István Szabó directs Klaus Maria Brandauer, Krystyna Janda and Ildikó Bánsági in this German drama from Hungary where an esteemed theatre actor “sells his soul” to advance his career during the Third Reich.
Fine. A little too dry and one note to really justify its Foreign Classic status. For example, it lacks the complexity, mystery and eroticism of Bertolucci’s similar but superior The Conformist. Klaus Maria Brandauer’s central performance is superb however… his Hendrik Höfgen is based on a real life figure and the bruv never stops acting. Can’t even have lunch without playing a part. You never know who the real human behind the performance is, so you can only judge him on his actions. Selfish decisions and dangerous compromises. The montages of him going through all his stagecraft clearly inspired Matt Berry’s Toast Of London. Ends abruptly.
Neveldine/Taylor direct Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Dwight Yoakam, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Bai Ling and Efren Ramirez in this action comedy series where a hitman has to survive a fraught couple of hours where something in his body will shutdown if he doesn’t keep his pecker up.
A frankly bizarro mixture of D.O.A. / Speed / G.T.A. that just about works. Every camera trick, cheap FX and mad edit is deployed to deliver something that is pretty self consciously juvenile. The Crank movies are set in a world of cartoonish bad taste that intend to offend every modern moral but really have a similar sweet impact as a four-year-old repeating the same swear word over and over. To keep his heart pumping The Stath’s Chev Chelios will do anything. Toilet floor coke, public sex, gang warfare, defibrillators, jumping out of helicopters. It is all very tongue-in-cheek and all a little deadening. Half an hour works better than a whole feature length sitting. Crank feels like a series made preemptively to watch while simultaneously scrolling at your phone screen, full of short sharps shocks to let you know when the mad violent mania is worth sequestering your full attention.
Jason is game. Selling the physicality and drive of Chelios to either survive or take as many bastards down with him on the way. He’s a desperate character, true anti-hero, who never loses his cool, even when dressed in surgery gowns or Puma shellsuits. MVP though is Amy Smart as his unwitting girlfriend. She’s a cute character who sells the comedy and her wholesome sexiness really well. She inarguably elevates the portions she is in and it is a shame both movies relegate her offscreen for entire hours of their brief runtimes. If Smart and Statham were a consistent double act for the full length of their adventures I’d probably revisit a Crank far more often.
The sequel is probably the better film of the pair just as it really doesn’t give a shit about sensibilities, is packed with genuinely quirky cameos and has the feeling of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or Magnolia with its overlapping side plots and sub characters. In an ideal world, the set pieces might have a bit more tension to them, a bit more girth but Neveldine/Taylor are all about instant gratification rather than delivering escalating traps or sustained spectacle.
Wolfgang Reitherman directs Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot and George Sanders in this perfect Walt Disney classic that adapts Rudyard Kipling’s adventure stories.
Going to be a difficult one to write cleanly about this as I have just flat out loved The Jungle Book since I was a little kid. I love the road movie, ‘who will we meet next?’, looseness of the narrative. Bagheera and Balloo’s chemistry. The be-bop, scatting jump blues of The Bare Necessities and I Wanna Be Like You. Louis Prima really rips that famous number. All the villains are iconic. George Sander’s classy Shere Khan and the devious Kaa. I just adore it, it opens up the boyhood magic within me and I’m sure everyone has their Disney favourite that does the same for them too.
Ryan Coogler and Michael B Jordan direct Michael B Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Sylvester Stallone, Phylicia Rashad, Wood Harris and Jonathan Majors in these spin-off legacy sequels to the Rocky franchise that become their own thing.
I’ve always liked the Rocky franchise but never truly loved it. A bit too blunt, a bit too schmaltzy. So Creed kinda blew me away on both watches. Adonis felt more of a 3 dimensional human being thanks to Michael B Jordan, this modern Philadelphia more accessible thanks to Ryan Coogler’s authenticity. And Stallone was still there in measured doses adding big heart. The training montages pumped, the fighting thrilled and the character stuff genuinely brought a tear to the eye. Donny and Bianca’s first date or Rocky in chemo are better handled moments of drama than most prestige Oscar bait releases. Ludwig Göransson’s mixture of Bill Conti remembrances and modern hip-hop made us all feel like we could go the distance. Superior popcorn.
Creed II did an admirable job of rerunning what worked and keeping original franchise fans sated. III though clearly wants to be its own thing. And is better for it. No Rocky. Los Angeles setting. Jordan making his directorial debut. There are some pretty stark choices. Some work – pitching an excellent antagonist in Jonathan Majors as an insidious yuppie-in-peril home destroyer in the first two acts. Some don’t work – the arty compression of time, space and psychology in the big finale bout seems like a bold move. Overall, it delivers as much entertainment as you can hope for. The Saturday multiplex crowd of vaping / Lynx doused boys clearly were caught up in it. Sitting patiently through a huge swathe of melodrama and clapping at the end.
There is a really cheap, rote and uninspired TV movie stuck between a superb opening sequence and a rollicking closing sequence. Essentially when Channing is dancing… we all good, but everything else really tests the patience. Salma looks gloriously curvy and rarely is seen without a three olive martini in her hand. You don’t know how much I wanted to enjoy this more!
Elizabeth Banks directs Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Ray Liotta in this crime horror comedy where a bear goes on the rampage in the woods after ingesting cocaine – hunting everyone, including the low level crims who lost the blow in the first place.
A serviceable cast struggle to get any momentum going. There is some extreme gore but the best moments are already in the trailer. Also, quite a bad atmosphere in the Friday night screening we went to. Especially when some of the more chemically enhanced members of the audience realised they hadn’t actually bought a ticket for the maddest film ever.
Marc Webb directs Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel and Chloë-Grace Moretz in this romantic comedy about a boy who falls for a girl who doesn’t love him and breaks his heart – told out of sequence and with flights of fantasy.
Two very likeable stars play two of the most obnoxious and selfish characters ever to grace a rom-com. Spit, needs to clean the bad taste from my mouth. A lot of directorial effort to make a stinky mess. Why did I give this a second chance? Movie has rubbed me up the wrong way TWICE now.
4
Perfect Double Bill: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008)
Stan Dragoti directs Michael Keaton, Teri Garr and Martin Mull in this battle of the sexes comedy where when Dad loses his job he stays home and keeps house, while Mom becomes the breadwinner.
Sleazy elevator sax score from Lee Holdridge. We had this taped off the telly as kids so watched it a lot. It probably didn’t deserve as much attention as we gave it. Feels a bit too much like an extended pilot for a sitcom. Keaton (full power, even through joke-free scenes) and Garr have nice chemistry and you can feel John Hughes fingerprints all over the script. The gender stuff now plays like a museum relic but the recession politics of the workplace scenes still holds true.
Adam McKay directs Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate and Paul Rudd in this spoof comedy where a Seventies TV newsman has his perfect world rocked when he has to share the spotlight with a superior female co-lead.
“Good evening, San Diego. I’m Veronica Corningstone. Tits McGee is on vacation.” The film that launched a hundred quotes, a zillion gifs and made Ferrell a star. It is still very funny but this Saturday night rewatch didn’t hit the same giddy heights of laughter as it once did. I was expecting gales of laughs. Now knowing what he next went on to do you have the creeping suspicion that even here that McKay is trying to say something important about masculinity and sexism. Ugh! The best jokes still work gangbusters – Baxter, “I love lamp”, Sex Panther, “I’m Ron Burgundy?”, Jazz Flute, Afternoon Delight, milk. It is better looking than most comedies of the era. Applegate and, particularly, Rudd are superb.
Arthur Lubin directs Claude Rains, Susanna Foster and Nelson Eddy in this period romantic thriller loosely based on Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel.
Surprised this doesn’t have a stronger reputation. OK… so the scenes without the impeccable Claude Rains are a bit doily and duff but the gothic thriller stuff, especially the cavernous underground finale, are very compelling. Our DVD skipped a few bits but this interpretation is a frothy blast with little arias of horror. Clearly the direct synoptic influence on the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 