA terrorist when he foils an assassination attempt on holiday.
One or two action sequences short of being impressive. What excitement there is is emotionally engaging rather than particularly eventful. That is down to Ford’s star power being so dependably exploited as the lead and Noyce zipping through the doorstep airport novel’s reams of subplots with a nimble confidence. Faultless but nothing special.
Jacques Tourneur directs Simone Simon, Tom Conway and Jane Randolph in this classic horror where a man marries a mysterious beauty – scared of sex, violently jealous and possibly able to turn into a panther when threatened.
Birthplace of the jump scare. Horror was changed permanently by the unexpected arrival of that bus. The rest of the film is more atmospheric melodrama than thrill fest… exploring the misogynistic but trendy form of psychoanalysis Hitch was equally obsessed with. It is only in the final twenty minutes the beast is loose and you start to fear for all involved. Yet the stand-out sequences still hold up: the pet shop going wild, the recognition between two fellow Serbian cats, the lonely pavement stalk, the swimming pool menace, the cornering of our unfaithful leads, the staircase finale. For a talky 70 minute film, there are deceptive chunks of creepy set-pieces.
John Landis directs Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Pfeiffer and David Bowie in this romantic crime thriller where an insomniac aerospace engineer picks up a distressed woman and is bounced around L.A. as they try to avoid the growing factions who want to kill her.
It looks like a comedy but has less jokes than The Accused? It feels slick and light but has at least two brutal deaths that would be the centrepiece of a gritty crime thriller? Goldblum and Pfeiffer are a hot pairing, so why are we continually overwhelmed by paranoia whether they are onscreen together or separated? Whatever Landis is trying for here doesn’t work. But it is a hell of a curio for fans of 1980s cinema. And the B.B. King theme music chops.
Olivier Assayas directs Clément Métayer, Lola Créton and Félix Armand in this semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama following three radical kids who leave their suburban high school bubble after the May ‘68 riots to travel the world, start work, fall in and out of love.
A very handsome movie with a couple of truly cinematic sequences that thoroughly impress. It does jar watching the rich kids with no financial limitations and nepotism to fall back on make bad life choices over politics they will soon abandon. Assayas seems fully aware of this and frames everything with a cynical self-aware detachment. Best to let the handsome imagery of sun dappled bodies, relaxed hedonism and folk prog vibes wash over you rather than care too much about the contradictions of posho brats smashing a system that they continue to benefit from.
Barry Levinson directs Michael Douglas, Demi Moore and Donald Sutherland in this corporate thriller where a middle aged suit’s new female boss sexually assaults him on the week of a proposed merger.
A polished entertainment that feels both a relic of its time (digital technology is very much in its infancy, the attitudes are gratingly misogynistic) and yet accidentally prescient. The noodling around rape, consent, gender and workplace power echoes this past year’s #metoo content like Bombshell, I May Destroy You and, especially, The Morning Show. Of course, whereas those current meditations are very much tales of female victimhood, empowerment, complicity and agency, Disclosure is in its heart of hearts a simple yuppie-in-peril thriller. His career, happy home life and sense of self is threatened by the accusation of rape and the fact that he was the one who was corralled into an unwanted sexually aggressive advance. Telling that Hollywood was more comfortable investing in this exception rather than the rule. Even now, there still haven’t been that many A-List movies about the norm: a predatory male boss who ruins a life and career simply as he has leverage over a female subordinate. Having framed Disclosure’s rather unique position among Hollywood hits… Is it any good? Good but not great. Everyone seems to be doing gun-for-hire work. I doubt Levinson cared much for the material, Ennio Morricone’s score has all the grace of a modem kicking into life and Moore seems happy to fade back into the corner office once she’s looked smoking in and out of some fetching power suits. Douglas is the only actor who brings it. After his masculinity is wounded and his security threatened in the first half, he becomes a pro-active detective, more comfortable turning the tables and figuring out the dodgy foundations of the billion dollar merger this is all obviously a sideshow for. Once he no longer has to pretend to be perturbed that Demi Moore nuzzled his genitals, we warm to his scrambling patsy trying to crack the corporate conspiracy built around him. After all, this was never a film made to be a voice for sexual assault victims in the work place, but a reassurance to straight couples investing in a babysitter and two multiplex tickets that the man of the house can keep his job and seal the deal while navigating the perils of… hot women in the workplace.
The blockbuster saga that all franchises aspire to be and very few exceed. The toys, annuals, games and movie defined my childhood. It nearly all has a special place in my heart… even one of those prequels.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 