Jonathan Demme directs Talking Heads as they perform a career defining concert.
Puts you right in the mix. You share the thrill of what it must have been like to be in the front row while experiencing the immaculately joy and rehearsed effort of the performers.
Éric Rohmer directs Phillippe Marlaud, Marie Rivière and Anne-Laure Meury in this French romantic comedy where a jealous postman follows his non-committal girlfriend’s ex.
I tried a Rohmer when I was younger and could not get into it. Dull-a-go-go! This one though grabbed me. We get a look at a day in the life of a group of discontent Parisiens. Anne is rude to everyone and wants a relationship where she is left alone most of time. The callow Francois is overbearing and out of his depth… his paranoid clinginess turns to full on stalking. 15 year old Lucie mistakenly thinks he is following her… and she could be the woman of his dreams… if only he wasn’t so obsessed with his (not unjustified) paranoia. Their interlude that forms the core of the film is delightful, with Anne-Laure Meury’s precocious flirt electrifying the film. Nothing ends up how you expect but the quiet mundanity and gentle ironies Rohmer revels in here really hooked me. A new director to explore. If you are a fan of Before Sunset, give this a try.
Mélanie Laurent directs Ben Foster, Elle Fanning and Beau Bridges in this neo-noir Western where a hitman rescues a young whore and her little girl.
Decent action, rote miserablism dramatics. Foster and Fanning are far too good to ever be unengaging, it looks appropriately gritty and sweaty. Just travels from its well trodden A-B with enough flair to survive but not enough to meet the expectations brung along by the talent involved.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa directs Kōji Yakusho, Masato Hagiwara and Tsuyoshi Ujiki in this Japanese serial killer mystery where a group of murders are easily solved, each perpetrator is found disorientated near their victim, but a dogged detective feels a creepy drifter might be equally culpable for the crimes.
*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS *** Cure didn’t even get a cinema release in the U.K. in the late Nineties but has grown in cult reputation and stature over the past two decades. This was my first viewing and it has pretty much everything I like and need in a new favourite. An unsettling narrative, never fully resolved, so you pick and pull at the puzzling loose ends long after. This could keep you up at night worrying about what was real and who has become whom. I shan’t discuss my theories on the playfully open dreamlike second half but will say it still works throughout as an accessible thriller. A rebellious detective, cut from a different cloth from his colleagues, gradually solves the bizarre mystery. A villain emerges who is unnervingly blank. Seemingly brain damaged, he cannot remember who he is, or focus on conversations for more than three sentences, responding to every interaction with non sequitur queries of his own… then insidiously after he has baffled those around him he becomes in control of people. A devil… a puppet master… one who has evaded the scene long before deadpan violence erupts and whose grand scheme or method is never truly revealed. Masato Hagiwara is fantastically obtuse in the antagonist role, evoking a supernatural disconnection and virulent undercurrent of genius. Koji Yakusho is equally compelling as the outsider detective, smarter than everyone else but not clever enough to realise staring too long into this particular abyss will warp him too. Kiyoshi Kurosawa directs it with a clinical precision that gives way to a spaced out surrealness. The look of the film is clearly influenced by the dank dystopian interiors of Se7en or The Silence of the Lambs. The central hero / nemesis dynamic owes a debt to The Usual Suspects. This forgotten gem is clearly an influence on Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder. But the feeling it reminded me of the most was the shifting unease and unnavigatable warping of time and space you get watching David Lynch. He executed similar mindfucks with both Fire Walk With Me and Lost Highway. If any of those half a dozen mentioned revered classics are your cup of tea then quite the sanity altering jewel awaits you with Cure. I can see the below score rising on revisits.
Arthur J. Bressan, Jr. directs David Schachter, Geoff Edholm and Billy Lux in this indie drama where a young gay man volunteers to care for an activist dying of AIDS.
This little seen film was the first to dramatise the HIV crisis. It is a tender, frank two hander mainly set in one ward room. The more assimilated David confronts the progress and sacrifices that people like gay rights campaigner, Robert, made for people like him. And as “the old guard” dies alone, a pariah in a cold clinic, the younger man begins to embrace the importance of continuing the fight for gay rights and AIDS awareness. It is as heavy as it sounds but delivered with a lighter, more seductive touch than you’d believe possible. Bressan very much isolates us way from others people, leaving us observers on a little island in time populated by just these two souls in a private interaction.
Wes Miller directs David Gyasi, Ron Perlman and Frank Grillo in this Western that attempts to tell the Bass Reeves story; the first black U.S. Marshall and alleged inspiration for The Lone Ranger.
For an hour this is a dull rather trudging Western. The ever reliable Perlman and Grillo try to inject some spunk into their stock parts but the writing never rises above a Nineties teatime adventure series. The shoestring worthiness of it bleeds out any enjoyment. It looks like it has been filmed at a shutdown cowboy theme park with the almost-passable costumes of the host staff to match. Then in the final act of action… things utterly unravel. You notice headlights from a passing freeway in the treeline, buildings in the town have very modern glass and steel facades. It completely devalues a project it was hard to get invested in in the first instance. Amateur.
Arthur J. Bressan, Jr. sends 25 camera crews out to capture various Gay Pride events one summer, interview the participants, spectators and objectors.
A thrilling kaleidoscope of footage and vox pop – many unguarded. This manages to include a nice potted history of the political activist roots of the gay rights movements and even is prescient enough to catch some of the seeds of future discontent within the various factions. It works best as a celebration of love among various people before such events became commercialised. Whether the participants have just come out, only just released from heterosexual default relationships or (for want of a better pair of words) utterly flaming, their passion and freedom is splendidly euphoric. Love is the message. Would make a fine triple bill with Paris Is Burning and the little seen Nineties period drama Stonewall.
Vincent D’Onofrio directs Jake Schur, Leila George and Ethan Hawke in this Western retelling of Billy the Kid / Pat Garrett legend from the eyes of a boy on the run for killing his abusive father.
A solid cowboy drama with bursts of traditional bloody action that interrupt a few lurches into pretentiousness. Dane DeHaan gets the showiest role as Billy but doesn’t shake the persistent suspicion that Hollywood tried to clone a young DiCaprio in a lab and he was the best result they produced by the time Leo was middle aged and above such movies. This leaves Hawke and Chris Pratt to battle it out for who can steal the film. Starlord just about noses it with a genuinely evil turn that bristles with unrestrained violence and anger. Well done him!
Jack Sholder directs Michael Nouri, Kyle MacLachlan and Claudia Christian in this sci-fi buddy cop movie where a body-hopping alien serial killer goes on various sprees around L.A..
A Saturday Night Special. The same plot as The Borrower, Monolith and to some extent Fallen, this sees a variety of character actors and cult figures become the carnage loving extra terrestrial villain. The police chasing him are boosted by a quirky pre-Twin Peaks turn by MacLachlan who completely takes the movie from Nouri’s de facto lead. What is most impressive about The Hidden (a throwaway release probably made by New Line on the same budget as a Freddy sequel) is just how high its production values seem. Filmed on the same downtown streets as The Terminator, it has verisimilitude that most cheap sci-fi releases lack. Even the action is ambitious; it opens with bank robbery / car chase that feels more of the standard of an Arnie or Sly production. Well worth tracking down.
Joseph Anthony directs Burt Lancaster, Katharine Hepburn and Wendell Corey in this Western romance where an old maid falls for a travelling conman who offers hope with his zealous overconfidence.
The above plot description is a little unfair as I get the feeling Hepburn is supposed to be playing a plain girl in her early twenties. Casting a striking star rubbing against 50 years old in the role creates a jarring awkwardness that the film never really overcomes. It is colourful filmed stage play aiming for somewhere between Oklahoma and The Chase. A lively, inhibited star turn by Lancaster saves this. His untrustworthy charm electrifies his scenes with boyish machismo.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 