Jeff Tremaine directs Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O and Bam Margera in this action comedy documentary where a group of skateboarders and stunt people’s kids do nasty pranks and dares on together camera.
The cat couldn’t sleep so I selected this late night treat from my drinking days. Feels very much like an offshoot of the TV series but the air horn golf and a very sincere X-ray specialist had me in fits of suppressed giggles towards the end.
Daniel Espinosa directs Jared Leto, Matt Smith and Adria Arjona in this Marvel spin-off where a sick scientist gains the powers of a vampire.
No idea why I do this to myself? It was unlikely I was going to enjoy Morbius. Leto is a million miles away from my ideal leading man… the superhero sub-genre feels tired currently. Morbius is hacked to fuck. The scenes are piecemeal, disjointed. There’s barely a movie here. 90 minutes of deleted scenes.
Sian Heder directs Emilia Jones, Troy Kotsur and Marlee Matlin in this teen drama where the hearing child of deaf parents begins to follow her own path, causing disruption within the household that relies heavily on her.
I liked so much about this movie. Especially the salty, playful performances. You’d never catch me looking sideways at it but I’ve come to it late in the day. Watched with the Best Picture Oscar win hanging over it you can’t help but notice how slight and well trodden Heder’s movements are. Some scenes bare the distracting digital scars of what can only be a COVID restricted reshoot and they shake you out of the story. It is baggy and overlong. Still, CODA feels very different from your standard gold bait in that it is built primarily to entertain and is full of positive messaging.
Stanley Kramer directs Sidney Poitier, Tony Curtis and Cara Williams in this race drama where two prisoners, one black and one white, are shackled together and on the lam.
The ultimate solidarity movie. After they set aside their prejudice, the pair realise their struggle, present and existential, is shared and decide not to abandon each other. Tony Curtis is a little miscast as a gutter brute but does solid work. Poitier is something else. Man wasn’t no flash in the pan. Must have been fascinating for him to navigate being the big screen voice of controlled black outrage for audiences of all colours at this precise point in American history. You feel him making silent decisions both as a capable but desperate character but also as a consummate actor in every moment here. The set pieces are strong… the interlude with the deserted farmer’s wife and her child is sensational. The atmosphere of the entire film is amped up by Kramer’s choice to make all the music diegetic. Proto-buddy movie, sweaty thriller, brave statement. The Defiant Ones holds up incredibly well.
Eliza Hittman directs Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder and Théodore Pellerin in this drama where a pregnant teen has to navigate the bureaucracy, costs and perils of crossing state lines to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
A sensitive and immersive procedural drama about modern day abortion in America. Really memorable lead performance by Flanigan who evokes a lot with very little dialogue. Having said that – I could tell this wasn’t for intended me as every man is pitched as an active sexual predator except the bus station employee who gave them directions. I’m a big boy, I can take it… but every… fucking… man? Made very much for its echo chamber which maybe limits its scope to change the current political landscape.
6
Perfect Double Bill: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)
Roland Emmerich directs Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger and Jason Isaacs in this period war drama where a peaceful farmer is driven to lead a colonial militia against the British during the American Revolutionary war.
A more subdued Mel leans into his acting chops for a movie that doesn’t fully deserve them. This is more blockbuster than prestige but the unusual mixture of gloss and gore can be strangely winning. The third act has problems – a couple of key characters are killed off quite abruptly before the big conclusive battle set-piece and it proves hard getting back into the rhythm of this being a rousing entertainment. Still the sight of Mel taking on the old country with nothing more than a massive flagpole has its iconic pleasures, as does the knowledge he was probably still pranking away off camera then switching to dour everyman once the Independence Day director yelled ‘Action’. Isaacs made his name with his hissable bastard of a redcoat villain here. The entire package doesn’t work but quality elements like him make it a very serviceable if throwaway Saturday night filler.
Christian Petzold directs Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld and Nina Kunzendorf in this German drama where a concentration camp survivor who has undergone reconstructive surgery tries to reconnect with her untrustworthy husband.
A strong mystery about broken people. We are never sure of the husband’s true motivations… surely he recognises his own wife? Excellent central performance by Hoss, Petzold’s low key, sparse direction always allows her to shine. A really neat mic drop ending slightly ruined by our steaming service buffering in the final seconds.
István Szabó directs Klaus Maria Brandauer, Krystyna Janda and Ildikó Bánsági in this German drama from Hungary where an esteemed theatre actor “sells his soul” to advance his career during the Third Reich.
Fine. A little too dry and one note to really justify its Foreign Classic status. For example, it lacks the complexity, mystery and eroticism of Bertolucci’s similar but superior The Conformist. Klaus Maria Brandauer’s central performance is superb however… his Hendrik Höfgen is based on a real life figure and the bruv never stops acting. Can’t even have lunch without playing a part. You never know who the real human behind the performance is, so you can only judge him on his actions. Selfish decisions and dangerous compromises. The montages of him going through all his stagecraft clearly inspired Matt Berry’s Toast Of London. Ends abruptly.
Neveldine/Taylor direct Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Dwight Yoakam, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Bai Ling and Efren Ramirez in this action comedy series where a hitman has to survive a fraught couple of hours where something in his body will shutdown if he doesn’t keep his pecker up.
A frankly bizarro mixture of D.O.A. / Speed / G.T.A. that just about works. Every camera trick, cheap FX and mad edit is deployed to deliver something that is pretty self consciously juvenile. The Crank movies are set in a world of cartoonish bad taste that intend to offend every modern moral but really have a similar sweet impact as a four-year-old repeating the same swear word over and over. To keep his heart pumping The Stath’s Chev Chelios will do anything. Toilet floor coke, public sex, gang warfare, defibrillators, jumping out of helicopters. It is all very tongue-in-cheek and all a little deadening. Half an hour works better than a whole feature length sitting. Crank feels like a series made preemptively to watch while simultaneously scrolling at your phone screen, full of short sharps shocks to let you know when the mad violent mania is worth sequestering your full attention.
Jason is game. Selling the physicality and drive of Chelios to either survive or take as many bastards down with him on the way. He’s a desperate character, true anti-hero, who never loses his cool, even when dressed in surgery gowns or Puma shellsuits. MVP though is Amy Smart as his unwitting girlfriend. She’s a cute character who sells the comedy and her wholesome sexiness really well. She inarguably elevates the portions she is in and it is a shame both movies relegate her offscreen for entire hours of their brief runtimes. If Smart and Statham were a consistent double act for the full length of their adventures I’d probably revisit a Crank far more often.
The sequel is probably the better film of the pair just as it really doesn’t give a shit about sensibilities, is packed with genuinely quirky cameos and has the feeling of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or Magnolia with its overlapping side plots and sub characters. In an ideal world, the set pieces might have a bit more tension to them, a bit more girth but Neveldine/Taylor are all about instant gratification rather than delivering escalating traps or sustained spectacle.
Wolfgang Reitherman directs Phil Harris, Sebastian Cabot and George Sanders in this perfect Walt Disney classic that adapts Rudyard Kipling’s adventure stories.
Going to be a difficult one to write cleanly about this as I have just flat out loved The Jungle Book since I was a little kid. I love the road movie, ‘who will we meet next?’, looseness of the narrative. Bagheera and Balloo’s chemistry. The be-bop, scatting jump blues of The Bare Necessities and I Wanna Be Like You. Louis Prima really rips that famous number. All the villains are iconic. George Sander’s classy Shere Khan and the devious Kaa. I just adore it, it opens up the boyhood magic within me and I’m sure everyone has their Disney favourite that does the same for them too.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 