Sidney Lumet directs Sean Connery, Harry Andrews and Ossie Davis in this war time drama about the over zealous punishment of the shirkers and deserters consigned to a desert stockade.
Fascism and corruption fight free will and collaboration in a military prison. We start out with a gruelling real time indoctrination. Lumet at his most candidly procedural. We get to experience a few laps up and down the hill, feel the heat of the Libyan sun, the unsure footing of the sand banks, watch even the hardiest hero be felled by a couple more steps. After that we switch to a macho play on film. Not opened up. Lumet likes the claustrophobia and pressure. The state of play becomes repetitive as both sides try and goad and bully the other into making a provable error. Bullying overwhelms every interaction. Bullying on film is often inaccurate. It is not just violence towards a weaker individual. It is a relentless cornering of that person until they a forced to break the rules too. A bully wants to see you lash out or fight back. As then they can use the full force of the rules meant to protect you against you. A bully wants you to be a defenceless version of their own weaknesses. The performances are superb. Connery, the star, is the closest we have to a hero. Yet he is passive unless the opportunity is right. He endures until he spies winnable ground. Ossie Davis is subjected not just to the regular dehumanisation of this process but suffers racism from all sides. He is never broken by them, amplifying the fears in their face in his bravura finale. Then on the side of the officers we have Ian Bannen’s sole good chap and Ian Hendry’s nasty bastard. Two sides of the same coin but one struggles to find his strength of character while the other is viciously sure of himself. The insidious power of the loudest or smartest voice gives way to the most unblinkingly confident. A culture of fear and unwavering fealty to rank fuels the mistreatment and power plays. The finest piece of acting is Harry Andrew’s as the man in charge. He lives by tenets that do not allow for the nuances of personality. And that is his ultimate undoing. Not that anyone wins. For a film that revels in its monochrome starkness, very little is black and white here. If Twelve Angry Men was a celebration of the democratic system, this Twelve Shouty Men is an evisceration of the very idea of systems having power over men.
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne directs Thomas Doret, Cécile de France and Jérémy Renier in this drama where a boy abandoned by his father begins to be fostered at weekends by a local hairdresser.
A gritty sweet slice of social realism. Noteworthy that one subplot lays out the realistic process of gang indoctrination of lone kids by older members pretty accurately.
Antonio Campos directs Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Bill Skarsård in this adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock’s southern gothic literary sensation where two generations of the town of Knockemstiff, Ohio are consumed by dark desires and zealous faith.
A montage of horrific tragedy and everyday violence. I would say Pollock’s intertwining family histories suffer from a bad case of the Monster’s Balls. If oh so much misery and weird criminality happened over a locale then surely the FBI would eventually become involved? At least these interconnected vignettes are spread over a couple of decades. And I guess if one looks at Pulp Fiction then far more happens in a few days and smaller area there than here. Still whether you want to sit through relentless, feverish, depressing brutality with no glimmer of hope or humour is your look out. It is well acted and beautifully grim, constantly. Akin to a man pouring a jar full of spiders over his head, freakish but you wouldn’t look away. The eventual succession of vigilante resolution reaches a satisfactory closure to all the random threads.
John Whitesell directs Emma Roberts, Luke Bracey and Kristin Chenoweth in this romantic comedy where two losers make a deal to accompany each other at special occasions over a hectic year.
Aims for a Adam Sandler-level of poppy broadness but due to the script proving rather humourlessly tone deaf most of the time, Holidate plays out like a Rob Schneider shitshow. It is a very busy film and Bracey, while handsome, only has one setting… he’s certainly no Cary Grant, he’s not even a Chris Hemsworth. Emma Roberts and Kristin Chenoweth are better than this and if you have no built up goodwill towards them then I’d say avoid Holidate like the plague. As a Scream Queens fan, I’ll take my Chanel #One fix wherever I can get it. Not even her aunt would accept material as off its meds yet utterly as predictable as this though.
Karen Maine directs Natalia Dyer, Timothy Simons and Alisha Boe in this turn of the millennium set teen movie where a prim Catholic schoolgirl begins to question her community’s attitude toward sex.
More of a well observed light drama than the raunchy comedy it has been pitched as, this is successful on its own terms. It has a sweet sex positive message and accurately portrays the overriding sense of guilt that being raised Catholic installs into exploring your sexuality. Not groundbreaking but difficult not to enjoy.
Lawrence Gordon Clark directs Simon Gipps-Kent, Michael Bryant and Edward Petherbridge in these M.R. James period ghost story adaptations made by the BBC to be screened at the darkest hour over Christmas each year in the Seventies.
Shot on 16mm film, at gothic locations, with high production values for shoestring TV, with a focus on convincing atmosphere (a combination of dread and crumpets) these lesser celebrated A Ghost Stories at Christmas all stick the landing nicely. Camply overacted but all building to an unsettling head of steam, each contains a mystery that keeps you glued and barely glimpsed monsters that irritate your dreams days after you’ve turned the DVD disc off. Ghoulish children with overgrown corpse’s fingernails floating around the hallways. A black slime that follows you home. The spider baby hatchlings that live in the ash tree. All achieved on a low budget yet deployed at a point when James’s stock questing curious academic heroes are too close to the truth to notice the dangers. We are foolishly right by their side as they unravel the dark secrets that any sensible person would leave well enough alone. These shorts all work as more often than not the terror is only peeped at and ignored until those final fateful shots. Before then a patient deadpan rationalism keeps us blinkered as to the true shocks that awaits us all.
Éric Rohmer directs Marie Rivière, Vincent Gauthier and Carita Järvinen in this French romantic comedy where a miserable young woman embraces loneliness (poorly) when her holiday plans are ruined at the last minute.
Quite possibly the nadir of boredom that a competently made narrative film can achieve.
Nick Rowland directs Cosmo Jarvis, Barry Keoghan and Ned Dennehy in this Irish gangster movie where a small town enforcer feels his life spiral out of control when he is ordered to kill a local man.
All about muddy atmosphere and scruffy setting, this leans into its country milieu hoping for authenticity. Really it is just a Guinness soaked update of Mean Streets and Miller’s Crossing. Not bad sources to crib from. The frequent lurches into sentimentality all but neuter it by the end, which is a shame as when it is being a nasty little thriller it persuades and hits the spot. There’s a budget obliterating car chase and a late in the day surprise behind the door of a posh country house… but sadness and pretensions dominate just when you are primed to enjoy having a go.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa directs Atsuko Maeda, Shota Sometani and Tokio Emoto in this Japanese drama where a travel show presenter feels alienated in Uzbekistan.
A nothing movie… Yoko has a gruelling and confusing time filming her latest episode in a country where everything and everyone feels inhospitable and overbearing. There’s a nice interlude involving the liberation of a goat. Kurosawa injects a paranoid dream logic into the silent longueurs between repetitive incidents.
François Ozon directs Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert and Fanny Ardent in this musical murder mystery where a family of femme fatales find themselves snowed in with a dead body on Christmas Day.
A class act. The song and dance interludes are not particularly memorable but the costumes and tantrums are. Pretty much each and every beauty, whatever their vintage, goes through a sexual transformation, as if the life-size Cluedo set is a cocoon for French cinema’s hardiest butterflies.
8
Serendipity (2001)
Peter Chelsom directs John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale and Jeremy Piven in this Christmas set romcom where a pair of starcrossed lovers meet cute and decide to let fate decide if they will ever meet cute again.
Pretty but very contrived. Cusack and Beckinsale suffer an endless series of near misses but you are not ever entirely convinced as to why they part company in the first place? OK… We wouldn’t have a movie otherwise…but… But! Cusack is a little too cool for all this while Kate, Piven and Molly Shannon treat it like the Hollywood big break it was. They sparkle just as much as a gorgeously decorated festive Manhattan.
6
Home Alone (1990)
Chris Columbus directs Macaulay Culkin, Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern in this family comedy where a precocious 8 year old has to protect his home from burglars when he misses the plane to Paris.
An iconic staple, still one of the most profitable sleeper hits ever. I remember it staying in cinema screens well past the winter, long into the spring. The acting is broad with Culkin proving a natural alongside pitch perfect work from his highly stung adult co-stars. The slapstick violence is wish fulfilment for little kids of all ages. Beyond the inventive concussions and blow torches, the film suffers from a mean streak. The rich McCallister family is awful in general and unwarrantedly nasty to our baby faced protagonist. You’d be quite happy if he were left to his own devices for far longer than a few days of popcorn and pizza. Or if he just left a few of his lethal booby traps up to deal with his cunty kin when they bolt through the door just in time for the credits. John Williams out Danny Elfmans Danny Elfman with his jaunty yet sinister wintery score.
6
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)
Jeremiah S. Chechik directs Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo and Juliette Lewis in this comedy where the Griswold family’s December goes to utter shit.
I have a massive affection for the Griswolds (Sparky, Rusty, heterosexuality confirming at an early age Beverly D’Angelo, the daughter) due to Vacation & European Vacation. They were family favourites in our house in the Eighties. Despite making money in the States, this went straight to video over here. NLCV isn’t quite as chaotic or expansive as it predecessors but has enough slapstick and Chase’s trademark mugging to pass muster. It actually is the Christmas setting that papers over the gaping flaws, lack of raunch and weaker bits. With its animated credit sequence and overly decorated house, the movie feels like a Christmas classic even if the joke in the cracker is a little tired and gravy stained.
5
Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Henry Selick directs Danny Elfman, Chris Sarandon and Catherine O’Hara in this stop motion animation classic where Jack Skellington decides he wants to branch out into running a new holiday.
One of the greatest animations ever, this thrills and seduces norms and kooks alike. The relentlessly upbeat score dashes through the snow and the slime. Every scene is filled with delightful grotesques. Its breathless jam packed brevity means we never linger too long and outstay our welcome. Tim Burton’s iconic designs are still one of the most darkest yet profitable corners of the Disney Store but director Henry Selick did the graft. Some shots are so complex and cinematic you marvel at the Herculean effort put in to manipulating every element in the shot one painstaking frame at a time. Jack Skellington is a hero for all of us who want to be a little different, not just accept the hand we’ve been dealt. But I personally love the bug filled sack of swing Oogie Boogie. Ends on one of the sweetest moments in cinema history.
10
White Christmas (1954)
Michael Curtiz directs Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney in this musical romantic comedy where two pairs of music acts fall for each other over their Christmas break from performing.
Not quite as magical as Holiday Inn but more winningly focussed on Christmas. The technicolor VistaVision dance numbers are often mind boggling thanks to Vera-Ellen’s poise and skill, Edith Head’s vibrant costuming. Crosby and Kaye are a little creaky to modern eyes but the gals absorb all the focus with their effervescent star turns. The title number bookends the film… the first blast taking place in a bleak bombed out WWII holding point, the final bombastic revisit during a spectacular stage show where all the romantic misunderstandings are neatly straightened out to leave you with a mile wide smile and glow in your heart.
8
The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
Bharat Nalluri directs Dan Stevens, Morfydd Clark and Jonathan Pryce in this biographical fantasy where Charles Dickens, in desperate need of a hit, self publishes A Christmas Carol while being pursued by his imagined creations and his own past.
A nice solid bit of London Victoriana, a period as visually synonymous with Christmas as Post-War Small Town America. I’ve read a big biography on Dickens in the distant past and this rings pretty true with the man as presented there despite being a broad comic book fanfic account of his mid-career slump. The expansive cast is noticeably better than the material and there are few surprises. It hits it marks with enthusiasm and confidence even if very little else is achieved.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 