Louis Leterrier directs Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher and Mark Ruffalo in this magicians-do-heists caper.
This was a surprisingly good blast at the cinema but doesn’t really hold up on rewatch. Glossy, silly but way too beholden to the big twist reveal. There’s a point at the midway mark where it either gets bored of, or can’t figure out a way to allow us to stay with, the main set of criminal conjurors. Which is a mistake in my mind. Everyone is on form in a fantastic ensemble yet it is all just smoke and mirrors by the end credits.
Wes Craven directs Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg and Joshua Jackson in this werewolf horror where to siblings are infected by the beast.
Did you hear about Cursed? The horror film that took two and half years and $40 million to make? Why? Because the Weinsteins had a 90% complete film in the can and decided to completely rewrite and majorly recast it… then they did that again… and then they had a fourth reshoot that took out all the gore. Gone are Rick Barker’s practical creature FX. Gone are any of Kevin Williamson self aware jokes or well executed twists. It pretty much stalled rising star Ricci’s career and slowed Craven down when he could have churned out two or three lower budgeted gems before his death. What we are left with is formless, bloodless and clinical. It goes through the motions with zero imagination and thrills. You can spot scenes and shots where dialogue has been overdubbed, old subplots have been pruned and characters are far younger. Eisenberg manages to hit his now standard acerbic geek schtick well, no matter what obvious wig he is wearing. Ricci has less freedom and the occasional glimpse of her as curvaceous teen jar with the dominant third gen sequences where she is stick thin and an adult. A scarred yet unexceptional film this gets by on the likeability of its exhausted cast and one goofy shot where a werewolf flips us the finger.
Ben Affleck directs himself, Jeremy Renner and Rebecca Hall in this heist drama where a bank robber falls for one of his hostages but she in unaware of his involvement in their previous encounter.
Pretty run of the mill cops and robbers stuff. But fuck me, do I crave that shit! The ‘jobs’ themselves have a visceral thrill. They are kinetic, immersive and authentic. The romance and drama built around them is a bit more basic and overplayed. Affleck and Hall have nice chemistry but their dating seems to solely consist of miserable monologues. As a classy rehash of dusty themes and well traipsed plots The Town just about gets away with it but it is not of the Gone Baby Gone gold standard.
Josh Whedon directs Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Chris Evans in this Marvel superhero sequel where a rogue A.I. threatens humanity.
God! This has aged awfully in just half a decade. Wafer thin CGI stuntmen, inconsequential infighting, what seems like an hour given over to teases for future films. The ending does get the pulse racing and Elisabeth Olsen looks fetching as an “enhanced” witch. Anything with Mark Ruffalo and Scarlett Johansson sharing scenes is never going to be unwatchable. But this is not a standalone movie experience… it is just mega-bugeted episodic telly in both frustrating form and limited scope.
Robert Zemeckis directs Michael J Fox, Christopher Lloyd and Mary Steenburgen in this cowboy finale to the teen time travel trilogy.
I realise this is beloved by many and while it still is a superior summer blockbuster it rarely, for me, hits the giddy time looping heights of it predecessors. 1 & 2 took risks and explored the edges of family entertainment with an effortless air, while this sets it sights just a little lower and aims for a simple rerun of past pleasures in John Wayne’s cosplay… Sorry… Clint Eastwood. The Wild West setting allows for set-pieces to actually be life and death propositions for once and the production design is faultless. Someone had a lot of fun regressing Hill Valley into a timber and steam settlement. Christopher Lloyd’s excellent Doc Brown gets to be the romantic lead and man of action this variation, and Steenburgen is a sweet foil to that twist as our first new character in half a dozen Delorean rides. It is a rousing spectacle to end one of the best Hollywood franchises ever on… just a little safer, a little less mind blowing, than you might have expected after previous episodes rewrote the rule book twice. By the point where Marty and the Doc are dangling off an exploding steam train, their only chance to return to 1985 racing up on them… who cares if this just wants to be a gunslingin’ retread of past glories? Familiarity breeds contentment.
Lloyd Bacon directs Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons and Arthur Hunnicutt in this screwball comedy where a young heiress tries to anonymously reward a two horse town for a good turn the community did her in her youth.
Not particularly funny nor romantic nor compelling but Mitchum and Simmons’ sexy star power keep things watchable. A dated no-brainer.
Oliver Stone directs James Woods, James Belushi and Elpidia Carrillo in this true story of a sleazy photo journalist who travels back to El Salvador during a violent period of American backed civil unrest.
There’s no way this wasn’t going to be heavy handed. What is surprising, considering this is Oliver Stone’s first attempt in his genre of choice; the political drama, is how silly and accessible the first half is. Woods and Belushi drive down to the country of death squads and geopolitical corruption like they are Hunter S. Thompson and Dr Gonzo. I’m pretty sure they are supposed to be exactly that. Belushi’s character is called Dr Rock and he spends the entire movie boozing, fucking and scamming as if all the tragedy is happening a 1000 miles away and not at the table next to him. He literally gives his character the same scuzzball energy as his work in buddy cop films like Red Heat or K-9. Woods, obviously, is the far better actor and has the goods in his back pocket once all the assassinations, rapes and pits of dead innocents starts to niggle at his conscience. But even then his photo-journalist remains admirably unadmirable… hustling for drinking money, trying to get his girlfriend a passport and generally looking terrified when the war he’s come to photograph comes into focus. No white saviour narrative here, though it does become quite one note horrific in its second half.
Sion Sono directs Ami Tomite, Mariko Tsutsui and Fujiko in this erotic pop art exploration of feminism and exploitation.
The first twenty minutes is a very trendy softcore porn film where a flamboyant artist bullies her older assistant. Then someone yells cut, a wall disappears and we witness the all male crew filming the all female cast and everything changes. We are now in the psyche of one of the female performers. We are raced shrilly through a hypercolour dream state of flashbacks, fantasy, nightmare and self-realisation. There is unerotic nudity and unusual erratic sex. There are bukakkes of paint and character warps. In the main though, it is often didactic sequences of fetished young women screaming non-sensical gender politics statements at you with lots of commitment but very little deep though. Looks fantastic, plays out gratingly.
Chantal Akerman directs Juliette Binoche, William Hurt and Paul Guilfoyle in this romantic comedy where a New York therapist and a Parisian flake swap apartments.
Stilted, detached performances and a cliche-only script consign this to oblivion. Genre directors often struggle when they ambitiously attempt to make art but this implies arthouse directors should never be allowed near pure entertainments. Embarrassing for all involved.
Joel Schumacher directs Colin Farrell, Kiefer Sutherland and Katie Holmes in this thriller where a New York yuppie is held hostage in a phone booth by a sniper.
(This review was originally written for Kamera.co.uk when I was 23 years old)
Small time publicist Stu Shepherd (Colin Farrell), spends his day glued to a cell phone, and avoiding those he has lied to on the same device. His only break from mobile dishonesty is to call an aspiring actress at a phone booth, thus gaining some privacy from the hustle-bustle of New York’s streets and his wife’s prying into his phone bill. There’s just one hitch. Someone else rings him back and convinces him there is a high-powered rifle aimed at his head. If he leaves the booth he dies. If he fails to make amends for his dishonest ways, someone he cares for will die. And if he doesn’t hang up, the police swat team, who suspect him to be the killer of one of the sniper’s victims, will terminate the call permanently.
Phone Booth’s writer Larry Cohen is a hero to those who grew up with chunky VCRs. His scuzzy but imaginative brand of cinema have given us late night classics like Q (1982) and The Stuff (1985) which showed up a sterile corporate Hollywood with a verve, irreverence and scumbag brand of humour. They were true B-movies, the kind that don’t get made any more. Cohen’s formula is to take a concept and create a ride. Phone Booth is a rollercoaster that never moves, where verbal threats fill in for the hurtling speeds, and where the red dot of an unseen weapon become the explosions.
Surprisingly, and somewhat disappointingly, the film is nowhere near as claustrophobic as Die Hard (1988) or Speed (1994), in spite of the physical location of the crisis being under a metre squared in area. This has much to do with Schumacher’s typically manic style and Cohen’s coal-black humour. The ample performance of the disembodied voice (all mocking, reptile condescension), and the long-awaited emergence of Colin Farrell as a credible star, both allow the audience to avoid the yuppie-in-peril’s claustrophobic fate.
Farrell’s ascension to the A-list was built on filling roles vacated by the likes of Edward Norton, Matt Damon and Jim Carrey on projects which were tailored for them, but which they eventually turned down. The buzz around him has seen publicists working overtime to convince us that Farrell is the next big thing. Yet this much delayed thriller is the first film he’s headlined where the moviegoing public actually have some idea of who he is. His last six roles spent standing in for absent names have invariably been commercial failures. Despite showing plenty of onscreen presence in the overlong Minority Report (2002), this is the first venture which justifies the hype. The spotlight (and a rifle’s laser sight) is pointing at Farrell, and it’s time for him to prove his worth.
He does so admirably. Wearing other stars’ shoes for so long has meant that any Colin Farrell persona has been nondescript at best. Here he plays an alternative Tom Cruise; the top gun in the little league, the grinning hunk who has already failed. It took the Cruiser 15 years of success to realise that people might actually want to see him disappoint, and we got the fantastic Jerry Maguire (1996). It has taken Farrell just eighty minutes.
We watch him grimace and sweat, realising his life means nothing and has only detracted from those of other people. His sin may be relatively minor – kerb-crawling towards an affair with a hopeful – but his penance is overwrought and thoroughly enjoyable. He discovers the very technology he uses to conduct his misdeeds has become his prison, and his dishonesty may save him from the cops, but not from the sniper. Hollywood may crave tales about winners, but critics love the losers. Whether it is Charles Foster Kane dying alone with only a distant childhood memory to comfort him, or overweight ex-contender Jake La Motta punching at the jail cell wall, the fallen make for great drama. The only thing that upsets Cohen and Farrell’s otherwise good work is the cop-out ending. Watching Phone Booth rapidly shut down, it’s clear that (at least) two denouements have been filmed: one where our loser in a nice suit takes the redemptive bullet, and another where all is forgiven, good triumphs over evil and the reunited husband and wife get to ride an ambulance into the sunset. I’m not going to tell you which makes the final cut, but it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Hollywood can’t take too many new ideas at once.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 