Luis Buñuel directs Simone Mareuil, Pierre Batcheff, himself, Lya Lys, Gaston Modot and Caridad de Laberdesque in this series of short surreal experiments full of iconic imagery and weird visual gags.

Buñuel told Dalí at a restaurant one day about a dream in which a cloud sliced the moon in half “like a razor blade slicing through an eye”. Dalí responded that he had dreamed about a hand crawling with ants. Excitedly, Buñuel declared: “There’s the film, let’s go and make it.”

Got me a movie, I want you to know
Slicing up eyeballs, I want you to know

After World War II, Simone Mareuil returned to Périgueux, where she fell into a deep depression. She committed suicide by self-immolation — dousing herself in gasoline and burning herself to death in a public square.

Once you’ve seen Un Chien Andalou it becomes indelible in your film geography. A totemic key to any dream imagery or nightmare map you find yourself lost. I’ve watched it in A-Level Film Studies classes and standing up in art galleries but it works best at home. Somewhere between Laurel & Hardy and Tod Browning, this is the funniest terrifier ever made. Its easily digestible running time of 21 minutes means the shocks and the poetry never outstay their welcome or lose pace.

See The Golden Age for how important that last strength is. I know critics consider it just as “good” but for the casual viewer it is lengthy, indulgent, obscure and only very rarely attempts to illicit the high emotional reactions of its fore-bearer.

10/5

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Andy Muschietti directs Ezra Miller, Sasha Calle and Michael Keaton in this superhero epic where The Flash travels back in time to save his mom and breaks reality as we know it.

An imperfect blockbuster almost crippled by bad timing. Ezra Miller’s dual performance is actually quite a lark if you can dial into it and ignore their real life woes. That tabloid scandal has delayed the release of this, as have a bottleneck of SFX houses able to work on the project (plus a corporate takeover at WB)… all meaning The Flash comes out a day late and dollar short. When it was announced that Keaton’s Batman and Batfleck would be crossing parallel universes in a Flash solo adventure 5 years ago it felt revolutionary. Since then, multiple Spider-outings have stolen that thunder and freshness by getting out of the multiverse / legacy reunion gate first. This has to be one of the most sophisticated and ambitious productions ever in terms of digitally rendered EVERYTHING so it is understandable some shots and set pieces take you out of the reality. The desert Royal Rumble stinks for incomplete shots but the Speed Force time bending and reality colliding moments have an impressionistic ugliness I wish they leaned even further into. As for fan service, there’s so much juicy stuff here. Some genuine surprises that make the whole endeavour feel valid. I think we now know there’s a back door for Wesley Snipes’ Blade to appear in a new Blade flick and Keanu’s Constantine to appear in Justice League Dark… or Henry Cavill to play Old Man Supes in a couple of decades time. The wrapper is off finality now. The Flash movie itself has spits and spurts of both boredom and excitement. It made me smile way too often for me to write it off due to the flaws everyone else is obsessed with focussing on. We still have an Aquaman 2 due before the franchise slate is reset, I doubt that will feel as much of a celebration of all things DCEU++ as this does. Bruv even tried to sell me a Nespresso at the end!

7

Perfect Double Bill: Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

My wife and I 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/

Ari Aster directs Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone and Amy Ryan in this pretentious shaggy dog story where a man basically crippled with neurosis goes on a near-pointless odyssey.

Doesn’t stretch Joaquin one little bit. And that is a waste. There’s a certain fecund blankness to his performance and the overall intent that chinstrokers and Letterboxd dweller might get lost in… for the rest of us though? Not much. The opening act is an anxiety nightmare, a near dystopian trip across the street. It had me. I’d watch this extended high wire sequence of urban horror again on its own and as daring filmmaking goes, the promise of what Ari Aster can achieve for me somehow always outweighs the flabby final product. The rest is two hours of patience testing rectum exploration followed by a gob in the mouth as an anti-comedy punchline. Oh dear. I went to a deserted late night showing of this with four big bullet cans of Innis & Gunn, a tube of Smokin’ Sweet Chilli Pringles and some cheap guacamole in my backpack. I made my own fun.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Inherent Vice (2014)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Tim Burton directs Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short and Martin Landau in this stop-motion animated tale of a suburban child scientist who resurrects his pet dog.

This starts out really beautifully but becomes repetitive and inessential very quickly. If you are Burton Head then it could be seen as a bit of a career celebration… Too much filler in this plasticine ‘wonder’. Maybe just stick to the original live action short?

5

Perfect Double Bill: Corpse Bride (2005)

My wife and I 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/

Otto Preminger directs Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge and Pearl Bailey in this contemporary musical variation on the Bizet opera, with new lyrics and an African-American cast.

Feels crazily ahead of its time, but dated and regressive in so many other ways. Dorothy Dandridge is on fire here though and I reckon the scene of her in her lingerie might have psychically done more positive influence for race equality in America than anything else made in the 50s.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Island In the Sun (1957)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Hal Hartley directed Isabelle Huppert, Martin Donovan and Elina Löwensohn in this indie thriller where a nymphomaniac ex-nun picks up a man with amnesia in a New York diner.

My friend and lovely comedian Martin Croser used to send me unsolicited packages. Out of the blue a DVD copy of some arthouse forgotten film would pop through my letterbox. It was a lovely treat. And I am slowly working through them. Amateur was one of them, a flick I remember enjoying when it came out on VHS. You have Elina Löwensohn and Huppert being sexy as fuck, a plot about pornography and espionage told in a low-fi slacker way. It is a bit like if Jim Jarmusch made a Jason Bourne adaptation and got super horny. There’s a young Parker Posey in an early role, always welcome. The first hour is far better than the second. In fact… this feels like the palpable gearshift from Hartley’s better quirky romance dramas to his oblique actionless spy thrillers.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Flirt (1995)

My wife and I 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 Robert Mitchell directs Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist and Olivia Luccardi in this supernatural horror where a stalking curse that can take any human form is sexually transmitted to a suburban girl.

The most original, and certainly the most effective, horror of the last decade. Announced David Robert Mitchell as a major talent and then nobody watched his sprawling, eerie Under The Silver Lake and we haven’t heard a peep from him since. Very Lynchian – even though it delivers traditional shocks and tension too. The bleak romantic, horny yearning atmosphere of it really needles at you between the set pieces. There’s something significant being said here about sex and mortality, trust and intimacy. Maika Monroe is the only Scream Queen to rival Jamie Lee Curtis in terms of looks, acting ability, charisma and choice of projects. It doesn’t get much better than this. Disasterpeace soundtrack = chef’s kiss. No idea what the seashell kindle / torch one of the backing character’s use is?

9

Perfect Double Bill: Watcher (2022)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Alfred Hitchcock directs Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason in this espionage thriller where an advertising executive is mistaken for a spy who doesn’t really exist and nobody who is chasing him will believe he isn’t the spook.

The first action comedy? Strange to think this came out 3 years before a big screen 007 was made. It feels fully informed by what was to come, almost a spoof of something that doesn’t quite yet exist. Grant is sauve and vulnerable in fascinating ways. It does feel like his whole star persona is being put through the ringer, not just his Roger O Thornhill character. Eva Marie Saint feels a bit more polished than other Hitchcock blondes, even Princess Grace of Monaco, genuinely sophisticated. North by Northwest probably is 30 minutes overlong but I’m not sure what I’d cut. It is a movie where each sequence improves on the last and I wouldn’t risk that momentum. The lengthy teasingly frank train journey ‘meet cute’ between Grant and Saint has as many fireworks as assassination attempts, crop duster hits and monument clambers. As much a vibe as a cohesive experience, North By Northwest is Hitch at his most generous and playful.

9

Perfect Double Bill: Charade (1963)

My wife and I 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 Gibson directs Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne and Vanessa Bell Calloway in this music biopic about the abusive marriage between Tina and Ike Turner.

Pretty powerful acting… and avoids the pitfalls of most rock life story hack jobs by having a compelling central story that defines the narrative.

7

Perfect Double Bill: How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Jamie Blanks directs Denise Richards, David Boreanaz and Marley Shelton in this slasher where five mean girls are stalked by the boy they humiliated at a high school dance over a decade ago.

The closest Hollywood has ever gotten to replicating a giallo. That doesn’t mean it is particularly good or even competent. Two of the kills scratch an itch and the fact that everyone is an utter dick is kinda sweet. If I was casting Valentine from a pool of 2001 C-listers I could still replace everyone except Marley Shelton a dozen times over and find an improvement. Would it have rocked with Rose McGowan and Joshua Jackson or Tara Reid and Luke Wilson? Not much more. But, cleavage excluded, Katherine Heigl will never be an adequate substitute for Drew Barrymore.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Urban Legends (1998)

My wife and I 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/