Abel Ferrara directs Tom Berenger, Billy Dee Williams and Melanie Griffith in this crime thriller where the thugs who run a stripper agency based around 42nd Street find business dries up when a slasher starts mutilating the girls.

If only a movie could live up to its first five minutes. As the opening credits roll through the sleazy streets of Manhattan, we hear an actual New York Doll singing about New York Dolls and peak Melanie Griffiths stripping and gyrating and thrusting while a baying crowd lap up every neon-lit revealed curve of her flesh. You feel hot and sticky… there’s an anonymous freak cutting his way up to the star girl… suddenly the strip bars are deserted and girls are pulling out… the mafia wants action… And nothing really happens. It just kinda idles in the electric puddle milieu. I don’t mind hanging out in this era and this location but it is a long wait until the eventual happenstance alleyway fight that wraps things up neatly. The killer remains uncredited.

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/

Robert Aldrich directs Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine and Keith Carradine in this Depression era action movie where the unofficial king of the hobos, A-No. 1, wants to ride a rail line policed by the deadly conductor Shack.

Barneys, stunts, bum humour, scruffy period dress, breathtaking locations and choo-choos. Either you wanna watch dirty Marvin and nasty Borgnine old man fight on top of a speeding train with chains and 2by4s or you don’t. Don’t waste my time if you are the latter! “Stay off the tracks. Forget it. Its a bum’s world for a bum. You’ll never be Emperor of the North Pole, kid. You had the juice, kid, but not the heart and they go together. You’re all gas and no feel, and nobody can teach you that, not even A-No.1. So stay off the train, she’ll throw you under for sure. Remember me for that. So long, kid.”

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/

David Michôd directs Timothée Chalamet, Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris in this dark retelling of Henry V’s battles with France.

From a director not shy of darkness and frenzy, I want to be able to pinpoint more reasons why I couldn’t enjoy this beyond the winsome and flat Chalamet. But I can’t. He’s just a wet, unconvincing presence as always. This feels like Game of Thrones cosplay, wasting a strong cast who are subservient to a wafer thin lead. Robert Pattinson makes the best impression as a punkishly arrogant Dauphin, proof that there is a way out of the pretty boy ghetto. I doubt wee Timothée will ever reconfigure himself as someone you look forward to being cast though, he really is just a wan face… After a while I was opening side windows to look up actors and check my emails… there was no way to fully engage with Michôd well staged vision when we kept returning to such an unlikable anachronistic drip leading the charge.

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/

Kōji Fukada directs Tadanobu Asano, Mariko Tsutsui and Kanji Furutachi in this Japanese mystery where a strange loner moves in with a family, pulling at their quiet existence with insidious intent.

Slow burn and open to multiple interpretations, Fukada’s domestic thriller explores the unspoken secrets between people who should have nothing hidden from each other. The whole movie pivots on a shocking incident in the middle so I don’t want to say too much. Don’t expect set pieces or resolution… this is very much an exploration of the sides of ourselves we do not show even to those we share our lives with. Strong acting from Asano and especially Tsutsui. Fukada lays a strikingly simple red and white colour plan onto the often eerily unpopulated suburban world.

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/

Guy Hamilton directs Roger Moore, Jane Seymour and Yaphet Kotto in this 007 action movie where Bond investigates a drug distributor and dodgy ambassador who share the services of a psychic virgin.

The one where Bond runs over the alligator! EON’s confidence that they have the right man to replace Connery is evident. Moore is given little fanfare in his introduction, it feels very much like business as usual rather than a forced rebranding. He in turn has no interest in aping Connery and just relaxes through the globetrotting and enforced perils in his own inimitable suave as fuck style. Almost too relaxed! The script doesn’t have any big action until the final third and then most of it is an endless speed boat chase through the bayou – more interested in gags than thrills. The passable action is the only element that lets Live And Let Die down though. Everything from the dainty innocent sexpot to the rollicking Wings theme song cooks. There is some controversy about the voodoo and blaxploitation elements. Bond has never been, and should never be, a bastion of good taste. A weak defence would be it is far less gallingly racist than Fleming’s novel. A strong counter though I found put eloquently in a Den of Geek retrospective: “Kananga, Tee Hee, and Baron Samedi are all intelligent, charming and, crucially, competent villains who are depicted as Bond’s equals.” Thanks Max Williams for making a fantastic point… Live And Let Die abandons Blofeld and gives 007 some proper memorable fresh threats to face of against. Kotto, Julius Harris and Earl Jolly Brown make for positively formidable opponents and anyone who has witnessed Geoffrey Holder’s unrestrained weirdness as Baron Samedi knows these are exactly the strong support performances that make for an outstanding Bond. The pleasing supernatural notes have never been deployed in the franchise again but they meant Moore began his tenure with an indelible explosion of cool and colour.

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/

Wes Anderson directs George Clooney, Meryl Streep and Jason Schwartzman in this stop motion animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s childrens classic about a fox who steals from some vengeful farmers.

Anderson bolts on his shabby chic house style and Manhattan neuroses to the beloved tale, not always seamlessly. There’s a hyper cool wit to the script that makes you forgive all the additions and alterations. It looks comfy and raggedy enough to marvel but I doubt kids really get the archness of it all or care about psychological anxieties of the family. Still any scene were Clooney’s impeccably cast Mr Fox faces off against Willem Dafoe’s Nouvelle Vague rat is a joy.

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/

Brad Anderson directs Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin and Michael Eklund in this thriller where a killer traps a teen girl in the boot of his car and a 911 operator must locate her before she disappears.

The first hour of this is tight as a drum. The always reliable and underrated Brad Anderson turns the screws until they squeak. The finale makes the mistake of abandoning its well defined post for a poor man’s retread of The Silence of The Lambs. And while this decision forgoes the strengths of the high concept, it at least gives us a gory wrap up.

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/

Rob Reiner directs John Cusack, Daphne Zuniga and Nicollette Sheridan in this teen road movie where a mismatched pair of co-eds travel across America together; one too see her boyfriend, the other to make it with a dream woman.

A nice little respin on It Happened One Night… the romantic comedy elements chime best here. A shockingly young looking Cusack manages to translate quite a fratty jock-ish character into a likeable lead… on paper he is certainly a bit of a dick. There’s plenty of laughs and energy even if it very rarely strays from the most travelled route these things must follow.

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/

Tomas Alfredson directs Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Tom Hardy in this espionage mystery where a fired intelligence expert must figure out if the Russians have a mole in his old outfit.

A small confession: I have tried to finish John le Carré’s landmark thriller three times over my life and never gotten more than halfway through it. Let The Right One In director Alfredson recreates the mundanity, sadness and mistrust that I struggled with on the written page perfectly. His vision of Seventies London and the sad little bureaucrats who play games with each other’s lives is a seedy world of grime, dust and beiges. He populates it with the very cream of British screen acting. Everyone on top form, none more so than Gary Oldman in a career best as Smiley, a cog of coiled suspicion. All making for an endlessly rewatchable whodunnit.

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/

Christopher Nolan directs Guy Pearce, Joe Pantoliano and Carrie Anne Moss in this detective thriller where a man who cannot make new memories tries to avenge his wife’s murder in a tale told backwards.

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10

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/