Walter Hill directs Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte and Brion James in this belated sequel where Reggie Hammond is finally released only to discover everyone wants him dead.
A tired beat for beat retread. The action sequences are certainly bigger but less nail biting. The jokes are tired and repetitive. Every other scene Murphy recaps us on the bad day he’s having… a patter that wasn’t that all that funny the first time. Nolte looks bored as fuck. Done for the paychecks but destructive enough to fill an evening. At least James Horner’s sinuous score is still in place.
Sam Raimi directs Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and Willem Dafoe in this blockbuster introduction to the Peter Parker superhero mythology.
Summer 2002. This was it. The big one. And its still pretty pretty good. Pretty bitty. That’s the issue. It is collage of iconic comic book moments funnelled into some kinda pipe of a story. We get radioactive bites, unrequited romance, discovery of powers, high school tables being turned, the birth of the Green Goblin, costumes being designed, a wrestling match, the death of Uncle Ben… An hour in and we still really haven’t had a consistent Spider-Man action sequence. More montages, more soap, Peter and MJ are adults in the job market! Still not a lot of sustained excitement. Well… Raimi deploys his Evil Dead / Darkman extreme framing, brash colour scheme and energetic editing to tie it all together. You really feel like you are racing through an omnibus of Spider-Man’s golden years on holiday.
It probably didn’t help that they filmed that teaser trailer World Trade Centre action sequence and then couldn’t put it in the film. Are you seriously telling me something as big budget and epic as that wasn’t originally intended for the middle act of the actual movie? Because the middle of the movie is severely lacking such a sequence.
The bad stuff feels muted now. A charming product of its time. The Green Goblin’s stiff toyified armour is still as stinky as you remember. Dafoe’s performance is pretty randomly generated… but his character is having a year long psychotic break?! The great stuff still shines through… Dunst is luminescent in her first adult role, the swinging around Manhattan sequences have a real adrenaline rush to them, J.K. Simmons utterly owns laughter generator J. Jonah Jameson. So Spider-Man V1.1 is all over the shop as a narrative… all the heavy lifting is out of the way for the sequels and you could never accuse one second of it as being dull.
James Bobin directs Isabela Moner, Eugenio Derbez and Michael Peña in this kids comedy adventure where the animated explorer goes live action, experiences high school and has to rescue her parents from treasure hunters.
A bright and sunny Latino The Goonies. Bobin brings the same self aware screwball meta silliness to this franchise as he reinvigorated in The Muppets. All the performances are spirited and not too gratingly nice.
Jim Sharman directs Jessica Harper, Cliff De Young and Richard O’Brien in this sequel to Rocky Horror (Yes, it is!) where Brad and Janet’s marriage is threatened by a never-ending TV channel.
A valiant but unsuccessful attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle twice. Rocky Horror shouldn’t really work but deliciously does. This only intermittently comes close to the chaotic magic. The four main issues are easy to identify; no Tim Curry, no Susan Sarandon, no classic showstopper tunes, no room to breathe. It almost feels gaspingly engineered not to give the cult-ish fanbase of its progenitor a chance to heckle the screen. Not that they cared for it anyway in the end. A couple of the songs are toe tappers but you won’t be ‘jumping to the left’ to them. Harper is cute as the Janet replacement but Cliff De Young makes little impression as new Brad. Curry wisely bailed when he realised he might have to play dual roles or sing in an accent… O’Brien, Barry Humphries and young Rik Mayall do bring it, keep the energy going. The deranged physicality is there, just none of the soul. Whereas Rocky Horror was transgressively inclusive, this feel cynical and abrasive. The labyrinthine set design is impressive but visually Shock Treatment has to be the reddest movie ever made. Like staring into a warning light for two hours. It lasts 94 minutes.
Allan Dwan directs John Wayne, John Agar and Adele Mara in this WWII movie where a tough C.O. leads his troops to victory over the Japanese.
There’s no denying there’s a strange sensation watching a man who dodged the war order and berate real soldiers re-enacting their violent moment in history. That’s right, Duke… you show that actual veteran how to thrust a bayonet! Beyond that overriding, slightly queasy irony this is pretty standard stuff. A scene between Wayne and a prostitute has a wonderful charm to it. No reality to it again but sticks in the memory all the same.
Aki Kaurismäki directs André Wilms, Blondin Miguel and Jean-Pierre Darroussin in this French comedy where an ageing shoeshiner takes in an African boy on the run from port town’s immigration authorities.
What a double bill! From watching the miserable grind of right wing bureaucracy in I, Daniel Blake to this far more cinematic and romantic yet equally powerful affair. Kaurismäki’s approach to emotive injustices is the polar opposite to Loach. Colourful, deadpan, cine-literate, playful, entertaining. The characters might be jokey blanks but they are bastions of the human spirit. Inherently good, just a little shopworn by life. Kaurismäki present people as they’d like to be – good natured, unfussily heroic and rebellious. After a didactic dose of realism from Loach, I was quite happy to embrace this weaponised fantasy. It left me with a massive smile on my face, considering it is populated exclusively by grumps and losers, that’s quite the achievement.
Ken Loach directs Dave Johns, Hayley Squires and Briana Shan in this British drama where a carpenter and a single mother find themselves tangled up in the punitive recent changes to the U.K. benefits system.
I rarely get political online. I’m working class, left leaning and believe that there should be a safety net for everyone’s finances and welfare accessible to those in need. I let my vote do my talking as I often see didactic commentary on every little thing the other party does wrong only deafens those on the fence to the nuance of voting for “the good guys.” This film shows how the welfare system we have paid into has been warped and how the people who need it have been demonised. It shows how communities and charities have picked up some of the slack left when assistance is arranged purposefully to be bureaucratically inaccessible and social housing has been depleted. I realise that like a lot of Loach’s work he hones in on the worst case scenario but isn’t all cinema like that. Goodfellas wouldn’t be a classic if it followed the happily married, straight edge, jobbing hood. Casablanca wouldn’t sing if it followed the 48 hours before – where Rick ordered his weekend stock and Elsa packed her suitcase for the North African shore. Likewise this shows two unfortunates who have less access to family, patience or digital resources to help them keep at a pace with a system designed to trick them out of the benefits they need. Foreign film critics have seen the Kafka-esque world of sanctions, non-compliance and humans in need treated as “clients” as a parable, an amusing satire. It isn’t really though, is it? This is a humanised dramatisation of the bigger holes the Tories have slashed into the safety net so more and more fall through. The government’s endgame is to deter people away from benefits into work but as far as I can see we haven’t had near universal employment since my parents’ childhoods – the jobs just aren’t there in some areas. Johns and especially Squires do affecting work throughout as they try to survive continual denial of their basic need for an income. They are funny yet moments of their plight are truly heartbreaking. At times the eponymous lead’s struggle is overtly heavy handed but Squire’s subplot has veracity, the chilling ring of truth to it.
Marc Meyers directs Alexandra Daddario, Maddie Hasson and Johnny Knoxville in this Eighties-set horror where a group of teens find themselves partying with a killer cult.
Passable but not as smart or as outlandish as it needs to be. Wicked but not evil. It probably owes more to the Scream franchise than it even realises. Daddario is always watchable and a little more badass than her previous roles. Knoxville’s contribution is more a delayed cameo than a game changer. Teens end up covered in corn syrup and improvising weaponry. Achievement unlocked.
Lee Tamahori directs Morgan Freeman, Monica Potter and Michael Wincott in this Alex Cross thriller, where the intuitive cop pursues a genius kidnapper.
So sturdy it actually smooths out all the jagged edges and eye catching grain that makes a thriller pop. Wincott was born to play memorable villains but here he is too efficient and humane to really stand out. The more outlandish later twist is tee’d up reasonably well without hitting a mulligan – you see the logic of the surprise but can’t relish the pleasure of being hoodwinked. It just kinda happens. The chases, shoot outs and stand offs all occur at a clean, crisp clip – never dull but won’t have you or Freeman reaching for the beta blockers. The star himself is class personified as always but he only deploys his full power paternal, seductive magic in the final moments when he convinces a child it is safe to trust him. By then… the credits are desperate to roll. Possibly the most average movie ever made.
John Carpenter directs Kurt Russell, Keith David and Wilford Brimley in this sci-fi body horror mystery where a remote Antarctic research base finds itself infiltrated by an alien who absorbs and replicates its prey indistinguishably.
Ennio Morricone’s doom laden score is beating like a dying heart. A gorgeous huskie races across the unforgiving white. A hair smothered helicopter pilot pours melting ice and blended scotch dregs into his chess game’s harddrive. I’m in now but I wasn’t always. As a teen Carpenter’s finest didn’t get me. A notorious flop on release, this like Blade Runner (they were released on the same weekend) saw its reputation grow once it hit VHS and telly. It is almost easier to see why The Thing failed even though I prefer it. A desolate, often silent then earsplittingly loud and always pessimistic, film that explodes in bursts of nauseous shock and dread inducing fatalism. Like Guinness and whisky, you need to grow your tastebuds into a flick that is essentially beardy, paranoid middle aged men bellowing at each other for 90 minutes. Who is human? Who ain’t? Do the copies even know if they themselves, or which of each other, are alien? It is 12 Angry Men with dynamite and shotguns. Death on the Nile where Poirot prefers kerosene to monologues. Ostensible hero R.J. MacReady ain’t no bastion of good in a white suit; reluctant, self serving and only sometimes one thought smarter than a creature that has survived eons. Listen, I love Kurt Russell in this but I cannot for the life of me think why he wants to burn the entire outpost down in the third act (spectacle aside). The Thing can survive freezing to death, humans can’t… UNLESS!?… The transforming monster FX work are gloopily mind blowing. Rob Bottin, just 22 at the time, uses every animatronic technique in the book and then camouflages them in slathers of Vaseline, skewed lighting and elliptical movement to convince you heads are becoming space spiders and organs are becoming snarling dog foetuses. Case closed for the defence of practical effect over CGI. Your honour, this is the final argument against folks who instantly write off any remake of a beloved genre film too. And having said that, I’m even quite perversely fond of the Mary Elizabeth Winstead prequel / remake. “Yeah, fuck you too!”
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 