Penny Marshall directs Robin Williams, Robert DeNiro and Julie Kavner in this true life medical drama where a doctor proves that the closed-off vegetable patients in his mental ward could still be hidden inside their catatonic states.
An intentionally mawkish and sentimental film but told with such a persuasive cinematic patter that you get carried along. The first hour is a masterclass in bullet point storytelling. In short, cascading scenes Marshall and Steven Zaillian deliver swathes of dry medical information as Williams’ Doc deep dives into the medical anomaly like a detective mystery. It moves at such a persuasive beat while holding your hand with every nimble step of the chase. The final act is little more heavy going as DeNiro goes from a charismatic recovery success story to relapsing back into an unconscious state. Man, he was such a great actor then, even when twitching and gurning like an Oscar Whore in December! This material stretches him but he makes an impact even sitting motionless in a wheelchair. Williams has tooled around in the quirky outsider quack role a lot whenever he was working away from zany comedy. He really was attracted to scripts about mental rehabilitation. He essays a shy man… one who fights his corner only when necessary… whose background patiently observing plants and insects gives him the unique tools to not overlook the written-off patients. He resists quirk except for a few trailer moments and more than matches DeNiro’s more challenging role. While you can see the badgering manipulation happening before your eyes, this still is a good adult weepie. That excellent construction covers up its more inherent exploitative mercenary nature. It wants to make you cry, wants to make you feel, it shows no mercy or restraint in hitting the buttons beneath its sheen.
Jean-Pierre Melville directs Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Irène Tunc in this wartime drama where a bolshy priest and an agnostic single mother begin a passionate friendship over intellectual conversations and small acts of resistance.
Should really be called Barny, Legend! Riva’s single mum, refugee hider and bisexual romantic is the focus of the film. She takes on office collaborators, Nazis and lusty Yanks with zero nonsense. She has dreams and desires of her own. She has agency. Belmondo’s priest is attractive in a pushy, superior kinda of way but he could do far worse for himself. He only gets half the screentime of Riva so he can keep an air of alluring brute mystery to him. A really captivating, no nonsense drama that will have you hooked from first ecumenical book talk to last moment of quietly tragic chaste stoicism.
Russell Mulcahy directs Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery and Clancy Brown in this fantasy adventure where immortals sword fight across the centuries hoping to behead all their own kind to achieve a mystical prize.
Every comic book movie should have a Queen soundtrack! If it is a big unrealistic concept that requires a leap of faith and a few cold beers to embrace then Freddy, May and Taylor really are the chaser. Massive guitar solos, throbbing anthems and lyrics that are part sea shanty and part rallying cry to war… this is the music that closes the sale. Whether it is hypercolour intergalactic rebellion or lonely warriors duelling from medieval Scotland to broken windows New York, these thumping sounds persuade. Genre convincer that allow you to get lost in the storytelling sweep. It’s A Kind Of Magic!
The poster for Highlander haunted me as a child. It seemed to stay up at Shepherd’s Bush roundabout for my entire pre-pubescence and I saw it’s terrifying imagery every journey that we drove back from my Nan’s or Uncle Tony’s flats. A skull man sucking the soul from a spaced out warrior. My mind translated it as a horror version of He-Man. The eventually rented video cassette could never live up to the absolute fearfest my innocent mind conjured up every backseat ride through West London that the abandoned bus shelter advertising inspired.
The movie itself is a time lapsing shark. Moving constantly. Just not always forward. The 1985 sequences are Terminator inspired. Taking place in the sleazy dangerous New York of Frank Henenlotter gorefests and Equalizer episodes. Here a leather jacketed inhuman killing machine stalks a trenchcoated and sneakered soldier and the sexy innocent caught between them. “Buddy you got a dead cat in there?” Random vigilantes cruise the streets with passenger seats full of Uzis. Punk hookers fill the police stations, sidewalks and hotel hallways. Cameras impressively swoop like hawks inside wrestling matches and around exploding alleyways. Mulcahy paints a violent and vibrant bubblegum variation on “present day” reality. The rock video aesthetic disappears when we leap back in time. There’s no dry ice or electric blue light as a naive kilted Connor MacLoed discovers his strange existence, has a tragic romance, is trained by a master (and what a master!) and accepts his cursed fate to never die naturally. These green and muddy battle and passion sequence give the film heart and are appropriately more calmly, classically framed. They are as well conceived as any straight period film. Two wonderful bonus flashbacks to the courts of spoilt Regency France and WWII espionage only add to the scope gloriously. Mulcahy knows when to sizzle the retinas and when to relax and let the great production designers and art director pull off a prestige con.
The cast is almost perfect. Almost. Lambert is not a bad action star… he is better at selling the vulnerability and desperation of MacLoed than the timelessness and sword fighting ability. His lack of English does mean certain zingers and moments of snappy backchat fall flat. He is a pretty face with a hero’s physique who does his job. I would have cast Michael Biehn or Daniel Day Lewis… the fact that the character requires a crossover of those two very different stars possibly shows what a thankless task the casting director had?
Luckily the support is stellar. Relishing a comeback, Connery goes full throttle at the sensei / Obi Wan role he is tasked with. A strutting horny peacock who spouts all the exposition and gets his one glorious fight, the film is blockbuster perfection during his sequences. I’m not going to sass the accents of either lead – the nationalities make no sense, the sarcasm about him being a Spanish Egyptian and the other playing Scottish is as old as the film. This scrappy crowd pleaser has stood the test of time, let the dodgy flaws go.
Man of the Match would go to Connery in any other movie but Highlander has a black Ace up it’s sleeve. Clancy Brown plays The Kurgan. Clancy Brown inhabits The Kurgan. Clancy Brown is the motherfucking Kurgan. Up there with Han Gruber and Cyrus the Virus, this is one of the best antagonists ever committed to celluloid. When he swaggers into a scene the entire film reboots around him, your eyes widen to accommodate him. Danger personified, no pity, a flair for the theatrical. It is a balls to the walls fearless performance from the gravelly voiced, imposing character actor. You almost want him to win the prize, behead Lambert and ride off with lovely Roxanne Hart cackling. “HELLO PRETTY!”
Highlander is a wonderful six pack and pizza movie. A top Saturday night in. Full of action, cool, quotable lines and bad ass imagery. It all reaches a very definite and satisfying full stop. This was not built with sequels in mind. You can’t blame them for wanting to try and bend the lore in the hope of reanimating the rich mythology in sequels. Yet what followed was wobbly, less inspired, more compromised and ultimately diluted by too many cash-in tries to recapture the magic. Magic definitively put to bed by the epilogue of the original. Animated lightning demons swirl, we race in and out of Lambert’s eyeball, visible wires pull him to the rafters, windows explode, guitars swell! There can only be one!
Colin Higgins directs Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton in this workplace comedy where three put-upon female employees turn the tables on their misogynistic boss.
It has dated, it is bitty, the ending is about as neat as a Primark floor at 5.59pm. But Tomlin and Dolly are stellar, that theme song thumps and it makes you smile even at its weakest, broadest moments.
Diao Yinan directs Hu Ge, Gwei Lun-mei and Liao Fan in this Chinese crime romance where a gang leader on the run and a Wuhan Bathing Beauty prostitute try to scam the reward money for turning him in.
An absolute treat… dark and sexy. The set pieces are thrilling and slightly off kilter like The Coen Brothers of Blood Simple and Fargo times gone. This is a corking crime puzzler with unexpected twists, strange imagery and Lo-Fi but relatable characters. Well worth tracking down.
Abe Forsythe directs Lupita Nyong’o, Alexander England and Josh Gad in this ROM-ZOM-COM where a loser uncle goes on a school trip to an animal park plagued by zombies with only a perky Kindergarten teacher to protect him and the kids.
Maybe Alexander England is some big whoop in Australia but he hogs the first act of the film uncomfortably. I was sold on a bubbly Lupita Nyong’o taking on the undead with a ukulele and a bright smile. 20 minutes in and she was still a no show. We get the film we were advertised eventually but after a wearying schlep with a poor’s man Hemsworth bungling through a poor man’s episode of Nick Helm’s Uncle. The goods eventually arrive and it is all a pleasant, gory, silly watch. Not life changing, not Shaun of the Dead, not even Warm Bodies. But fine.
Michael Chapman directs Tom Cruise, Craig T. Nelson and Lea Thompson in this teen football drama where a cocky kid ruins his shot at a scholarship.
Known now only as a springboard on HIS leap to mega stardom and the film where you glimpse a flash of HIS “Top Gun”! A solid little high school drama… the romance between him and a superior Lea Thompson (he acts / she stars) is the best thing. I don’t entirely agree with the Hollywood politics that a working class existence is a prison to be escaped at all costs but in the main this is a Bruce Springsteen song come to cinematic life. And that’s always going to be a watchable vehicle.
Peter Weller direct David Caruso, Marg Helgenberger and Jeff Kober in this neo-noir where a criminal mastermind’s widow cannot keep her inheritance if she fucks anyone else… enter two very different bad guys.
A TV movie (directed by Robocop himself) made at the height of Elmore Leonard adaptation fever. It is not as slick or as finished or as cartoony as most Leonard adaptations but actually replicates the casual pace and flinty vibe better than most. A good Leonard book ain’t a page turner. He’ll set a dozen low level, big dream characters in motion in the first 80 pages then watch them square off, size each other up, fall for each other and more often than not wait each other out. Typically they just hang out until things come to an unavoidable head. This little movie gets that, gets the sleazy colours of Florida bad living, the rickety ethics of being a Detroit face. A fun Friday night on the couch, often better than watching A-List movie stars playacting grifters and molls like it is a scumbag pantomime. Caruso feels like a guy who done a little time, knows a few sharp angles and really just wants to work with dolphins. You never feel like you are watching an A-List movie star… but that’s his own cross to bear.
Stacie Passon directs Taissa Farmiga, Alexandra Daddario and Crispin Glover in this adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s 1962 chiller about a secluded family recovering from a scandalous tragedy who have to contend with the arrival of a handsome and controlling interloper.
We tried to see this on the big screen twice but at the time of each limited showing last year life somehow got in the way. Thank you streaming services for gifting us eventual access to it. Overlooked by critics and audiences, this is a very solid drama mystery that maybe had it thunder stolen by the recent similar likes of Marrowbone and various American Horror Stories. The imagery and beats of Jackson’s writing have been recycled and repurposed mucho in the past few years. A likeable cast (best career use of Daddario so far as a broken doll / Stepford Wife in the making) and a gorgeous evocative look get this respectably over the finish line. It has been sold as a supernatural horror but these elements are very reduced, it is far more approachable as a prestige adaptation of a modern classic in literature. Well worth digging up.
Josef von Sternberg directs Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook and Anna May Wong in this romantic thriller where a train carriage full of Westerners gets caught by a Chinese warlord.
Pre- Hays Code… so a bit naughtier and franker and salacious and adult than most B&W Hollywood films. This has a cracking plot (based loosely on a true story) that shifts with each act and increases the peril, drama and tragedy as it moves forward. There are some amazing shots of studio replicated China and the lighting is sublime. Dietrich sizzles as the bad girl with a better heart than her “respectable” compatriots. Warner Oland is a hissable villain as the hiding in plain sight dictator… modern eyes will have to get past the yellow face – and casual racism of the era. The only fault is Clive Brook’s stiff upper lip male lead really is not worth Shanghai Lily’s efforts, sacrifice or time. Too wooden and dim. Nice neat underplayed ending too… she buys him a watch but makes sure he’ll ultimately never know what the price she paid was… to keep him alive… ON THE SHANGHAI EXPRESS!
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 