Barry Levinson directs Mickey Rourke, Ellen Barkin and Steve Guttenberg in this comedy drama where a group of friends hangout on in a diner in 1959, their lives on hold while they drink, make wagers and talk the night away.

A rich and pleasurable and attractive movie that constantly slips its leash. You can’t really tie down or get a fix on what it is. A nostalgic exploration of masculinity in flux. A teen comedy in the mould of American Graffiti or Porky’s only the characters are half a decade too old, they aren’t coming-of-age so much as actively avoiding it. A stunted romance hidden among slathers of male braggadocio and bullshit so the triangle between Rourke, Barkin and Daniel Stern is barely acknowledged by any character. Barkin’s frustrated bride is the character with the fullest internal and external life – thanks as much to the talented actress as Levinson’s extra care to write her so humanly. Or is it a movie about nothing? What Tarantino would call ‘a hang-out’ movie? An excuse for Baltimore biographical moments and great dialogue to be committed to celluloid. Very few of Levinson’s subplots are resolved. Even characters as well defined as Bacon’s drunk or Rourke’s charmer have moments that betray their personalities as we and their intimate friends know them. What do the interruptions of magical realism and thick metaphor really mean? The ending as a bouquet glides over faceless, scrabbling hands but lands in front of a collection of boy men we have grown to care about…?… I don’t know… Maybe it is all just an accidental showcase for the bottom billed but wonderful Paul Reiser to riff. Whatever Diner is I know I really like it. And I like how it avoids pigeonholing or easy definition with a nimble wit and alluring bonhomie.

8

Check out my wife Natalie’s 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/

Pete Walker directs Deborah Fairfax, Rupert Davies and Sheila Keith in this British horror where a daughter struggles with her reclusive parents cannibalistic past.

A good solid chiller elevated by Shelia Keith’s unnerving performance and a grimy location shoot around a pre-gentrification Shepherd’s Bush.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s 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/

Vittorio De Sica directs Carlo Battisti, Maria-Pia Casilio and Alina Gennari in this Italian Neo-Realist classic where a pensioner faces poverty and destitution when his landlady decides she want him and his little dog out of her apartment.

A cute dog movie I’ve avoided over years. Who wants to see a lovely mutt caught in the grinding cogs of uncaring capitalist ‘progress’? Of course that is just one of the ironies that De Sica is playing with here. Why do we care more about a pet falling through societies cracks than we do a man who has worked and lived with dignity all his life? A brutishly sentimental film with moments of astounding beauty. Non-actor Carlo Battisti gives one the great ‘one time only’ lead performances. He sells Umberto’s humanity, frustration and desperation with a stoic magic. His relationship with his little dog is hope personified. The turns their situation take do lurch into uncomfortable darkness and the film offers no real solution to their plight. Running parallel is the story of his landlady’s maid. A child with her own financial ruin pending. A sequence where she wakes up and sets up the kitchen for the day in silence, tears in her eyes, has to be one of the finest moments in arthouse cinema.

10

Check out my wife Natalie’s 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/

Burt Kennedy directs Raquel Welch, Robert Culp and Ernest Borgnine in this rape revenge western where a wronged woman trains with a bounty hunter to avenge her husband’s death and her assault.

A strong Western, bizarrely produced by British horror outfit Tigon. Maybe that explains Christopher Lee’s lovely little interlude as a benevolent gunmaker. Nice to see him in a rare good guy role. The main meat of the film sees an excellent Robert Culp training up a beautiful Raquel Welch. Obviously there’s an irritation that the movie is clearly a vehicle to ogle Welch in ponchos and chaps but she is by the very dictation of the story a widow who has only just survived a brutal gang rape. If you can get past that paradox then the shoot-outs and mythic air make this ever so watchable.

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s 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/

Stuart Baird directs Kurt Russell, Steven Seagal and Halle Berry in this action thriller where a special forces team breach a mid-Atlantic flight that has been taken hostage.

This is more like it – though I suspect the dull title shaved $100 million off the middling box office. CABIN PRESSURE! SEALS ON A PLANE! BREACHERS! Anything might have sounded more dynamic and enticing to the multiplex crowds that two random words than happen to crop up in the script once in a scene featuring none of the stars. Russell tries out a Jack Ryan type role… the analyst we know will step up when the bullets start flying. The tuxedo and glasses cosplay is a strange fit for Snake Plissken but it works. Halle Berry enjoys her most screen time yet, relishing a role where she gets to display some emotions rather than just cleavage. David Suchet is an unmemorable villain – avoiding ham and relatively sensible in his apocalyptic fanaticism. Oliver Platt makes a little out of a lot with “the scientist who gets stuck with the commandos by mistake” nerd role. And Steven Seagal… well either you know about that first act twist by now or you don’t… but it is still, 25 years later, an absolute doozy. Beyond THAT infamous moment, Executive Decision is actually quite a dry game of cat-and-mouse. The pyrotechnics and bullet ballets are constantly threatened but the bulk of the narrative sees everyone waiting on edge until the villains are in the only probable position where a takedown will work. Problem solving takes precedent over kung-fu. We are gripped by trying to figure out which passenger has the dead man’s switch, how to disable the bomb, which compartment Suchet’s leader will be in and how to stop the US airforce from shooting the flight down when we no longer have radio contact. It does result in a whole hour where the heroes seemingly bicker behind luggage endlessly and that ain’t exactly Die Hard! Executive Decision works best as a disaster movie first, a thriller second and action flick distant last. It is a strange combination – hidden in solid Warner Bros clothing, full of unpredictable moments. Some work (Platt’s amateur bomb disposal, Seagal’s surprise), others stick out like sore thumbs (the flashback sequence to Suchet’s introduction that seemingly happens from Russell’s imagined POV). But the lavish production coalesces into a workable and pleasingly erratic slice of hokum.

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s 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/

Kevin Hooks directs Wesley Snipes, Bruce Payne and Elizabeth Hurley in the action thriller where a terrorist hijacks a flight with an airline security expert on board.

Cool trailer, rubbish movie. This has aged like vinegar. Possibly the worst Die Hard – On – A- Plane movie. It doesn’t have Con Air’s zaniness. Nor Executive Decision’s tension. Or even Turbulence’s Ray Liotta batshit powerhouse. The cast are game and try to elevate a script that has to rope together the studio mandated trailer moments and not a lot else. Tom Sizemore > Bruce Payne > Bruce Greenwood > Wesley Snipes > Liz Hurley. Yet clearly a decision was made to move the action from the plane as quickly as possible meaning that Passenger 57 is a film that only cursorily delivers on its hook for all of 20 minutes. All filler, trace levels of killer.

4

Check out my wife Natalie’s 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 Sean Connery, Jill St. John and Charles Gray in this Bond movie where 007 smuggles some diamonds that might end up being used on a space laser.

“I don’t need love, for what good will love do me?” A clunky and uninspired Bond. The action is rote, Connery looks full of regret, the girls and locations aren’t exactly memorable. The villians make this. Multiples Blofelds. Bambi and Thumper. The terrifying Wint and Kidd. I had no ideas they were gay when I was a kid but I just knew they were a pair of highly effective, utterly strange stone cold killers. Unnerving. Meeting these two weirdos means death. I feared for James as a little boy. Unsure if he could survive his much teased and delayed encounter with them. These motherfuckers were vicious! They’d actually be perfect characters to modernise and let loose in a new adventure.

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s 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/

Takeshi Kitano directs himself, Yusuke Sekiguchi and Kayoko Kishimoto in this Japanese road movie where a low level thug takes a lonely boy to see his estranged mother for the summer.

Beat Takeshi and John Woo. These were the first international directors I really got into. The violence and the persuasive sense of cool helped. Takeshi is the more experimental filmmaker. He plays with quiet and irony and and randomness a lot more. His background in sketch comedy means his stories have a jerky quality – a series of cascading skits. But every scene has a point or a punchline. There’s very little filler… even though his mood is akin to Jim Jarmusch where his films also often consist of the everyday life moments that might happen between what a regular genre movie might show. This is Takeshi’s A Perfect World. A personal film that hits a sweet spot of comedy and drama. There’s issues of loneliness and masculinity subtly explored here that are quietly sophisticated but in the main it is a daft ditty where Takeshi’s low-level yakuza ruins (and makes) the journey with his selfish uncouth behaviour. His twitchy blank face and brutish but broke approach to any interaction generates constant amusing chaos. It follows the road less travelled and is all the better for it. The final half an hour after Kikujiro reaches its planned destination is just Takeshi, the kid and some other hard shoulder denizens engaging in zany play. Extraneous to what you expect but as fine as anything dictated by the needs of the story. The printed shirts are awesome. Joe Hisaishi’s music is possibly one of the best movie themes not in heavy rotation. This a great little labour of love movie, a change of key from the director’s crime flicks but very much of the same rhythm.

8

Check out my wife Natalie’s 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/

Francis Ford Coppola directs Robin Williams, Diane Lane and Jennifer Lopez in this kids drama where a 10 year old boy has a growth disease that makes him look like a 40 year old man… time to go to school.

What in the holy fuck am I watching? Who is it for? A director going through a crisis of grief. And a genius comedy star whose ability to improvise is often capsized by his attraction to saccharine maudlin vehicles. The intended audience might find the queasy, boisterous ADHD boys playing sequence mildly distracting but adults have little hope of anything but boredom and a turned stomach. I love Robin Williams but Good Will Hunting Robin Williams or Aladdin Robin Williams or Insomnia Robin Williams or Mork Robin Williams. Sickbag Robin Williams rears his ugly head way too often in the 1990s.

2

Check out my wife Natalie’s 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/

Clint Eastwood directs himself, Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman in this revisionist Western where a reformed gunfighter takes up a bounty from some wronged whores.

How can this be Clint’s last western? I mean it is a perfect swansong from the genre that he defined for thirty years but still… Every lead performance is wonderful. Clint understands intimately how to wring star power from big names, and memorable performances from jobbing actors. David Webb People’s script is a masterclass. The lullaby theme by Clint and Lennie Niehaus is magical. Jack N Green’s cinematography glowing and shadowy in equal measure. The shocks from Quick Mike’s small dick to “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.” jerk you out of the deceptive elegiac pace. This is a definitive epilogue to my favourite genre and new day rising in the career of one the very best directors. This is where we all realised Clint was a master of the art of cinema rather than a star who also dabbled behind the camera often.

9

Check out my wife Natalie’s 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/