Martin Zandvliet directs Roland Møller, Louis Hofmann and Mikkel Boe Følsgaard in the Danish WWII movie about a cruel footnote in military history where surrendered German soldiers were forced to defuse thousands of land mines hidden in the beaches of Denmark, many of them mere young boys.
A cracking little anti-war movie that is intense and briskly scripted. There are precision calculated shocks and emotional shifts here handled in a way that would make a good class example of clean cinematic storytelling. The central performance by Roland Møller as the prejudiced officer left in charge of the doomed enemy kids is robustly affecting without ever needing a monologue or saccharine moment to underline his returning humanity.
Paul W. S. Anderson directs Sanaa Lathan, Lance Henriksen and Ewen Bremner in this sci-fi horror mash-up were the iconic xenomorphs and hunters from far better movie series’ face off.
“Whoever wins. We lose.” Fair to say I was the target market for this… I obsessed over both franchises – bought the Dark Horse comics, action figures and model kits in my teens. When this arrived after a seven year drought of big screen releases for either sci-fi series, it was fair to say I was hella thirsty for acid blood and cackling countdowns. Despite Event Horizon being promising, there was something about Paul W. S. Anderson that didn’t exactly stoke up the fire of excitement. Neither Arnie nor, more importantly, Sigourney was returning. The released movie was a low toss. Not particularly spectacular – awkwardly characterless and pulling its punches in terms of gore. Slick, toothless, featureless. A disappointment. A couple of decades of even lower quality reboots and sequels down the line, has this aged any better on cautious rewatch? Not really. It feels like mercenary lowest common denominator stuff. Sanaa Lathan tries to be a memorable final girl but she merely hits her mark in an underdeveloped role. Anderson clearly loves his sets and monsters, bringing atmosphere to his abandoned Victorian whaling outpost and the alien pyramid underneath. His shooting style is just a little too clean and unfussy though. You can see the animatronics jerkily calibrating the alien queen’s artificial moves, the shifting of the traps goes at exactly the speed of four Czech men pushing a bit of heavy set dressing in unison. There’s a reason Ridley, Cameron, Fincher and even Stephen Hopkins powered into backlighting, shadow and dry ice. As well designed as the creatures are they cannot hold up to the scrutiny of a well lit lengthy close-up. Give us a bit of mystique, for fucks sake. For middling action and reheated plotting AvP might be a good starter into the franchise for the uninspired. It does exactly what it says on the tin and clearly is made by someone who slavishly adores the franchise. For those of us immersed in these series this feels very much like the bland off cuts and reheats from superior movies rather than the mother of all battles. Still, the sequel to this went the other way and that was even worse…
Dan Berk and Robert Olsen direct Bill Skarsgård, Maika Monroe and Jeffrey Donovan in this indie thriller where two hapless crime kids break into the wrong house.
Echoing the early Coen Brothers, Bound and Ted Demme, this is the kinda showy little gem that used to get its directors noticed and at least offered a big budget swing at the A-List. These days your debut seemingly needs to be to Oscar nominated before you might be offered a franchise sequel but hopefully this has caught a cannier studio head’s eye over lockdown. A blackly comic game of cat and mouse between airhead gas station robbers and far more experienced, unhinged nasty pieces of work. Kyra Sedgwick ramps up her Baby Jane mature sexiness in a sinister bit of largess. Fighting it out for most memorable actor though is a titanic struggle between Maika Monroe and Jeffrey Donovan. The scream queen excels as the sweet but resourceful Jules (think an even more spaced out Bonnie or Alabama). Donovan, who is always great in small roles, relishes this maximum screen time as the smooth tongued dapper daddy who runs this house of kitsch horrors. Everyone is impeccably attired by costume designer Stacey Berman. There’s even a punky animated credit sequence.
Xavier Dolan directs Anne Dorval, Antoine Olivier Pilon and Suzanne Clément in this drama about a violently troubled teen who finds himself back in the care of his abrasive but loving mother.
Well acted and expressively shot but you feel like it doesn’t really have anywhere to go after its introductory title cards. So wallow in grating characters’ misery wondering if the horny brat will ever calm down long enough for the closeted housewives to get it on. Digital melodrama. Sirk without the restraint, Ray without the warmth.
Makoto Tezuka directs Shingo Kubota, Kan Takagi and Kyôko Togawa in this Japanese musical comedy about a manufactured pop duo who implode at the height of their temporary fame.
An absolute blast of makeshift zaniness and self aware satire. Almost entirely a series of lo-fi pop videos strung together into a rise and fall plot, the cartoon energy never relents and we spoof punk, horror, The Beatles and anime in the breathless poppy abandon of it all. The humour is very Japanese but if you’ve seen a few Beat Takeshis you’ll have your bearings. Man of the Match is Kyôko Togawa’s preternaturally sunny superfan. I’d struggle to think of such an upbeat, smiley character who keeps you enamoured with a throwaway movie no matter what weird and wonderful tangents it disappears off to on a whim.
Nicholas Ray directs Cathy O’Donnell, Farley Granger and Howard Da Silva in this lovers on the run crime romance.
Ray’s first movie displays a mastery and irreverence to the cinematic form. The helicopter tracking shots and overlapping fades might seem old hat now but I bet they blew audiences minds back then with their storytelling flair. The doomed kids trying to survive the dragnet is pretty standard stuff, especially if you’ve seen You Only Live Once, and Granger’s dopey lead isn’t the stuff dream were ever made over. Yet Cathy O’Donnell (a new name to me) gives a wonderfully layered piece of acting as the tough but sad, yearning but lonely Keechie. She feels like a wildly different proposition from the stock femme fatales and simpering good girls and wisecracking ‘one of the boys’ of the Golden Age era.
Roman Polanski directs Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston in this neo-noir detective classic where a private detective investigates the drowning of a man during a drought.
A movie that operates in blazing sunlight, the brightness of the California weather conversely hides the corruption and human tragedy that run deep into this mystery. We spy the most important clue early on, acknowledge we have glimpsed something revelatory but it shines too incandescently for us to fully reconcile what it is. That’s masterful crime writing. Robert Towne’s way with words have never found a better story. Only in the closing moments does darkness descend, all hope is lost and the bravado of the individuals we thought were our (anti-)heroes are swept into the gutter. Jack is as sound as a bell here as the sleazy but capable gumshoe… channeling Bogart and keeping his natural razzmatazz one gear under what you would expect from him. When he is not facing mortal danger or immoral turpitude, his JJ Gittes is completely likeable son of a bitch. John Huston steals the show with just a handful of scenes as the demonic embodiment of capitalist ownership. A pessimistic education in not poking your nose into the gravy train, even if you aren’t exactly riding first class. You’ll just end up with a wounded nose or, worse, losing an eye. The American Dream is a nightmare that operates in plain sight, to reveal its dirty secrets is to doom one’s self. Rightly regarded as one of the high points of New American Cinema.
Roman Polanski directs Harrison Ford, Emmanuelle Seigner and Yorgo Voyagis in this thriller where a doctor’s wife goes missing in Paris and his only lead is a sexy young drugs mule.
Kickstarted the unofficial trilogy where Indy found himself in criminal trouble because of his wife (see also Presumed Innocent and The Fugitive), this is a bog standard Saturday night special. Ford is a great meat and potatoes movie star beaming down from on high over an average espionage mystery, making the most routine moments very watchable. Polanski adds a sleazy strangeness to on location Paris, making the beautiful city seems like a treacherous, sordid underworld. Emmanuelle Seigner is utterly gorgeous as our untrustworthy tour guide on this walk on the wild side. Ennio Morricone turns in a solid bit of scoring, not his best but does the job. This might be utterly forgettable if everyone wasn’t so effortlessly good at what they do even at half power. As it stands, like Charade or Panic Room, there’s a surfeit of indisputable talent elevating a minor pulp concoction.
Bernardo Bertolucci directs John Lone, Peter O’Toole and Joan Chen in this epic following China’s boy emperor’s fate after the Communist Revolution leaves him deposed, exiled, exploited, incarcerated and eventually released.
A genuinely compelling story that peaks at the midway point. The cloistered life of the infant emperor as he comes of age and realises his lack of power and freedom is resonant and beguiling movie making. It almost out epics David Lean, it almost usurps Farewell My Concubine (a movie whose timeline runs parallel to the titular protagonist’s here) for emotional engagement. Once we leave the Forbidden Kingdom and enter a world of coups, espionage and re-education it becomes a harder film to love. Events tumble into each other far too quickly and with less grace, it becomes easy to get lost or grow restless. The characters and the audience get a little left behind in the march of time. Puyi’s adult life as playboy, puppet king and brought down to earth citizen needed an hour’s more space to flow naturally. I would have been happier if this were a two-part four hour event. We as mainstream audiences sometime reject too readily any film that exceeds the three hour limit. Much more interrogative than Scorsese’s later and similar Kundun, this is certainly a life worthy of the grand scale historical biopic format. By following a flawed figure who acts as a dissecting line through the churn of the 20th century’s upheavals we truly witness a verisimilar cross-section of China’s modern history. Bertolucci does however somehow manage to slow things back down and recapture some of his masterpiece’s early strange energy and majestic mystery in the final moments. Certainly an experience.
Irvin Kershner directs Peter Weller, Nancy Allen and Dan O’Herlihy in this sequel to the dead cop turned cyborg law enforcer classic.
Paul Verhoeven clearly was the magic ingredient that made the original Robocop such a cult classic. This tries for all the same beats yet misses the mark more often than not. There is action but it feels lacklustre. Gory violence but it feels rationed. Satire but it lacks the same scabrous luridness. The production design is bright but not particularly credible. At least they retain the zany wold upside down future ad breaks. The best moments really are when this feels more like a kid’s action comedy… Murphy being reprogrammed to be “nice” or when he is overwhelmed by the bigger toys. Some of the top notch animatronic work to realise Peter Weller chopped up into pieces is eerily effective. There’s just not a lot of love here for the concept… if there was we’d at least reprise Basil Poledouris’s anthemic score and make sure “I’d Buy That For A Dollar!” was still clogging up the telly networks. This isn’t going to be the most sophisticated diagnosis as to what went wrong in 1990 but it all is just generally shittier by comparison to our 1987 masterpiece. I sometimes get a lot of flak for not loving Empire Strikes Back quite as much as A New Hope or Return of the Jedi. I’m just going to point out both Episode V and this have been fobbed off on the same hack director rather than someone who cares about the follow-up. Robocop 2 filled a Friday night adequately as a nostalgic entertainment but feels indefensible in direct comparison to its progenitor. Stay off the Nuke, kids!
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 