Robert Altman directs Elliot Gould, Sterling Hayden and Nina van Pallandt in this detective drama where Phillip Marlowe looks for a missing writer while he investigates his friend’s wife’s murder.

Ambling, meta and damn near perfect. Elliot Gould’s Marlowe is a mumbling piece of driftwood gently pulled along between waves of conspiracy and the tide of the truth. He slopes scruffily through lengthy scenes, letting them unravel at their own natural pace. It is a knowing, relaxed and expert piece of comedy acting in an otherwise hard edged, serious mystery. A progenitor for Chevy Chase in Fletch and especially Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski. If you are a fan of either of those movies… and you should love both those movies… then this will be right up your street. You are so enthralled by Gould’s detached, out of sync Marlowe buying late night catfood or watching stray dogs rut from a bus window that the violent mystery elements creep up on you. When the old school crime strands intrude, they feel like eruptions. A funny, lonely counter culture rebranding of the old noir tropes that you should just let wash over you until it reaches its shockingly impactful conclusion. HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD!

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/

Don Taylor directs Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter and Bradford Dillman in this sci-fi sequel where a few survivors of the future ape apocalypse crashland in modern day America.

A very dry film where most of the scenes are the talking apes being examined and interrogated in government facilities. There is some amusing satire when they briefly become media sensations. The bleak fugitive finale fulfils the adventure requirements barely. Talky but not without something to say. God only knows what seventies kids, excited to see more simian dystopian action, made of it? Imagine a Fast & Furious sequel which was mainly the family renewing their driving licences and insurance quotes.

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/

Xavier Dolan directs Gaspard Ulliel, Marion Cotillard and Léa Seydoux in this French drama where an estranged playwright returns home one last time to argue with his family.

An excuse for beautiful actors to look dowdy and shout over each other. Exhausting.

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/

Mike Nichols directs Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer and James Spader in this werewolf movie where a mild mannered executive regains his animal instincts at work and in the bedroom after being bitten by a wild animal.

If you approach Wolf as a horror movie then you aren’t going to get a lot out of it. There is gore, peril and minimalist Rick Baker transformation FX work. Basically he bangs on some mutton chops and contact lenses to the top billed and lets them lope about with their mouths half open. It is no An American Werewolf In London, and was never intended to be. This has more sophisticated and more old fashioned intentions. Watching stars act and interact over a generous two hours. And you can’t do that if everyone spends six deadening hours a day in the prosthetics trailer get slapped up. The main hook ain’t watching Nicholson rampage through a moonlit Central Park… it is watching him go from sad sack to Jack’s back! The thrill of witnessing an A-Lister rope a-dope us into relishing him rediscovering all his old hammy tics and wild eyed cool. Want to see Jack flirt outrageously with Pfeiffer? They have a surprisingly electric chemistry considering the May to December age difference. Like Cruise, she’s always better when paired off against a New Hollywood elder statesman. Want to see Jack kick a hostile takeover in to touch and piss on a deliciously slimy James Spader’s disloyal suede shoes in the process? He gets there, he delivers. You leap a little out of your seat and punch the air when the wolf’s bite reinvigorates his predatory instincts with such puckish mischief. The pace is majestic, again a little clunky if you just want a full fat horror… but if you’ve come from an astute old school drama where the supernatural elements are there as a plot catalyst rather than the main thrust then you’ll have tons of fun. Approach it maturely as a work from the director of The Graduate and Working Girl and you’ll know what exquisite pleasures you are letting yourself in for. An underrated ominous score from Ennio Morricone stirs the emotions. Christopher Plummer, Kate Nelligan and Om Puri round out the ensemble with a touch of prestige.

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/

Sean Foley directs Julian Barratt, Essie Davis and Andrea Riseborough in this British comedy where a forgotten teatime detective telly show luvvie is called out of obscurity to solve a case on the Isle of Man.

Alan Partridge meets Garth Marenghi… with a half dozen jokes to gently fall back on. A nice conceit, enthusiastically performed, but only intermittently funny.

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/

Stephen Sommers directs Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller & Joseph Gordon-Levitt in this action movie based on the 1980s toy line about the covert war between a fantastical American military unit and the evil Cobra.

I used to love these little action figures with their outlandish uniforms and specialist skills. When the animated Action Force: The Movie was released exclusively on retail VHS via Marks & Spencers (in a bizarre corporate deal for a middle class department store to negotiate considering they didn’t even sell toys… let alone these toys) I watched it religiously. This movie can never live up to strange imprinting scenes of Cobra Commander turning into a snake and the Statue of Liberty’s face being the arena for a pitched war battle. But in all honesty if I was nine years old again this has enough slam bang and colour that I wouldn’t be bored. The Mummy and Deep Rising director does comic book carnage really well. His action is grand, kinetic and colourful. The vague concessions to plot and human emotion are simplistic and unintrusive. And for boys of all ages bad girl Miller and good girl Rachel Nichols flex about in tight outfits that spill out around the chest area effectively. Channing Tatum allegedly was contractually obliged to make it and his is the least committed performance, but he works out tops off for the girls. It ain’t Shakespeare, Tarantino or even Action Force: The Movie (“Cobra-Lalalalala!”) but it does exactly what it sets out to do on the tin… loudly!

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/

Joel Schumacher directs Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall and Barbara Hershey in this action drama where a white man cracks and rampages across a racially and socially divided Los Angeles.

A controversial hit in its day as its anti-hero flirts with racism and fascism in his day of weapons fuelled, urban hiking. It is undoubtedly a white fantasy about kicking back against eroding privilege that will sit even more uncomfortably with newer generations. For context, you are meant to have trouble with the protagonist and his actions. A few jokey quips aside, Douglas’ deadpan performance is meant to be a shotgun wielding Rorschach Test. You pour whatever anxieties and neuroses you want into his lashing out at everyone and everything. The dystopian vision of Nineties’ America is obliquely button pushing. A vision of the world so unbearably overheated and badgering that it doesn’t really give you space to rationally respond, only emote. There’ll be at least one act of rebellious destruction Douglas’ blank yet unhinged D-Fens executes that will ring true for any viewer… most likely stupid fast food policies. There are sops to racial equality… the minor African American characters pointedly avoid stereotypes, whereas other ethnicities are not so sympathetically sketched… Vondie Curtis Hall even pops up as mirror image of Douglas in a memorable sequence. As a heat-check of America’s troubled race relations Schumacher’s glossy and effecting rollercoaster ride can almost be read as the whiteboy’s ‘answer song’ to Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. Yet among all the sizzle, the real dramatic meat is Duvall’s sensitive cop who begins to see the patterns in the random carnage slowly making a beeline across LA. One of the perfect character actor’s finest pieces of screen acting. He proves a calm, controlled counterweight to Douglas’ escalating anger and frustration. So there’s a certain degree of middle class, conservative fantasy about Falling Down… it is delivered with a confidence and diplomatic detachment that the film can still be loved as a bareface violent drama or a gritty adventure comedy without losing one’s sanity or soul. Filmed during the LA riots, it has an of-its-moment punch that no amount of big studio production value can ever lessen. In fact it is the kind of movie you genuinely wonder how it ever got greenlit? Warner Brothers must have really not cared about risking the odd $25 million back them. The result: a consistently laugh out loud funny, explosively spectacular urban nightmare. Like a unicorn, it is a one of a kind.

10

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/

Jon Jost directs Emmanuelle Chaulet, Katherine Bean and Stephen Lack in this American indie where the art world and Wall Street and love are traded coldly.

Pretty boring early mumblecore. There’s a sequence on the rooftop of the World Trade Centre that captures the open air thrill of peering down on Manhattan but aside from that strap in for some listless pretentiousness.

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/

Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia directs Iván Massagué, Antonia San Juan and Zorion Eguileor in this Spanish sci-fi thriller where a man volunteers to experience a brutalist prison / social experiment where a banquet of food is lowered down the centre of a tower of inmates everyday.

The first half an hour of this actually won me over. The minimalist paranoia of Cube and the class consciousness of Snowpiercer. The mechanics of the trap are laid out to us by an untrustworthy source. Zorion Eguileor, wise but petty, hammers out a neat little sinister performance from reams of exposition. The problem is we meet nobody quite as fascinating when we leave his level and the writers prefer on-the-nose political allegory over action. The film has bursts of violence and is consistently nihilist but in a distasteful, obviously button pushing way. Instead of giving us extreme adventure, they go for bad vibes satire. I’m not even sure that the final act of defiance has any logic or sense to it. It is an ending separated and lost from the less pretentious first half’s strengths. Allegedly the script started off as fringe theatre and sadly the naivety and delusions of that brand of media are often left in place of the exciting potential of the cinematic high concept.

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/

Michael Hoffman directs Vincent Friell, Joe Mullaney and Ned Beatty in this Scottish crime comedy where a pair of Edinburgh youths hijack tourist buses for cash and become Robin Hood-esque media sensations.

The acting is atrocious and it often feels like it has nowhere to go but circles after the first act. Yet it is incredibly sweet natured and you’d have to be some kind stone hearted sad sack not to get swept up in its lo-fi ambition. Wonderful to see Edinburgh looking so dirty and undeveloped.

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/