John Guillermin directs M.E. Clifton, John Mills and Cecil Parker in this WWII true story about a struggling actor given the mission of impersonating Field Marshal Montgomery to distract to the dastardly Bosch.
M.E. Clifton plays himself – a former actor, working in the Army pay office who is enlisted into performing as a lookalike diversion for one the Allied’s key military figures. It is jolly little tale, full of pluck and patriotism. Perfect for teatime viewing. It only really sparks into something a bit more cinematically daring when embellishing the facts. A quite exciting kidnapping attempt is utter hokum but caps the rather talky adventure off on an action high.
Gilbert Adler directs Dennis Miller, Erika Eleniak and Angie Everhart in this vampire comedy where a sexy Christian and a sleazy detective investigate a deadly whorehouse.
Brash and diverting, just not very good. The scares and action are haphazardly shot. They have energy but no consistency. The sex appeal is supplied by Angie Everhart’s villain, Eleniak strangely wants to stay prim and proper, spoiling some of the intended fun. The comedy is strange. A third of the way in SNL alumni Dennis Miller turns up and tries to turn all the cleavage and rubbery fang silliness into Fletch. He improvises his socks off, twisting dialogue into something that sounds funny in his head even if it derails exposition or logic. Where Chevy Chase is detached and charming, Miller comes across as desperate and pugnacious. He certainly mixes things up on what would have been a forgettable throwaway production, though more often than not for the worse.
Gary Young directs Katie Jarvis, Cathy Tyson and David Hayman in this British crime drama where a derelict power station serves as the site for kidnapping, revenge and drugs.
I watched this to see what Fish Tank’s Katie Jarvis did next. The results are not impressive. The variable cast struggle with a convoluted script, written by someone who has never learnt the storytelling lesson, show don’t tell. Amateur hour stuff.
Toa Fraser directs Jamie Bell, Abbie Cornish and Mark Strong in this police procedural true story of when the SAS were brought in to end the 1980 Iranian Embassy siege.
A news story I was too young to remember but whose imagery seemed to be a mainstay of news reporting throughout my childhood. I worked around the corner from the location for many a year. The action is involving but Bell and Strong seem at half power in underwritten roles. Abbie Cornish is well cast as Kate Adie. Unlike Entebbe this doesn’t give you a greater psychological understanding of the terror attack. Maybe the other film is more interesting for focusing on the antagonists rather than the dry bureaucrats and grizzled soldiers.
Paul Bartel directs David Carradine, Simone Griffeth and Sylvester Stallone in this Roger Corman produced futuresport sci-fi.
Religious corporate fascists have taken over America. They mollify the masses with a hit and run murder race that takes place across the breadth of America. The contestants score points by running down pedestrians. The population is entertained and culled simultaneously. The production has a cheap tits and ass exploitation charm. The satire is strange and the violence lurid. You can see its massive influence on 2000AD in every frame. I enjoy it more every time I watch it.
Krzysztof Kieślowski directs Irène Jacob, Irène Jacob and Philippe Volter in this existential drama where a singer and a music teacher lives parallel lives in Eastern Europe and Paris respectively.
My second attempt to get my head around this and I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it. It seems to be about fate and loneliness. We are all puppets, like the beautiful marionette we see at a central point. I think it is an experience where you can pull at any philosophical thread and walk away with your own theory on it. Or you can just be seduced by the rich, waking dream beauty of it all. SławomirIdziak’s cinematography is like a creamy golden broth, warm and fluid. He frames the captivating Jacob as if she were an angel… an angel who takes the bus, makes trilling phonecalls and goes to cafes. A sumptuous mystery I’ll certainly get lost in again over the next decade.
Sean Durkin directs Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson and John Hawkes in this drama about a young woman who escapes a cult only to find life at her sister’s lake house alien and disorientating.
A solid, well acted piece of indie filmmaking. We get the rundown of how a Manson-style sex cult indoctrinates its members in a unsensational yet queasy way. We get thrown into Martha’s paranoia and confusion as she struggles to reconnect with her sister and process the abuse she has been a party to. Durkin plays with the formal process, flashbacks are smoothly moved in and out of so we often don’t know for sure what timeframe we are in. Equally our moral understanding of the multi-named lead is eroded as she suddenly becomes more culpable and corrupted than we earlier assumed. Gripping.
Dome Karukoski directs Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins and Colm Meaney in this biopic of The Lord of the Rings writer.
Dull-Kien. There’s 15 minutes set in the trenches of WWI peppered around the running time where the chaos of war morphs into Middle Earth imagery. That’s solid. The rest of this is rich people with rich people’s problems. My least favourite sub-genre, nobody even gets buggered gently.
Ivan Reitman directs Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito and Kelly Preston in this high concept comedy that imagines what if Arnold and Danny were somehow brothers.
When I was a kid we queued around the block to watch this. It was a genuine blockbuster. The poster told us “Only their mother can tell them apart” but the upshot actually was “What if Arnie played a straight off the boat dork?” and the movie soon gets bored of even that and just decides to remake Rain Man… with Danny DeVito more convincing in the Tom Cruise role. Does it matter?… Nah. This is a really sunny, pleasant watch. Well made, deftly focussed on keeping momentum.
Jonathan Levine directs Seth Rogen, Charlize Theron and O’Shea Jackson Jr. in this romantic comedy where an undisciplined journalist falls for the woman most likely to be the first female President of the USA.
An hour into Long Shot and it had completely won me over. The hooking up of idealistic but messy loser Rogen with the immaculate and successful Theron was tee’d up convincingly. The laughs came thick and fast – hitting highs of slapstick and cattiness that never punctured the bubble of the (quite a sweet) odd couple pairing. An hour in, I would have said we had one of the funniest and engrossing rom-coms since Norah Ephron’s heyday. It even had a built-in third act dilemma. Even if we and Theron can be won over by Rogen’s bumbling, loudmouth pothead, that doesn’t mean there’s any reality where he would play with the media and the voting public. And that’s where the movie goes off the rails. In the final act we get two sequences that feel like the very worst of that Judd Apatow fratpack formula. What if the the Secretary of State had to negotiate a life and death crisis high on MDMA? What if something really vulgar about Rogen was leaked to the press? The excessive, crudeness of both set pieces feel at least 10 years off base and I’m not sure any real laughs are hit during these hurdles. They feel like spitballed ideas that could have been lost in an earlier draft or in the edit. Why? They rob the film of its hardfought for warmness, scupper the movie logic verisimilitude. Long Shot still reaches a satisfying ending but you don’t trust it quite so much. It sacrifices that rare seductive spark between Rogen and Theron for potential cheap laughs. There’s still a really witty romance here for 80% of the running time, one well worth seeing. Long Shot is one of the better entertainments of the year and the finest recent example of the form. But its missteps glaringly hold it back from instant classic status. At its rawest parts it evokes the feeling all men feel about their better halves… we are unbelievably lucky to have them as part of our lives and can’t believe they see our better qualities through our shambolic, childish lifestyles.
