Edward Dmytryk directs Humphrey Bogart, Van Johnson and Fred MacMurray in this naval drama where a U.S. minesweeper captain shows signs of mental instability that jeopardises the ship.
Pretty average film that just happens to include Bogie’s best ‘against type’ acting turn. The final half hour of tribunals has the air of A Few Good Men and ends things on a high.
Oliver Stone directs Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez and Nick Nolte in this neo-noir where a drifter is asked to kill a rich man’s sexy young wife.
You’ve seen this movie before. John Dahl made it about five times (all better) in the Nineties. Just never with a cast of so many A-Listers and award whores. Does it make for a better movie? No, the unfettered overkill often sinks it. Stone fucks the frame with such constant ferocity that Michael Bay, Spike Lee and Tony Scott would all agree he is being a bit excessive. Most of the little quirky subplots go nowhere. Once we get down to the formulaic third act there are no surprises and then it drags it’s feet. Nasty, fascinating, not the stamp of anyone involved’s talents.
Hayao Miyazaki directs Sumi Shimamoto, Mahito Tsujimura and Hisako Kyôda in this Japanese anime where warring kingdoms battle it out over a toxic forest.
Epic adventure. Gargantuan insects rule over a forbidden zone. A brave princess flies around on a glider trying to keep the peace. Steampunk battalions plot mass destruction. Really stirring stuff, often uncommonly beautiful.
Jason Reitman directs Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott and Cory Michael Smith and Tim Fehlbaum directs Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro and Leonie Benesch in this pair of historical behind-the-scenes recreations of Seventies TV live broadcasts that were ground breaking.
Claustrophobia. Ticking clocks. Looming deadlines. Murphy’s Law. If there was an unrecognised movie sub genre that has been kicking about since the late 50s it would be The Pressure Cooker. Ordinary people trying to achieve extraordinary goals while everything around the becomes an obstacle. Sidney Lumet was the pioneer of the form with everything from 12 Angry Men through Fail Safe to Dog Day Afternoon. Recently the Safdies’ have popularised the tropes with Good Time and Uncut Gems. Or maybe Birdman? Or Captain Phillips? Or the Charlie Work episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia… The camera stalks, the walls close in, and for every ingenious, improvised solution there is a Chekov’s gun waiting to go off at the worst possible time.
Two films have been released in the U.K. within a space of a week which seem to ride this growing trend and set in the same milieu; live television. Saturday Night aims for “real time”-ish comedy drama. Cramming all the legends, tall tales and bad behaviour into the 90 minutes before the first SNL sketch was put on air. It is a race against the clock, a clash of egos and a watershed moment. Very much a lionisation of what Lorne Michael’s achieved with very little backing from the NBC suits. This era of US comedy is my hot sauce and the casting is really keyed in, especially the lad they get to play Chevy Chase. The female performers are a still sidelined but the always welcome Rachel Sennott is given a pumped up writer’s role. I had high hopes for this and, a little inevitable mawk aside, Reitman did the business even if it never quite blew me away.
Far more effective is the comparatively dry apolitical drama of September 5. Sure any film about Palestinian militants killing Israeli athletes is going to be an ethical hot potato to juggle. Fehlbaum’s talky ensemble film walks the line tightly by focussing on the analogue solutions to reporting this knife edge situation to the world. 16mm film is raced across police lines, phone lines are soldered to microphone wires, ID cards forged and time on the sole satellite has to be bartered for in hourly shifts. All by a sports broadcasting team with minimal hard news experience. You get a true sense of modern reporting coming together in the lunges of inspiration and desperation. I was completely gripped. Was that day truly the first time a TV channel ident was used?
Drew Hancock directs Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid and Lukas Gage in this thriller where a young woman begins to discover her life is not all that it seems on a weekend getaway with her boyfriend’s friends.
I had the early big twist ruined for me the morning before going to see this. I probably would have twigged it. There aren’t many surprises after that but it is handsome.
Mel Gibson directs Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery and Topher Grace in this thriller where a U.S. Marshall tries to transport a federal prisoner over the Alaskan wilderness only to discover her pilot is an assassin.
Not entirely sure what attracted Mel to this. Cheap rather than claustrophobic. The script is a stinker. Never really confident with what to do after the first act set-up that doesn’t instantly crash the little plane into a mountain. So Marky Mark spends most of the movie knocked out. He goes out of his comfort zone but a new Hannibal Lecter ain’t born. Full of weird little choices, none of them good. A hard movie to take any positives from even though it ticks its own basic boxes on the check list.
John Dahl directs Steve Zahn, Paul Walker and Leelee Sobieski in this highway thriller where a prank on a road trip turns nasty once a killer in a truck begins chasing two brothers.
A nice little American Pie era spin on Duel. Looks glossier than anything Dahl had made before but also has a nasty streak that owes as much to Wes Craven’s Scream as any Neo-Noir. The ending has quite obviously been reshot but still works as a multiplex grabber. Zahn shines in the lead, Ted Levine’s supplies the malevolent voice of the unseen tormentor.
The Coen Brothers direct Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind and Fred Melamed in this bleak comedy where a Jewish college professor’s humdrum life unravels in the 1960s.
The Dybbuk. The goy’s teeth. The “Mentaculus”. Joel and Ethan’s biggest enigma. Is it a fable? Is it fate? Some faithful yet biblical recreation of their childhoods? The closest we have gotten to the existential dread of Barton Fink but here the mysteries are both more suburban yet difficult to fully fathom. Stuhlbarg is fantastic, permanently harried, this is the role that made him “a name”. Maybe they lean into the dream sequence rug pull once too often, maybe for non-Coen initiates this will feel like a big nothing? I don’t know. I’m a fan and I find it spellbinding.
Guillem Morales directs Belén Rueda, Lluís Homar and Pablo Derqui in this Spanish psychological thriller involving twin sisters, eye transplants and suspicious suicides.
The sorta mystery where the drip feed of clues is so obvious you are constantly aware of the manipulation. Don’t you hate only getting half the story? That story mutates about three times meaning it is unpredictable but you never feel each new ripe set-up is ever fully exploited. Belén Rueda is a very attractive lead and there’s a couple of unnerving moments but this just never fulfils its potential. Hitchcock or De Palma would have cooked this concept up tasty hot.
John M. Stahl directs Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde and Jeanne Crain in this film noir melodrama about a socialite with an obsessive love for her novelist husband.
Bright noir that looks like Sirk and proves gently psychologically unsettling. Tierney looks stunning no matter what states of unease (harried / paranoid / murderous / suicidal) she is in. I don’t want to spoil the strange little “happy” ending but I’ll posit two questions. Who doesn’t want to spend their marriage alone and uninterrupted with Gene Tierney? And should we really trust a narrator who is defence attorney for the survivors, retelling a story with many suspicious plot holes in it?
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 