Ronan O’Leary directs James Spader, Anne Brochet and Barry McGovern in this dark Irish romance where an isolated artist rescues a man who washes up on her beach but, when she realises the amnesiac hunk might leave her, she pretends her little stretch of coast is an island cut off from all contact.

Low budget and refusing to settle into an established form, this is a weird little indie with a lot of gentle charm. Sometimes it feels like a timeless fairytale, other times a ghost story and towards the end it echoes Misery and Peeping Tom without ever descending into full blown thriller mode. It probably works best as an erotic drama told from a feminist perspective. There’s balanced nudity, sex and an attractiveness to the hermit lifestyle of our sculptress anti-hero. Loose like a half finished riddle, it is a story open to many interpretations but moment to moment it works as a low key curio. Probably would make a strong double bill with Secretary.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

David Raymond directs Henry Cavill, Ben Kingsley and Alexandra Daddario in this serial killer thriller where a nonce hunter and an intense cop chase the same psycho.

A wobbly nasty… too slick to be exploitation, too cliched to be memorable. There are a couple of passable twists but every name actor has one eye on their paycheck and the other anywhere but the script. An almost autistic endeavour.

3

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Ken Loach directs Carol White, Terrence Stamp and John Bindon in this British Kitchen Sink drama that follows a young woman’s shifts in fortunes as she shacks up with London career criminals.

Based on Nell Dunn’s novel this is a rarity: a feminist, socialist gangster film. Carol White gives a warm and complex lead performance as the blonde we’d usually see voiceless sitting in a booth tarted up with a Face’s arm around her. We see her financial struggles and the pull between her heart and sexual needs. Loach is careful to avoid judgment even though a lot of her harder choices generate scenes that put this comfortably in the saucy / seedy milieu. He’s not making exploitation just following a young woman who is at least articulate about her desires in the darker side of Swinging London. It makes for quite the beguiling character study. Her more brutish husband is played by John Bindon a real life gangster who also appears in Get Carter and Barry Lyndon. I’m not saying he was the best actor in the gaff but he brings an authenticity and cockiness that shows up the more studied improvising of sensitive thief Terrence Stamp. There are a lot of bleak and frank moments here and you’d struggle to say Loach finds much hope in the stalemate conclusion. Yet it feels like a lighter, less didactic exploration of urban life that a lot of his left wing canon. Really liked this one.

8

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Alan J Pakula directs Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffmann and Jason Robards in this true story of the cub reporters who broke the Watergate Scandal that toppled the Nixon presidency.

Probably my third time watching this and I still find it more admirable than thrilling, dry rather than rich. Like sitting through a modern history lesson that cuts off short once momentum builds and the important dominos start falling. I know this focussed on the grind and deadends that Woodward & Bernstein endured to get sources confirmed that a conspiracy had and was occurring. Eavesdropping on them get shutdown mid phone call or in face-to-face meetings has a procedural dullness to it. The veracity of a thriller set in open plan offices, mundane reception areas and messy living rooms. The film is at its paranoid best when we go out on the shadowy streets and into the murky darkness of the parking lot rendezvous. Gordon Willis trademark opaque location cinematography is an indisputable strength. I also rate Jason Robards prickly, intelligent turn as Washington Post legend Ben Bradlee. I would never quibble its CLASSIC status, I guess I’m just a more 3 Days Of The Condor kinda guy. “If you’re gonna do it, do it right. If you’re gonna hype it, hype it with the facts. I don’t mind what you did. I mind the way you did it.”

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Mia Hansen-Løve directs Paul Blain, Constance Rousseau and Marie-Christine Friedrich in this French drama following a young girl’s estrangement from her father witnessed at 6 years old and then again at 18.

A competently and sensitively made debut. Hansen-Love keeps a certain detachment from the otherwise intimate scenes. I know I enjoyed watching this in the moment but very little has stayed with me only a little later.

5

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

William Friedkin directs William Petersen, Willem Dafoe and John Pankow in this cop thriller where a corrupt Secret Service agent enters into a deadly game of cat and mouse with a flamboyant counterfeiter.

Wow! Much like the walloping centrepiece car chase (all hail Buddy Joe Hooker’s stunt driving madmen) where our protagonists’ race down the wrong direction of a freeway… this is a movie that revels in making the least sensible survival choices. And it absolutely rocks because of it. We get more explicit male nudity than female, we get a “white hat” who proves more repugnantly villainous than any of the criminals and we get a shock resolution that must have made test audiences throw up on their opinion cards. To Live And Die In LA looks and sounds like someone distilled the mid-Eighties into a coke caked test tube… Wang Chung does the omni-present poppy rock soundtrack for fucksake. Everything is bright, seedy, overwrought and striking. An absolute nasty blast of a thriller, morally bankrupt in all the best ways. Strange to think that the three releases that toppled Friedkin’s intense career are among his best. Sorcerer, Cruising and this are scorching adult entertainments, up there with The Exorcist and The French Connection. Featuring an early John Turturro support: “That doesn’t mean I’m gonna roll over and play informer. If you’re looking for a pigeon, go to the park.”

9

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Steve McQueen directs Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham and Brian Milligan in this true story of IRA political prisoner Bobby Sands’ hunger strike following an unsuccessful ‘no wash’ rebellion in the Maze Prison.

One of McQueen’s lauded but unpleasant wallows in pretentious misery that kickstarted his career. I prefer his warmer, more recent work. There’s no way you can watch nameless beardy prisoners smear shit on a wall for half an hour with occasional breaks to be brutalised and tell me this is the cinema you want to watch. No matter how well intentioned and carefully crafted. It is a combative art project, there to document cruelty the target market middle classes are now safely distant from and an oppression they still benefit from… as if witnessing it filmed with an artist’s eye for detail somehow omits their roles and complicity in the process. McQueen’s film does have strength among all its Guardian reader exploitation. The Brit security services are given surprisingly fair glimmers of humanity as the continual degradation takes it emotional toll even on them. The Babylon breaks even the paid bully. Fassbender and Cunningham stage a perfectly acted, one shot 20 minute play as a sympathetic priest tries to talk Sands through his motivations on visiting day. Sands story should be told and this is less hypocritical than a sanitised Hollywood biopic that thankfully will never be greenlit… but who is it really for? Sadism as art.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Denis Villeneuve directs Pascale Bussières, Alexis Martin and Richard S. Hamilton in this existential romantic comedy where two friend… one of whom might be dead, the other in a relationship… fly to the desert to have sex.

A competent calling card debut, set in a series of chaste purgatories where time has seemingly stopped. The kinda movie you often would find playing on TV when you got home after closing time, too drunk to log but that then hides away in your subconsciousness. Deadpan, resourceful, unresolved. There are stunning shots and a degree of well composed intimacy. The narrative is disjointed enough that you can bring your own meanings to the riddler components. Made in a decade where this sort of low key, magical realist independent cinema was the norm, it now feels like a nostalgic relic.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Jackie Chan directs himself, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao in this period action comedy where Jackie’s disgraced coastguard kicks pirate butt in 19th century Hong Kong.

Breathlessly enjoyable. Barfights, bicycle chases, death defying stunts and an explosive finale. The plot gets a little lost, all but forgetting the piracy aspect for the first hour. But dotted between all the rumbles and slapstick are some neat bits of broad comedy: a Police Academy style training camp and password skit that rivals The Marx Brothers in its pay-offs. Hung and Chan have magical chemistry together and even though it often feels like everything including the kitchen sink has been thrown into the production no element is overused to the point where you don’t want to see more of it. The dangerous clock tower set piece is particularly memorable and you know it was done for reals as Jackie shows us it five times before we fade to black and the lights go up.

8

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Nuri Bilge Ceylan directs Cihat Bütün, Emin Ceylan and Fatma Ceylan in this Turkish arthouse film following the population of a small town in winter.

The everyday is filmed from a striking perspective during the first half of this debut. You get a real feeling of just how emotionally isolated this close knit community is from each other. The focus on the casual cruelty of the children to animals and outsiders matches with Haneke’s The White Ribbon neatly. The second half of the film we sit with three generations of a family around a campfire as they discuss themes Ceylan would explore in later films with more elegance: individuality, responsibility and restlessness with the mundanity of life. After the cinematic mood poem start, a static staged yet rambling conversation feels like a bit of a disjointed comedown.

5

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/