Hong Sang-soo directs Kim Min-hee, Lee Eun-mi and Song Seon-mi in this Korean arthouse drama where a woman takes a break from her husband to visit three old friends, only for an overbearing man to interrupt each catch-up.
One joke told three times over, each time at length. There’s a stunning feral cat in the first segment. Everyone has some nice drinks and snacks. The conversations are self consciously non-important mumbling with vague allusions to gender expectations and happiness. I don’t think there’s going to be a movie that ever unlocks this particular director’s work for me.
John Landis directs Anne Parillaud, Robert Loggia and Anthony LaPaglia in this horror comedy where a female vampire with a conscience only drinks the blood of criminals, which is a fine plan until she leaves a mafia don to turn…
Half the supporting cast of The Sopranos mooch around waiting to get bit in a release that is nowhere near as scary as An American Werewolf In London and nowhere near as funny as An American Werewolf In London. The one thing it gets right are the very special FX. The gore is flowing, eyes glow eerily and when a baddie gets a suntan… all bets are off. The sequence where Don Rickles crumbles into glowing ash is iconic. There’s a reasonable amount of sex and nudity too but these sequences often seem there in place of the plot coming to any kind of boil. It really just idles about noisily, lewdly and then just ends. I have a teenagers’ nostalgia for this from my video rental days but if you aren’t of the very particular vintage where boobs, bush, blood and Goodfellas parody acting seemed like mind blowing good value for £2.50 then you probably aren’t going to get a lot out of it. Was meant to be La Femme Nikita’s big Hollywood break, she’s probably the best performance in Innocent Blood despite struggling with certain foreign words and shifts in emotions.
Steven Spielberg directs Tom Cruise, Samantha Morton and Colin Farrell in this sci-fi chase thriller where a future cop, who solves crimes before they happen using images from psychics brains, finds himself on the run when he is predicted to be a murderer.
Not as spectacular as I remember. A fantastic opening sequence where Cruise manipulates the dream imagery of a flash forward to a crime is the high point. We are right beside the dependable star scanning the Hitchcockian Plus Plus homage to find its location before it occurs. Spielberg shows us the concept with a masterful, playful elan and as a mini-movie in its own right – it is among his best work. The rest of the film is a choppy prestige take on The Fugitive. Cobbled together from set pieces from jobbing writers’ various drafts that are tonally inconsistent and often inconsequential. A barney through a factory is resolved with Cruise slowly gliding out in an automated car, as slowly and as casually as a man turning into a traffic jam. A grim eye transplant set piece where Cruise cannot remove his blindfold for twelve hours, as we and he are warned he will go blind if he does, ends with zero ramifications. This often feels like Spielberg behind the pace… the plot strands tighten together in the strict formation of a Shyamalan narrative rug pull. The mega corporation defined world building has the distinct air of Verhoeven (the earliest drafts of the script were developed as a Total Recall sequel). There’s nothing inherently wrong with Spielberg taking in new influences but he used to set the trends or exist well above them, so it can’t help but feel like a step backwards for the groundbreaking wunderkind to start cribbing from such recent talents. There are positives… the noir-ish elements, a regular respite from the haphazard dash, where Cruise meets a series of ageing suspects to further his investigation are given room to make impact. The finale feels cheekily oblique on rewatch (much like Total Recall… reality is called into question long before the happy ending unspools far too neatly into place). Before production started Spielberg invited a panel of scientists and commentators to suggest the cultural and technological advances we might see in fifty years time. That attention to detail shows throughout. The vision of 2054 is sober and believable, sieved through the emergent security concerns of the early 21st century as much as genre classics that have gone before it. The Gap still exists, Vomsticks are a thing, yoga has evolved nightmarishly. Samantha Morton is memorable as the weird, closeted psychic accuser. Minority Report is a reasonable one watcher made by a craftsman… though the overwhelming brightness of it all is another choice that is quite questionable. Why Janusz Kaminski painfully bathes so many of the settings in almost blinding light is beyond me? Maybe he knows this is a blockbuster that promises a lot but doesn’t warrant looking into for too long. You wouldn’t question someone if they said it was their favourite movie, equally you wouldn’t be surprised if it were a pointless answer on the quiz show Pointless if the category was Tom Cruise or Steven Spielberg movies.
Edith Carlmar directs Liv Ullmann, Atle Merton and Rolf Søder in this teen romance where an upright young man takes his delinquent girlfriend away to a remote country cabin, only for the adults to interrupt their idyllic getaway.
Future arthouse royalty Ullmann kickstarts her career in this piece of cheesecake fluff. You can broach it as a low energy drama but it clearly has been made with at least one eye on the international exploitation circuit. The quick scenes of frolicking nudity are innocent enough as Ullmann romps through the Norwegian countryside starkers. But the endless lingering shots of her in her scanties and tight hotpants have clearly been lensed with the dirty mac brigade in mind. The Soho regulars must have struggled through the lengthy interludes where the kids make daisy chains and steal a sheep during its two week run at the Cameo-Royal on Charing Cross Road in the early Sixties. They probably breathed a grunting sigh of relief when the enigmatic older drifter turned up at the halfway mark to lead our eponymous protagonist astray again. Once he moves in with our temporary Adam & Eve the sexual tension rises steadily.
Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz direct Zack Gottsagen, Shia LaBeouf and Dakota Johnson in this road movie where a down syndrome wrestling fan and a down on his luck fisherman go on the run in North Carolina.
A sweet and low stakes riff on Rain Man and Midnight Run. The leads all give far better performances than you’d expect, respective genetic conditions and awful back catalogues withstanding. Two thirds of the cast spend nearly the entire runtime tops off… sadly Johnson is the fully clothed spoilsport! Doesn’t really reinvent the wheel but a pleasant watch… even with some lurching, not entirely necessary, swings into brutality.
J. Lee Thompson directs Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Polly Bergen in this neo-noir where a lawyer’s family are harassed by a sociopath recently released from prison who blames the straight laced man for his incarceration.
Explicitly cruel and nasty for a mainstream release of its era, up there with Psycho. Mitchum’s beating of a good time girl and his lingering looks at little Lori Martin’s underage body are creepy and taboo breaking. He’s a compelling and strangely attractive monster. Always one legal step ahead and happy to toy with his prey in a series of atmosphere heavy set pieces. The monologue where he talks Peck’s staid white hat through the merciless sexual destruction of his ex-wife’s happiness is a masterclass. It is hard for Peck to really share top billing with such bristling behemoth of a star turn. The river boat finale is a drawn out, murky treat. You’ll be utterly gripped. Bernard Herrman’s score is an urgent doom laden elegy that really gets under your skin. Sam Leavitt’s B&W cinematography ups the contrast the further into the deadly mire we wade. By the time Mitchum’s definitive Max Cady is snapping necks in the swamp the screen is engorged in darkness. Features strong support work from Martin Balsam and Telly Savalas.
Charles Frend directs John Mills, Kenneth More and Harold Warrender in this big screen recreation of Scott’s doomed expedition to reach the South Pole.
An Ealing Studio classic that left me cold. The fundraising and team recruiting first hour is flat, filled with stiff upper lip acting. The more visually impressive Antarctic scenes do still have some power but the dwindling men are given so little to do but stoically suffer in silence as bad decisions and the elements seal their fate.
Fritz Kiersch directs Kathy Long, Andrew Divoff and Ginger Lynn Allen in this action movie where a vengeful blonde rides into town to take down a biker gang.
A modern day DTV remake of High Plains Drifter with background goon roles for Danny Trejo and the gnarled guy who Arnie steals his clothes from in T2. Meant as a vehicle for former Kickboxing champion and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman stunt double Kathy Long. She’s no Gina Carano, proving too stiff with her minimal dialogue and low stakes brawling. And a lot of this is cool posturing rather than ass whupping in a desert town. We do get a sex scene that somewhat surprisingly doesn’t involve porn star gone mainstream actor Ginger Lynn Allen. She actually gives the best performance as the town harpie. I watched this to try out something else in Tuff Turf director Fritz Kiersch forgotten movie back catalogue. Looks like the teen gang movie treat was an outlier.
Deon Taylor directs Michael Ealy, Meagan Good and Dennis Quaid in the yuppie in peril thriller where a rich couple buy their dream home in the country… only for the former owner to keep popping by with malevolent intent.
A revival of all the old tropes which makes its lead couple far too unlikeable for us to ever care about them. Now part of the joy of these class war home invasions always used to be us serfs seeing the upwardly mobile have their success torn apart by a psycho… but Good and (especially) Ealy are such bimbos that you wish the screws started turning a lot sooner and even more viciously. Quaid is hammy and OTT, it is such a relentless spin of tics and glaring he almost saves the film. The fact he does half his leering and lashing out in a red cap will mean this rote release will find itself being picked apart in a fair few “Cinema in the Trump era” dissertations. More of interest is that The Intruder shares a big twist with a far superior, celebrated movie of the same year. One final criticism, the incongruously hard hip hop soundtrack is misguided and disruptive. Imagine if someone decided to include continual blasts of Slipknot and Insane Clown Posse in a Matthew Broderick & Julia Roberts thriller following a white couple of vanilla suits who buy the wrong house in the 90s?!
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 