NYC. The Big Apple. From Harlem to Wall Street. Brooklyn to The Bronx. Coney Island to The Statue of Liberty. Is there any city more cinematic? It can be your romantic playground or a grimy labyrinth where dreams go to die. You can be surrounded and alone. Set out like a grid but teeming with life. All the worlds art, culture, food and people piled on top of each other. I love movies set in New York. Here are some recent ones I’ve watched.

Conspiracy Theory (1997)

Richard Donner directs Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts and Patrick Stewart in this thriller where a paranoid taxi driver realises some of his outlandish conspiracy theories are bringing him to the very real attentions of a shadowy security agency.

After Princess Diana died, the U.K. seemed to collectively lean into the rather artless comforts of the just released The Full Monty. Yet the same weekend that tragedy struck, my group of mates were more palpably excited about going to see Conspiracy Theory. Mel! Julia! Donner! Action! A healthy slice of The X-Files paranoia spun into a late summer blockbuster from the makers of Lethal Weapon. The first half is a lot of gritty larks. Mel plays Jerry as a batshit but loveable creep and watching him realise his worst delusions are coming true, evading the authorities like a Looney Tunes The Fugitive, makes for Saturday night slam bang of the highest order. Highlights are a truly ridiculous escape in a wheelchair and an equally slapstick hospital runaround. His dark, stalkery obsession with Julia Roberts’ angelic lawyer is kept on the right side of acceptable, puppy dog sweet, and this is possibly one of the cleanest uses of her wholesome star power. The threat escalates with some nasty lurches, Carter Burwell’s cheeky score makes even the worst tortures and tightest spots seem like jaunty japes. The narrative does get lost in a series of repetitive looping near escapes and fake deaths by the last act. It doesn’t satisfyingly conclude so much as give up. Donner adds his usual gloss to the puddle soaked streets of Manhattan… clearly enjoying making an action romantic comedy in the borrowed settings of Scorsese and Lumet’s crunchier dramas.

7

Light Sleeper (1992)

Paul Schrader directs Willem Dafoe, Susan Sarandon and Dana Delaney in this crime drama where a high class drug dealer weighs up his options when his boss decides to retire and one of his clients turns murderous.

A respin of Taxi Driver and American Gigolo, though existing in the more rarefied world of grand hotel lobbies, neon night clubs, video rental shops and Fifth Avenue crematoriums. That garbage strike won’t last forever… in fact the real sanitation workers of New York often started cleaning up Schrader’s unsightly set dressings while filming, thinking it was actual refuse and not visual metaphor. There’s a definite sense of a city shifting… we are watching crime being gentrified. First time I visited New York I expected it to be like this, not Friends. A world where the rich are above interacting with the poor or the authorities for even their most illegal vices. Dafoe’s existential worrier, a good soul in a demon’s profession, is their conduit. Looking respectable enough to make it past security but street smart enough that he can buy a revolver in a leather bar. Had the strangest sense of déjà vu watching this. As I often do delving into films from the very early 1990s. I was just getting into film as a teenager, did I watch this late night and not log what it was? How could I forget Susan Sarandon’s enigmatic but glamorous turn as a boutique drug retailer who runs Dafoe? There’s a lot of DNA between this and Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho too. It could almost be a spin-off movie or companion novella where we follow the main cast’s pusher. Schrader really really influenced the novelist, this feels like the answer song. Other movies do all this better, many from the same maker, but in its most apt moments Light Sleeper is a very watchable character study.

6

King of New York (1990)

Abel Ferrara directs Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne and Wesley Snipes in this gangster actioner where a crime boss is released from prison and starts a war with everyone while trying to fund a neighbourhood hospital.

Again, I don’t specifically remember watching this but I must have as a kid… it is all too familiar. It is very comic booky, especially in its violence. Ferrara sets up twenty or so recognisable faces just so he can gun them down bloodily, and those faces nearly all are played by future stars… CARUSO / BUSCEMI / RANDLE / GUS FRING… even that cool guy from Frankenhooker and Street Trash plays a doomed cop. It is pretty rote and gaudy… Ferrara doesn’t have anything more to say about violence and corruption than Scarface did. But this has a brevity to it I appreciate. And Walken and Fishburne are doing fascinating work. Overacting? For sure. But really pumping it out. “He’s a fucking glitter-boy! He’s looking to get sprayed, laid, played and slayed. You know what I’m sayin’?”

7

Keith Haring: Street Art Boy (2020)

Ben Anthony directs Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Fab 5 Freddy in this documentary looking at the life and work of the iconic 1980s pop artist.

Those dancing jellybean men are a landmark touchstone to my childhood but I never really knew much about the artist who created them. This is a solid biography giving you a good firm brushstroke overview of Haring’s life, development as an artist and popularity. The view of New York’s street art movement and gay clubbing scenes of Eighties ring true with other works contemporary and current. While it doesn’t do all that much different with the standard documentary form the subject is groundbreaking enough, and the artwork prolific and stimulating, that you never grow bored. Nice that his straight laced parents had so much love for their son, when so many other gay children from his background were treated like outsiders in that era. Possibly would have preferred a tad more interrogation about a middle class white boy adopting a black urban form but maybe there really isn’t anything further to say there?

6

The Apartment (1960)

Billy Wilder directs Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray in this romantic comedy where a low level office drone loans his city centre apartment out to the philandering executives.

A very bitter drama told with sitcom quirk and zippy energy of something fluffier and safer. It looks flawless and has the barbed preciseness to land blows against gender and financial inequalities without feeling didactic. MacLaine’s Fran Kubelik is one of the first “modern” female screen characters. Putting a voice to women who want love and independence, need honesty and affection. Don’t want to be defined by their uniform or sexual history or looks. I’m not entirely sure Wilder and Diamond knew the words they put in her mouth would still ring true and quite so feminist. As brilliant writers as they are I’m sure they were just reaching to put a beatnik spin on Sugar Kane. But MacLaine finds more pathos and yearning and despondency and chagrin in the script than I’m sure ever was intended. Lemmon’s Baxter doesn’t hold up quite so well under contemporary gaze… but one point most reviewers overlook are his motivations. He isn’t doing all this for a promotion even if that’s the upshot. He is just as trapped as Fran, the bosses threaten if he doesn’t play ball and let them have his home he’ll be out on his ear. That’s why it is so unnerving to watch The Apartment as a romcom. It is about two fearful souls caught in the grift of corporate America, the patriarchy, the urban hive. Suicide attempts, workplace misconduct, alcoholism. In Soviet Russia it was viewed as a self lacerating indictment of the American system. Wilder put them straight when he was at an East Berlin Film Festival. “The Apartment could happen anywhere, in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Rome, Paris, London. The reason this picture could not have taken place in Moscow is that in Moscow nobody has his own apartment.” Humanity is corrupt whatever the system, Wilder holds up a broken mirror to us, not politics. One of Natalie’s favourites.

10

Maniac Cop (1988)

William Lustig directs Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell and Richard Roundtree in this horror exploitation flick where a New York City cop is rampaging through the streets killing criminals and citizens with vigilante brutality.

A Larry Cohen script. The whodunnit aspect works best. Even after the mystery is solved and we have some idea of which cop the killer is, all the other detectives, officers and captains remain corrupt and unheroic. It is a pretty cheapo slasher despite its anti-establishment leanings. Campbell doesn’t really give his full effort as the de facto lead but it ends with an on location bang. The last set piece looks like it puts its stuntman in some pretty lethal peril. Hope he made it out ok!?!

4

The King of Comedy (1982)

Martin Scorsese directs Robert DeNiro, Jerry Lewis and Sandra Bernhard in the black comedy where an unhinged wannabe comedian stalks a talk show host.

It isn’t gold standard Scorsese but it is still better made than most other directors’ output. Playing with video and keeping his camera fixed and mid shot for the first time ever, this is is still virtuoso in its production design and editing. We have the glorious Thelma Schoonmaker to thank for that. She cuts it so the shifts between reality and fantasy become imperceptible. How many Scorsese films end with us not sure what is dream? Too many? I love how Rupert and Jerry start off in the same place – same suit, stuck in the throng, wanting to be in that limo backseat for different reasons. They are both lonely, alienated characters. When Jerry stops to look at Pickup On South Street on one of his three tellys he isn’t admiring a Sam Fuller classic. He’s envious of the man who can travel on public transport, so faceless in a crowd he can steal from a purse and have a loaded flirtatious exchange with a stranger. Jerry (Langford / Lewis) can’t walk the streets without being catcalled and pestered. Interactions cannot happen naturally so he shuns them. He is just as sad a character as the sociopathic Rupert Pupkin. What is real in The Pup King’s world? The man who mimics him behind his back on the date. The mammoth, elaborately decorated and expensively kitted out basement under his mother’s house. The positive audience reaction to his bleak stand-up monologue. We can’t trust anything in this movie. Sandra Bernhard’s improvised performance is pretty amazing for a newcomer. The King of Comedy is a bit too tightly wound and desolate to love. But you can always zone out from the foreground action and look at that heaving Time Square crowd work. The rubbernecking onlookers ruining shots. The movie billboards advertising releases no longer showing. A harried Chinese man cutting through the action, half running to get to his own story, oblivious to the fact he is being immortalised on celluloid.

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/

Michael Mann directs Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Val Kilmer in this sprawling crime drama that explores a cat and mouse game between LA’s Robbery Homicide division and some expert thieves, both led by fanatical obsessives.

Whisper it but I’m pretty sure outside of movie journalism Heat was considered a bit of an unspoken disappointment on initial release. It didn’t receive one notable awards nomination, zero Oscars, not even nods. The US box office was middling, saved by the international market. The much hyped onscreen pairing of Pacino and DeNiro happened teasingly halfway in – a subdued coffee shop conversation rather than a big face off / showdown and then they do not really touch base together until the drawn out, dialogue free foot chase finale. Pacino is full ham here (albeit gifting us the most entertaining performance of his career) and many of his improvised excesses became punchlines. The support cast of Kilmer, Tom Sizemore and Ted Levine were about to squander their reputations with poor choices within and without the industry. Jon Voigt is probably the only actor who perceptibly benefited from being cast in one of the most critically lauded studio movies of all time. You could even say the same for leads if you were being exacting. A three hour runtime was unheard of for a mainstream action release in the 1990s. After a couple of high calibre takedowns, the final drawn out moments of violence can be seen as underwhelming and minimalist. I knew as a teenage movie fan Heat was very good but I wasn’t ever sure it was a “great”.

Time has been kind. Not being an instant favourite means I’ve only rewatched it once a decade since. The undeniable qualities become more prominent as my expectations mellow. DeNiro is decisive as the consummate professional, the man whose code is a hard shell that he slowly shatters against his best instincts. That coffee shop scene is a thing of wonder – didactic, playful and bristling with chemistry. Why Bobby never got nominated is anyone’s guess? The heists when they happen are convincing, pummelling endurance tests. You are right in the shit but Mann’s bold and masterful storytelling chops mean you are never lost in the carnage. His visual sensibilities is of a clean urbanised world… designer suits, starched collars, pressed shirts. The sodium glare of LA at night is more magical and romantic than the stars in the sky. The immaculate streets of corporate uptown are waiting for the violence to upend them. You’ve never seen so many shades of grey.

What works best about Heat is it feels like a native metal movie. The purest form of a sub-genre just sitting out their in nature. This is THE cops and robbers movie. There are others but they all feel like spins or alternates or pollutions of this epic. Heat is the real deal. The dedicated police and the ‘professional’ criminals both are the uncontested titans at what they do, likewise they admire and never underestimate each other. As we see McCauley’s crew snake out of a series of ever closing loopholes, we watch Hanna’s squad draw closer and closer. Each side is given equal screentime, each member their vulnerable moment, your sympathies and identification are equal as viewer. You want DeNiro to escape and yet justice to be done, Pacino to get his man while we naughtily marvel at the thrill of the score. Three hours is room to breathe, the simplest of plots to grow detail, overgrowth, life. As immersive 2for1character study or existential action movie or macho acting masterclass Heat is “sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be.” “Drop of a hat these guys will rock and roll…” It is climbing… Shit, a decade’s time and the below score will be that rare 10.

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/

Paul Schrader directs Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto in this drama where three friends at an automobile plant burglarise their union when their finances are stretched.

A thumping blues score from Ry Cooder. Three leads fighting for dominance. Allegedly the set was a nightmare of egos. Cocaine, brawls, guns being pulled. Pryor liked to improvise, Keitel needed five or six takes to warm up, Kotto lost his place if the chaos went too far off script. The unlikely result is onscreen… everyone gives fantastic energised, angry performances. Everyone achieves career bests. Pryor catches the most praise… the consensus is he shouldn’t be this good in a drama. But Keitel very rarely plays an Everyman and his take on it is muscular and sympathetic. Kotto gets the best four scenes. Now, one I won’t spoil but if you’ve seen Blue Collar you’ll know of its unflinching, overwhelming impact. Two others involve him tracking and laying in wait for some mob thugs. The fourth has him lay out the plight of the working man with brute logic. “They pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. The black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place.” It is an unsettling film that shifts from zany workplace comedy to gritty procedural to low level heist to paranoid conspiracy theory thriller. The final third when our anti-heroes are separated is less enjoyable; the camaraderie has left the building, characters we love grow selfish or racist (it works within the logic of the movie) and there’s a thumping car chase that feels like it is from a very different project. All these discordant elements actually are incendiary cinema… you realise long before the credits when we do leave these men it will not be a happy ending. The finest moments are the silliest though – Pryor riffing his petty complaints and scamming the IRS, good time cocaine orgies (that make zero sense in the ‘day late and a dollar short’ milieu of Schrader’s vision), Kotto dominating the workplace interactions with his laidback raspy confidence. Blue Collar is a gloriously messy film, full of pleasures, about just what a con the American Dream is for those actually sweating and grafting to achieve it. I’m surprised any factory allowed them on site to location shoot it – the labour politics are that incendiary and damning. I’m surprised it isn’t now talked about with the same reverence as Taxi Driver or Raging Bull.

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/

Mark Romanek directs Keith Gordon, Amanda Plummer and Bob Gunton in this indie drama where a small town drop out invents a television that can show pictures of heaven.

17 years before his official debut One Hour Photo, Romanek directed this little feature length calling card. He has since rejected it but I can’t really tell why? It is a quirky slice of atmosphere. The plot doesn’t really go anywhere but it is professionally achieved and acted, way above the standard you’d expect for a no budget endeavour. Full of ideas. Full of cool imagery. The banging New Wave soundtrack opened up a career for him as a pop promo director. The story itself gets a little lost but it certainly isn’t an embarrassment or all that far removed from the director’s later more polished works.

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/

Mark Romanek directs Robin Williams, Connie Neilsen and Gary Cole in this thriller where a lonely photo developer’s fixation with a perfect looking family moves beyond stalking when he snaps.

A bleak nightmare starring the lynchpin of schmaltzy family comedy. Williams was such a strange Hollywood star as whenever he worked outside his natural motormouth wheelhouse in drama or crime he actually shone brighter than he does in his blockbuster syrupy silly films. “Shone brighter” might not be the best term for his powerhouse lead here as Sy the photo guy. A man so devoid of meaningful human interaction he literally looks like he has been permanently bleached by the chemicals he works with. It is a distinct and unpredictable piece of film acting, dominating a visually precise world of corporate conformity and monotone blankness. Romanek seemingly cares a lot more about the mise en scéne than he does the narrative. One Hour Photo quirkily doesn’t position Sy into the most obvious course when he loses control. And while every lunatic thriller that doesn’t just mimic Psycho or Silence of the Lambs should deserve praise, the end game of this particular nightmare isn’t exactly satisfying even if it is disturbing. The wrap up just doesn’t work as popcorn. Add to that, away from Williams, only Gary Cole (as an insidious superstore boss) puts in anything resembling a memorable performance and you are left with a showcase rather than an entertainment. Williams proves he can veer into extreme darkness, Romanek that he can direct the fuck out of a dressed set if not an ensemble. Mixed feelings.

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/

François Truffaut direct Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claude Jade and Hiroko Matsumoto in this French comedy where Antoine Doinel enjoys married life… until he doesn’t.

Slighter than the previous entries, this starts out as a pleasingly gentle courtyard comedy. Léaud’s feckless drifter tries out some childish jobs (dyeing flowers, remote controlling boats for an architect’s model) with wavering success. His relationship with his young wife feels more like kids playing house than an adult relationship. Just witness the moment they feed each other baby food for dinner. But he grows restless… disrespecting her and having his head turned by a Japanese client. The uncomfortably darker third act where Antoine makes some awful decisions and suffers the fallout lands us back near the toxic domestic relationships we saw from his child eye’s view back in The 400 Blows. The Tati inspired visual playfulness gives way to strops, self pity and alienation. We end on a downer. Stand out here is Claude Jade as his nymph-like wife. She didn’t really register in Stolen Kisses but here she demands as much of our attention and affections as Léaud himself. When he begins his affairs and you know her heart might be broken by the betrayal you grow to hate the quirky boy we have been following for over 3 and half movies now!

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/

Alan J. Pakula directs Harrison Ford, Raúl Juliá and Bonnie Bedelia in this courtroom drama where a prosecuting attorney finds himself investigating his work colleague and former secret lover’s murder.

Exactly my cup of coffee, even if it isn’t the best example of the form. Scott Turow’s source novel uses first person narration to obfuscate a ton of not unguessable twists and obvious red herrings… but on celluloid the amount of dead ends and coincidences can seem a little hokey within a two hour film. Pakula also doesn’t quite figure out how to keep megastar Ford in the spotlight for the second half… once he is charged with the murder and in the dock, he becomes a passive figure. His contributions to the investigation feel forced and his presence in the back room negotiations doesn’t always ring true. Luckily, that second half is far less objectionable and thoroughly sustained by the arrival of Raúl Juliá as his defence attorney. The whole ensemble reeks of class (look out for all those future The West Wing alumni) but Julia as always is something else. 30 years down the line you may now know who the killer is, or you may have forgotten, but the final moments add a chilling uncertainty to the happy-ish ending. Justice hasn’t been done and a killer knows you know what they did. End credits… oooooohhh! The autumnal look and the moral ambiguity of the whole entertainment now feels more like a later Fincher than a big studio release of the VHS era.

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/

Adrienne Shelly directs Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion and herself in this romantic comedy where a put upon waitress in a small town diner falls for her new doctor when she becomes pregnant.

The above précis is a reduction, as Waitress is a simple movie about a whole lot more than its central hook. It is vividly colourful and has the basic narrative arc of a fairy tale but the issues it explores are more real, messy and emotionally intelligent than most prestige movies. Shelly makes her low budget treat work as an ensemble comedy, seduce as a brittle romance and land as a unfussy feminist drama. It is a blue collar fantasy anchored by Russell’s excellent turn as the cynical dreamer at its heart. Lovely stuff and by golly those pies look delicious!

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/

Elio Petri directs Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress and Elsa Martinelli in this Italian sci-fi satire where humans hunt one another around the globe in a big televised game, only for two of the leading contestants to fall for each other.

Very silly, this sparse vision of the future has influenced everything from Austin Powers to Blur pop promos. It is a wayward piece of exploitation with robot dogs, machine gun brassieres and polythene dance numbers. It doesn’t really work as a thriller, a satire or a sex comedy. Yet it is a fun little curio to watch, never boring and always taking the road less travelled. Considering the basic hook has been battle royaled to death since, from The Running Man to The Hunger Games, it is kinda sweet that this early variation is one of the most irreverent takes. My second Elio Petri of the week and clearly he is an anti-establishment voice who likes slick men, sexy femme fatales and bonkers scores. The jazzy little numbers by Piero Piccioni form a soundtrack that suits only this camp and chaotic vision of a swinging dystopia.

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/

Natalie Erika James directs Emily Mortimer, Robyn Nevin and Bella Heathcote in this horror movie where a mother and daughter stay at grandmother’s house when it becomes clear her senility is making her a danger to herself.

What often feels like a routine and didactic study of ageing actually lurches into genuine terror in the final twenty minutes after some middling creepy tease. James manages to close on a neatly ghoulish but emotionally satisfying image. Most of this is slow boil and low key drama, what is now deemed ‘horror adjacent’, but Relic sticks the landing so well I might actually give it another try.

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/