Barry Sonnenfeld directs Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia and Christina Ricci in this dark comedy sequel where the creepy and the kooky family welcome a new babysitter who has murderous intentions towards Uncle Fester.
The first act is such a hilarious onslaught of jokes that this sequel threatens to outpace and outclass the already beloved first film. It does (unfortunately) settle down once the two main plots kick in but everything that follows is still very satisfyingly on point.
Jonathan Lynn directs Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn and Lesley Ann Warren in this cult ensemble based on the murder mystery board game.
The litany of beloved intellectual properties Hollywood stripmines and reboots and yet the one from my childhood, desperate for a second chance at glory, somehow hasn’t been touched. Clue is a one location comedy with a lot of running around and barely any jokes. It is so caught up in it concept that it completely overlooks this indispensable ingredient. Listen… I love that the glorious Tim Curry is centre stage. I love the fact that five minutes from the end the brilliant Madeline Kahn tries to improvise something funny for her character to say and it stands out like a sore thumb. I love Coleen Camp in a French Maid outfit. A true cult item in that my baffled generation has looked so hard into it for laughs that we’ve kind of turned all the exposition, shrieking and repetition into its own comedy version of alchemy. It is the Magic Eye painting of humour, stare at it long enough and you’ll see hilarity. Released in theatres originally with three different ending, you’d have to hope you at least bought a ticket for the C finale that has one of the greatest closing lines to any movie ever.
Thomas Vinterberg directs Ulrich Thomsen, Thomas Bo Larsen and Trine Dyrholm in this Danish black comedy where a son makes shocking speech at a family dinner and everyone just tries to carry on celebrating.
So… I was devouring Sight & Sounds in my college library in the late 1990s. Trying to mature my tastes from John Woo and John Landis. I’d wager this is the first foreign (and experimental) film that actually clicked with me on the big screen. I was fully engrossed by the disturbing satire, the ugly performances from the spoilt family members and the warmer background turns from the staff. The digital supernatural elements have aged well. There’s some fine in-camera shocks. Some strong bastard laughs too. Sneaky tender moments amid all this nihilism and class scabrousness. I care less and less about the Dogme fimmaking methods the further away we get from their brief moment in the sun. The “vow of chastity” never meant all that much to me. Instead of democratising cinema, pretty much every release that followed in Festen’s wake was found wanting. There are times when the handheld, medium definition filmmaking doesn’t help the escalating drama even here. For that reason I loved Vinterberg’s breakthrough just a little less on this rewatch. But back in the day, this was a landmark in the evolution of my movie tastes. I’ll always be a mainstream guy, but this opened up arthouse for me, made it accessible.
Hong Sang-soo directs Kim Sang-kyung, Uhm Ji-won and Lee Ki-woo in this Korean arthouse drama where a young man watches a film about a suicide pact at a cinema, only to then spy the lead actress he is enamoured with after leaving the screening.
Two parallel stories about feckless men. Pleasurable only when ‘life’ imitates art and shots and locations and awkward emotions are recreated between the actress and her rather pitiful stalker. Some nicely mundane sex scenes stop this from being a complete trudge.
Ed Zwick directs Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Andre Braugher in this Civil War drama following the formation of first fully black company of volunteer soldiers.
Morgan Freeman and Denzel delivering exactly the acting quality and star power you now expect from them near the start of their respective careers. Equal screentime is given to the white officers, though theirs isn’t the story you care about. Matthew Broderick is de facto top billed, and while his character would be callow and inexperienced in reality, even then he doesn’t seem like the right actor for this particular job. Even if the slightly meatier John Cusack or James Spader were cast, you do feel thirty years down the line the narrative focus would now be squarely on the enlisted grunts. The blistering grand finale, a heroic suicide raid on a fort, echoes Kurosawa’s work in colour in both its beauty and tragic ferocity. James Horner’s elegiac score ekes itself into your soul for days after. This is a wonderful piece of mainstream filmmaking, almost timeless… I wonder if the core audience for Civil War cinema doesn’t favour the wrong side of history, however? Just a thought…
Satoshi Kon directs Megumi Hayashibara, Tōru Emori and Katsunosuke Hori in this anime sci-fi where scientists try to solve the mystery of a stolen dream decoding technology.
Beautiful dreamer – manga edition! There’s a lot of ideas and imagery here and not all of it sticks. I’m not sure whether it is even supposed to. Noteworthy as there clearly are a few plot concepts and visual echoes that found themselves into Inception only a few years later. The final near-apocalyptic overspill of fantasy into reality seems to predict social media’s persuasive influence on everyday life and interaction at least five years ahead of time. This is a prescient little trip but a bit too unwieldy to fully enjoy as much more than a colourful academic exercise.
The Dardenne Brothers direct Adèle Haenel, Jérémie Renier and Louka Minnella in this kitchen sink mystery from Belgium.
Works both as a low key amateur detective thriller and as a convincing week in the life of a modern GP. Adèle Haenel sells the pressures and rewards of working in her lower income community with a believable resilience. You share her quiet tenacity to get to the truth and alleviate some unwarranted guilt over an unclaimed young girl’s death. The crime aspects that unfold naturally are pretty compelling.
Sidney Lumet directs Al Pacino, Tony Roberts and John Randolph in this true story of a New York undercover cop who resists the systemic corruption within every department he is assigned.
I’ve always found this a little dull, overly dated and repetitive. A crime ‘classic’ that hasn’t matured well. Pacino gives a strangely unattractive lead performance, though that may well be down to the quirks of the real life figure’s personality. Some of those fashion though…? Compelling on location footage of Seventies New York.
Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow direct Brian De Palma in this documentary where the legendary director talks us through the sleazy ups and well publicised downs of his 50 year moviemaking career.
If only every director of his stature had a personal overview of their body of work such as this. He’s a candid, if not unafraid to self aggrandise, companion. This is a fascinating journey from his indie and exploitations roots through to his infiltration of New Hollywood and the corporate filmmaking eras. Makes you want to watch all of his films again… except maybe Passion. You’d be happy if there was another two hours of him sitting in a chair explaining his love of the split diopter and settling old beefs.
James McTeigue directs Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving and John Hurt in this comic book adaptation of Alan Moore’s dystopian sci-fi drama where a masked terrorist recruits a young woman against the Orwellian regime that oppresses them.
I’m always surprised that Alan Moore resists the Hollywood adaptations of his work so vehemently as, with the exception of From Hell, they are relatively faithful. Overly so, more often than not. This recreates the mid 1980s concerns and depressing aesthetics of its source material. You can see Moore’s trademark patterns in history, densely repeated… that neatly sectored framing unlocking time and space… be used as a direct storyboard in this movie’s best and worst sequences. Sometimes the visual storytelling bravura translates perfectly; Evey’s incarceration or the tragic build up to the 5th of November, for example. Other times you wish Joel Silver gave his producing partners the Wachowskis a hard shake. It is blockbuster cinema. Let it flow and glide. There has to be some conversion to suit the change in media, the passing of time. Open up that action. A singular small studio set for duels or a lone demolition has not the same impact after decades of Die Hard, Speed and Face / Off. The ambitions for the terrorist destruction and Fingermen stand-offs should be grander and less inert. Otherwise we appear to be watching a curiously prestige adaptation of a dated funny book. Portman and Weaving are, as always, inviting to watch.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 