Michele Soavi directs Barbara Cupisti, Tomas Arana and Asia Argento in this Italian horror where a group of priests, academics and tourists are trapped in a church that hides a portal to hell.
Quite clearly started life as a third Demons movie. It has the same form and beats. The emphasis here is less on jump scares, pandemonium and inventive kills. It is creepier and with greater focus on dread. If you wanna watch Hieronymus Bosch’s worst imagery come to life then you’ve come to the right shop. Me, I prefer the more straight out siege and chase nastiness of Demons 1&2. Still, you’ll struggle to predict who will make it to the daybreak and some of the monster FX are top notch.
Cathy Yan directs Haoyu Yang, Mason Lee and Meng Li in this ensemble drama where a half dozen disparate characters suffer ups and downs in capitalist China.
Nice mosaic plotting, memorable personalities, strong vision. One or two of the threads don’t really stretch any further than their initial concept but nothing outstays its welcome. The ending is optimistic if not particularly believable. You saying there’ll be no emotional fallout after certain relationships are betrayed?! I’m a fan of this multi character form… Altman, Dazed and Confused, Pulp Fiction, Holding On, etc. This is the best and most naturally entertaining recent example.
John McTiernan directs Sean Connery, Lorraine Bracco and Elias Monteiro Da Silva in this action romance where a pair of mismatched scientists try to find the secret ingredient for a cure for cancer before their unique swathe of rainforest is destroyed.
As an attempt to make an ecologically worthy update of The African Queen, Medicine Man has its heart in the right place. McTiernan is in his element in an impressive on location jungle shoot. The leads have heat right up until the point they start admiring each other. Bracco is really good here, I’m never entirely sure what the Razzies see in their so called worst nominations every year, and this proves a case in point. After the first act though the story is stuck in a rut and doesn’t really cover any new ground. We science, we bicker, we abseil, we flirt… rinse and repeat.
Harry Bromley Davenport directs Bernice Stegers, Philip Sayer and Maryam d’Abo in this British sci-fi horror where a missing father returns from a Lovecraftian dimension and has a reality altering effect on his estranged family.
Unsettling, seedy and illogical. Almost like watching a no budget David Lynch sitcom, only with zero confidence that the storytellers know what they are doing even if you don’t. The FX have a Seventies Doctor Who ‘charm’ and the ever gorgeous Maryam d’Abo shows her 007s as a loved up French au pair. Small pleasures.
Takeshi Kitano directs Ken Kaneko, Masanobu Andô and Michisuke Kashiwaya in this Japanese coming-of-age drama where two delinquents bunk off from school getting involved in petty crime and boxing.
A simple enough teen comedy told in Beat Takeshi’s deadpan style. The cinematography is as colourful as Joe Hisaishi’s score. Things grow more serious in the second half, the mood becomes yakuza adjacent if not full fat crime thriller. We keep an eye on lots of other wistful characters as the boys become adults, and these sad little subplots intrude or illuminate on the main friendship in memorable ways.
John McTiernan and Michael Crichton direct Antonio Banderas, Vladimir Kulich and Diane Venora in this medieval actioner where a Muslim ambassador joins a squad of Vikings to stave off some cannibalistic attacks.
A notorious flop after delays and extensive reshoots pushed the budget up to an unfeasible $160 million. Once it settles into its main siege battle motions it isn’t that bad a film. Diverting, gory and atmospheric. But the storytelling is often risible, characters disappear into the chaos, you are never sure who is dead or has been erased in the rewrites and second tries. What we see is passable, if forgettable. If you worked at Touchstone in 1999 you might give pause at throwing unrecoupable dollars after bad though.
Alex Ross Perry directs himself, Carlen Altman and Kate Lyn Sheil in this indie comedy where an awkward brother helps his abrasive sister move out of her ex’s apartment.
Alex Ross Perry is a rising director whose output doesn’t quite match his reputation. You can see potential in all his films but only the recent Her Smell actually deserved the attention lavished on it. I have no doubt he’ll get there but seeing this debut compared to the French New Wave is baffling. I mean… it is in black and white… and it is pretentious. The Color Wheel is far closer in spirit to the Gen X calling card debuts of Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Whit Stillman or Kevin Smith. Kevin Smith, actually being the closest. You keep catching glimpses of something bubbling beneath the surface while the grating siblings embarrass themselves and bicker. The fact that Perry actually breaks with conformity and goes there in the end… well its a shock if not a complete surprise. He should be applauded for making you care for the daring choice the story fades out on. And I did chuckle a few times during the build up. A curio, not a classic.
NYC. The Big Apple. From Harlem to Wall Street. Brooklyn to The Bronx. Coney Island to The Statue of Liberty. Is there any city more cinematic? It can be your romantic playground or a grimy labyrinth where dreams go to die. You can be surrounded and alone. Set out like a grid but teeming with life. All the worlds art, culture, food and people piled on top of each other. I love movies set in New York. Here are some recent ones I’ve watched.
Conspiracy Theory (1997)
Richard Donner directs Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts and Patrick Stewart in this thriller where a paranoid taxi driver realises some of his outlandish conspiracy theories are bringing him to the very real attentions of a shadowy security agency.
After Princess Diana died, the U.K. seemed to collectively lean into the rather artless comforts of the just released The Full Monty. Yet the same weekend that tragedy struck, my group of mates were more palpably excited about going to see Conspiracy Theory. Mel! Julia! Donner! Action! A healthy slice of The X-Files paranoia spun into a late summer blockbuster from the makers of Lethal Weapon. The first half is a lot of gritty larks. Mel plays Jerry as a batshit but loveable creep and watching him realise his worst delusions are coming true, evading the authorities like a Looney Tunes The Fugitive, makes for Saturday night slam bang of the highest order. Highlights are a truly ridiculous escape in a wheelchair and an equally slapstick hospital runaround. His dark, stalkery obsession with Julia Roberts’ angelic lawyer is kept on the right side of acceptable, puppy dog sweet, and this is possibly one of the cleanest uses of her wholesome star power. The threat escalates with some nasty lurches, Carter Burwell’s cheeky score makes even the worst tortures and tightest spots seem like jaunty japes. The narrative does get lost in a series of repetitive looping near escapes and fake deaths by the last act. It doesn’t satisfyingly conclude so much as give up. Donner adds his usual gloss to the puddle soaked streets of Manhattan… clearly enjoying making an action romantic comedy in the borrowed settings of Scorsese and Lumet’s crunchier dramas.
7
Light Sleeper (1992)
Paul Schrader directs Willem Dafoe, Susan Sarandon and Dana Delaney in this crime drama where a high class drug dealer weighs up his options when his boss decides to retire and one of his clients turns murderous.
A respin of Taxi Driver and American Gigolo, though existing in the more rarefied world of grand hotel lobbies, neon night clubs, video rental shops and Fifth Avenue crematoriums. That garbage strike won’t last forever… in fact the real sanitation workers of New York often started cleaning up Schrader’s unsightly set dressings while filming, thinking it was actual refuse and not visual metaphor. There’s a definite sense of a city shifting… we are watching crime being gentrified. First time I visited New York I expected it to be like this, not Friends. A world where the rich are above interacting with the poor or the authorities for even their most illegal vices. Dafoe’s existential worrier, a good soul in a demon’s profession, is their conduit. Looking respectable enough to make it past security but street smart enough that he can buy a revolver in a leather bar. Had the strangest sense of déjà vu watching this. As I often do delving into films from the very early 1990s. I was just getting into film as a teenager, did I watch this late night and not log what it was? How could I forget Susan Sarandon’s enigmatic but glamorous turn as a boutique drug retailer who runs Dafoe? There’s a lot of DNA between this and Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho too. It could almost be a spin-off movie or companion novella where we follow the main cast’s pusher. Schrader really really influenced the novelist, this feels like the answer song. Other movies do all this better, many from the same maker, but in its most apt moments Light Sleeper is a very watchable character study.
6
King of New York (1990)
Abel Ferrara directs Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne and Wesley Snipes in this gangster actioner where a crime boss is released from prison and starts a war with everyone while trying to fund a neighbourhood hospital.
Again, I don’t specifically remember watching this but I must have as a kid… it is all too familiar. It is very comic booky, especially in its violence. Ferrara sets up twenty or so recognisable faces just so he can gun them down bloodily, and those faces nearly all are played by future stars… CARUSO / BUSCEMI / RANDLE / GUS FRING… even that cool guy from Frankenhooker and Street Trash plays a doomed cop. It is pretty rote and gaudy… Ferrara doesn’t have anything more to say about violence and corruption than Scarface did. But this has a brevity to it I appreciate. And Walken and Fishburne are doing fascinating work. Overacting? For sure. But really pumping it out. “He’s a fucking glitter-boy! He’s looking to get sprayed, laid, played and slayed. You know what I’m sayin’?”
7
Keith Haring: Street Art Boy (2020)
Ben Anthony directs Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Fab 5 Freddy in this documentary looking at the life and work of the iconic 1980s pop artist.
Those dancing jellybean men are a landmark touchstone to my childhood but I never really knew much about the artist who created them. This is a solid biography giving you a good firm brushstroke overview of Haring’s life, development as an artist and popularity. The view of New York’s street art movement and gay clubbing scenes of Eighties ring true with other works contemporary and current. While it doesn’t do all that much different with the standard documentary form the subject is groundbreaking enough, and the artwork prolific and stimulating, that you never grow bored. Nice that his straight laced parents had so much love for their son, when so many other gay children from his background were treated like outsiders in that era. Possibly would have preferred a tad more interrogation about a middle class white boy adopting a black urban form but maybe there really isn’t anything further to say there?
6
The Apartment (1960)
Billy Wilder directs Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray in this romantic comedy where a low level office drone loans his city centre apartment out to the philandering executives.
A very bitter drama told with sitcom quirk and zippy energy of something fluffier and safer. It looks flawless and has the barbed preciseness to land blows against gender and financial inequalities without feeling didactic. MacLaine’s Fran Kubelik is one of the first “modern” female screen characters. Putting a voice to women who want love and independence, need honesty and affection. Don’t want to be defined by their uniform or sexual history or looks. I’m not entirely sure Wilder and Diamond knew the words they put in her mouth would still ring true and quite so feminist. As brilliant writers as they are I’m sure they were just reaching to put a beatnik spin on Sugar Kane. But MacLaine finds more pathos and yearning and despondency and chagrin in the script than I’m sure ever was intended. Lemmon’s Baxter doesn’t hold up quite so well under contemporary gaze… but one point most reviewers overlook are his motivations. He isn’t doing all this for a promotion even if that’s the upshot. He is just as trapped as Fran, the bosses threaten if he doesn’t play ball and let them have his home he’ll be out on his ear. That’s why it is so unnerving to watch The Apartment as a romcom. It is about two fearful souls caught in the grift of corporate America, the patriarchy, the urban hive. Suicide attempts, workplace misconduct, alcoholism. In Soviet Russia it was viewed as a self lacerating indictment of the American system. Wilder put them straight when he was at an East Berlin Film Festival. “The Apartment could happen anywhere, in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Rome, Paris, London. The reason this picture could not have taken place in Moscow is that in Moscow nobody has his own apartment.” Humanity is corrupt whatever the system, Wilder holds up a broken mirror to us, not politics. One of Natalie’s favourites.
10
Maniac Cop (1988)
William Lustig directs Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell and Richard Roundtree in this horror exploitation flick where a New York City cop is rampaging through the streets killing criminals and citizens with vigilante brutality.
A Larry Cohen script. The whodunnit aspect works best. Even after the mystery is solved and we have some idea of which cop the killer is, all the other detectives, officers and captains remain corrupt and unheroic. It is a pretty cheapo slasher despite its anti-establishment leanings. Campbell doesn’t really give his full effort as the de facto lead but it ends with an on location bang. The last set piece looks like it puts its stuntman in some pretty lethal peril. Hope he made it out ok!?!
4
The King of Comedy (1982)
Martin Scorsese directs Robert DeNiro, Jerry Lewis and Sandra Bernhard in the black comedy where an unhinged wannabe comedian stalks a talk show host.
It isn’t gold standard Scorsese but it is still better made than most other directors’ output. Playing with video and keeping his camera fixed and mid shot for the first time ever, this is is still virtuoso in its production design and editing. We have the glorious Thelma Schoonmaker to thank for that. She cuts it so the shifts between reality and fantasy become imperceptible. How many Scorsese films end with us not sure what is dream? Too many? I love how Rupert and Jerry start off in the same place – same suit, stuck in the throng, wanting to be in that limo backseat for different reasons. They are both lonely, alienated characters. When Jerry stops to look at Pickup On South Street on one of his three tellys he isn’t admiring a Sam Fuller classic. He’s envious of the man who can travel on public transport, so faceless in a crowd he can steal from a purse and have a loaded flirtatious exchange with a stranger. Jerry (Langford / Lewis) can’t walk the streets without being catcalled and pestered. Interactions cannot happen naturally so he shuns them. He is just as sad a character as the sociopathic Rupert Pupkin. What is real in The Pup King’s world? The man who mimics him behind his back on the date. The mammoth, elaborately decorated and expensively kitted out basement under his mother’s house. The positive audience reaction to his bleak stand-up monologue. We can’t trust anything in this movie. Sandra Bernhard’s improvised performance is pretty amazing for a newcomer. The King of Comedy is a bit too tightly wound and desolate to love. But you can always zone out from the foreground action and look at that heaving Time Square crowd work. The rubbernecking onlookers ruining shots. The movie billboards advertising releases no longer showing. A harried Chinese man cutting through the action, half running to get to his own story, oblivious to the fact he is being immortalised on celluloid.
Michael Mann directs Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino and Val Kilmer in this sprawling crime drama that explores a cat and mouse game between LA’s Robbery Homicide division and some expert thieves, both led by fanatical obsessives.
Whisper it but I’m pretty sure outside of movie journalism Heat was considered a bit of an unspoken disappointment on initial release. It didn’t receive one notable awards nomination, zero Oscars, not even nods. The US box office was middling, saved by the international market. The much hyped onscreen pairing of Pacino and DeNiro happened teasingly halfway in – a subdued coffee shop conversation rather than a big face off / showdown and then they do not really touch base together until the drawn out, dialogue free foot chase finale. Pacino is full ham here (albeit gifting us the most entertaining performance of his career) and many of his improvised excesses became punchlines. The support cast of Kilmer, Tom Sizemore and Ted Levine were about to squander their reputations with poor choices within and without the industry. Jon Voigt is probably the only actor who perceptibly benefited from being cast in one of the most critically lauded studio movies of all time. You could even say the same for leads if you were being exacting. A three hour runtime was unheard of for a mainstream action release in the 1990s. After a couple of high calibre takedowns, the final drawn out moments of violence can be seen as underwhelming and minimalist. I knew as a teenage movie fan Heat was very good but I wasn’t ever sure it was a “great”.
Time has been kind. Not being an instant favourite means I’ve only rewatched it once a decade since. The undeniable qualities become more prominent as my expectations mellow. DeNiro is decisive as the consummate professional, the man whose code is a hard shell that he slowly shatters against his best instincts. That coffee shop scene is a thing of wonder – didactic, playful and bristling with chemistry. Why Bobby never got nominated is anyone’s guess? The heists when they happen are convincing, pummelling endurance tests. You are right in the shit but Mann’s bold and masterful storytelling chops mean you are never lost in the carnage. His visual sensibilities is of a clean urbanised world… designer suits, starched collars, pressed shirts. The sodium glare of LA at night is more magical and romantic than the stars in the sky. The immaculate streets of corporate uptown are waiting for the violence to upend them. You’ve never seen so many shades of grey.
What works best about Heat is it feels like a native metal movie. The purest form of a sub-genre just sitting out their in nature. This is THE cops and robbers movie. There are others but they all feel like spins or alternates or pollutions of this epic. Heat is the real deal. The dedicated police and the ‘professional’ criminals both are the uncontested titans at what they do, likewise they admire and never underestimate each other. As we see McCauley’s crew snake out of a series of ever closing loopholes, we watch Hanna’s squad draw closer and closer. Each side is given equal screentime, each member their vulnerable moment, your sympathies and identification are equal as viewer. You want DeNiro to escape and yet justice to be done, Pacino to get his man while we naughtily marvel at the thrill of the score. Three hours is room to breathe, the simplest of plots to grow detail, overgrowth, life. As immersive 2for1character study or existential action movie or macho acting masterclass Heat is “sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be.” “Drop of a hat these guys will rock and roll…” It is climbing… Shit, a decade’s time and the below score will be that rare 10.
Paul Schrader directs Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto in this drama where three friends at an automobile plant burglarise their union when their finances are stretched.
A thumping blues score from Ry Cooder. Three leads fighting for dominance. Allegedly the set was a nightmare of egos. Cocaine, brawls, guns being pulled. Pryor liked to improvise, Keitel needed five or six takes to warm up, Kotto lost his place if the chaos went too far off script. The unlikely result is onscreen… everyone gives fantastic energised, angry performances. Everyone achieves career bests. Pryor catches the most praise… the consensus is he shouldn’t be this good in a drama. But Keitel very rarely plays an Everyman and his take on it is muscular and sympathetic. Kotto gets the best four scenes. Now, one I won’t spoil but if you’ve seen Blue Collar you’ll know of its unflinching, overwhelming impact. Two others involve him tracking and laying in wait for some mob thugs. The fourth has him lay out the plight of the working man with brute logic. “They pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. The black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place.” It is an unsettling film that shifts from zany workplace comedy to gritty procedural to low level heist to paranoid conspiracy theory thriller. The final third when our anti-heroes are separated is less enjoyable; the camaraderie has left the building, characters we love grow selfish or racist (it works within the logic of the movie) and there’s a thumping car chase that feels like it is from a very different project. All these discordant elements actually are incendiary cinema… you realise long before the credits when we do leave these men it will not be a happy ending. The finest moments are the silliest though – Pryor riffing his petty complaints and scamming the IRS, good time cocaine orgies (that make zero sense in the ‘day late and a dollar short’ milieu of Schrader’s vision), Kotto dominating the workplace interactions with his laidback raspy confidence. Blue Collar is a gloriously messy film, full of pleasures, about just what a con the American Dream is for those actually sweating and grafting to achieve it. I’m surprised any factory allowed them on site to location shoot it – the labour politics are that incendiary and damning. I’m surprised it isn’t now talked about with the same reverence as Taxi Driver or Raging Bull.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 