Robert Zemeckis directs Denzel Washington, Kelly Reilly and John Goodman in this airplane crash drama where an alcoholic pilot performs a near impossible landing during a midair malfunction but his toxic lifestyle becomes the centre of the following investigation.

The curse of Denzel Washington is he is such an acclaimed and proven talent that often the projects he is in don’t feel fully worthy of him. Or the stellar performances he commits to can feel like business as usual. Flight suffers from the latter issue. If Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford did half of what Denzel achieves here it would be Oscars all round. Yet as great as he is as the bad boy, past-his-prime pilot, it ain’t quite of that Mo Better Blues, Malcolm X or The Hurricane standard. He’s almost better off taking the paycheck and excelling in expert schlock like Inside Man or Man Of Fire rather than wasting big swings in merely solid projects like this. Or not working at all unless he knows it is a diamond role in a platinum film. Flight has a really impressive opening act where Denzel’s sleazy and sweaty Whip Whitaker flips into calm expert mode and saves 100 passengers performing a stunning piece of flying. Zemeckis revels in recreating the chaos in the cockpit and standard class, it is a sustained sequence up there with Fearless and Alive for its immersive shock. After that though the movie gets lost in the woods. The soundtrack is too on the nose, an ill fated romance goes nowhere, we aren’t having fun anymore. For a film about a spectacular ditching of an aircraft, Flight really struggles to stick the landing after a generous and often spectacular approach.

6

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

BWe 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/

Kiyoshi Kurosawa directs Tadanobu Asano, Eri Fukatsu and Masao Kamatsu in this Japanese supernatural romance where a widow’s dead husband returns after three years and they go on a journey helping other ghosts let go of their past lives.

This one can be a little listless and cold at times but there’s a brilliant lynchpin performance by Eri Fukatsu and a few Five Star scenes that belong in a far stronger film.

6

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

BWe 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/

Gavin O’Connor directs Ben Affleck, Al Madrigal and Janina Gavankar in this drama where an alcoholic begins to mend his life when he is asked to coach his old high school basketball team.

Featuring a good central turn from a hulking Affleck and impressive production values, this fills a hole nicely. It is by default a miserable prospect but often finds wit in the pits of despair. The sporting aspect seems like an afterthought – the athleticism is secondary to the final score, likewise no other character enjoys anything but a thinly sketched subservient relations to Afleck’s struggling fuck-up. It is an engaging if sometimes shameless mix of The Fighter and Moneyball, so if you like them you’ll no doubt be entertained. I was.

6

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

BWe 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/

Hou Hsiao-Hsien directs Kenny Bee, Chiang Ling and Chen Mei-feng in the gentle Taiwanese drama where a substitute teacher spends a year teaching a bunch of harmless mischief makers and falling in love in a rural posting.

Innocent pranks, minor romance and air of pastoral innocence. A sweet little movie.

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/

Mario Bava directs Barbara Steele, John Richardson and Andrea Checchi in this gothic horror where an executed witch is brought back to life and wants the nubile body of her descendant.

You can tell this was a hot potato back in its day. The uncut version wasn’t available on home video in the U.K. until the mid-nineties due to censorship. It is like a Hammer movie with flashes of extreme gore. A Hammer movie that is actually still disturbing and uneasy at times. Barbara Steele looks resplendent. The comic book set design is full fat spooky. This is what all horror movies should look like. The perfection of the graveyard opening has influenced Richard Donner, Tim Burton and the Silent Hill games for good reason. So it may not captivate for its entire runtime anymore, it is nice to see an aged whack of schlock that still feels a tad transgressive.

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 Fincher directs Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker and Kristen Stewart in this one location thriller where burglars break into a mother and her child’s new home and they seek refuge in an impenetrable panic room.

Slick glossy stuff, a domino rally of domestic cliffhangers. A minor film for Fincher but one of Jodie’s best pure entertainments. Turns its screws with maximum efficiency but never truly twists to a point were it breaks away from its initial home invasion concept. Jared Leto’s two short planks mastermind is the only weak acting link and he seemingly is copying Brad Pitt’s physicality from Fight Club. Which raises all kinda questions; Did Fincher instruct him to play it like that? If not, why didn’t he stop him?

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/

Stephen Sommers directs Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and Arnold Vosloo in this adventure movie where treasure hunters uncover the resting place of a cursed but angry mummy.

Will always hold a fond place in the memories of my generation. The summer blockbuster that unexpectedly filled the entertainment deficit that The Phantom Menace left in its wake. This is vibrant and simple stuff, delivered with an almost shameless chutzpah. Any other year it might have been written off as a rubbery Indiana Jones rip-off, it certainly goes on far too long and tries to get away with too much. Yet keeping their heads energetically above all the messy, unoriginal, slightly racist fakeness is a self aware bit of brio by peak Brendan Fraser and a star making turn by a game Rachel Weisz. They have fizzing old school chemistry and you kinda wish there were half a dozen less doomed characters and fifty less ropey CGI shots so they can have even more room to spark off each other.

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/

Robert Zemeckis directs Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer and Jahzir Bruno in this second adaptation of Roald Dahl’s childrens’ classic about a boy who finds himself in a hotel full of murderous witches.

A relatively faithful retread which lops off some of the creepier embellishment but pretty much just remakes the Angelica Huston / Nic Roeg variation for current tastes. I usually like Anne Hathaway but she’s way too much here. The only element that raised a smile rather than bored was Chris Rock’s overly enthusiastic narration. What was that weird Roald Dahl ident in the middle of the credits? Why was it at such a jarring moment rather than the very start or the very end? Smooth and unnecessary, worst of all… often tedious.

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/

Steven Spielberg directs Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum in this sci-fi adventure movie where a theme park with resurrected dinosaurs as the main attractions runs amok.

The game changer. I was more excited about Last Action Hero that summer… and adamantly stuck to my guns for at least a decade over which was the better blockbuster. But now I concede… Spielberg’s mastery, John Williams’ rousing score, Stan Winston’s amazing physical creature design, Phil Tippet’s go motion dinosaurs, Goldblum’s eccentric sass. All add up to a beautiful, lively concoction, one that still marvels after dozens upon dozens of revisits. If I was picking nits, I’d suggest that the wonder of seeing dinosaurs dominates over the action. Aside from the iconic Tyrannosaurus-Rex escape, the set pieces are minor cliffhangers; an electric fence being turned on, a race down a dark hallway, getting the computerised door locks to work. The movie just ends abruptly with the survivors somehow escaping into the credits yet seemingly no safer or with any less lethal creatures to deal with at the end of the third act than the shit they were in at the start of the third act. Not that this really matters as we came for dinosaurs and thrills, Spielberg delivers breathlessly. Delivers in a way that would have been impossible to achieve any decade earlier, and of a class that studios seem unconcerned about in the decades since.

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/

Daniel Wolfe directs Sameena Jabeen Ahmed, Conor McCarron and Gary Lewis in this British thriller where a young couple must outrun the Pakistani relatives of the girl and their hired white thugs who intend to perform an “honour killing.”

I usually score movies on how much I would want to rewatch them. This is so unrelentingly grim and seedy that I had to change the metric slightly. Apart from one incongruous breathless caravan dance sequence to Patti Smith’s Horses there is scant here to enjoy on a second watch. The dark, misty depiction of the North is a little too extreme but certainly captivating, the constant bearing down of the threat utterly gripping. Race, religion, poverty, crime is given a callous review in passing. The lead performance by Sameena Jabeen Ahmed is convincing, you do have to wonder why the British film industry hasn’t further capitalised on such an outstanding debut? The saddest part of this very miserable film is the lovers on the run seem on to the final ebb of their affair, in less heightened circumstances they probably would have broken up and returned to their families without threat or coercion by the doomed night we enter their lives. Whatever thrill and happiness has been used up.

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/