Hou Hsiao-hsien directs Lin Yang, Jack Kao and Tianlu Li in this Taiwanese drama where the oldest daughter in a troubled family tries to hold things together working at KFC and studying at night school.
Really struggled to follow this and care. The gangster subplot just comes out of nowhere and never makes sense. It kinda ambushes the movie for little gain. At its best as a pseudo-documentary of young adults in Taipei. The shots of them partying, working, studying have a dreamy nostalgia to them. As a narrative its all over the shop.
George Miller and George Ogilvie direct Mel Gibson, Tina Turner and Bruce Spence in this post-apocalyptic sequel where Max strikes a deadly deal with Auntie of Bartertown… To enter the Thunderdome.
Always seen as a quality dip in the series… for understandable reasons. George Miller’s regular producing collaborator Byron Kennedy died in a helicopter crash, scouting desert locations before production. In his grief, Miller decided to focus on the action, splitting directorial duties, essentially demoting himself to overworked Second Unit Director. The silver lining is two thirds of Mad Max 3 is all action; our night in the Thunderdome is a gladiatorial battle on bungee harnesses that fizzes with danger, the epic finale chase – as makeshift vehicles hunt each other through the wastelands – delivers exactly what you bought a ticket for. Eye popping carnage. The middle 30 minutes with that tribe of Peter Pan kids… well… its heart is in the right place but sadly it does obliterate the tone of a movie series that was always daringly 18 cert. Tina Turner isn’t winning any Oscars but at least is iconic as the big bad. Mel can carry this kinda thing in his sleep. He seems happy to let the expansive production rollick and explode around his serene anchor point. “WE DON’T NEED ANOTHER HERO!”
Clive Barker directs Scott Bakula, Famke Janssen and Daniel von Bargen in this supernatural mystery where a detective investigates the strange deaths of members from a stage magician’s old cult.
Something that these days would be described as “horror adjacent”, this is ram jammed full of disturbing gloopy imagery in the service of a wayward private eye narrative. Noir where you can expect a generous serving of gore or creature FX work every other scene. The bookending sequences with the Manson-esque desert cult are deliriously overblown, everything else makes for good trailer and Fangoria shots. The plot itself is wobbly and overpacked. There are flashy loose ends that never go anywhere (detective Harry D’Amour’s flashbacks to an exorcism, a baboon). You’d struggle to say our protagonist does much more than turn up and bear witness to whatever weird shit or fated death is waiting behind each door he kicks down. He has very little interactive affect on the plot. Which is a shame as this was one of Scott Bakula’s rare attempts to convert his Quantum Leap stardom into a big screen career. It is the only studio film I can think of where he was the name above the title. He makes a good fist of being the Indiana Jones or Sam Spade of the uncanny but alas the film was unloved by the studios who traded it between themselves during a catalogue sale. It also is the last time Barker directed a feature. Fair to say his storytelling is still too raggedy to really fit the mainstream, the master of horror prefers shifting dream logic to tight Robert McKee structure. You can’t help but wonder what might have happened if a friendly collaborator (producer, editor, anyone) gave him the note to put his hero in more direct peril, with some kind of invested presence within the grand evil that unfolds? Would have helped Bakula make more of an impact and elevated Lord Of Illusion from being a mere eye catching curio to a genuine lost treasure.
Jackie Chan directs himself, Maggie Cheung and Bill Tung in this Hong Kong action comedy where the naval marine is transferred to corrupt police precinct during a period of revolution.
Jackie’s The Untouchables with the loveable multi-hyphenate in period garb, being a beacon of honesty in a mire of bribes and even singing the theme song. If you’ve come for fights then this is a little disappointing. The emphasis is mainly on farce… with physicality replacing repartee. The finale contains the expected carnival of lethal stunts, with even future arthouse stalwart Maggie Cheung gamely putting her life at risk. Feels like a jumble of all the ideas they couldn’t find a home for in the first Project A but none of those ideas are unworthy of your entertainment receptors.
Vittorio De Sica directs Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola and Lianella Carell in this Italian neo-realist classic about an unemployed father whose one chance of retaining a new job is finding his stolen bicycle.
One of the indisputable greats of cinema, I’d struggle to find anything new to say. De Sica establishes the importance of the quest, the hopelessness of the struggle and the callous indifference of society to one man’s basic needs. A family’s entire future can hang by a thread over one stupid bicycle… an object so insignificant that outsiders cannot take the desperate search seriously. The drama conjured up from this is distressing but prosecutorial, the imagery spellbinding. We are lost in a working, bustling, endless Rome… nearly every shot, mockingly populated with other bicycles. Instead we trudge through false hope and humiliation with a good but distracted father and his cute son. A marathon of frustrating indignities and dead ends. By the FIN credits we only have a pessimistic idea of their fate. Heartbreaking and didactic in all the right ways.
Beeban Kidron directs Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo in this road movie where three drag queens travel from New York to L.A. only to find themselves stranded in a one horse town in need of a makeover.
A gaudy mess that abandons the on-the-road, Easy Rider in heels pitch far too quickly. The girls become sexless fairy godmothers to a town of repressed hicks, riding in like Shane and riding out like Oprah. The tone shifts unsettlingly from underwritten Oscar bait drama to facile kids’ movie. Reality is in short supply, fantasy is only present as the three macho leads are so game in their well maintained transformations. Not a patch on Priscilla… and that beloved cult favourite was hardly perfect either.
Paul Mazursky directs Nick Nolte, Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler in this farce where a charismatic tramp moves in with a rich family after attempting suicide in their pool.
A remake of Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved From Drowning but with very little of the charm. Aims for loud and chaotic rather witty or insightful. The culture clash rarely works outside the gated communities so we are essentially watching wealth porn – how quickly the destitute takes to makeovers, expense and bullshit. Sure, he gives a little wisdom and glides through the spoilt family’s neuroses like some wizened sage but this angle never finds fertile ground. There’s no median here between the filthy rich and the itinerant either… the gardener and the maid have lifestyles on a par with their employers and seemingly work patterns and demands as indulgent. Beyond the distasteful omission of the working and middle classes of America (you’ve either made it or you’re a bum) the formula shenanigans waste a stellar trio of leads… Midler feels particularly underused – though her clipped little trot raises a smile even when her dialogue is found wanting. Whenever a scene fails to find a laugh they cut to the comedy dog. This happens so often you tire of seeing his cute responsive face as a hold card for a punchline. There are even scenes where this chuckle lifeline feels distasteful. When Little Richard rants about the injustice a wealthy black man still must endure… it feels like only the silly dog is listening and he finds the concept of racial inequality laughable. A dated relic… but it does have Talking Heads on the soundtrack.
Fede Álvarez directs Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez and Jessica Lucas in this terror and gore orientated reboot of the Evil Dead saga.
Not a perfect film but far better than it had any right to be. There’s a sincerity and lack of smoothness here that is really laudable. Whether doomed, possessed or resurrected, final girl Jane Levy is excellent. So much so that the middle act stalls when she is locked in the fruit cellar and the other four non-entities are killed off. If you came to see a new spin on the classic iconography and a man slip up on his girlfriend’s severed cheek, you’ll leave pummelled but contented. One of the classiest full-on bloodfests of the past decade.
Peter Hyams directs Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Byrne and Robin Tunney in this demonic action thriller where a security specialist finds he is the only thing that stands between an innocent girl and a horny Satan.
An unsuspected issue of the 1990s was Arnie, the popular and behemoth superstar, struggled to find antagonists worthy of his stature. He’d taken on and killed intergalactic warriors, super upgraded terminators and the planet Mars at the height of his powers… the litany of British character actors playing drug lords and terrorists who followed didn’t really cut the mustard. So when Arnie Vs. The Devil Himself was mooted you can see why appetites on all sides of the projection booth might be whetted. Borrowing its aesthetic from Fincher’s Se7en and its mythology from the Bible (not really… Richard Donner’s The Omen is the true gospel here) End of Days is a fascinating lurch into horror for Arnie. The plot itself follows the pattern of Arnie’s biggest hit, T2, almost fanatically. Morally dubious killing machine finds his humanity so he can protect an innocent who is prophesied to be a key player in an impending apocalypse. The one overlooked element from the superior chase film is the near relentless action. Hyams (who joined the project just at it started shooting) loses sight of why we buy a ticket for one of these mega budgeted rollercoasters. The first seventy minutes only has one action sequence of note – Schwarzenegger dangling from a helicopter over Wall Street, fishing for a fleeing sniper like a mechanical claw hunting a cuddly prize. After that, the film gets lost in papal conspiracy, kinky bad behaviour from Gab Byrne’s sleazy Lucifer and the occasional jolt of body horror. The slambang eve of the millennium finale does eventually deliver the promised gunfire and pyrotechnics, some of the CGI holds up better than I remembered. Not anybody involved’s finest hour but it fills a Saturday night loudly and gives its beloved star a slightly meatier, more serious character to humanise his ass kicking with. Fine.
Luis Buñuel directs Georges Marchal, Simone Signoret and Michel Piccoli in this adventure movie where, after a revolt, the citizens of a mining town in South America go on the run in the jungle.
The biggest surprise about Buñuel Technicolor drama? What a solid traditional action movie it is. Very much in the spirit of Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Hitchcock’s Lifeboat or Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear. The first act establishes the characters as they snooker themselves into being hounded by the corrupt military and experience a violent revolution first hand. Then we are lost in the jungle and those well defined types destroy themselves – their beliefs and their sins – in an unforgiving green inferno. Here Buñuel indulges in his expected surrealism; a mute girl’s hair entangled in the vines, a snake’s meat writhing under the duress of an army of ants, Signoret’s fallen woman emerging from the overgrowth in full glamorous evening gown. It starts off like a dirty joke… “A priest, a whore and a cowboy get lost in the jungle…”…. and ends like the book of Genesis. The two purest survivors leaving the Garden of Eden, no longer innocent but knowledgeable of a better life.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 