Eric Blakeney directs Liam Neeson, Oliver Platt and Sandra Bullock in this crime comedy where an undercover Fed begins group therapy, a relationship with his cute colon cleaner and a friendship with a mafia psycho.
Can definitely see why this got greenlit at the peak of Analyse This / Mickey Blue Eyes fever. Yet it is simultaneously criminally ornate and under baked. The opening sequence is important to many of the later relationships and gags, yet it is very choppily edited. We rush through a violent fantasia with names like Taylor Negron appearing for just one distracting shot. You assume we’ll get the full picture at the second act turning point… a flashback that fills in the elusive blanks… Nah. It is never revisited. This cavalier, distracted manner of storytelling is endemic throughout. You’ll struggle to care, never laugh. Not enough Sandy Bullock – she’s in her perky wheelhouse but its a small role that should have went to newcomer rather than an A-Lister. A cameo would have made sense, but tenth billed?? Maybe she owed somebody a few days’ work?
Michael Mann directs William Petersen, Tom Noonan and Joan Allen in this definitive serial killer thriller where a sensitive FBI profiler tracks a human monster called The Tooth Fairy.
Flawless.
You think I’m gonna see him standing in the street and say “there he is”? That’s Houdini you’re thinking of.
We tried sodium amytal on him three years ago to find where he buried a Princeton student; he gave ’em a recipe for potato chip dip.
You owe me awe!
It’s just you and me now, sport.
Because everything with you is seeing, isn’t it? Your primary sensory intake that makes your dream live is seeing… Reflections… Mirrors… Images…
Baz Luhrmann directs Austin Butler, Tom Hanks and Olivia DeJonge in this rock’n’roll biopic following The King and his symbiotic relationship with oily Svengali, Colonel Tom Parker.
Over the top, grating, messy, disorientating, cheesy. And I loved it far more often than I hated it. The first 90 minutes really thumped along to its own crazy beat, the second half does hunker down and try to be an ounce more traditional. But this is a rare biopic with a well formed “villain of this here piece”, which grants us more tangible shape than most musicians’ life stories – where the crisis are more existential. The metric it works towards is Forman’s Amadeus and it is an apt lift. And even though the unashamed blockbuster is a heartfelt celebration of Presley, it never feels like the “authorised version.” There’s no Bohemian Rhapsody style hamstringing, axe grinding and concessions to the surviving band members’ take on history don’t stink the room out. This just wants to lionise with flair and rhinestone sparkle The King in its own frenetic, fucked up way. Elvis is inarguably pure Luhrmann, his finest since William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Special shout out should go to Catherine Martin’s glorious recreations of all the fashions and costumes. And it is a folly, but one that always grips, keeps you hooked, tapping your toe, struggling to focus. Butler is grand casting, the spit, a star is born. Hanks is doing his own thing, the only work similar in his back catalogue is his deep fried turn in the Coen Brothers’ The Ladykillers. If you like what he does here then more power to you, I’m not sure I can condone it, but at least his scratching, clawing take makes for a hissable antagonist. In a movie full of big mad swings, his interpretation on Colonel Parker is the wildest. The whole thing is as bonkers as hippos on a bouncy castle, neon fried gold. This energy makes Elvis easily the most watchable rock icon biopic since Walk The Line. In an era when even the best big releases feel like product, here is some art, a personal vision. Sure, that personal vision is gaudy and eccentric, the art is more likely to appear in a tat shop than the Tate, but it is bloody nice to witness a multiplex crowd enjoy something so naff and idiosyncratic.
Ninja Thyberg directs Sofia Kappel, Zelda Morrison and Evelyn Claire in this character study where a Swedish teen moves to LA hoping to make it big in the porn industry.
A well researched but often flat and dour look at the current adult entertainment market. Much rings true but the film feels like a Rorschach Test that the viewer brings their own politics and views to and finds whatever they like or disagree with laid out like a buffet for them to pick from. If you go in thinking porn is ultimately an abuse on the naive sex workers who sign up to be in it, then you’ll see plenty of soulless, callous exploitation. And if you are sex positive and think what a women chooses to do with her body is her own business then you’ll also enjoy plenty of… exploitation. The film tries to play to both markets, and everyone curious in between. You’d have to be pretty gauche in your understanding of the long existent billion dollar industry to not know most of the grim realities already – the coercion, the pain, the prejudices. There is nudity but it becomes background noise after the first set piece, there’s very little titillation for a plot with so many sex acts hardwired into it. The film is less interested in jiggling flesh, more in choices that might be seen as a moral fall or gynaecological compromise. It doesn’t help that game, first time actress, Sofia Kappel as Bella Cherry, is often such a blank slate (again specifically enigmatic so the viewer can pour their own juice into her empty cup). It is hard to see her much more than avatar for us to run over the rights and wrongs, positives and negatives, of each job she finds herself on. Sometimes even she is the manipulator and exploiter. Yet you don’t massively invest in her faltering march to stardom. You fear in five years time the non-professional actress might come out and say she felt pressured into taking on such an explicit and challenging role, uncomfortable with what ended up on screen, abandoned by how underwritten it was beyond the physical demands. Should Ninja Thyberg have found an established talent from the mainstream or porn industry to take on the lead? The rest of the ensemble are plucked from this world like the cast a neo-realist drama? These are thoughts, not accusations. It is a striking and promising debut, just a little obvious in its intentions and methods. It can be ugly to experience and watch. There are even times when the filmmaking transcends its purposeful digital flatness, has moments of almost Lynchian metaphor, like when Bella’s head leaves a set and gets smothered in the blue sky outside of the bedroom where the action is taking place. But there, pointedly, ain’t a lot of Pleasure here and the best porn is when the performers at least look like they are enjoying themselves.
Jean Vigo directs Jean Dasté, Dita Parlo and Michel Simon in this classic French romance where newlyweds on a boat begin to question their life choices as reality settles in.
Has some beautiful moments. Mainly involving the barge full of stray cats and Simon, as the seasoned tough who coddles them.
Matthew Reilly directs Elsa Pataky, Luke Bracey and Aaron Glenane in this Die Hard On A Missile Base where a whistleblowing officer starts her new post on the very day terrorists hijack her base, launch 15 nukes at America and drag up the workplace sexism she suffered.
Clunky. The storytelling is inelegant in every respect. The missile base control room where 90% of the action happens looks like a Saturday afternoon TV show set from the Ninities. The exposition is painful. Hard to say whether the acting or the dialogue makes this all seem so amateurish. I can take or leave the unexpected #metoo stylings. I understand why they are here, and they are give the right amount of screentime to not feel solely like a cynical bolt on to the main plot, but I doubt very many are selecting this on Netflix hoping for a topical debate or searing insight into US military gender politics. The fact such heavy chew is explored in between the bullets and bombs is more down to this being an airport thriller writer’s big foray into movies. Matthew Reilly’s novels will no doubt have his protagonists overcoming past trauma as they defuse bombs or find treasure… so why shouldn’t his movie debut give his muscular cypher some kind of ripped from the headlines internal struggle? I, however, turned up for a light retread of Clancy / Crichton / Hunter and this just about delivers. For all its flaws and junkiness, it manages to meet its cheap Under Siege remit whenever it gets kinetic. Whenever the control room is breached, whenever smackdowns are dealt out or whenever trash needs to be talked over the intercom, Interceptor has the goods… just about. The countdown finale builds to a decent head of steam. It ain’t beer and pizza movie heaven but it is one of the more adequate examples I’ve clicked on in a while.
Cy Endfield directs Michael Caine, Stanley Baker and Ulla Jacobsson in this war movie recreating the attack on Rourke’s Drift between the Zulus and the British Army.
John Barry’s wide reaching and hard thumping score, a patient threat. Stanley Baker and Michael Caine squaring off marvellously in a quiet class war. The lush on-location cinematography from Stephen Dade. Gold old British military heroic tragedy. The singing. Top notch afternoon killer filler.
Aleksei Balabanov directs Sergei Bodrov Jr., Viktor Sukhorukov, and Svetlana Pismichenko in this low key gangster flick where a unassuming ex-soldier travels to St. Petersburg and becomes his criminal brother’s secret muscle.
All Daniela wants to do is listen to local pop on his discman. Yet the dude is like a John Wick or a Léon in a damp sweater when called upon. He hangs about with tramps, all women love him. His untrustworthy brother uses him like a tool. There are sideswipes about Russian culture post the Fall. Daniela interacts with pretty much every strata, seems fascinated and appreciative of how the non-violent live their lives. This is pretty spaced out and sly. Like Jim Jamursch’s genre experiments. Deceptively simple, with tense set pieces. Likeable lead Sergei Bodrov died in an avalanche making another movie only a few years later. He has real charisma.
7
Perfect Double Bill: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (2000)
Amy Heckerling directs Alicia Silverstone, Brittany Murphy and Paul Rudd in this era-defining teen movie that updates Jane Austen’s Emma to a California High School.
Josh: If I ever saw you do anything that wasn’t 90% selfish, I’d die of shock. Cher: Oh, that’d be reason enough for me.
OK… so its not quite Austen… but it is pretty, pretty witty most of the time.
The Nineties were never like this, I was the same age as these kids and the closest I got to a cellphone was a BT Pager. This is some kind of hyper reality. The candy colours pop, the vacuous rich kids form tribes, maybe only in Hollywood. It is very funny. But the look of thing, like a Rubik’s Cube fucked a Versace shirt, and the child was pure cinema. Amy Heckerling started developing this up as a TV show pilot. “Twentieth Century Fox said they wanted a show about teenagers — but not the nerds. They wanted it to be about the cool kids.” Cool obviously equals wealthy here.
Silverstone is irrefutably hot. This is an iconic breakthrough. She never got close to hitting this hard again. For every Cruise and Winona, there’s a Judd Nelson or a Phoebe Cates. There’s part of me that wonders about Silverstone? Lightning in a bottle? The right role at the right time? Clean, sexy, adorable, funny. The outrageous outfits help, the self-awareness of the script is killer. But she has rare chemistry. Not just with the cast, but with us the audience. You couldn’t imagine Neve Campbell or even Sarah Michelle Gellar making the same impact in the role. A one-off magic occurs. She’s become indelible with the role even thirty years later. Multiplex landmark. The sleeper box office success brought the then-largely unknown Silverstone to international attention and earned her a $10 million, multi-picture deal with Columbia TriStar. As far as I can see the studio only got Excess Baggage for their money. Expect to see that on The Worst Movies We Own podcast later this year… Nobody has hooked us quite so hard with one killer movie since. Is Julia Stiles or Minnie Driver an equivalent household name even though their purple patch churned up far many more hit movies?
Rudd, Murphy and Dan Hedaya shimmy through their scenes with untouchable flair. A soundtrack of post punk and hip hop bangers seal the deal. A bright beacon to a time that never existed.
Dionne: “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, but thy eternal summer shall not fade.” That! Did you write that? Cher: Duh! It’s like, a famous quote. Dionne: From where? Cher: CliffsNotes.
Wolfgang Reitherman and David Hand direct Brian Bedford, Peter Ustinov and Terry-Thomas in this Disney animated classic where a fox with skill at archery steals from the rich to give to the poor.
Natalie has a long-standing crush on the vulpine lead. I can’t argue. Lithe, suave and smart. So the craft is noticeably scrappier than your traditional Disney classics, and the form is very freewheelin’… you still can’t help but like it. It is intentionally lower key – easy going fun, maybe that’s the true secret to its of its charm. When you watch Snow White you don’t want to miss a frame. This is far more leisurely, easier to dip in and out of, while never squandering your attention. Gentle adventure, familiar skits. A rooster is our narrator, a minstrel voiced by Roger Miller who supplies the music honky-tonk-influenced novelty songs. Real mellow. Setting the tone. Suiting the tone. Ustinov and Thomas make fine villains, they ain’t threats, they are goons for the pratfalls. Silver spoon voiced haughty naughties we want to see slapped about rather than plot instigating big bads like Shere Khan, Ursula or Jafar. The Merry Men are pointedly absent as Reitherman wanted a “buddy picture” reminiscent of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Again, something just a bit more lackadaisical, not strictly tied to myth and history. The long haired kids could chill out and chuckle along. Your traditional story highlights like the recruiting of Friar Tuck are edited out, amusingly Little John and Robin are introduced politely allowing each other to cross a log bridge first. Even the romance is put on the backburner, Maid Marian is barely present for three quarters of the run time. The old ground is scoffed at, this is about the ambiance, not fealty to the source. It is after all, at the end of the day, a medieval legend blended into an anthropomorphic fox fest. Disney animated classics weren’t blockbusters in this decade, they were made to be solid little programme fillers, this landed happily in at number 8 in its year’s Top 10 box office earners in the US. Set a new records for foreign profits. Maybe the people of 1973 wanted a soothing, undemanding family flick just as much as it wanted The Exorcist? Maybe everyone secretly fancied those foxes.
7
Perfect Double Bill: The Sword In the Stone (1963)
