Stephen Chbosky directs Ben Platt, Kaitlyn Dever and Amy Adams in this teen musical where a depressed shy loner kid pretends he and a boy who committed suicide were friends when his “note to self” is found on the dead kid’s person.
Monotonous and in poor taste. The songs all sound the same and the lead performance is so miscast it feels almost like a parody. A middle aged SNL regular playing a nervy, singing teenage with anxiety issues. Very little of this is entertaining, the mawk is often rancid. A whole extra point goes towards the cardies and sweaters Kaitlyn Dever wears. Amy Adams as the grieving mom who looks immaculate and still can rustle up a three course meal days after her kid kills himself is criminally wasted… but at least this keeps her off the streets.
Laura Fairrie directs Jackie Collins, Joan Collins and Morton L Janklow in this biographical documentary about the bestselling trash romance novelist.
A typical example of the modern documentary form. Does Jackie Collins deserve such an easy ride? Her books aren’t exactly going to stand the test of time and the nepotism and privilege she benefited from probably deserves a fair few more moments of serious interrogation than these 90 minutes can find room for… Even the full fat raunch of her novels is given slightly short shrift.
Edwin Brown directs Debbie Thureson, Steve Bond and Lori Lethin in this cheapo slasher in the woods.
Possibly the most cobbled together, fudged and stretched out movie I’ve ever witnessed. Very little scripted dialogue and even less action. Instead, this is often a montage of establishing shots with scripted lines dubbed over them, endless nature shots (often quite gory) and improvised babbling. There’s maybe 20 minutes of competently shot horror movie here and that’s putting a lot of undue pressure on the word “competently”. Terrible acting, weak gore. Still some of that time filler animal footage is quite watchable, if icky.
Garry Marshall directs Bette Midler, Barbara Hershey and John Heard in this weepie following two mismatched pen pals as they grow up.
Does Beaches make me cry? Sob uncontrollably? Not once. But it was never really made for me. It is probably Bette Midler’s best role, she certainly overpowers Hershey into insignificance. The childhood scenes are the strongest, everything else perfunctory… until that gut-punch ending. The ballad Wind Beneath My Wings does a lot of the hard work.
Philip Kaufman directs Maria de Medeiros, Fred Ward and Uma Thurman in this period erotic drama involving Anaïs Nin’s sexual and literary awakening when she becomes obsessed with Henry Miller and his young wife.
Pulp Fiction’s Maria de Medeiros is well cast and game as Nin, Fred Ward less so. He was a last minute replacement for Alec Baldwin who, rumour has it, refused to shave his head to accurately play Henry Miller. Fair to say the first ever NC-17 rated release has aged poorly. Not in terms of production values, 1930s Paris is beautifully realised. Yet as a movie, this just plain doesn’t work. It is stilted, directionless, slightly laughable. Yet there is plenty of classy nudity, Uma Thurman beguiling us with a creepy marionette and a surfeit of background dogs. You wouldn’t believe how much this movie delivers on the random canine front. Come for the sex, leave with the dogs.
Douglas Sirk directs Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall and Dorothy Malone in this drama where a smart beautiful woman marries into an oil dynasty against her better judgment.
Impotency: The Movie. Like watching three seasons of Dallas on fast forward only with the clean lines and Technicolor lushness of the era. Does squander the always stunning Lauren Bacall once we are in the home stretch but this is, by all other accounts, a classy piece of trash. The butt shakin’ heart attack sequence has to be seen to be believed.
Ralph L. Thomas directs Donald Sutherland, Chad Lowe and Mia Sara in this true crime period drama about a boy who gets involved with his town’s untrustworthy powwow medicine man.
TV movie production values and barely a hint of a murder until the rushed final 15 minutes.
This movie pervs hard on barely legal Diane Lane. This movie looks fantastic but has little to it. This movie loves a clock… tick tock… time is running out. This movie ain’t as good as The Outsiders even though it tries a lot harder. This movie proves that having Dillon, Rourke, Nic Cage, Larry Fishburne, Tom Waits and Dennis Hopper jostling for centre stage can somehow still somehow produce a boring, one-note result.
Denis Villeneuve directs Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson and Jason Momoa in this adaptation of just the first half of Frank Herbert sci-fi classic; following the House of Atreides as they take over the exploitation of a desert planet for a hostile empire.
I went into this with lowered expectations: Denis Villeneuve always directs a lovely looking feature but none of them have risen above a promising “very good” for me over the past two decades… and your Prisoners and Enemy have actually suffered from over inflated reputations when actually watched. Dune isn’t an IP I have any real affection for… but having revisited Lynch’s derided version again relatively recently I at least had my bearings on the plot and unwieldy form. And I’m never going to get excited about a marketing campaign that places the watery and wimpy Chalamet and Ferguson at the forefront…but more on those two a little lower down.
The first two hours blew me away. The clarity of the storytelling. The patience to let the impressively massive visuals work their magic. The marshalling of a potentially cumbersome cast of characters with a certain degree of straight faced presentation. Villeneuve understands just how hard work this is going to be for Spice virgins and admirably leans into the pomposity while blatantly just letting the characters speak in manageable chunks of exposition. If you’ve come for banter or emotion then you’ve come to the wrong shop. Equally for something so slavish to impenetrable nomenclature, clans and imagined sociology this Dune is never confusing say like Tenet or Interstellar or 1984’s Dune. Only the occasional vision of the future used to crowbar imagined action into the stiller sequences feels like it is extraneous, cheating the audience of a neat straight shooting through line.
And in all honesty this Shakespearean style works… you can either switch off from each spoken Wikipedia stub and just absorb the visuals (something I did often and happily) or you can try to fathom all that is going on. Narrative is given a minimal say in how this tale is told. You are either learning about these future societies or you are marvelling at the scope, scale and detail of them. Betrayals, revelations, connections happen in the edits. We are burying ourselves in the vision – an epic of minimalism where humans become stick figures in massive landscapes, weathered polygons glide through faded vistas.
It looks the utter tits. I’d quite happily watch a version where Hans Zimmer’s wailing, bullying score just dominates and the mouths move but are never heard. This is every painted sci-fi novel cover you’ve glimpsed at the mobile library rampaging off the cardboard. Warhammer 40,000 live and in concert. Chris Foss and MOEBIUS masterworks desaturated so that only the fewest colours can fill some previous inconceivable canvas. When we move to a wide shot, which is pleasingly often, Villeneuve’s regular editor Joe Walker knows to hold on that shot for an indulgently stately amount of time. This looks a piece with modern blockbuster from masters like Nolan or Reeves but made by someone has learned their pacing from Kubrick… there’s no confusion here or race to move onto the next piece of visual trickery. We wallow in the unabashed grandiosity of it all. None of it shows flaws or cheats. You never see the strings or joins. And I loved that.
Is it a little humourless? Sure. But messianic prophecies, genocide and future imperialism don’t really feel like the appropriate place for zings and sassy chat. Villeneuve’s has a nice running visual game of including an incongruous prop or gesture here or there. That produces as many chuckles as the “gag” heavy Shang-Chi movie did last month. And the support cast are so on point and game that you relish seeing anyone left standing at close of play getting just a little more screentime if Part Two does ever get before the cameras. Without revealing who survives to the credits Momoa, Josh Brolin, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem and especially Charlotte Rampling leave you wanting more from all of them despite a paucity of individual screentime.
And then we get to the trouble in paradise. While the first two hours are packed with BIG set-pieces the final act narrows down to following the bland Chalamet and Ferguson in a series of smaller perils. You can ignore how white bread and marge they are when smothered by all that world building and great ensemble. But when its just Peggy Hill and Bobby in the desert, your pulse slows and you wonder at what point in the grand arc Villeneuve will lower the curtain and declare the start of a two to three year interval. It is fair to say after gorging us with sci-if brilliance for a 110 minute the veal stops being fatted, the juice pipe is ripped from our greedy mouth. We end on an elongated comma rather than a full stop.
Yet… I do understand why Chalamet has been cast. There were far more teenage girls in our busy matinee screening than Dunkirk or The Last Duel could ever hope for. Would I prefer if someone young and charismatic and with a bit of oomph about them was cast in such a crucial role? Sure. But thinking about names; John Boyega is a little too old to play the callow boy prince, personal favourite Skyler Gisondo too quirky and Barry Keoghan a bit too dark a choice. A complete unknown wouldn’t have done the business. Having Timmy No Chest front and centre for the big finale does leave a bad taste in the mouth, hampers this entry’s genuine five star potential. So Dune ends on a whimper but hopefully if we return to Arrakis he’ll be back to being buffeted by that fantastic returning cast and seamless SFX. The hard slog when he’s carrying the story has now been endured… let’s get back to that grizzled and perfect ensemble as soon as possible.
Marcel Ophuls directs Pierre Mendès France, Anthony Eden and André Harris in this four and half hour documentary to investigate France’s collaboration with Germany after they surrendered during WWII.
All these talking heads are dead now. And as Ophul’s very rarely signposts who we listening to and whether they collaborated or resisted it can feel very overwhelming to start. Part of that must be down to our own historical ignorance, unable to recognise key players in French politics who would have no doubt been infamous 50 years ago. But eventually you get attuned to the rhythm of the monologues and the Pathe newsreel footage… and begin to realise that is the point. Nobody was sure who was against the Nazis and who was for Vichy? Some probably even had their choice made for them. As we go deeper into their lives over four years of occupation you begin to interrogate them less and yourself more and more. Would you submit or even profit from the fascist regime who may have potentially become your long term rulers? Or would you have risked everything and fought back? Watching this I don’t know how anyone who wasn’t there could stand in judgement. And someone please make a biopic of trans British spy Denis Rake! Pretty please!
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 