Ernst Lubitsch directs Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis and Herbert Marshall in this pre-code romantic comedy where a long con couple meet their match in a glamorous heiress who wants the male lothario.
Took me the first act to get into the rhythm of this but then it just flew. Really witty and quite saucy. The hucksters get a taste of their own medicine when a rich girl gets what she wants with a predatory zeal. There’s a lovely wiggle of truncated storytelling involving clocks going from long shot to close-up. Must watch more Lubitsch.
Richard Benjamin directs Whoopi Goldberg, Ted Danson and Nia Long in this romantic comedy where a black high school honour student discovers her mother visited a sperm bank to get pregnant and her biological father is a white moron.
Will Smith’s big screen crossover role. The Fresh Prince steals his scenes in the best friend role. The first half is really broad and zany, a lot more entertaining than you’d expect. The second half descends into romantic bleh… the jokes fade but Goldberg and Danson have surprisingly strong chemistry so it isn’t a complete wash out. Jennifer Tilly is also incredibly funny in her small role… clearly improvised. I’ve read a few retrospective Letterboxd reviews stating the racial politics of the film don’t hold up to 21st century scrutiny. I’m not going to say what is racist and what isn’t but…Goldberg and Long’s characters were originally scripted as white, the project was overhauled by an uncredited Carrie Fisher to accommodate the African American stars casting and Benjamin embroiders his goofy farce with plenty of right-on political references. You’d struggle to find many Hollywood projects of the early Nineties where characters organically wear Act Up T-Shirts and Malcolm X caps, there isn’t a suggestion of gang violence and a white and black lead end up together in middle class harmony. Feels pretty progressive, even now.
Julie Anne Robinson directs Katherine Heigl, Jason O’Mara and Debbie Reynolds in this mystery comedy where a down on her luck single gal becomes a bounty hunter whose first case is her high school prom date.
A star vehicle where the star can’t be bothered. Heigl’s entire performance feels off-key and lacklustre. She’s aiming for Geena Davis but with a real “one half hearted take and we’re done for the day” energy. The rest of the movie is random and unappealing. Feels like an over lit pilot for a TV show you’d never watch. A shame, as I reckon there’s a fertile project to be made out of Janet Evanonvich’s long running Stephanie Plum novels.
Jake Scott directs Liam Gallagher, Noel Gallagher and Bonehead in this concert movie capturing what was the biggest live event in Britpop.
“This is history, this is history, right here, right now. This is history.”
August 10th 1996. I was there. Meaning I spent the entire documentary, tinnie in my hand, scouring the crowd footage to see if I could spot 16 year old me. Scott rather pleasingly focuses on the fans as much as the music. I spent a whole afternoon on the phone with my mates dialling and redialling the day tickets went on sale. In the end we kinda got split up by the dates we all scraped tickets for. Me and Paul Clifford went together on the first Saturday. Paid twenty quid to sleep on some old guy’s living room floor in Stevenage, he woke us up with this massive fart the next morning. Obviously I remember the bands as well. Would have been nice for the doc to include more of The Prodigy who truly won the day, the barrier coming down allowing us to rush into the closest area just as Oasis started… the cold, miffed reaction the new Be Here Now material got. Still, this was one of the greatest weekends of my life and it is sweet to have such a vibrant, loved up document of it. MAD FOR IT!
Lewis Allen directs Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden and Nancy Gates in this noir thriller where the small town of Suddenly is overrun by secret service agents ahead of the President’s visit and three assassins take a family hostage so they can maintain the vantage point of their sniper rifle.
Really solid this (though some the minor characters acting is atrocious). Sinatra gets a really beefy part as the self-aggrandising psycho. This could easily be a play but it grips and stays surprisingly claustrophobic.
Clint Eastwood directs himself, Jeff Fahey and Charlotte Cornwell in this period adventure based on a true story where John Huston delayed and exploited The African Queen’s on-location shoot to hunt an elephant (thinly fictionalised).
An amusing anecdote told with an epic sweep. Though it takes potshots at colonialism and Hollywood hypocrisy, it is hard to see who it is really for. Perhaps Clint relished playing someone whose monstrous flaws are human, whose weaknesses are apparent. Definitely one for him rather the studio or his fanbase but a fine enough single use movie in its own right.
Baz Luhrmann directs Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes and John Leguizamo in this MTV-era modernisation of the tragic teen love story.
The boys are on the pills at their enemies’ party and one callow youth spots a beauty through an aquarium and chases her to a kiss in the gold elevator. Magic, swoony magic. A mainstay on my home VHS rotation and the soundtrack defined that summer. Massive crush on Claire Danes back then too. Luhrmann really fucks the frame with his big reel decoupage of tropical fish, florid shirts, massive shooters, fireworks and drag. Still feels like a once-in-a-lifetime wonder. The second half cannot keep up the speedball pace and the doomed lovers clicking into place clunks a little to these older eyes. The ultimate message is one shouldn’t rely on wrinkly British people to give important messages. I’m pretty sure this story / 1996 was the reason the SMS was invented.
James Mangold directs Harrison Ford, Mads Mikkelsen and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in this concluding chapter to the archaeologist adventure serieswhereHenry Jones Jnr finds some surviving Nazis to punch in the Sixties.
It is just not cricket to square up any sunset sequel to the unimpeachable classic original trilogy… yet comparing Dial Of Destiny to Crystal Skulls feels like solid ball work. The new movie is a far safer, conservative and smoother experience than the derided fourth entry. Any problems feel like inherited unavoidabilities rather than the risks of bored untethered creatives (Lucas & Spielberg) who could almost be heard grumbling as they returned to the Well Of Souls with a passel of half hearted ideas. And even if you fanatically hate the abrasive 2008 cash-in that left everyone a bit shellshocked, I’ll just point out I don’t dislike it. There’s nothing in Dial quite as exhilarating as nuked fridges or ant eviserations. So let’s get the wobbly stuff out of the way first.
The AI de-aging flashback effects manage to convince for all of three seconds until Indy has to move his head, then we are stuck in quite a compelling 20 minute PS5 era cut-scene you wish we could take control of and have some 1945 fun with. Later sequences have squalls of rain, steam and ticker-tape to cover up their pixelated forger notes. Waller-Bridge’s self-aware sidekick Wombat grates like a Jar-Jar Binks or a Mutt and her spindly posh girl arms do not convince in the rough and tumble. Luckily, the crash of Tuk-Tuks and the juddering of shutting down propellers often drown out her plummy Millenial Marvel-esque meta commentary on the peril and pitfalls. The series never needed snark and certainly one wonders what a more natural movie star like Emily Blunt or Felicity Jones might have made of the untrustworthy goddaughter role?
Yet digital FX and flavour of the month casting are the hamstrings of any current franchise entry. What about the good stuff? Dial Of Destiny is rather bravely more of an adventure movie than an action flick. Ford’s age doesn’t just limit what he can and cannot do onscreen but Hollywood changes also mean that on-location stunt work and period spectacle just don’t happen on the same level. Not now key master technicians have aged out and celluloid is no longer the format. There is just one shot of Jones and Wombat entering a cave and being overawed by the scale that feels like it rekindles any of the true 1981 magic time. Mikkelsen and Boyd Holbrook make for threatening antagonists – there’s a surprising amount of murder in the first hour which ups the stakes for the heroes regularly. No spoilers now but there is also a third act plot swerve that might become as derided as the previous adventure’s notorious inter-dimensional beings… but I hope that it doesn’t. The inspired finale is well tee’d up and we spend more than a few seconds living in it so the talking point gamble feels a bit more a part of the story entire. And how pleasurable is it to have a summer blockbuster where the treasures of the last hour aren’t raided by the trailers six month before we even get a chance to buy a ticket? Most importantly, Ford is an evergreen class act. This could have been his Top Gun: Maverick, instead it proves a perfectly adequate episode in The Old Indiana Jones Chronicles. You leave with a smile on your face but there’s no need to install a pacemaker. Your childhood winding down into a warm bath of hard drive nostalgia.
Gene Stupnitsky directs Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman and Matthew Broderick in this raunchy comedy where a slacker beauty agrees to bang a nervy 19 year old before he goes to college when his parents offer her a car.
Jennifer Lawrence’s big screen comeback. Lots of goodwill going into this. And No Hard Feelings never betrays that even if it struggles to fully capitalise on it. The simple, witty script only has four strong, laugh out loud set pieces when really it should be aiming for seven or eight. That shouldn’t overly matter as Lawrence is consummately watchable throughout… even in sequences when you get the gut reaction that they don’t know what to do with the A-Lister or how to move the plot forward. A positive spin is the movie is pretty chill and has more room for character stuff. Our protagonist Maddie Barker isn’t on the most complex journey, not too dissimilar from Bill Murray’s in Stripes or Seth Rogen’s in Knocked Up. What is more fascinating is Stupnitsky takes on the American class system of wealth imbalance with quite an unforced precision. Still, I came for naked suplexes and party throat punches. There just about enough of that sweet comedy overkill to make me revisit this sometime soon.
Don Siegel directs Clint Eastwood, Lee J. Cobb and Susan Clark in this cop thriller where an Arizona deputy sheriff comes to NYC to catch a fugitive.
Clint versus The Hippies. Or a very reactionary dry run for Beverly Hills Cop’s fish-out-of-water disruptor detective formula. Fading western transposed to The Big Apple. Clint getting his fuck on any which way he can. Pool room brawls, motorbike duels and freak out face-offs. A very pure, simple movie that hits the spots and holds up as a quirky artefact of its time.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 