Kevin Lewis directs Nicolas Cage, Emily Tosta and Beth Grant in this horror comedy where a silent drifter is tricked into spending a night in a family fast food restaurant where the animatronic band puppets have been possessed by killers.

Does exactly what it says on the tin. If you’ve come for fully committed Cage rage weirdness then this delivers. If you want one joke violence and trace level creepiness then this just about scrapes up enough of both. Anyone watching this must be primed for a feature length meme, nobody is choosing this casually expecting a great movie. Considering the low bar the filmmakers set themselves, Willy’s Wonderland is shockingly competent.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Color Out of Space (2020)

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 Mirkin directs Mira Sorvino, Lisa Kudrow and Janeane Garofalo in this comedy where two gauche high school best friends, who have stayed together, head back to the hometown reunion worried they have little to show for their ten years after graduation.

Bubblegum look, top pop soundtrack and a couple of good laughs. Let’s say three. Hard to see its cult appeal, but R&M is undemanding and cute – surprisingly low energy too.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Clueless (1995)

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 De Palma directs Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins and Connie Nielsen in this sci-fi adventure movie where the first astronauts to land on Mars suffer a tragedy and another crew is sent to rescue them.

Plodding and lacking atmosphere. This is not exactly the sexiest cast ever for a blockbuster and the dialogue is very meat and potatoes. De Palma gets away with a decent middle act as extended set piece where everything that can go wrong does go wrong during the approach to the planet. He also pleasingly makes it quite clear he’s happy to kill off anyone and everyone. It is the controversial first sequence of his Mission: Impossible all over again. Yet once we touchdown on the red planet, things go all diluted Close Encounters / 2001 / Contact and it really feels like an adaptation of a Disney theme park ride you might not bother waiting in line for. Adequate but uneven.

4

Perfect Double Bill: Marooned (1969)

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/

Elie Wajeman directs Vincent Macaigne, Sara Giraudeau and Pio Marmaï in this Paris-set neo-noir where a philandering but good hearted GP makes his nightly house calls to addicts and the infirm while pressure is put on him to write fake prescriptions for fentanyl.

Not ground breaking but adequate. Mean Streets and Taxi Driver are obvious influences on the plot and you’ll know where this is ultimately headed to very early on. Vincent Macaigne is not an obvious sex symbol but in French cinema anyone with access to a leather jacket seemingly can have a gorgeous wife and one or two ladies on the side every night.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Playing Good (1997)

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/

Jean Vigo directs the residents of Nice in France for this documentary montage of life in the seaside town.

Perfect length for what it is. Some neat surreal moments and sexualised shots. The carefree partying is brought into judgmental juxtaposition with the industrial work that goes on away from the riviera.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927)

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/

Carol Reed directs Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli and Orson Welles in this Graham Greene scripted thriller about a pulp novelist who arrives in post-war Vienna to find his friend is dead and the story of his demise has an inconsistent third person involved.

Before WWII, your 39 Steps or Riddle of the Sands had a hero lost in circumstance, scrabbling to get ahead of international intrigues. After VE Day, with the arrival of Greene, Len Deighton and John Le Carre, you’d be lucky to get a good guy. And if you did, like here, he’d be so bumbling, useless and counter intuitive to what anyone else wanted to achieve that he pretty much jams up everyone he cares about on his crusade to find that titular shadowy figure. Of course, we all know who that mysterious Third Man is. We’ve seen his face lit by a treacherous pool of window light, know his opinion on the Swiss and have read his legendary name in the credits. Orson’s third act unveiling is no surprise, no twist. What a callous bastard he is though is the true shock. Handsome… impish… charming but fuck me you wouldn’t want to be on a big wheel with the door unlocked around him. Everything about this screams perfection; Reed’s trademark Dutch angles, beautiful Alida Valli walking through the cemetery, Anton Karras’ iconic zither theme (note the credit sequence of strings being plucked by an unknown hand) and that wonderful narration… Carol Reed’s own voice wistfully telling us “I never knew the old Vienna before the war with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm. Constantinople suited me better. I really got to know it in the classic period of the black market. We’d run anything if people wanted it enough and had the money to pay…” This is about as good as it gets.

10

Perfect Double Bill: Odd Man Out (1947)

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/

Sean Baker directs Simon Rex, Bree Elrod and Suzanna Son in this indie comedy where a washed-up male porn star returns to his hometown to try and get his life back on track.

From the three Sean Baker flicks I’ve now seen, I kinda know I’m never going to miss anything he puts out ever again. He makes shitholes glow with vibrant colour, treats sex workers like they are superheroes. Flawed, fucked up, Donut shop loitering superheroes. Simon Rex’s Mickey Sabor is his funniest character study yet. The man boy is all optimism, all manipulation. His life is sex yet he only ever uses fucking to gain status, advantage or just a better place to flop. Watching him con only himself that “the comeback” is happening around the tributaries of the Texas oil refineries makes for a high wire, highly strung, high note two hours. Red Rocket pops!

8

Perfect Double Bill: Accatone (1961)

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/

Clio Barnard directs Adeel Akhtar, Claire Rushbrook and Shaun Thomas in this British romance where a Muslim landlord in a loveless marriage and a single grandmother start a tentative relationship in Bradford.

Glimmers of hope but mainly miserable. It is easy to admire something this well acted, Akhtar and Rushbrook have fine chemistry. Barnard has a palpable sense of environment as always. Close mist, distant fireworks and scrubland. I just don’t think anyone in the world is looking for a movie that is 80% grim right now.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Ae Fond Kiss… (2004)

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/

Andrea Arnold directs Sasha Lane, Shia LaBeouf and Riley Keough in this road movie where a poor teen joins a band of itinerant magazine sellers.

Goes on and on and on and on. And even when there are scenes that it could use as an adequate closer… just keeps rolling aimlessly forward. That’s the vibe, and this doesn’t need such a strict narrative form but the ultimate point is vague. The undeveloped background kids begin to annoy as we spend another moronic journey with them crammed in a van, babbling and self aggrandising. I bet every character stinks to high heaven. Arnold has moments of poverty porn beauty that are memorable, almost wounding. You know her heart is in the right place from her previous movies focussing on teens at the fringes of society. It isn’t just squalor as fashion show. The film ain’t nothing but energy and comedown, attraction and then thud. Arnold really understands attraction, and her use of cinematic space is second to none. She engages expertly with both intimacy and distance in her frames. Her compositions in the Academy ratio are pregnant with connection. Why does our storyteller keeps putting Lane’s Star in risky, predatory situations (genuinely tense, but with a seemingly oblivious lead) which have minimal fallout? She never makes explicit that the kids are essentially truckstop prostitutes who are positioned into vulnerable circumstances to make their “magazine sales”, especially the girls. Yet that’s the ultimate end game, right? Keough and LaBeouf do good, physical work as the thrift store pimps, bottom feeder capitalists. Arnold has a great eye for casting unknowns. Lane puts in a very alluring performance with minimal material. Would I watch it again though, knowing it is all half essayed proposition with minimal conclusion…?

6

Perfect Double Bill: Kids (1995)

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/

Geoff Murphy directs Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips in this western sequel where the regulators reunite and go on the run again.

Just as scrappy and as spry as the original but with less setting up to do. There’s enough cute little moments to justify returning to the well. It has a neat bookend sequence set in 1950… and unbelievably based on fact. The welcome additions of Christian Slater’s ‘Arkansas Dave’, a grounded Alan Ruck and a Bon Jovi theme song only strengthen the case that this is the rare cash-in sequel that is a slight improvement on the original.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Young Guns (1988)

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/