David S. Ward directs John Goodman, Peter O’Toole and Camille Coduri in this comedy where a brash but sweet natured American accidentally inherits the British throne.
Better than its reputation, better than it has any right to be. Essentially four episodes of a well constructed teatime sitcom spliced together. Only the last section is pretty jokes free as it tries to tie up various subplots with dignity rather than farce. Goodman is fantastic value as always. The London location work is well exploited and evocative of the city I grew up in. We’ve all crammed into that Piccadilly Burger King that is now a Boots. Not game changing but gently pleasant.
Tinto Brass directs Teresa Ann Savoy, Ingrid Thulin and Helmut Berger in this notorious sexploitation hit about a real life Nazi brothel.
Sets out to unpleasantly shock in the first half hour – live animals are butchered, foetuses displayed, sex with deformed humans ogled. Then settles into a marathon of glitzy soft porn. The plot zeroes in on the sweet face and babyfat body of Savoy and not a lot else happens. The production design by Bond / Kubrick maestro Ken Adams is dazzling but all in the service of a bonking film that offers little human variety… very slowly. If Swastikas and lacy lingerie get you off… any 10 minutes out of context should do. The fact that the true story of Berlin’s espionage fuelled Salon Kitty would actually make for a fine film or miniseries, with some care and ambition, is the saddest indictment of this wasteful relic.
Tate Taylor directs Octavia Spencer, Diana Silvers and Juliette Lewis in this psychological horror where a group of teens start to party at a lonely middle aged lady’s house, only to discover their host wants a lot more from them than weekend company.
Very early on you realise the adult cast for this are far too prestigious for such small roles. It is strange watching Alison Janney in an insignificant tenth billed three scene-r part that should have went to some jobbing actress. That’s the queerest thing about Ma; a Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?-style hagspolitation update for the social media age. The film itself is uneven and uncertain. The lurches into violence seem tonally off rather than well calculated shocks. There are elements of the plot left vague and unexplored while we are distracted by a rote group of teens making poor decisions and gallingly surviving for far too much of the runtime. There are enough quality elements within not to write Ma completely off but it is an unsatisfying watch.
Pedro Almodóvar directs Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura and Lola Dueñas in this Spanish melodrama where two sisters deal with death… one has a dead body that turns her life around, while the other reunites with a dead person!
If you’ve never watched an Almodóvar before then this is probably the best entry to get a feel whether he is for you. You get all the primary colours, farce, sense of community, rape, murder, soap opera plotting, food and sexiness he’s known for with very little weirdness, rough edges or histrionic camp. The three female leads are on form and Cruz looks even more fantastic than usual.
John Ford directs John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara and Victor McLaglen in this western romance where a tough cavalry leader’s estranged son joins his unit.
A dry run for The Quiet Man and a rerun of She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and none the worse for it. Action, laughs and romance. How else would you want to spend your afternoon?
Marek Kanievska directs Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz and Robert Downey Jr. in this adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ debut novel where a rich kid returns to L.A. over Christmas and casually witnesses his school peers spiral into drugs, degradation and inhumanity…
Only here the vanilla Andrew McCarthy has been cast as the lead and he’s gonna force his friends to “JUST SAY NO!”. Ellis would become infamous for American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction but this is his best attack of writing. Brutal, nihilist and voyeuristic the novel passively flits between a group of unlikable peers as they fuck, snort and witness each other’s downfall to hell. Ominous, cool and genuinely disturbing, the book is a curious project for a major studio to get excited over. There is no hero, most of the violence is sexual, self inflicted or implied at a distance… everyone is bisexual or addicted or callous. Often all three. After 20th Century Fox bought the rights, the studio went through a couple of regime changes. By the time the finished product was released various executives had miscast it and warped the focus into an anti-drugs warning film. The irony of the most coke fuelled industry in its most coke fuelled era turning a seminal work into a crusade against their very own nose blast of choice. Gone is the nude 12 year old strapped to a bed. There’s no sense that a serial killer lurks just beyond pool lights of their mansion homes. Even the coyote makes it out unscathed.
Ellis has gone on record about the blatant miscasting of McCarthy and Getz. Poor Andrew is too suburban, too bland and too unpolished to be a rich kid who’ll dead eye watch his ‘friend’ pimp himself to travelling salesmen. He doesn’t have to be anyway in this version… the script warps his vacant crowd member into a romantic crusader, a saviour for his fallen pals. Getz is surprisingly quite good in the first half… unreadable and manipulative… often given to staring off in the middle distance a little too long after dialogue is finished. By the end she is just a trophy for the good guy to reclaim. She’s pouring a grand’s worth of primo gak down a nightclub sink within 24 hours of McCarthy’s white bread dick sandwich. No. No. No, no, no. Let’s not talk about the cautionary tale tragic ending!
Is it irredeemable? Not at all. RDJ, James Spader and Michael Bowen are all amazingly well cast as different shades of predatory scumbag. The future Iron Man seriously fucks up his life on the freebasin’ and the movie doesn’t shy away from that. He even has some hyperactive larks doing it before he’s forced into motel prostitution and looking like he has terminal flu. I’m not sure what is more terrifyingly accurate though… Spader’s slick hair or Bowen’s muscle? Either way you kinda wanna hang out with these hot tub baddies more, getting their spoilt harem of hooked billionaire babies to turn tricks. White slavers of the MacArthur Park nightclub scene. What a scheme!? What a plan! And the whole thing looks correct. Like a David Hockney painting fucked a Style Council promo. Wow. It looks sharp. Terrible adaptation, O.K. product of its time.
Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage direct Walton Goggins, Alice Englert and Kaitlyn Dever in this hillbilly drama following a pregnant teenager hiding her secret from her snake cult leading Daddy.
Hold a deadly rattler to prove your devotion to God. A strong and likeable cast elevate this unfussy drama. Goggins, as nearly always, is superior to the material. He doesn’t, strangely, even get meaningful screentime with newly minted Oscar winner Olivia Coleman. I would have written a few extra pages on location if I was the directors to make this happen.
Alan Parker directs Madonna, Antonio Banderas and Jonathan Pryce in this musical biopic of a facist’s trophy wife.
Don’t Cry For Me Argentina aside… The songs are awful. The politics are awful. The looping of the lyrics and the mouth movements are abysmal. After 30 minutes of watching a stumbling Madonna half heartedly whore herself into a position of power the movie is left with 90 minutes and nowhere but an interminable loop to go. There’s no romance, affection or agency. There’s no real story. You kinda know there’s a better biopic to be salvaged from Eva Peron’s life, a better use for the sepia and sunlight and seven thousand extras. Yet it would be in the service of celebrating a figurehead for a military dictatorship. The musical it is based on and this adaptation bookend the Thatcher era. Maybe Britons secretly crave the boot on their neck?
Walter Hill directs Nick Nolte, Eddie Murphy and James Remar in the original buddy cop thriller where a white cop springs a black convict from jail hoping to catch a killer on the loose with his revolver.
A flawless entertainment. It gave birth to a whole sub-genre and gifted Eddie Murphy the most A-List star making movie debut in Hollywood history. Amazingly well cast – beyond the superstar leads such memorable character actors as Jonathan Banks, Sonny Ladham, Annette O’Toole, David Patrick Kelly, Frank McRae, Denise Crosby and Brion James get significant speaking parts. Tough – it has the plot and energy and bloodshed of a revisionist western, only fuelled by the energy of San Francisco’s neon-lit urban nightlife. Action packed – an on-location shoot out around a crowded subway station is rattlingly well orchestrated. Iconic – James Horner’s ominous, teasing score pulls you deeply into the chases and stand-offs. Hilarious – Eddie and Nolte have a perfect mismatched rhythm. Neither willing to give up focus, both itching to have the last jab in their verbal sparring. Is thuggish detective Cates a racist? Yes, he uses his position, privilege, violence and constant verbal denigration to keep Reggie Hammond under his boot. But is the film racist? No… Murphy’s Hammond constantly lashes back or wiggles out of the power dynamic so he maintain equal footing. He doesn’t just proves he’s his unwanted partner’s peer, he forces him to accept the power imbalance shouldn’t exist. Though only when he isn’t trying to get some ‘trim’ before his weekend pass runs out. I’m not going to wax lyrical about the political importance of 48 Hrs. I watch it often and love it as a simple blockbuster first and foremost. There are very, very few movies as purely satisfying and curtly unfussy as this.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 