Sean Durkin directs Carrie Coon, Jude Law and Oona Roche in this Thatcher-era drama where a mother moves her family from the States to Surrey, begrudgingly chasing her spendthrift husband’s dream of making a billion dollar deal.

The urgency of a thriller, the haunting paranoia of a ghost story – this is a slice of prestige soap that constantly upends expectations. Martha Marcy May Marlene director Sean Durkin returns to the big screen after a decade and it was well worth the wait. He is a boldly intimate director, able to convey emotions and fears and frustrations in his characters without explicitly setting them to words. He favours backlit shots where characters features are draped in shadow, he isn’t scared of an unfocused detail or an unorthodox piece of framing. We are aware when watching this fractured dysfunctional family through his true auteur’s eye that we are getting right into their faces rather than the big picture. When we do see an establishing or wide shot, Eighties England is presented as a deserted and desolate place. The inhabitants of the drama might very well be the last people on Earth… or so caught up in their own disintegration that nobody else intrudes or matters. The acting is uniformly pitch perfect. Law leans into the seedier, untrustworthy side of his star persona. The treacle voiced scumbag in him has always been there but here the tarnish is truly glaring. It is a great piece of casting. Coon, however, is the standout. It proves fascinating that her drowning wife never is portrayed as perfect or the victim. That would be too easy. She has flaws, is lazy, late, almost embraces obsoletion by the end. Watching her rankle at Law’s repetitive bullshit or dance the night away in a room of strangers is the movie’s fireworks. Matthew Price’s costume design for her in particular is noteworthy, subtle and timeless but never fully rejecting the strangeness of Eighties design. The spot on New Wave soundtrack too is banger after banger, filtered through crackly radio stations and sound systems in other rooms. A family slowly rotting, an indictment of neoliberalism economics as a way to live your life, a dead horse being flogged in the most beautiful way possible. Abrasive movies for adults this well made don’t come along very often anymore. If you are a fan of Closer, Phantom Thread or American Beauty you’ll cherish this.

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/

Nia DaCosta directs Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris and Colman Domingo in this legacy sequel to the original Clive Barker adaptation.

Bernard Rose’s Candyman is a favourite in our house; an urban fairytale where body horror meets social commentary meets gothic romance. So this attempt reimagine the concept from black voices and leapfrog over those duff cash-in sequels that directly followed is welcome. There are times where it can feel like a dissertation movie – something with just a little too much to say to do so persuasively and set to inspire far too many college thesis over the next few year. Candyman is explicitly repositioned as a personification of black American suffering, a golem or wraith solidifying a history of racial violence. This aspect works well and the first hour has plenty of shocks and food for thought – classily made, well cast and gripping. It is a project that is in constant dialogue with the original, sometimes on the attack, often celebratory, but never alienating to newcomers or old fans. There is trouble in paradise however. The closer does go off the rails a fair whack. You could say DaCosta is matching the unpredictable lurches of the original’s third act. But those narrative leaps felt discombobulating but organic to the set-up. Here the big finale seems rushed to the border of incoherence. The final shot will sate the existing fanbase and you’ll never see better executed shadow puppetry as a narrative device on the big screen. With a really penetratingly icky score from Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe too boot, he gives Philip Glass a run for his money.

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/

David Bruckner directs Rebecca Hall, Sarah Goldberg and Stacy Martin in this horror where a grieving widow notices strange nightly disturbances in the lake house her dead husband built.

More chiller than shocker, the one well deployed jump scare makes zero sense in the ultimate explanation. Moves painfully slowly, you’ll be so far ahead of Rebecca Hall in unravelling the mystery that you’ll want to shake her and explain the plot to her by the close of the second act. She’s wasted here. Stacy Martin keeps her clothes on for once in a rare mainstream role. Sarah Goldberg, who has rose to fame playing a bad actress in TV’s Barry, suffers from you seeing her through that lens here. I reckon she can shake that stigma off but this ain’t the movie that will do it. Snore!

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/

Prano Bailey-Bond directs Niamh Algar, Michael Smiley and Nicholas Burns star in this period meta horror where a tightly wound government censor for video nasties unravels when a movie reminds her of a past trauma.

Ooh… ‘elevated horror’, the critics love you as you are so easy to bash out a few thousands words about but genre fans do struggle to see what all the fuss is about. Censor is one of the better critical darlings in that it might not hit the giddy heights of Ben Wheatley or Rose Glass’ debuts but it certainly makes you want to see what Bailey-Bond does next. Censor can feel a little too much like a calling card at times yet it wears its influences on its sleeve nicely… Garth Marenghi meets Polanski giving way to surprising overtones of Lynch and Bava. That first hour feels pretty promising ratcheting up the tension and paranoia with deadpan unease. Yum! But the final act is a flub, going the most predictable ‘unpredictable’ route with a lack of ghoulish mania. It is a bit too measured, a bit too clumsily forewarned and neat. The twist is textbook. Either give us either carnage or a genuine shock. I really liked the milieu and the central performance by Algar is outstanding… possibly will become iconic. I’ll definitely give this another try with expectations diminished… sometimes those movie experts piling on and lauding a promising debut actually does it a slight disservice. We would have found this digital nasty without them, and the joy of discovery is half the battle with becoming a cult favourite.

6 (Bordering on a 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/

Kevin Costner directs Robert Duvall, himself and Annette Bening in this western where a group of free grazers find themselves hounded into violence by a local land baron.

Gently paced and rich in character this is a fine piece of genre work. It is such a beautiful and entertaining movie that it is actually quite hard to fault, though some make take umbrage at the relaxed lengthy build up to the eventual, brutal day of violence. The final shoot out is a messy, nasty affair, fraught with threat to our heroes, Costner’s classical storytelling style keeping you in the mix but never lost within the satisfyingly clunky storm of bullets. Yet this is an experience whose true strength lies in its cautious but generous character work. Duvall often commands centre stage in these wonderfully written interactions and you begins to desire the moments of calm, often romantic, reflection over the stand-offs and blazes of glory. One of the finest example of its rare form this century. Demands repeat viewings.

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/

Gus Van Sant directs Gabe Nevins, Taylor Momsen and Jake Miller in this indie teen movie where a skateboarder lives with the guilt over his involvement in the death of a security guard.

Crime And Punishment for the Tony Hawks generation. Nothing much happens… pointedly. The adults are generally out of frame or out of focus like a Peanuts cartoon. There are allusions to the invasion of Afghanistan. Some nice skateboarding footage. It is probably fair to say Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge or Larry Clarke’s Bully do a lot more with this set-up.

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/

Mike Figgis directs Dennis Quaid, Sharon Stone and Stephen Dorff in this yuppie in peril thriller where a rich family buy the wrong rural mansion.

A very late in the cycle entry, flat and unfocused. Dorff’s threat is just as likely to start crying as pull a knife. Stone is relegated to thankless role. Very boring, you get the feeling nobody really wanted to make this project… it is the result of some half forgotten contractual obligation from the Nineties.

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/

Tony Scott directs Robert De Niro, Wesley Snipes and Ellen Barkin in this thriller where a star baseball player is stalked by an obsessed knife salesman.

A very brash and wobbly thriller but loaded with nice juicy bits. A twenty minute sequence set around Opening Day at the ballpark is absolutely gripping with minimal physical threat or violence. Ellen Barkin is always extremely watchable. Scott is developing his more unhinged, juddering approach to cinema that would define the second half of his somehow still underrated career. So Bobby and Wesley had already played these types a dozen times before by this point. It is nice to see the names do the hits again and De Niro especially imbues his psycho with a now long lost relish. Works best as a very extreme character study, kind of a poor man’s Falling Down.

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/