Zack Snyder directs Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell and Omari Hardwick in this zombie action heist movie where a crew assemble to rob a Las Vegas casino after the bright light city has been quarantined off due to a zombie outbreak.
Snyder’s commitment to the stand-out credit sequence is second to none. This spins its wheel forever though stifling the good, the cliched and the extraneous. At least the zombie king antagonist is well established…
David Lean directs Charles Laughton, John Mills and Brenda de Banzie in this British classic where a drunken bootmaker refuses the dowry to marry off his daughters… so the smartest one takes matters into her own hands.
I had no idea what choice this titular Hobson would be making going into this? What we get is a British comedy, and as such a comedy about people out manoeuvring the class system, anchored by two fine performances. Laughton’s drunken blowhard delivers just as much as you’d expect. Brenda de Banzie’s wise and driven daughter is more than a match for him. What John Mills is doing here is a whole other matter… but it works out for the best in the end. Has aged splendidly.
John Fawcett directs Emily Perkins, Katharine Isabelle and Mimi Rogers in this teen werewolf horror where two outsider sisters fall apart once one begins to go lycanthropic.
Fantastic concept and two fine leads but the horror never really steps up a notch after a strong start. Feels more like an allegory than a gory thrill ride.
Audrey Diwan directs Anamaria Vartolomei, Kacey Mottet Klein and Luàna Bajrami in this Sixties-set French drama where a university student falls pregnant and seeks an illegal abortion.
A career making central performance from Anamaria Vartolomei. Is she ever off screen? Do we ever have any doubt as to what fears, emotions and pains she is forced to internalise? Immersive, intimate and gruelling. Just a fantastic piece of filmmaking. And depressingly timely. A woman’s body is her own dominion. Let’s not ever roll back the clock to the point where young people were forced to be so ostracised and put in so much jeopardy just for deciding their own life deserves more of a chance than one that isn’t even formed yet.
Curtis Hanson directs Eminem, Mekhi Phifer and Brittany Murphy in this underdog hip-hop drama where a white boy from Detroit struggles to find his confidence to win the rap battles he has a clear talent for.
Rocky but with rap but kinda better than Rocky somehow. The grit feels more authentic, the rebellion has a true edge to it. Brittany Murphy as the romantic interest is on a whole other level… her whole body seems to be operating on different voltage… you can’t take your eyes off the visual energy. The support cast in general is impressive. Kim Basinger and Michael Shannon do a little with a lot. The studio must have had an inbuilt fear that the MTV star might not be able to carry a two hour “serious” movie so they’ve buffeted him with quality at every angle. The fear was unjustified. Even though playing a fictionalised version of himself, he carries the flick and you get the feeling he could have even without such strong support. He’s never really acted again, despite this being a sizeable hit in every respect, more as he doesn’t like the process rather than he doesn’t have the ability. Yet we came for the rap battles and by God they deliver. Tense, funny, bouncing – not leaned into too desperately either. This movie had no remit to be made quite so well, so all credit to Curtis Hanson, who was on quite a streak at this point, for landing this so smoothly.
Adam McKay directs Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep in this mega budgeted satire where the media, big business and the government ignore an extinction level event until they can profit from it.
Smug and sanctimonious. I’d queue up to see half this cast on their own, as a glitzy ensemble though only Jonah Hill adds value and his hilarious scenes are few and far between. Paused it at a point where it exhausted not just me but its crux for existing… and we still had over an hour left with nothing new to say. A shameful waste.
Mimi Cave directs Daisy Edgar-Jones, Sebastian Stan and Jojo T. Gibbs in this romantic comedy thriller involving supermarket hook-ups and cannibalism.
A wonderful little calling card movie. Essentially two elongated seductions where the end game both times is murder. The finale is rushed and notably less smart and playful than the slow drip build-up. This looks hot, there’s a tangible texture in every production design decision, and Cave playfully retains a couple of unrefined dance numbers… she’s smart enough to bask in her stars’ chemistry. I wanted to like Fresh even more than I ultimately did. Stan is a cool antagonist but you do have to question his choice of girls to turn into prime cuts. They’re all a bit… skinny… no?
Lars Von Trier directs Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård and Katrin Cartlidge in this arthouse drama where a sheltered young woman, who believes she speaks to God, marries a worldly oil worker whom after a debilitating accident asks her to start sleeping with other men.
I have never been Von Trier’s biggest fan. He loves the naughty shock just far too much. Cruel rather than transgressive. Whether you approach him as provocateur or prankster, his movies have a cold, clinical distance that I struggle to connect to. He’s a formalist as much as an enfant terribles, Breaking The Waves contains some of his most wholegrain gambles. The chapter breaks are little marvels – on the nose selections of Seventies glam rock play over moving oil paintings – which punctuate the dour tragedy. The imagery is processed to drain all the vivacity from the shots. Film converted to video and then back to film – giving the whole project the feel of a faded Kodak photo found in a charity shop book… underlit, candid and important to someone once. Yet what truly elevates this above Von Trier’s usual experimentation and irritation is Watson superlative debut performance. The fanatical mischief on her face when she communes with God, the frailty when she stumbles unprepared into the world of men’s desires. One of the greatest pieces of screen acting.
Amy Heckerling directs Alicia Silverstone, Krysten Ritter and Sigourney Weaver in this comedy where two single gals share an apartment in Manhattan and just happen to be vampires.
Strange little production, seemingly filmed on the weekends with whomever was available. There’s a lot of faces packed in here but no sense of cohesiveness. It has the form of those three panel newspaper cartoon when they try to tells a story over days and weeks, one little set-up… set-up… punchline at a time. The gags rarely hit. The SFX are laughable. Yet the leads are cute and willing. The epilogue to all the nonsense is actually quite touching in a cheap but ambitious kinda way.
Rob Reiner directs Kathy Bates, James Caan and Richard Farnsworth in this Stephen King adaptation where a bestselling author finds himself crippled and housebound in the wintery backwoods of Colorado with only his psychotic “Number One Fan” to care for him.
One of those movies that was there for me as I was realising my love for cinema. I know it back to front, shot for shot, line for line. Luckily it is a marvel of storytelling efficiency. King via William Goldman via Rob Reiner leaves not a slither of flab on this two hander. Precision is the nurturer of fine thrills. Bates became a horror icon based on this one performance. Dirty Birds. Flicking lighter fluid. Pig impressions. Heavens to Betsy. Hobblin’. Shit is off the chain. Yet no matter how intense she gets, how grotesque her Annie Wilkes becomes, she remain believable, complex and funny. Like Hopkins’ Lecter, she’s a terrifying creation, seemingly in total control of our protagonist and capable of extreme torture… yet there’s a certain degree of cornball hokeyness. Both Oscar Winning monsters are punchline orientated as much as body destroying hellions. Caan’s bedridden lead is a generous turn – reactive, fragile and in the moment. He is us trapped in that bed, we are him watching helplessly at his ordeal. He is such a macho persona (does he really write Regency romances?) that part of the immoral pleasure of Misery is seeing a brute and a thug immobilised so that he no longer has his strength or posturing to save him. Wouldn’t work with a oily Beatty or suave Nicholson. You’d kinda know they might win the mind game. With Caan we see masculinity neutered and it makes us worried for him, knowing he doesn’t have many other cards in his deck aside from his lost physicality. There is too much to love here, it really puts the viewer through the grinder. Barry Sonnenfeld’s sumptuous yet off kilter photography, Farnsworth and Frances Sternhagen adorable, bickering investigators. I probably know Misery just a little too familiarly to get fully lost in it any more but it is always a comforting rewatch. A movie where a man’s ankles are smashed with a sledgehammer. Like a warm blanket on a cold night. There’s a deep seated part of me that feels all movies should look, feel, move and talk like this.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 