Dan Trachtenberg and Joshua Wassung direct Doug Cockle, Rick Gonzalez and Michael Biehn in this animated sci-fi action anthology where warriors from three different eras face down a Predator.

Just very cool. A violence extravaganza that bolsters the lore we love. The samurai segment, The Sword, is probably the strongest. The action flows with a balletic smoothness. The Predtor IP feels in very safe hands with Trachtenberg.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Predators (2010)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/ and my own Substack https://substack.com/@edinburghlaughterbulletin

Anand Tucker directs Emily Watson, Rachel Griffiths and David Morrissey in this biography of British classical musician sisters Jacqueline du Pré and Hilary du Pré.

This has a more unusual tale to tell than most awards bait biopics. The sister’s relationship is not a pure rivalry. It is parasitic and scandalous. Which makes the whole thing a fascinating car crash. It does suffer from some cliched direction. There was a distinct visual mode of recreating the fifties and sixties in the cinema of the 90s that became very commonplace. Not sure? Think Heavenly Creatures and you are there. But certainly watchable thanks to the strong leads.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Shine (1996)

Nacho Vigalondo directs Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández and Bárbara Goenaga in this Spanish sci-fi thriller where a husband finds himself in a deadly time loop.

Decent one watcher. The obtuse morality lets it down. Our protagonist does some pretty repugnant shit to reset his world back. Are we supposed to take away he would do anything for his wife? Or that he has this casual evil in him and just needed a crisis to let it loose?

6

Perfect Double Bill: Triangle (2009)

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Kevin Booth and David Johndrow direct Bill Hicks in this stand-up comedy special where Bill performs a live stand-up show in Austin, Texas.

Whoever decided to overlay grainy black and white footage onto the performance needs to have a word with themselves. It detracts from the comedy and makes Bill seem like he is trapped in a Lynchian hellscape. The lack of slickness is often endearing though; walkouts, distractions, terrible camera angles. It feels like a truer document than what we get today. There are some god level perfect stand-up routines here. Searing, brutal, honest. Others are captured better in Revelations while the George Michael stuff has dated horribly.

8

Perfect Double Bill: American: The Bill Hicks Story (2011)

Simon Wincer directs Jason James Richter, Keiko and Michael Madsen in this kid’s animal movie about a foster kid who befriends a trapped whale at a failing aqua park.

A weird brew of anodyne and tough messaging. I was always going to be too jaded for this. Shares a dubious honour with The Shawshank Redemption and Carrie in that its most famous one-sheet poster was the ending of the movie.

4

Perfect Double Bill: Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home (1995)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/ and my own Substack https://substack.com/@edinburghlaughterbulletin

Ridley Scott directs Michael Douglas, Ken Takakura and Andy Garcia in this fish-out-of-water thriller where two NYC cops transporting a Japanese prisoner back to Osaka lose him at the airport.

Plot wise this is standard product. A less serious tone and it could easily be Beverly Hills Cop Goes Japan. Douglas looks like he will fuck anything that moves (if only he had the time). Ridley clearly loves filming modern Japan. Neon, trucks, motorbikes, clean lines. He has a visual hoot. It is a quite loose, quite basic movie but when it hits a note it hits it with intensity. Some decent mid level action if you aren’t keen on the travelogue and brooding culture clash performances. Put into production when Japan was buying up American corporations and movie studios but it ain’t as xenophobic as you’d fear. Made for Saturday nights in.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Rising Sun (1993)

Parker Finn directs Naomi Scott, Rosemarie DeWitt and Lukas Gage in this horror sequel where the smiling curse moves onto a pop star just as she is about to embark on a gruelling comeback tour.

Again, more a chiller than a horror with massive debts to Repulsion and J-Horror. The backstage of a world tour setting adds pageantry and pizazz. Naomi Scott heavy lifts for the bulk of the movie. She convinces as a world famous singing sensation, a mentally fragile diva and a doomed doll in a demon’s psychological toy box. Bloody and grinding in equal measure my only real beef with the ambitious but mainstream Smile movies is they stretch a nippy Twilight Zone hour over twice the runtime. They play like emotional marathons. Intentional maybe, but this is going to restrain me from rewatching regularly.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Malignant (2021)

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Bronwen Hughes directs Sandra Bullock, Ben Affleck and Maura Tierney in this road movie romantic comedy.

Let’s direct an aggressively anti-marriage It Happened One Night in an ugly world that looks like the fake reality from The Matrix? Will it have likeable characters? Will it have a happy ending? Ugh!

3

Perfect Double Bill: Practical Magic (1998)

Ben Stiller directs Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke and Janeane Garofalo in this twenty something teen movie / romantic comedy / Generation X time capsule.

Forget Top Gun and Pulp Fiction. This has the Greatest Movie Soundtrack Of All Time! OK… maybe it’s neck and neck with Dazed And Confused’s OST. The movie itself is a little mercenary. Rather cack handedly trying to define an era as it was happening. While the plot is basically an update on Alcott / Austen / Brontë. Will our self aware heroine chose love or security… both choices come with a loss of independence, integrity and artistry. Both suitors are absolute states. And everyone else is insufferable too. Still, it is trying to be adult, cuter and edgier than Friends in passing. Winona feels like she is playing a human being who does shopping and laundry which was a rarity in the Nineties. There are some good laughs. The script has wit that rounds off the cliched tartness and those fool’s errand attempts to be seminal. And because it was marketed as THE Generation X movie, nostalgia now means it fulfils that destiny. We all know Before Sunrise is the actual Gen X movie that got things right. I kinda love Reality Bites in spite of itself.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Empire Records (1995)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/ and my own Substack https://substack.com/@edinburghlaughterbulletin

Clint Eastwood directs Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette and J. K. Simmons in this courtroom drama where an everyman finds himself serving on a jury in a murder case where he not only believes the suspect to be innocent but he himself might be responsible for the victim’s death.

Somber and elegiac. Hoult reins it in with an internalised performance surrounded by a wonderful ensemble. What a brilliant sweet spot his career is in right now! It doesn’t go for the explicit thriller manoeuvrings of a Grisham but often it feels like knowingly playful update on 12 Angry Men. Much like Mystic River and A Perfect World this is an adult exploration of shared guilt and American justice hidden within a glossy morality play. Shame it didn’t reach a wide audience. 20 years ago it would have been THE Oscar front runner.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Mystic River (2003)