Jessica M. Thompson directs Nathalie Emmanuel, Thomas Doherty and Sean Pertwee in this bloodless horror romance flick where a long lost relative of some European aristocrats turns up at a country house clearly owned by a vampire.
Downtown Abbey meets Bram Stoker but set in the modern day. Feels very much like a Young Adult novel that has been sifted through a TV show development sieve. So… not very cinematic. Flat, ponderous and often quite boring.
Peter Farrelly directs Zac Efron, Bill Murray and Russell Crowe in this war drama true story about a ne’er-do-well New Yorker who decides to bring a beer to each of his drinking buddies while they serve in Vietnam.
I’m about to type a sentence that lists a lot of decades. There was a real boom in the late Eighties and early Nineties for accessible films that dramatised big events of the recent past (the Fifties / the Sixties / the Seventies). Some might say your Driving Miss Daisys, Good Morning Vietnams and Forrest Gumps sanitised or even mollified the huge schismatic upheavals of near history. Taking big issues, ones still influencing the politics and injustices of the American present, and polishing them into nostalgic light entertainments. Not every film has to be as brutalising and as self-lacerating as Platoon. We know which movies have a more realistic bent on the past and which ones want to reframe civil and global trauma into something box office worthy. I’m of the school that there are room for both… you can take a less journalistic, less coroner’s report, approach to events from our lifetime and still make them sad and funny and add a little sparkle. But then again, I did grow up on a steady diet of Quantum Leap.
Peter Farrelly’s Oscar winning Green Book felt anachronistic when it scooped the Best Picture Oscar a few years back. A call back to a time when prestige and full houses mingled a little easier. Directed by a silly comedy hit maker, dealing with race and racism from a conservative white male POV and more jovial and adventurous than worthy or punitive. Yet… considering it was a box office hit aimed squarely at adults and was as entertaining as it was focussed on dealing with weighty issues… I was happy to enjoy it for it was – a really well made, salty bit of Hollywood product. In my eyes, it is one of the few recent Best Picture winners that a casual movie viewer might elect to rewatch for fun if it popped up near the top of their streaming menu on a Saturday night. The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a follow-up in very much the same mode. Much as the award winning road movie put a glossy and laugh worthy spin on racism, here the big gaping wound on America’s psyche (the failed occupation of Vietnam) is approached not from the vantage point of some bleeding heart liberals or gung-ho warmongers but of an average dude who believes what he reads in the paper and would vote for whoever could lower his taxes… if he could be bothered to vote.
A game Zac Efron is the glue that makes this unlikely mixture of fish-out-water comedy and occasionally hard hitting tragedy work. He’s a fun guy, sweet hearted, not particularly heroic, who brashly puts himself in a dumb but kinda admirable danger. All for the sake of being a decent human being on his own terms. And as he spends his improbable but seemingly true week in Vietnam handing out tinnies of Pabst Blue Ribbons, his eyes are opened to the destruction his people are bringing to this beautiful country, the brutalising violence his old drinking buddies are enduring and the lies his government has fed him and the folks back home. Did all this need to be said again? Possibly not. But that doesn’t stop this from being a very enjoyable, universal film with a fair bit more emotional grit and heft to it than teenage fantasies like a Fast X or your Black Adam.
Niels Arden Oplev directs Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace and Dominic Cooper in this revenge thriller where a man with a dark secret infiltrates an organised crime gang and a scarred woman wanting revenge blackmails him into taking on her own crusade for justice.
The first 30 minutes of this are intentionally but needlessly confusing. Convoluted storytelling resolved – the final hour has some good set pieces and a sad little almost romance that feeds into the leads overqualified talents.
Sidney Poitier directs himself, Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee in this buddy western where a righteous wagon trail master and a sleazy preacher navigate their party around a posse of white hired guns in Reconstruction America.
An absolute pleasure on the big screen. Feels like a big entertainment, hitting laughs, adventure and drama. Yet it also tackles historical racism, in a way that must have spoken loudly to African American audiences in the Seventies and still has relevance today. I’ve never really noticed Belafonte in a movie before but he’s on fire here. Benny Carter’s bluesy jazzy score is an earworm and invigorates every time it comes on. Bank robberies, horse theft, horse chases, desert battles, shoot outs and stand-offs – I can think of no better way to spend an evening.
Harald Zwart directs Liv Tyler, Matt Dillon and Michael Douglas in this crime comedy where three different men become obsessed with a low-rent femme fatale who will do anything to live in the perfect home.
James M Cain meets There’s Something About Mary. Silly little movie that supplies the usually drippy Tyler with something a bit more vivacious. Strong comedy support from Paul Reiser and John Goodman. Michael Douglas steals the show as a bingo loving hitman. The third act grinds its gears for 10 minutes more than its worth. It feels like we are never leaving that living room set but the overburdened farce finally ends on three high impact punchlines.
Robert Aldrich directs Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert and Ed Lauter in the prison sports movie where a disgraced NFL star is tasked with putting together a team from the chain gang.
The edgiest TV sitcom never made. Everything about it is indulgent and overlong. You hope it will at least snap into shape once the big game begins, split screen and all. Even that treats every shot of coverage as essential subplot. Features early noteworthy roles for Richard Kiel and Bernadette Peters.
Wes Craven directs Eddie Murphy, Angela Bassett and Kadeem Hardison in this horror comedy take on Dracula.
You can see why this had such a slating on release… it stinks of vanity, choppy as fuck, broad humour, Eddie only trying to be funny when he is hidden under latex in secondary roles, the distinct lack of scares. Yet there are admirable qualities too: gore, committed comedy support from Hardison and a brilliantly coarse John Witherspoon, amazing production design, a certain degree of fealty to the gothic romance of Bram Stoker, Angela Bassett is underserved but still resplendent. With low expectations it fills a Saturday night adequately. But if Craven and Murphy had unified and forged a clear agreement of what they wanted to achieve then this could have been so much more than a one-watcher.
Michelangelo Antonioni directs Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau and Monica Vitti in this Italian arthouse flick where a couple consider infidelity over a long sleepless night.
More empty glamour and hollow nihilism. Feels the least effective of the trilogy. The acting is sound – it is all about death and fucking again, ain’t it?
John Lounsbery and Wolfgang Reitherman direct Sterling Holloway, John Fiedler and Junius Matthews in this Walt Disney cartoon collecting three adventures from The Hundred Acre Woods.
A bit too insipid for adults. Cute enough to sell toys. Pooh is a dickhead. Not enough Eyeore.
Adam Wingard directs Sharni Vinson, Nicholas Tucci and Wendy Glenn in this home invasion horror movie where a rich family is stalked by masked killers and a very capable final girl emerges amongst them.
I think the slow drip ‘eat the rich’ satire and the long ramp up before any carnage starts puts some people off. When You’re Next builds up a head of steam though it really delivers. OTT kills, iconic menaces, simple tension and a fantastic genre lead in Sharni Vinson. When she starts laying out X-rated Home Alone traps and taking mutherfuckas down with gusto you quickly realise in a parallel universe she could be the unhinged psycho everyone else needs to save themselves from. Very rewatchable.
