Lee Cronin directs Lily Sullivan, Alyssa Sutherland and Morgan Davies in this continuation of the classic horror franchise where the Necronomicon is found by a family on the top floor of a condemned apartment building.
I’m not entirely sure a Deadite should be this hot!? Cronin does everything right… especially the gore and the lack of sensibilities over who gets killed. Scalps, graters and chippers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It isn’t particularly scary or funny but it keeps moving to a rapid heartbeat right up until the end. Can’t see me not wanting to catch this again soon.
Martin Bourboulon directs François Civil, Vincent Cassel and Eva Green in this classic French swashbuckling adventure based on the first half of Alexander Dumas’ epic tome.
One small confession. I ran out of coffee and had a short doze at the start of the third act. And considering this is the first movie adaptation aiming to reintroduce a bit of girth and complexity back into this much rehashed tale I probably missed a few important moments. What I did see was very satisfying. The perfect casting. The bruising, close quarters battle sequences. Every single look Eva Green’s Milady served. The fact that it was serious in its execution but still retained a good sense of humour within the easy camaraderie of the four heroes. This is an impressive production with minimal sops for 2023 audiences specifically, it is happy to let Dumas’ story and characters do the heavy lifting entertainment wise, framing them in a grimy yet handsome mood. Well up for Part Two later in the year and if they stick the landing this could be the definitive version of the novel. Like Villeneuve’s similar Dune diptych one key pleasure here is trying to figure out where the narrative is going to break off and leave the second movie to cover. Bourboulon picks the right moment.
7
Perfect Double Bill: The Three Musketeers: Milady (2023)
Ken Russell directs Richard Chamberlain, Glenda Jackson and Kenneth Colley in this extreme biography of Tchaikovsky.
Nobody… before or after… made movies like Ken Russell. There is nothing restrained by his filmmaking, no concessions. Here he frames Tchaikovsky as a selfish shit and all around him as wanting to cage him in. Homosexuality, incest, madness, death. And some of the most baroque, extreme musical numbers ever committed to celluloid. When it isn’t overly grim The Music Lovers can be a sumptuous feast for the eyes, marrying the classical music to the OTT visuals gloriously. Glenda Jackson is firing on all cylinders as the composer’s doomed wife. Her fate is so nightmarishly awful that it might be another decade before I can build up the courage to rewatch but there is so much great cinema squeezed in here that it will be more than worth the effort.
Andy Tennant directs Reese Witherspoon, Josh Lucas and Patrick Dempsey in this romcom where a fashion designer returns home to her small shitkicker town to get an urgent divorce from her childhood beau.
Handsome fluff with a very busy cast and obviously reshot wrap-up. Frustrating to think that up until this point Witherspoon had been making really daring career choices. Thumbs down for Josh Lucas.
George Scribner directs Joey Lawrence, Billy Joel and Bette Midler in this Walt Disney classic animated update on Oliver Twist where the orphan is a kitten lost in Eighties’ Manhattan.
The songs are pretty toe-tapping, New York is well realised. Doesn’t exactly feel like Disney but does seem at least to be pointed in a modern direction. When was the last time you could say that? The Aristocats? The Jungle Book?
Brian De Palma directs Craig Wasson, Gregg Henry and Melanie Griffith in this bonkers erotic thriller where a claustrophobic actor gets over his hang-ups by stalking a doomed woman and then trying to hire a porn star for a fake project.
Listen, Body Double is a ride. Try and overthink it… or pick it apart and it falls apart. Doesn’t mean it isn’t thrilling. Approach it as a four cheese pizza and Penthouse fuelled wet nightmare where the geography constantly shifts and the waking moments are dirty meta jokes and you’ll get off. The whole thing is a dirty meta joke really. But I take my sleazy genre entertainments seriously and I reckon De Palma does to. He is serious about his hard-on for Hitchcock. Serious about VHS porno. Serious about how actors and women should be put through the ringer because of all his personal hang-ups about them.
The mutating plot melds Rear Window, Vertigo and Dial M For Murder together. The solution to the gimcrack mystery is guessable from the first act. Just follow the meandering horny, nasty journey. De Palma hobbles himself in the casting of sitcom nobody Wasson. He can’t hold a candle to the ladies we never get within touching distance of. His performance is maybe weak by design, unattractively bland in a movie popping with spicy flavour? De Palma might be ultimately saying that movie actors are interchangeable, bodies to be swapped, the auteur is the mastermind and all that matters. Look at the early bar scene where just about every principle and extra has a look-a-like sharing the frame. Look at that last, daft over-the-end-credits gag. An obtrusive musical number to Frankie Goes To Hollywood! Look at the chat show porn star who accidentally mistakes the word exposition while she delivers the exposition that actually shunts the story ahead to its final unlikely section!
Once you accept that everything ropey about Body Double is take-it-or-leave-it unreality intentional, my only true gripe is we do not get enough Melanie Griffiths. As she is baby-voiced glorious here as the sex worker dream girl. Pino Donnagio’s dreamy electronica score also bumps this way up. The set pieces are marvels: mall stalk, drill kill, risky hitchhiking, burial. After the promised titillation, these luxurious traps are the true reason to indulge in De Palma’s chaotic doodling. Saturday night madness.
Craig Brewer directs Terrence Howard, Taryn Manning and Taraji Henson in this drama where a pimp builds his hopes up about a chance to start rapping again.
A surprisingly likeable slice of poverty porn fairy tale with a strong soundtrack. Terrence Howard has never been better but there’s as much here that feels like a Seventies kids film as a hard hitting drama. It is a one-watcher but a very solid one-watcher.
Todd Field directs Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson and Marisa Tomei in this drama where a couple deal with the violent death of their teenage son.
Patient, sensitive and consummately acted… until the third act. The extended finale is still as finely crafted but feels like a tonal shift too far, ultimately unsatisfying when compared to what has gone on before.
Alfred Hitchcock directs Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor and Jessica Tandy in this disaster horror where a murmuration of birds attack a bayside town in increasing waves.
Outwardly this looks like a classical, smoothed, technicolour entertainment. Yet there are very few movies out there like The Birds. The first hour is a teasing rom-com then it eventually “From Dusk Till Dawn”’s us with the first lone bird attack… but even after a couple of set pieces where eyes are pecked out and school kids are chased (and the tension is ramped way, way, way up) we are still focussing on the seething sexual mania of all the women in the town. I know all about Tippi and Hitchcock’s dark backstory. But The Birds does feel a touch misogynistic even taken at face value. Every woman is willing to make their life a misery over that plank Rod Taylor!? The hysteria over a new fertile female in town means nobody can even think rationally over the apocalyptic threat they are facing. And that feels just as creepy as the feathered crowds amassing in the lulls between invasions. As a horror, when it hits… it hits hard… you just wish Hitch slapped us about a bit sooner into the runtime. Works better at midnight, in the house by yourself… And Hedren, unfortunately in her last major role, is excellent. Imperfect but iconic.
Max Ophüls directs Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux and Vittorio De Sica in this tragic romance where an aristocratic wife sells a gift to pay some taxes on a dress… starting a chain reaction of infidelity, jealousy, mistrust and sadness.
Beautiful and brutal – this is my favourite Ophüls so far. Three complex yet clean performances from the principles – your sympathies shift but eventually you realise that the nameless Madame De… is traded, valued and passed off just as much as the totemic earrings that cause all the drama. The camerawork by La Grande Illusion’s Christian Matras glides elegantly about, giving the surface impression this is all a light frippery, but he captures the ornate splendour of this world of diplomats and generals like the cage it truly is. Wonderful.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 