Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand direct this silent visual hymn to New York splicing early footage of the city with a Walt Whitman poem.

Watched at Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Man With a Movie Camera (1929)

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/

Ed Wood directs Clancy Malone, Steve Reeves and Dolores Fuller in this cheapie noir involving a plastic surgeon’s son who goes on a crime spree.

A film set in eternal night, with constant inappropriate flamenco music. The random plot is not the worst out there but Wood’s florid dialogue, when put in the mouths of a cast of actors of wildly variable quality, just drains you. Should there be so much sexual chemistry between a brother and a sister? Can you perform a facial reconstruction surgery on an unsterile sofa? Wow, that stock footage blackface sequence is really crowbarred in and gallingly competent compared to everything that surrounds it! And no “jailbait” doesn’t mean what you bought a ticket for in this creaky, crazy world…

3

Perfect Double Bill: Detour (1945)

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/

Akira Kurosawa directs Toshiro Mifune, Yuzo Kayama and Yoshio Tsuchiya in this Japanese period drama about taciturn town doctor and his new unwilling trainee.

Wayne and Ford. De Niro and Scorsese. Depp and Burton. DiCaprio & Scorsese again. Always fascinating to follow a star / director who have long standing, almost symbiotic, collaboration together and then try and pick apart that final project to try and figure out why ever they split the dream team up. In the case of Mifune and Kurosawa… the master just took too damn long. A two year shoot where Mifune could have made a half a dozen other projects. And at the peak of his international stardom cashed six juicy Toho or Hollywood paychecks. Still the results were worth it, a far more humanist drama than his samurai pictures but they still manage to crowbar in a kick ass fight sequence in the middle. In fact the rather death-centric movie turns a corner after Red Beard hands a group of pimps their hats and the narrative tightens to focus on a child rescued from prostitution, a very cute thief and our junior doctor finding his purpose after resisting his new posting. If you stick with it, Red Beard sheds its darkness and has a true, rare poetry.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Ikiru (1952)

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/

Peter and Bobby Farrelly direct Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid and Vanessa Angel in this sports comedy road movie where a broke, one-handed bowling failure shows an Amish apprentice the hustling ropes.

Sandwiched between the far more financially successful Dumb & Dumber and There’s Something About Mary, if you told anyone in the 1990s that Kingpin would be the Farrelly Brothers’ release that would stand the test of time they’d spit their bull semen right in your face. An unsubtle, unlikely mash-up of Witness and The Color Of Money this feels like it should run out of ideas after the first act. But joke for joke, gag for gag it is a titan. Stupid, silly, gross, inspired. It just makes you laugh a lot. And when most mainstream comedies hit the 90 minute dip, this flick picks up a spare. Kingpin reintroduces Bill Murray as Big Ern McCracken, the star’s most malevolent and vain creation. A truly hissable antagonist worthy of any sports movie finale, the genius is off-the-leash of having to drive the story, he dances a ballet of scumbaggery. The directors have openly stated Murray ad-libbed virtually every line he spoke, including his stand-out infomercial. He would read over the script, get the general idea, and then discard it.

It was around 1996 I first heard a film reviewer (Mark Kermode?) state that if a comedy made you laugh out loud 10 times then it was way ahead of the pack. I must have bellowed at Kingpin way too much. I took a girl on a first date to see it at what was then the Hammersmith Virgin. When I called her next weekend to see if she wanted to meet up again I was given the excuse that her grandmother was ill. Many of my first dates were responsible for a whole spate of sick grandparents in my mid-teens. I’m surprised the NHS could handle the pressure at such full capacity. I didn’t let the disappointment jade my feelings toward Kingpin though. It has become a firm favourite.

Quaid and Harrelson have a lovely rhythm together. Playing even the daftest moments relatively straight. They have a chemistry and clearly seem comfortable even with the groaniest, nastiest digressions. They trust the material even when they shouldn’t and it pays off dividends. Harrelson had only just shed his Cheers following by this juncture in his career and was being courted as a serious actor around Hollywood, so it feels especially brave in retrospect to reverse back into a comedy that is, on the surface, far dumber than the classy sitcom he made his name in. Yet the gamble paid off, I’d say Kingpin was the first time he was the dominant side of the buddy pairing or the love triangle. Box office wise, this might not have fluctuated his ranking on the A-List but it proved he could carry a movie without a Wesley / Demi / Juliette. And, much like Kingpin, in the long run he made whatever the opposite of “a real Munson” is from out smart plays like this.

“What is it about good sex that makes me have to crap? I guess it’s all that pumpin’. Pump and dump. You really jarred something loose, tiger.”

A joy.

10

Perfect Double Bill: Semi-Pro (2008)

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/

Loren Bouchard and Bernard Derriman direct Kristen Schaal, H. Jon Benjamin and John Roberts in this big screen animated adventure of the family of burger restaurant nerds.

Much love for the telly show but it works better in 20 minute condensed bursts. There’s nothing here that wouldn’t work over one or two far shorter episodes and I definitely expected more laughs.

5

Perfect Double Bill: The Simpsons Movie (2007)

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/

Alex Garland directs Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear and Paapa Essiedu in this folk horror where a woman goes on retreat to a country house in a village where every man has a familiar look to them.

Technically perfect (that score, that lighting, that costume design, that freak-out finale) but ultimately a cold fish. Difficult to connect to. Feels like an exercise. Ripe, almost teeming, with allegory, to the point of distraction. But you will see things and in spurts it forgets to be ‘elevated horror’ and just delivers horror. I will revisit this… Jessie Buckley might want to take a break from existential nightmare-scapes, where all men are controlling bastards, though. This and I’m Thinking Of Ending Things feel too much a piece.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Ex Machina (2014)

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/

Mia Hansen-Løve directs Vicky Krieps, Tim Roth and Mia Wasikowska in this arthouse drama about a couple, filmmakers, who work on their next projects while staying in Ingmar Bergman’s home.

Bergman directed 50 feature films. Which means you could watch a different Ingmar movie every week for a year and be bored every time. I tease. But there’s a grain of truth there. This movie is about gender imbalance when it comes to having the space and confidence to create. But it really needs to check its privilege. Very few are awarded the freedom to spend weeks writing on inspirational islands with other more successful filmmakers, there also to lend their cache and connections to projects. That ain’t no curse. Queen, if you can’t write in Swedish paradise then maybe you ain’t that good a writer. At one point Vicky Kriep’s flaky wife begins to tell Tim Roth’s distracted director her fragment of a story idea at length. Midway through he zones out and she calls him out in it. I get the feeling he and us would rather be watching the well made retro horror we glimpse at the screening. Did he check out from the story because he’s a disinterested, selfish man? Or it wasn’t worth telling at such laborious detail in the first place? Dull but pretty, well cast.

4

Perfect Double Bill: All Is Forgiven (2007)

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/

Neal Israel directs Tom Hanks, Adrian Zmed and Tawny Kitaen in this gross out comedy where a group of arseholes have a bachelor party.

From the creatives behind Police Academy, this feels really off. Tom Hanks is trying an obnoxious but “cool” schtick that comes across as very creepy, but he holds the eye better than any of his interchangeable male co-stars. Weird to think he, Michael Keaton and Steve Guttenberg were all battling it out to be the next Chevy Chase or Steve Martin at this point in their respective careers, a goal none of them ended up hitting. Which in the long run was for the best. This is pretty abrasive, lowest common denominator fare for the first hour but the chaos starts building towards the end to a decent crescendo. It becomes so busy you can begin to look past the creakiness of the jokes. And Tawny Kitaen is surprisingly good in a role that requires little of her more than to be a pretty face. There are a few scenes where you wish we stuck more with the bridal shower rather than the curly haired boy men.

4

Perfect Double Bill: Dragnet (1987)

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/

Matt Wolf directs Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw and Julia Hummer in this documentary based on Jon Savage’s book Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture.

A fine collection of footage and lost voices, movements, trends and mini-biographies. Ties social and political upheavals to fashion subsets in fascinating ways. Interprets responses cannily. Boy Scouts and Swing Kids as proof that youth movements existed before Rebel Without A Cause.

6

Perfect Double Bill: American Teen (2008)

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/

Joshua Logan directs Marlon Brando, Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki in this drama where a US air force officer based in Japan falls in love with a native actress, a relationship actively discouraged by all.

As a travelogue deep diving into Japanese culture, customs and exoticism, this is quite wonderful. Drama-wise we focus on the wrong couple. We linger on the leads when Buttons and Umeki are far sweeter and eventually tragic a pairing. Brando is very much doing his own thing, a thing that slows an already stately movie right down to an interminable squelch at times. Logan’s heart is in the right place and as an observance of modern Kyoto it is very pretty.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Mutiny On The Bounty (1962)

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/