Hou Hsiao-Hsien directs Kenny Bee, Chiang Ling and Chen Mei-feng in the gentle Taiwanese drama where a substitute teacher spends a year teaching a bunch of harmless mischief makers and falling in love in a rural posting.
Innocent pranks, minor romance and air of pastoral innocence. A sweet little movie.
Mario Bava directs Barbara Steele, John Richardson and Andrea Checchi in this gothic horror where an executed witch is brought back to life and wants the nubile body of her descendant.
You can tell this was a hot potato back in its day. The uncut version wasn’t available on home video in the U.K. until the mid-nineties due to censorship. It is like a Hammer movie with flashes of extreme gore. A Hammer movie that is actually still disturbing and uneasy at times. Barbara Steele looks resplendent. The comic book set design is full fat spooky. This is what all horror movies should look like. The perfection of the graveyard opening has influenced Richard Donner, Tim Burton and the Silent Hill games for good reason. So it may not captivate for its entire runtime anymore, it is nice to see an aged whack of schlock that still feels a tad transgressive.
David Fincher directs Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker and Kristen Stewart in this one location thriller where burglars break into a mother and her child’s new home and they seek refuge in an impenetrable panic room.
Slick glossy stuff, a domino rally of domestic cliffhangers. A minor film for Fincher but one of Jodie’s best pure entertainments. Turns its screws with maximum efficiency but never truly twists to a point were it breaks away from its initial home invasion concept. Jared Leto’s two short planks mastermind is the only weak acting link and he seemingly is copying Brad Pitt’s physicality from Fight Club. Which raises all kinda questions; Did Fincher instruct him to play it like that? If not, why didn’t he stop him?
Stephen Sommers directs Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and Arnold Vosloo in this adventure movie where treasure hunters uncover the resting place of a cursed but angry mummy.
Will always hold a fond place in the memories of my generation. The summer blockbuster that unexpectedly filled the entertainment deficit that The Phantom Menace left in its wake. This is vibrant and simple stuff, delivered with an almost shameless chutzpah. Any other year it might have been written off as a rubbery Indiana Jones rip-off, it certainly goes on far too long and tries to get away with too much. Yet keeping their heads energetically above all the messy, unoriginal, slightly racist fakeness is a self aware bit of brio by peak Brendan Fraser and a star making turn by a game Rachel Weisz. They have fizzing old school chemistry and you kinda wish there were half a dozen less doomed characters and fifty less ropey CGI shots so they can have even more room to spark off each other.
Robert Zemeckis directs Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer and Jahzir Bruno in this second adaptation of Roald Dahl’s childrens’ classic about a boy who finds himself in a hotel full of murderous witches.
A relatively faithful retread which lops off some of the creepier embellishment but pretty much just remakes the Angelica Huston / Nic Roeg variation for current tastes. I usually like Anne Hathaway but she’s way too much here. The only element that raised a smile rather than bored was Chris Rock’s overly enthusiastic narration. What was that weird Roald Dahl ident in the middle of the credits? Why was it at such a jarring moment rather than the very start or the very end? Smooth and unnecessary, worst of all… often tedious.
Steven Spielberg directs Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum in this sci-fi adventure movie where a theme park with resurrected dinosaurs as the main attractions runs amok.
The game changer. I was more excited about Last Action Hero that summer… and adamantly stuck to my guns for at least a decade over which was the better blockbuster. But now I concede… Spielberg’s mastery, John Williams’ rousing score, Stan Winston’s amazing physical creature design, Phil Tippet’s go motion dinosaurs, Goldblum’s eccentric sass. All add up to a beautiful, lively concoction, one that still marvels after dozens upon dozens of revisits. If I was picking nits, I’d suggest that the wonder of seeing dinosaurs dominates over the action. Aside from the iconic Tyrannosaurus-Rex escape, the set pieces are minor cliffhangers; an electric fence being turned on, a race down a dark hallway, getting the computerised door locks to work. The movie just ends abruptly with the survivors somehow escaping into the credits yet seemingly no safer or with any less lethal creatures to deal with at the end of the third act than the shit they were in at the start of the third act. Not that this really matters as we came for dinosaurs and thrills, Spielberg delivers breathlessly. Delivers in a way that would have been impossible to achieve any decade earlier, and of a class that studios seem unconcerned about in the decades since.
Daniel Wolfe directs Sameena Jabeen Ahmed, Conor McCarron and Gary Lewis in this British thriller where a young couple must outrun the Pakistani relatives of the girl and their hired white thugs who intend to perform an “honour killing.”
I usually score movies on how much I would want to rewatch them. This is so unrelentingly grim and seedy that I had to change the metric slightly. Apart from one incongruous breathless caravan dance sequence to Patti Smith’s Horses there is scant here to enjoy on a second watch. The dark, misty depiction of the North is a little too extreme but certainly captivating, the constant bearing down of the threat utterly gripping. Race, religion, poverty, crime is given a callous review in passing. The lead performance by Sameena Jabeen Ahmed is convincing, you do have to wonder why the British film industry hasn’t further capitalised on such an outstanding debut? The saddest part of this very miserable film is the lovers on the run seem on to the final ebb of their affair, in less heightened circumstances they probably would have broken up and returned to their families without threat or coercion by the doomed night we enter their lives. Whatever thrill and happiness has been used up.
Jan De Bont directs Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt and Cary Elwes in this disaster movie where scientists chase tornados hoping to test a new gizmo that will help them predict their destructive movements better.
Twister was the big one of the summer of 1996. And while it never was going to win any acting gongs or screenplay plaudits, it delivers on its trailer’s promise in spades. For two hours you get to see apocalyptic weather from some dizzyingly close perspectives. Coming from the director of Speed, he engineers sequences where vehicles race and pursue and escape massive, swirling behemoths of devastation over and over again. Twister is a one trick pony that loves performing its impressive trick. Even though it is an FX extravaganza, De Bont doesn’t push the CGI to breaking point like many of his mid-nineties peers. It was a new technology that had severe limitations as to what it could convincingly recreate on the big screen. Spielberg and Cameron knew it was better to augment practical FX that survive at the forefront in the spotlight for prolonged periods with this new magic wand. But swirling masses and crazy debris actually fitted well within the burgeoning effects method’s wheelhouse. So here we get hurricanes and flying cows a plenty. It is a testament to the calculated orchestration of the set pieces that De Bont manages to put us in the path of danger again and again, every time making us squeeze our palms tighter as the peril unfolds. A rare lead role for Bill Paxton in a blockbuster, here the usually quirky scene stealer plays things straight and square jawed. He makes a fine fist of being a budget Kevin Costner or cut rate Harrison Ford… Meanwhile, lots of recognisable faces drive the other jeeps and RVs, none of them making quite as indelible an impression as Bill might have in a showy support.
Hou Hsiao-hsien directs Fong Fei Fei, Kenny Bee and Anthony Chan in this Taiwanese romantic comedy where a city girl avoids meeting her arranged suitor by taking a trip to the country, there a civil engineer catches her eye.
The disowned debut of a revered arthouse director. I haven’t watched any of his later ‘classics’ yet. This was a vehicle for the pop star and TV presenter known as The Queen of Hats. She wears plenty of hats, her outfits are pretty sweet. It is cute and girly, the only way this frippery stands out from every romcom ever is the two male suitors actually get along quite nicely when they eventually cross paths.
Chia Yung-Liu directs Cynthia Rothrock, Kiu Wai Miu and Ken Tong in this Hong Kong martial arts comedy where an FBI agent and two inept policemen find themselves keeping tabs on a diamond smuggler.
Cheap and with some very sexist and homophobic humour, this still manages to come alive when Rothrock is allowed to kick ass. The warehouse finale is something to behold, until it arrives you’ll just have to sit through a very bad taste, tone deaf mash-up of Lethal Weapon and Stakeout.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 