John Schlesinger directs Tom Courtenay, Wilfred Pickles and Julie Christie in this British kitchen sink drama where a restless lad fantasises about a life less ordinary but reality is catching up on all the lies he has told.
God, Schlesinger hates these characters. Looking down on their values and limitations with a brutish derision. Only Christie’s free spirit and Finlay Currie’s ageing voice of disjointed reason get any kind of sympathy. Schlesinger always attacks both the status quo and the change in his assessments of the Sixties. This film has somehow gained a reputation for being quaint and cosy yet it is absolutely scabrous. The ending is a gut punch… even though it only involves milk, a suitcase and a train leaving a station.
Harold Becker directs Al Pacino, Ellen Barkin and John Goodman in this cop thriller where a detective tries to find a serial killer who is selecting their victims from the lonely hearts ads and then falls for the only suspect he hasn’t cleared.
Becker struggles to find a consistent tone here with Richard Price’s script. Scenes shunt awkwardly from hard boiled policier into the realms of erotic thriller and then over to romantic comedy with little grace. The whole shebang is essentially a heterosexual Cruising. Yet Pacino feels untethered, struggling to match the unusually aggressive heat generated by an outstanding Barkin or that natural charisma of Goodman. It proves a grand movie for character actor spotting; half the cast of The West Wing is floating about while Richard Jenkins, Michael Rooker and Samuel L Jackson get memorable moments. Shame that as both a star vehicle for Al and a straightforward genre piece in general it is pretty meh.
Terry Gilliam directs Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams and Mercedes Ruehl in the fantasy drama where a depressed, fallen from grace, radio DJ tries to help the unstable homeless man who has saved his life.
The above plot précis is only about a third of The Fisher King’s overloaded story… there is romance, quests and slapstick comedy. It probably is the most “balanced” Robin Williams star role. And I’m aware of the irony of using these words. His tour de force as Parry manages to find equal time for all the shades of Williams that might dominate another of his movies. The motormouth off-script riffing mania of Good Morning Vietnam or Mrs Doubtfire, the inspirational and unlikely therapist of Dead Poets Society or Good Will Hunting, the extreme fantasy quest embarker of What Dreams May Come or Jumanji. There’s even the darkness and maudlin air and bleak sincerity that he explored in later roles more and more. All that is missing is the saccharine staleness of his worst instincts. He’s delightfully unpredictable here. It leaves Jeff Bridges to be the straight man and he makes for a perfect reticent foil for Williams’ antics. The acting is uniformly grand… Amanda Plummer and Michael Jeter have stand out roles while Mercedes Ruehl deservedly won an Oscar for her brilliant turn as the put-upon video store owner who has somehow attracted all these fumbling failures into her orbit. Gilliam transforms New York into a dreamscape – one where skyscrapers, Chinese restaurants and Central Park feel like artificial worlds of scale, magic and adventure. In a key moment, Grand Central Station at rush hour mutates into a glorious ballroom dance. A rare Hollywood movie about loss and losers that feels bigger and more entertaining than most superhero flicks. The Fisher King is busy… but wonderful for it.
Barry Sonnenfeld directs John Travolta, Gene Hackman and Rene Russo in this Elmore Leonard based crime comedy where a debt collector upsticks to L.A. hoping to become a movie producer.
The cast for this is amazing, the look clean (a little too clean, maybe?). Lots of balls are thrown in the air but very few come down with any kinda thud and it closes up on a weak punchline rather than a frenzy. I guess if you approach Get Shorty more as a gentle Hollywood satire you may find more pleasures. Yet this was clearly surfing in the immediate wake of Pulp Fiction and can’t help but come across as a disappointment. At least everyone looks cool… and that probably was the prime working directive.
George Miller directs Jack Nicholson, Cher and Susan Sarandon in this black comedy where three single witches start dating a “horny, little devil.”
Comedy was so big in the Eighties that a relatively dry and adult work of literature could get a few big names attached to it and suddenly find itself adapted into a kinky blockbuster extravaganza. Too mature and sophisticated for me as a kid, I’d still concede it doesn’t really take shape until the SFX showcase second half. The sex comedy is dated and subtle but the rollercoaster of demonic bad behaviour that eventually sprouts from it is well worth sticking around for. Jack is wonderful here but it is fair to say he only really generates heat in his one-on-one moments with Sarandon. Cher is not a great screen presence but the supporting cast which includes Michelle Pfeiffer, Richard Jenkins and a very game Veronica Cartwright ably carry the film.
Ira Sachs directs Isabelle Huppert, Brendan Gleeson and Marisa Tomei in this ensemble drama where a family assemble around their dying actress mother in a Portuguese seaside town.
Was this commissioned by the Sintra tourist board to show off their pleasant locale? Or as a tax shelter dodge by movie loving capitalists? Whatever the reason for this terminally half hearted production, all the impressive acting talent assembled look uncommitted and listless. Huppert in particular cannot hide her boredom during certain scenes.
Spike Lee directs John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody and Mira Sorvino in this period drama following a community of Italian-Americans the summer their streets are terrorised by serial killer David Berkowitz.
Being a big Spike Lee fan I remember this being a jolting disappointment at the cinema. Lee has such little affection or respect for these characters – they shriek, harangue and attack each other. None of the pastoral sense of community from Do The Right Thing or Crooklyn exists here. Lee’s assessment of white people under existential pressures and in sexual flux is as damning as it is grinding. You just don’t want to be in anyone within the ensemble’s company for a prolonged time… and seemingly their subplots and hang ups get stuck in a narrative rut for what plays like FOREVER. The Son of Sam hysteria is more a framing device than a thread of reality explored with any impact… the few scenes where we witness Berkowitz’ day to day life often drift into unintended parody.
Henri-Georges Clouzot and Serge Bromberg direct Henri-Georges Clouzot, Romy Schneider and Serge Reggiani in this lost film documentary where a film historian assembles the remaining footage and explores the troubled production of the French master’s unfinished film.
Contains some stunning test footage of beautiful Romy Schneider – experimenting with colour, make-up, symmetry, fabrics, movement and geometry. And you get a rough discombobulated sketch of the narrative of the intended film. So much so that it felt very familiar. I knew I had seen this story before? One thing this documentary of “a lost classic” fails to mention is Claude Chabrol did produce the very same script in the 1990s with Emmanuelle Beart. That L’Enfer can’t have been that obscure a release as I saw it as a teenage with only minimal access to arthouse cinema!? Why pretend that does not exist? So this project is wonderful to look at, but does struggle to find new or relevant ground after the one hour mark.
John Woo directs Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lance Henriksen and Yancy Butler in this action thriller where a squad of mercenaries are hunting the homeless in New Orleans for sport.
A celebration of everything unique and everything naff about JCVD (though I don’t actually remember him doing his trademark splits here). He surfs a motorbike blasting a gun, flies through a warehouse of Mardi Gras floats with a shotgun in his hand, bites the rattle off a snake. An orgy of petrol, bullets and confetti. Easily his best movie. Woo’s first Hollywood studio project might have been forged under fire (Sam Raimi was hired as a substitute director on location and permanently poised to takeover if the suits lost faith in the master, the edit was taken over from him by the star) but the second half is brimming with the hyper-stylised high octane action you’d expect. It benefits from a memorable villain in Henriksen and in general has some amusing OTT swagger to it. A Friday Night Highlight.
Allan Moyle directs Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis and Annie Ross in this teen movie where a shy new kid at school is also a foul mouthed but inspirational anonymous pirate radio DJ by night.
One thing that frustrates me about just about every film’s page on Wikipedia is somebody has been allowed to write; “The movie is now considered a cult film.” The unsuccessful, the weird, the hyper-popular, the forgotten. They can’t all be ‘cult movies’ just because somebody rewatches themselves. Christian Slater is no longer a fashionable star… he had a fine decade long stint as “the teen Jack Nicholson”… made some fantastic films and some cute movies and was pretty memorable in all of them. And he has carried on working in a perfectly respectable regularity once the heat switched off on his career. True Romance and Heathers would be the releases of his that have retained and evolved their initial popularity but I’d say Pump Up the Volume is his finest acting role and best candidate for cult revival. It has just faded from availability in spite of being pretty fantastic. DVD copies change hands for high fees on EBay, it has never to my knowledge been available on a streaming service in the UK. Yet it has so many strengths. A witty script with real edge. A red hot debut from Samantha Mathis who has thermonuclear chemistry with her lead. A genuinely cool soundtrack featuring Leonard Cohen, The Pixies, Beastie Boys and The Descendents. A sense of rebellion and sincerity lacking from even your John Hughes and Cameron Crowe flicks. Allan Moyle is the unsung hero of my generation’s youth cinema. Times Square, this and Empire Records is an unofficial trilogy that will mean something special to film fans of a certain age. He seems attuned to how important music is to communal cohesion and discourse among kids, the fact that the hopeful already see how rigged the system they are growing up into is. His style and voice is more akin to novelists like Douglas Coupland or Jonathan Lethem than the big teen movie auteurs. Pump Up the Volume won’t change your life but it has an attitude, a philosophy and a value system that still feels rare within the genre. The ending is a little rushed and abrupt, squandering the potential of everything coming to a big head as promised. That quibble aside, if you can find the right frequency, here is a film ripe for cult re-evaluation and resurrection. Hornier than a ten peckered owl, to boot.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 