Pedro Almodóvar directs Victoria Abril, Antonio Banderas and Loles Léon in this erotic drama where a Spanish movie star is held captive by an unstable young man who has fallen for her.
Possibly the first Almodóvar I watched back in the day. Definitely before I even knew who he was. Probably bored me back then beyond the nudity. I enjoyed it a lot more as an adult. As with a lot of Pedro’s work this wasn’t PC back then and has aged even worse in terms of “wokeness” but for those of us looking for emotionally charged exploitation and kinky histrionics this delivers. Great lead performances from Abril and Banderas.
Raj Kapoor directs himself, Prithviraj Kapoor and Nargis in this Bollywood classic where a rejected son is pulled between a life of crime and his love of a society girl.
The first hour of The Vagabond really cooks. We race through the tragedy and childhood of Raj’s downfall and it is Dickensian. Then we get another 100 minutes of star crossed lovers and songs. The injustice and social message is still there but you get the feeling that the only reason the first act moves at such a modern clip is because the star / director was desperate for his protagonist to be at an age where he could play him. What follows ain’t bad but is now creaky. An excellent dream sequence musical number comes out of nowhere. Very popular release in communist countries.
Larry Cohen directs Fred Williamson, Julius Harris and Gloria Hendry in this blaxploitation sequel where Black Caesar seeks out revenge on those who wronged him at the end of the first film.
Made on the weekends while Black Caesar was still raking in the box office, this scattershot sequel features 50% side characters, 30% stand-ins and very little actual Fred Williamson. Some of the stringed together sequences are pretty cool… an airport chase, a scuba assault… but this is playground fighting rather than persuasive plotting. The Edwin Starr soundtrack is smooth as satin.
Curtis Hanson directs Michael Douglas, Robert Downey Jr. and Frances McDormand in this literary comedy where a stoned professor must make some big decisions when he cannot finish his epic sophomore novel, his star student shoots his boss’ dog and the women in his life offer him a variety of ultimatums.
The film the versatile Curtis Hanson decided to make after the Oscar success of L.A.Confidential gave him a blank cheque in Hollywood. Adult, quirky, considerate, funny, intelligent. The Big Lebowski for people who read “Great American Novels” rather than noir pulp. Wonder Boys feels like both a parody and a celebration of U.S.A. literary pretentions. A sad sack Confederacy of Dunces. A middle aged Catcher in the Rye. A freewheelin’ Stoner. I don’t know about that last one. I haven’t read Stoner yet. Verbose and sensitive, allegorical but with a chaotic heart, Wonder Boys makes cinematic the experience of devoting a week to a lauded novel that might just change your life. The warm wintery weekend world of tactile symbols (a stolen coat, a dead dog, a battered pink nightgown) and labyrinthian human connections helps. The fact everyone seemingly is writing their own future classic on clanky inky typewriters of old seals the deal. This is a rambling ensemble piece. The casting is perfect. McDormand – the desirable mature soul with her own life to worry about. Downey Jr – the puckish agent of chaos, desperate for Grady Tripps’ next masterpiece before he loses his job. Tobey Maguire – as the unsettling savant, full of lies and who only speaks in the terse seductive imagery of Richard Ford or William Maxwell. Katie Holmes – never more desirable in her red cowboy boots, an easy to make bad choice in waiting for Grady. Even in the lower ranks Alan Tudyk, Jane Adams, Michael Cavadias and Rip Torn turn two scenes characters into fully fleshed spirits. But this is Michael Douglas’ show – as the imperfect, utterly human, gone to seed lost talent. His Grady Tripp is relatable and loveable. Watching him make terrible decisions and moments of faltering low-stakes heroics is a joy. Douglas is playing against type. The other end of the keyboard from his equally out-of-his-comfort-zone powerhouse in Falling Down. His yuppie-in-peril back catalogue is what he’ll remain a legend for but his unusual breaks in stuff like Falling Down and here prove what a genuine talent he is. Wonder Boys is a warm hug from a intelligent body. You’ll feel smarter having watched it even though it still sates all your entertainment receptors with a gentle wit and many ribald twists… even a car chase or two. A forgotten gem.
Josh Boone directs Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy and Alice Braga in this superhero horror where five young mutants are incarcerated in an asylum.
An orphan of the Fox / Disney merger and a film publicly batted around for its reshoots, delays and obsolescence – it is difficult to expect much from the first superhero horror movie since Constantine. The tragedy of The New Mutants is it has seemingly delayed Josh Boone’s career for half a decade. In its quieter and finest moments the movie displays Boone’s strengths from The Fault in Our Stars; excellent shot framing and sensitive portrayal of imperfect teenagers. He makes his avatars human and his camerawork full of life. Especially in scenes that feel like accidental survivors of a nastier, bolder production. For example: Williams and Blu Hunt’s midnight romantic rendezvous in a graveyard will mean a lot to teenage viewers, the fact the graves appear to be the final resting place of hundreds of unnamed teen mutant former inmates is both unremarked upon and unsettling. The female actors shine here and Boone know exactly how to make their introductions, interactions and moments of anti-heroic transformation feel iconic. Shame it is in the service of a half-hearted release. Clearly on paper and in intention, The New Mutants is a horror movie in the mode of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 or The Lost Boys. The bursts of terror imagery are strong flavoured but few and far between. You could only say there is one sustained sequence of full fat creepiness. Leaving us with a lot of preamble where the characters are set-up then left idle, then a rushed finale where they “team” and face down their most pressing nemesis. The first half takes its time and never fails to be engaging despite not a lot happening, the second half skips and skims over a lot of action without really settling on what it desires to deliver. Every generation needs its The Monster Squad or The Craft or Jennifer’s Body. If I was 10 years old I’d love the imperfect but ominous The New Mutants. This is going to be a gateway film for nerd kids to explore material darker than the Spider-Man or the Deadpool flicks they are spoonfed. As a 40 year old I’m just glad the talented Boone, Taylor-Joy and Williams can move on without the eventual form of this Frankenstein’s monster being too embarrassing to their careers. It is serviceable but disposable ultimately.
Christopher Nolan directs John David Washington, Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki in this sci-fi thriller where a secret agent tries to stop a technology that reverses objects through time.
Positives first. The tailored suits… WOOF! Washington and Pattison are wonderful fresh movie stars who both relish the Bondian aspects of the production and their characters. If there is chance to be cool or rakish or masculine they exploit it fully. I doubt anyone watching this isn’t excited afterwards for what they do next in their careers. It is the second blockbuster in a row where Nolan doesn’t rely on A-Lister to sell his massive concepts and complicated machinations. The mission here conjures up five excellent set-pieces in the first half. An opera siege, a bungee jump breach, a kitchen fight, a plane crash heist and a 70 MPH robbery. Any and all are top flight physical stunts and grand scale spectacle, among the best we have seen on the big screen since Craig first became 007. True live action cinema. Think Heat or Miami Vice. You can feel the grit of the tarmac, scrape of the metal, rush of the wind, devastation of the cheese grater, impact of the bullets. None of these thrilling roustabouts rely particularly on the time inversion central hook and when it does surreally enter the fray, the weird glimpse of physics in reverse are a pleasing tease for things to come. Nolan delivers enough pure action cinema that the ticket price is justified before a character has even considered doing a Marty McFly. Whether you embrace what comes after is up to you.
Now the negatives. Tenet has a lot of information to waft at you. Some is theoretical quantum physics. Some is sophisticated narrative foreplay. Some is just wordy terminology soup. All is often constantly competing with a loud, overpowering soundtrack of jarring discordant notes and dominant background noise. For much of the plot, characters wear gas masks, in assault rifle battles, in already chaotic environments with pulse raising music pummelling you. At best, and I’m two watches in, you can pick up, follow and process four fifths of what is being said. Nolan got away with a similar trick with Inception where he had a lot of heady information to transfuse to us while the action was in steady flow but there we were already lowering ourselves into the mind bending world as we were being taught of its rules… here we are trying to enjoy a spy thriller while inaudible cut scenes and ticker tapes of knowledge overload swamp us simultaneously.
Until the final set piece we can just about keep up. I’m a pretty astute viewer and while I never felt lost on first viewing in the first two hours I knew a long chat with Natalie and a second or third watch would clarify more. But the final war sequence… without giving anything away except it all goes a bit Halo / Battleground for twenty minutes… is barely comprehensible on initial watch. I knew what the strategy and endgame and stakes of all the mass scale carnage was. But I couldn’t for the life of me follow swarms of masked, impossible to hear troops… some of whom were moving backwards in time and some of whom might be doppelgängers of themselves. Second view I gleaned more and could focus on different aspects but really I think I’d need to be able to whack the subtitles on, pause the action frequently and map out who is doing what and when with a very big sheet of paper to truly understand what goes down in the big finale. One character tells us in as many words “You just need faith that reality is reality and what has happened has happened.” And I’m willing to give Nolan the faith that he has achieved a holeless plot that intertwines all its narrative fingers. We have no reason to doubt him. Yet there’s no denying you feel very left out, uninvolved and disinvested from the eye popping maelstrom of faceless violence and kinetics that Tenet resolves itself with. Two other characters a continent away are having an intercut Hitchcockian stand-off at the same moment and it feels far more rewarding to concentrate on that than the show-off killbox of garbled confusion. Tenet certainly is high-end, unashamed blockbuster cinema but will leave even the smarties and bullshitters scratching their heads as the credits unfurl. Never lend money to anyone who claims they could fathom it completely on initial viewing.
Stanley Nelson Jr. directs Miles Davis, Carl Lumbly and Frances Davis in this documentary biography of the troubled jazz great.
The super quick montages of candid photo sets really bring this movie to life. A fine review of an unparalleled career and difficult figure. His jazz (pre-1969) is still fantastic and the insights into its composition accessible but illuminating.
Emile Ardolino directs Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson in this romantic comedy sequel to the bachelors raise a cute kid smash hit.
Inessential but I’ll always give it a pass due to my affection for the original. There are problems here. The main being the struggle aside from money to find a valid reason to reunite the cast. After a few solid laughs based around the lads trying to shepherd the precocious tot through the adult world, we shift gears into a very trad romcom. Selleck makes for a fine lead and he gets to bounce off a wonderfully awkward Fiona Shaw for his England scenes. Guttenberg and Danson get relegated to background extras for much of the runtime and the little lady is all but forgotten about. It isn’t what anyone really bought a ticket for, the very outdated stereotypical view of ‘good ole Blighty’ irritates and the gags are few and far between. It is just about saccharine, lighthearted and poppy enough to get away with its sins but there was a better movie to be had from reuniting the cast – all it took was some more imagination and less compromises. Ted Danson allegedly didn’t leave LA for his scenes which must have been quite the fudge seeing as the action was filmed on location in Manhattan and Hampshire! See if you can spy him in an exterior shot?
King Hu directs Lingfeng Shangguan, Chun Shih and Ying Bai in this kung-fu classic, where a death squad amass at a deserted inn but a group of unlikely rebels interrupt their plans.
Great to look at but a bit too static and drawn out in its plotting. The final eunuch battle feels a little unfair seeing as its one dickless bad guy against four heroes we’ve seen take on armies by their lonesome in the build-up.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 