Shaka King directs LaKeith Stanfield, Daniel Kaluuya and Jesse Plemons in this dual biopic of young Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and the secret FBI informant by his side, Bill O’Neal.

What a movie! Even though it stays completely within the realms of veracity, every other scene, nearly all interactions, simmer with the threat and peril of a great psychological thriller. The movie is pregnant with doom and risk, enveloping you in a world and a mindset of justified rebellion. Fred Hampton’s short but worthy life gets the lead performance it deserves in Kaluuya’s persuasive and charismatic powerhouse. LaKeith Stanfield continually impresses in all his projects but here he stretches every muscle of his acting core playing the tragic and conflicted snitch. Shaka King’s visual sensibilities are unshowy but impactful, I was often impressed by the unfussy luxury of his shot compositions and eye for period detail. This can’t have had the biggest budget in the world for its recreation of Sixties urban America but there’s never a detail that feels forced, cheap or fudged. The one stylistic choice that feels less organic but wholly successful is Craig Harris and Mark Isham’s foregrounded music. The discordant jazz score moans, swipes and bides it time throughout scenes, like being trapped in a room with an unseen wounded predator. Easily the finest Black Panther movie to date but also probably the best undercover movie ever made.

9

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also 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/

Michael Chaves directs Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson and Ruairi O’Connor in this period horror sequel based on a true story where paranormal investigating couple, The Warrens, try to help a possessed boy accused of murder.

A brave but unsuccessful attempt to open the franchise out and away from the haunted house genre. Farmiga and Wilson seem underserved by the script, the moments of gentle wholesome campness in their ghostbusting marriage are markedly absent. Where James Wan would put you through the wringer with 15 to 20 minutes of sustained scares as one sequence, Chaves goes for little regular bursts which lack the patient escalation that is the series’ hallmark. There’s plenty of shock imagery seeded throughout the investigation narrative but these arrive with minimal tension. You’ll remember the possessed contortions, the rats and a charging corpse. Whether the lack of chills also had something to do with our continually chatty, whispering audience can’t be discounted. It appears that cinema etiquette has vanished over lockdown going by my last two visits. And here was a movie that needed optimum silence and darkness at points to work.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also 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/

Simon McQuoid directs Lewis Tan, Jessica McNamee and Josh Lawson in this video game adaptation reboot about a violent tournament of fighters with supernatural powers.

I was the only person in my cinema screen without a top knot haircut, the only person in my socially distanced row not checking their phone for half the movie. It starts strong with a period prologue that feels like Takashi Miike’s Mortal Kombat but once we are in the present the plot takes the form of a Saturday morning kid’s cartoon. There is way too much exposition, the shooting style is murky and fuzzy whenever not a close-up and the fights are edited poorly. Yet the production values have merit – the Outworld sequences neatly evoke the fantasy stylings of Masters of the Universe or Army of Darkness. As a casual fan of the games I relished seeing the gory fatalities and the character designs. At near two hours, there’s not nearly enough “FINISH HIM!” or “GET OVER HERE!” to really make you again want to sit through the painstakingly set-up sequel. And permanently wisecracking Aussie Kano is mercifully put to bed after simultaneously stealing your attention and swamping the film in poorly written quips. After his grating omnipresence is defeated, you might look forward to a Mortal Kombat movie populated only by the silent, gruff and bland. Personally this scratched an itch that I hope I never have again. A mess but adequate given its pedigree.

5

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also 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/

The Coen Brothers direct Tom Hanks, Irma P. Hall and J.K. Simmons in this comedy remake of the Ealing caper movie where an unlikely bunch of hoods have to kill the indomitable little old landlady they are using as a cover for their heist.

Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy aside, I don’t really rate Joel & Ethan’s broad comedies. I know they have their fans but for me they feel like shaggy dog wastes of their rare talents. Nobody makes movies like those Coens so to see them squander their technical perfection, sunny nihilism and syllable perfect way with words on fart gags and pratfalls is kinda galling. When they season their darkest thrillers or eccentric dramas with a bit of dumb comedy I’m fine with that, only they can seemingly get away with such daring shifts in tone. When, like with The Ladykillers, it feels like two geniuses goofing off at the back of the classs between bigger project I’d personally rather they took a year out rather than dilute the brand. One of the more universally unloved of their back catalogue, The Ladykillers isn’t actually without merit. It looks the part, has that delicious Coen-esque dynamic where pure good and true evil is defined and personified but we are stuck with blowhards and schmoos somewhere in the middle, and Tom Hanks delivers a game slice of hammy villainy. His scenes with a wonderful Irma P. Hall crackle, together they make the first half an hour sing. Then the crime plot kicks in and we halfheartedly watch the goons one by one get their just desserts. The heist and the deaths that follow feel roughly sketched. The zings and repartee get left behind. An hour in, all the pep has abandoned the project, then 90 minutes in we finally, at long last, start “ladykilling” in full knowledge the finishing line is already in sight. It all closes on a whimper, never once achieving a crescendo. Too well cast and visually well crafted to deserve its rotten reputation but not a patch on the original. It just deflates so early, as if The Coens too realised after the strong set-up, remaking an Ealing classic wasn’t probably the best use of their powers after all.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also 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/

Nagisa Ōshima directs Yusuke Kawazu, Miyuki Kuwano and Yoshiko Kuga in this Japanese teen thriller where a schoolgirl and a student fall in love over a scheme to rob middle aged drivers who try to rape the hitchhiking bait.

Seedy but poppy. This is a very vibrant film with a very dour view of humanity and first love. As the ensemble slowly expands, the troubled lovers seem beset by all corners of society, a jagged worldview forms. Oshima defines everyone older as a mass who don’t just want to crush the ill fated union, but suck it dry like vampires. It makes for a pessimistic and ugly prosecution of teen lust and all the generations. A bit tabloid hyperbolic at times but this straddles the line between exploitation and arthouse with a rare deftness. Shame it is so continually bleak really.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also 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/

Jean Negulesco directs Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable in this romantic comedy where three fashion models go for broke and give themselves a year to each snag a man of exclusive means.

Opulent fluff in then revolutionary CinemaScope and Technicolor. Monroe and Grable go for laughs with broad characters that suit their personas. This is Bacall’s movie though. She’s marvellous as the mastermind too shrewd for her own good. The men don’t really deserve these stunners, only old hand William Powell can keep pace with them on screen, but that’s part of the joke. When we get off of the obvious soundstage sets there are wonderful Joseph MacDonald shots of Post-War Manhattan.

8

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also 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/

Hou Hsiao-hsien directs Lin Yang, Jack Kao and Tianlu Li in this Taiwanese drama where the oldest daughter in a troubled family tries to hold things together working at KFC and studying at night school.

Really struggled to follow this and care. The gangster subplot just comes out of nowhere and never makes sense. It kinda ambushes the movie for little gain. At its best as a pseudo-documentary of young adults in Taipei. The shots of them partying, working, studying have a dreamy nostalgia to them. As a narrative its all over the shop.

4

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also 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/

George Miller and George Ogilvie direct Mel Gibson, Tina Turner and Bruce Spence in this post-apocalyptic sequel where Max strikes a deadly deal with Auntie of Bartertown… To enter the Thunderdome.

Always seen as a quality dip in the series… for understandable reasons. George Miller’s regular producing collaborator Byron Kennedy died in a helicopter crash, scouting desert locations before production. In his grief, Miller decided to focus on the action, splitting directorial duties, essentially demoting himself to overworked Second Unit Director. The silver lining is two thirds of Mad Max 3 is all action; our night in the Thunderdome is a gladiatorial battle on bungee harnesses that fizzes with danger, the epic finale chase – as makeshift vehicles hunt each other through the wastelands – delivers exactly what you bought a ticket for. Eye popping carnage. The middle 30 minutes with that tribe of Peter Pan kids… well… its heart is in the right place but sadly it does obliterate the tone of a movie series that was always daringly 18 cert. Tina Turner isn’t winning any Oscars but at least is iconic as the big bad. Mel can carry this kinda thing in his sleep. He seems happy to let the expansive production rollick and explode around his serene anchor point. “WE DON’T NEED ANOTHER HERO!”

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also 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/

Clive Barker directs Scott Bakula, Famke Janssen and Daniel von Bargen in this supernatural mystery where a detective investigates the strange deaths of members from a stage magician’s old cult.

Something that these days would be described as “horror adjacent”, this is ram jammed full of disturbing gloopy imagery in the service of a wayward private eye narrative. Noir where you can expect a generous serving of gore or creature FX work every other scene. The bookending sequences with the Manson-esque desert cult are deliriously overblown, everything else makes for good trailer and Fangoria shots. The plot itself is wobbly and overpacked. There are flashy loose ends that never go anywhere (detective Harry D’Amour’s flashbacks to an exorcism, a baboon). You’d struggle to say our protagonist does much more than turn up and bear witness to whatever weird shit or fated death is waiting behind each door he kicks down. He has very little interactive affect on the plot. Which is a shame as this was one of Scott Bakula’s rare attempts to convert his Quantum Leap stardom into a big screen career. It is the only studio film I can think of where he was the name above the title. He makes a good fist of being the Indiana Jones or Sam Spade of the uncanny but alas the film was unloved by the studios who traded it between themselves during a catalogue sale. It also is the last time Barker directed a feature. Fair to say his storytelling is still too raggedy to really fit the mainstream, the master of horror prefers shifting dream logic to tight Robert McKee structure. You can’t help but wonder what might have happened if a friendly collaborator (producer, editor, anyone) gave him the note to put his hero in more direct peril, with some kind of invested presence within the grand evil that unfolds? Would have helped Bakula make more of an impact and elevated Lord Of Illusion from being a mere eye catching curio to a genuine lost treasure.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also 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/

Jackie Chan directs himself, Maggie Cheung and Bill Tung in this Hong Kong action comedy where the naval marine is transferred to corrupt police precinct during a period of revolution.

Jackie’s The Untouchables with the loveable multi-hyphenate in period garb, being a beacon of honesty in a mire of bribes and even singing the theme song. If you’ve come for fights then this is a little disappointing. The emphasis is mainly on farce… with physicality replacing repartee. The finale contains the expected carnival of lethal stunts, with even future arthouse stalwart Maggie Cheung gamely putting her life at risk. Feels like a jumble of all the ideas they couldn’t find a home for in the first Project A but none of those ideas are unworthy of your entertainment receptors.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also 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/