Paul Schrader directs Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver and Quintessa Swindell in this drama about a gardener with a very dark past who takes on an apprentice.
Same old Schrader but this might be his best meditation on his own strict and extreme personal form. Though I did find it funny when the main character states he hates writing his journal. Weaver is on fire. Watched at the brilliant Grand Action Cinema in Paris.
Terry Gilliam directs Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt in this time travel head fuck where a damaged man from a post-apocalyptic future travels back to the source date of the epidemic that forces humanity underground… and everyone treats him as if he is crazy… which he may well be.
Vertigo. La Jetée. The Terminator. The Last Battle. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. A winning mish-mash of sources and influences – some openly cited; others lurking in the back seat. Yet it coalesces beautifully and becomes its own thing. This contains one of those OTT early Brad Pitt performances that can be quite grating, twitching before he found his inner cool. If I can forgive it in Se7en, then I can forgive it here. When I was a teen 12M really affected me at the cinema. I struggled with its pacing the last time I watched it and took a 10 year break. Here we are now though and the salvaged production design and Willis and Stowe’s frantic but dialled back romance swung it back into “classic status”. It is imperfect but if you are in the right mood, all its tricks and twists and ambiguities are quite powerful. Spoiler: I’m pretty sure the female scientist who appears at the end in the coda scene is there to ensure the epidemic does happen and her future is assured rather than to be a back-up if Cole fails.
Adequate remake that puts some nice spins on the established beats. But lacks star power, the foul mouthed poetry of Shelton’s original screenplay and any kinda urgency. Which is a shame as the main dudes are sweet and have nice chemistry.
Julia Leigh directs Emily Browning, Rachael Blake and Ewen Leslie in this Australian drama where a young woman takes a part-time high-paying job with a mysterious group that caters to rich men who like the company of drugged nude girls.
I watched this on the train from Amsterdam to Munich. And I’m not going to lie it was a terrible selection. Shines a brutal light on the exploitation of the gig economy, comparing pretty much any shift to sex work. Yet it is all quite blank and vacant beyond the blunt politics, both sexual and economic. It is feminist horror but marketed on the opportunity to ogle the doll-like body of Sucker Punch’s Browning. Not sure who gets much of anything from this.
Phil Alden Robinson directs Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan and Ray Liotta in this baseball fantasy where a farmer hears an eerie voice in his crop and follows its instruction to build a baseball field.
I have never studied the exact definition of the literary term ‘magical realism’ but in my head it is this: A fantasy bolted down in the everyday. No elves or magical swords. But pollution free sunsets, the embrace of a true friendship and the feeling you’ve witnessed a parable, seen the hand of some god in the spinning of the yarn. Like beloved Stephen King adaptations The Shawshank Redemption or Stand By Me, this is a backwards looking comfort movie. Not only nostalgic but a tale of escape told through the lens of memory and lost innocence. All three films, all of disparate genres, share a warmth, a mystery and a narration. They work within the oral tradition of storytelling and the connective tradition of the first or second person narrative. I’ve never run along a railway bridge or played opera to a yard full of hardened cons or even been to watch a baseball game. But I understand the power of jumping the rails. Of seeing the way one’s life eventually plays as preset and the zen of taking steps to rebel against the natural flow of time’s gentle but constant moving river. The supernatural moments still give me chills, the comedy still makes me chuckle, the threads of freedom and happiness tie into my personal philosophies, the Dad stuff gets my throat clogged and makes my eyes (almost) dampen. The technical qualities, though unfussy, are flawless. “Is This Heaven? No, It’s Iowa”
Danny and Michael Philippou direct Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen and Miranda Otto in this Australian horror where a ceramic hand allows the very worst of the spirit realm to possess your body.
The (un)pleasant surprise of the summer. The trailer didn’t do a very good job of selling this. It focussed on the annoying Gen Z party brats and appeared the be an elevated horror about grief. NOT AGAIN!?! And those are elements are in there but it works best as a far more traditional full fat shocker. Has pretty much everything I needed from the genre. Gnarly violence, flashes of hellish practical FX, a set of clear rules to be broken, a third act where there is no going back and anything could and does happen. Woo hoo! Untrustworthy horror heaven.
Bassam Tariq directs Riz Ahmed, Aiysha Hart and Alyy Khan in this British drama where a London-Pakistani rapper is struck down by a disease that means he will miss out on a big break he has worked years to position himself into.
Curious that the hyper talented Riz Ahmed decided to make two films with essentially the same basic plot and overlapping themes in the same year. This is the more obtuse, experimental and abrasive of the diptych. Admirable but a lot of the runtime I just wished I was rewatching the superior Sound Of Metal.
Luke Greenfield directs Emile Hirsch, Elisha Cuthbert and Timothy Olyphant in this teen sex comedy where a prissy kid falls for his hot new neighbour only to discover she has previously embarked on a career in porn.
Risky Business updated for the pornstar era. At one point Tangerine Dream’s Love On a Real Train plays!! Then again… there are so many needle drops in this flick that it might be easier listing the songs not featured on the soundtrack. I’m not entirely sure director Greenfield needed to smother the movie quite so much in emotion stoking jukebox clips. The script is basically witty in a shotgun blast kinda way. Crude but good natured. And the support cast is pretty stacked. Olyphant is superb as the outwardly friendly but predatory suitcase pimp. The movie flags whenever his wild energy is sidelined. And you have James Remar and young Paul Dano floating about too. And yet… this was intended and sold as a vehicle for Kim from 24 to breakout from her hit TV series into movie stardom. And she very much gets lost in the mix during the second half. She never emerges as much more than a wet dream fantasy figure without much motivation or internal workings… and then feels extraneous to the busy plot while everyone else is shuffling about. If she wasn’t the biggest face on the poster, you’d forget it was ever her vehicle.
Peter Cattaneo directs Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy and Tom Wilkinson in this British comedy where six unemployed men in Sheffield decide to put on a stripshow for cash.
If you asked me in any other context what modern British cinema needs I’d tell you more populist movies about people who at least know what a Job Centre smells like. It is a tradition we have seemingly lost in the 21st century… yet there’s something about The Full Monty, a movie that over fulfilled on exactly that brief, that leaves me quite cold. The humour and the plotting feel rote and backwards. It just does nothing for me and I struggle to understand its continued popularity.
Luchino Visconti directs Clara Calamai, Massimo Girotti and Juan de Landa in this Italian neo-realist crime thriller based on The Postman Always Rings Twice.
Remarkably frank about adulterous sex and surprisingly unguarded about one character’s homosexual desire (the clear suggestion is our feckless protagonist would be better off palling around with the fey gypsy). The best adaptation of the source material I’ve watched.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 