Jan De Bont directs Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt and Cary Elwes in this disaster movie where scientists chase tornados hoping to test a new gizmo that will help them predict their destructive movements better.

Twister was the big one of the summer of 1996. And while it never was going to win any acting gongs or screenplay plaudits, it delivers on its trailer’s promise in spades. For two hours you get to see apocalyptic weather from some dizzyingly close perspectives. Coming from the director of Speed, he engineers sequences where vehicles race and pursue and escape massive, swirling behemoths of devastation over and over again. Twister is a one trick pony that loves performing its impressive trick. Even though it is an FX extravaganza, De Bont doesn’t push the CGI to breaking point like many of his mid-nineties peers. It was a new technology that had severe limitations as to what it could convincingly recreate on the big screen. Spielberg and Cameron knew it was better to augment practical FX that survive at the forefront in the spotlight for prolonged periods with this new magic wand. But swirling masses and crazy debris actually fitted well within the burgeoning effects method’s wheelhouse. So here we get hurricanes and flying cows a plenty. It is a testament to the calculated orchestration of the set pieces that De Bont manages to put us in the path of danger again and again, every time making us squeeze our palms tighter as the peril unfolds. A rare lead role for Bill Paxton in a blockbuster, here the usually quirky scene stealer plays things straight and square jawed. He makes a fine fist of being a budget Kevin Costner or cut rate Harrison Ford… Meanwhile, lots of recognisable faces drive the other jeeps and RVs, none of them making quite as indelible an impression as Bill might have in a showy support.

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/

Hou Hsiao-hsien directs Fong Fei Fei, Kenny Bee and Anthony Chan in this Taiwanese romantic comedy where a city girl avoids meeting her arranged suitor by taking a trip to the country, there a civil engineer catches her eye.

The disowned debut of a revered arthouse director. I haven’t watched any of his later ‘classics’ yet. This was a vehicle for the pop star and TV presenter known as The Queen of Hats. She wears plenty of hats, her outfits are pretty sweet. It is cute and girly, the only way this frippery stands out from every romcom ever is the two male suitors actually get along quite nicely when they eventually cross paths.

4

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/

Chia Yung-Liu directs Cynthia Rothrock, Kiu Wai Miu and Ken Tong in this Hong Kong martial arts comedy where an FBI agent and two inept policemen find themselves keeping tabs on a diamond smuggler.

Cheap and with some very sexist and homophobic humour, this still manages to come alive when Rothrock is allowed to kick ass. The warehouse finale is something to behold, until it arrives you’ll just have to sit through a very bad taste, tone deaf mash-up of Lethal Weapon and Stakeout.

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/

More romantic than Arnie, more sensitive than Bruce, wilder than Clint. Here’s an action movie star who always delivered in my teens, whose directorial career is as enviable and unique as any great auteur.

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden (1977)

Summer City (1977)

Mad Max (1979) 👍👍

Tim (1979)

Chain Reaction (1980)

Attack Force Z (1981)

Gallipoli (1981) 👍👍

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) 👍👍

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

The Bounty (1984)

The River (1984)

Mrs. Soffel (1984)

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) 👍

Lethal Weapon (1987) 👍👍

Tequila Sunrise (1988)

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) 👍👍

Bird On A Wire (1990)

Air America (1990)

Hamlet (1990)

Forever Young (1992)

Lethal Weapon 3 (1992)

The Man Without a Face (1993) 👍

Maverick (1994) 👍

Braveheart (1995) 👍👍

Casper (1995)

Pocahontas (1995) 👍

Ransom (1996) 👍👍

Fathers’ Day (1997)

Conspiracy Theory (1997) 👍

FairyTale: A True Story (1997)

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) 👍

Payback (1999) 👍

Chicken Run (2000)

The Patriot (2000) 👍

What Women Want (2000)

The Million Dollar Hotel (2000)

We Were Soldiers (2002)

Signs (2002) 👍👍

The Singing Detective (2003)

The Passion of the Christ (2004)

Paparazzi (2004)

Apocalypto (2006) 👍

Edge of Darkness (2010)

The Beaver (2011) 👍

Get the Gringo (2012) 👍

Machete Kills (2013)

The Expendables 3 (2014)

Blood Father (2016) 👍

Hacksaw Ridge (2016) 👍

Daddy’s Home 2 (2017)

Dragged Across Concrete (2018) 👍👍

The Professor and the Madman (2019)

Force of Nature (2020)

Fatman (2020)

Boss Level (2021)

Dangerous (2021)

Last Looks (2021)

Panama (2022)

Father Stu (2022)

Agent Game (2022)

Hot Seat (2022)

Bryan Singer directs Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin and Ian McKellen in this Marvel superhero adventure that introduces a near future world of mutants with unique powers and the human society that rejects them.

The general consensus on this franchise starter is it is more a prologue used to establish all the players for future entries than a fully fledged movie in its own right. All I know is I’ve had an absolute blast each and every time I’ve watched it. Bizarrely me and my mum went to see it together at the cinema on opening weekend. I think we wanted to go do something while I was visiting back from Edinburgh. The brevity of it all is very appealing. The storytelling is so fat free and confident. The script feels gently wittier and more emotionally astute than its peers. Magneto, Rogue and especially Wolverine are given neatly iconic introductions. Singer does an excellent job marshalling his busy but talented cast and bringing some real world grit to an adaptation that could have easily been a day-glo hyper colour car crash. Instead, with a palette of leather blacks and varnished browns, he pre-empts Nolan’s Dark Knights by 8 whole years. The fantasy bursts come from a fixed recognisable stance, feet firmly in reality. The smaller scale action finale on the Statue of Liberty is only underwhelming if you need every superhero film to close with a world destroying nebulous vortex. Luckily McKellen’s Magneto is up there with Hackman’s Luthor and Nicholson’s Joker as one of the finest big screen antagonists. You don’t need an alien apocalypse if your villain is this efficient and charismatic. So it doesn’t feel epic or OTT… X-Men 1 still delivers a lot more excitement remaining relatively grounded and compact.

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/

Adam Wingard directs Millie Bobby Brown, Alexander Skarsgård and Brian Tyree Henry in this monster movie where the two titans fight when King Kong leaves the safety of Skull Island to lead a group of scientists to the kingdom of Hollow Earth.

When it is massive lizards and grumpy gorillas scrapping or even just going about their day, I’m in. LET THEM FIGHT!!! The human stuff… plot, exposition, character arcs is given a little too much game time. I came for the bunting not the string. Wingard delivers a film almost as beautiful and almost as chaotically exciting as Godzilla: King of the Monsters. It certainly is the neon pinkest movie I’ve ever seen. Kong for Best Actor 2022!

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/

Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz direct Janelle Monáe, Jack Huston and Jena Malone in this suspense movie where modern day black Americans find themselves captured as slaves on a pre-Civil War plantation.

The opening half an hour is genuinely unsettling. We watch the horrors of American slavery replayed and note the few needle skips that suggest we maybe are not in the 1850s as would initially seem to be the case. What happens after we leave the plantation is pretty uninspired. Janelle Monáe is saddled with a character who can’t help but do the wrong thing every time she has a shot at freedom, and eventually her continued survival just does not ring true. It also doesn’t help that Gabourey Sidibe (usually very watchable) is playing perhaps one of the rudest, most annoying characters put up there on screen as ‘hero’ in a long old time. It is a problem when one of your good guys is less sympathetic than the psychotic kidnapping, raping racists. Wastes a potentially transgressive premise by going down the most predictable, fruitless and stupidest route with minimal excitement. The kinda film that feels like its making a statement about black identity and racial politics but really is just wallowing in cartoon suffering. The production values are strong, I’d give Monáe a second chance in a better movie.

4

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/

Atsushi Yamatoya directs Yūichi Minato, Miki Watari and Noriko Tatsumi in the Japanese pink film where a hitman must find the yakuza who are holding a businessman’s girl hostage and keep sending him films of her being raped and tortured… I think?

Around 15 years ago, the NFT did a season of Japanese exploitation movies that I gobbled up. Atsushi Yamatoya wrote two of the best features I saw in the retrospective; the already famous Branded to Kill and Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter. The former shares a similar plot and vibe as this film; duelling hitmen, fetishes, lurid desires. The latter was a more obvious pink film: featuring nudity and or sex every 10 minutes. Inflatable Sex Dolls of Wastelands is one of Yamatoya’s rare self directed efforts. The plot is near incomprehensible – a kinda wet dream nightmare that pre-dates 8MM and Anomalisa. There are lurches into surreal horror and traditional hard boiled noir. Some of the imagery has genuine flair to it. But at the end of the day it still just a film that mechanically returns to rape and forced nudity every 10 minutes. While you get lost along its strange and artful back alleys you always find yourself back at the same unpleasant crossroads.

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/

Brian Welsh directs Cristian Ortega, Lorn MacDonald and Laura Fraser in this period youth movie where two disenfranchised Scottish teens go to one of the last illegal raves after the Criminal Justice Bill came into force.

God, this really rubbed me up the wrong way! I was exactly the same age as these two plum bellends in 1995 and I can pretty much tell you the lives of such mopey eyed, sweaty, pillheaded dickheads ain’t nothing to celebrate. What a bunch of scumbags. “Ooh… I’m sad.” “Oooh… I’m lairy.” “Ooooh… I’m such a great mate.” This movie actually made me consider that no wonder the government brought such a draconian bill in considering all the petty crime, drunk driving and assaults that occur because of their “good time.” If you are not sure about the bill then don’t worry the script explains it chapter and verse about four increasingly boring times. Had exactly the opposite effect of what a youth rebellion movie should… it is no La Haine or Trainspotting or Small Faces. It made we want to vote fuckin’ Tory. Reach for the lasers so I can kill you with them! I’ll be fair and balanced. It is well shot, the moment the film lurches into colour was predictable but well handled. The soundtrack thumps with house classics. Laura Fraser gives a good performance in a minor role. Maybe I’m just too old for this kind of ‘hedonistic wankers being treated as heroes’ tosh.

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/

Joe Johnston directs Rick Moranis, Amy O’Neill and Marcia Strassman in this kids adventure movie where a suburban inventor accidentally miniaturises the local kids and the squabbling bunch must make their way across the expanse of their backyards.

I remember being taken to this in the summer of 1989 and it was so popular we had to queue an hour before around the Ealing ABC. I only ever had to do that for this and Twins. Holds up surprisingly well. The practical special effects marvel, there’s solid family friendly humour and regular lively set pieces. It means there’s never a dull moment. Re-Animator’s Brian Yunza and Stuart Gordon wrote the original screenplay and you can see their sensibilities rustling beneath the more patented Disney elements. The two conflicting influences work exceedingly well together. This is as close to replicating The Goonies as any family film ever got. The Monster Squad and The Lost Boys were just a little too adult. This actually hits its PG remit bang on target.

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/