Jeff Baena directs Alison Brie, Debby Ryan and Molly Shannon in this strange drama where a shy and sensitive woman begins to suspect she is losing time and any sense of reality.

A genuine strange one this. Especially as I’m adamant that I reviewed it weeks ago. But that post has disappeared. Fitting giving the themes. It starts as an awkward comedy but then the mystery overwhelms. It is a good mystery, pleasingly never fully squared up. Fair to say if disquiet and rambling aren’t your bag though… back away now. This is not a clean or slick piece of storytelling. Alison Brie puts in a brave performance that is affecting and ethereal. Well worth a mind-bending risk if you like things that used to be programmed after midnight on channels before they shut down for the night.

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Fritz Lang directs Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Raymond Massey in this thriller where a college professor and a mysterious beautiful woman have to team-up and cover-up when they murder an important man in self-defence.

An early Film Noir; full of tense set-pieces and a few decent twists. Lucky for us that Edward G. Robinson is such a likeable star (intelligent and authoritative) as his character as written performs plenty of incriminating mistakes. He’s such a bumbler that it makes you want to tie the noose yourself for him sometimes. Joan Bennett is glamorous, hot and sympathetic as the thoroughly decent femme fatale. There are wobbles (Robinson really should be prime suspect after his behaviour, I’m not sure how I feel about the eventual studio-mandated solution) but this is Hitchcockian fun told with Lang’s more pessimistic visual pragmatism.

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Roxanne Benjamin directs Karina Fontes, Casey Adams and Emily Althaus in this thriller where an inexperienced Park Ranger gets lost in the woods and finds a corpse.

A bit of a shaggy dog story. A lot is threatened to happen or implied… but with minimal pay-off. The direction is promising… you never get bored or check out even though we spend the feature-length essentially waiting for something… anything… to occur. That is a skill. The cast are pleasing. Karina Fontes manages to make a whiny and incompetent protagonist, who has to hold centre stage by herself for nearly a whole film, at least a little more attractive than how she is written. An admirable debut.

5

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Brian Yuzna directs Jeffery Combs, Bruce Abbott and Fabiana Udenio in this body horror comedy sequel where bargain basement Dr. Frankenstein-wannabe Herbert West continues his experiments.

Not as funny or as anarchic as the first entry. Combs is good value but seems a little dialled back. The plotting contains lots of filler… only a few moments are particularly worth showcasing. It does end in an orgy of anatomical surrealism. The gloopy overkill does kinda justify the wait. But there’s no reason a bit more of the chaos and chunks couldn’t have been salted over towards the first hour.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Ron Shelton directs Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson and Rosie Perez in THE basketball hustling comedy.

You either know what a glorious two hours this is, or you ain’t worth engaging with. Talking dirty fast and witty lyrical like a classic rap album. Vibrantly coloured like a Keith Haring work of art. Moving like a kung-fu comedy. You couldn’t get more 1992 than White Men Can’t Jump. It is The Hustler on e-number enriched blue colouring. “We goin’ Sizzler!” Wesley’s best work! Woody stretching his sitcom chops into proper acting. Rosie Perez berating him and dominating Jeopardy like a sexy motherfucker. “Billy – you so fucking stupid!” It is a macho buddy comedy that teaches young men to respect women. It is a flashy conman lark that favours hard work and getting paid. There’s more value and love and heart and intelligence and craft in White Men Can’t Jump than in any Oscar nominated contender of the 90s. So there’s a litany ‘yo momma’ jokes?! Just because Ron Shelton made it look, and move, and sound, and dunk like something more juvenile doesn’t mean it ain’t one of the finest scripted films Hollywood ever actually made. One of Stanley Kubrick’s fave rentals this and for great reasons. Rewatchable, requotable and with a soundtrack that attaches itself to your soul and energises you for life. “Listen to the woman.” Doesn’t make a wrong move, goes for the slam dunk when it could just land a two pointer and walk away! A perfect movie.

10

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Dario Argento directs Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasance and Dario Nicolodi in this supernatural horror where a sleepwalking girl with a psychic connection to insects stalks a slasher.

As mad as a box of frog. There is so much camp weirdness here that to list any of the more ridiculous developments would be to spoil the fun. The first hour is floaty atmosphere and icky strangeness. The last 30 minutes are nightmare fuel of the most depraved kind. You can look for logic or have a blast. You can’t do both. Probably would be awful without the star value Connelly and Pleasance imbue it all with by their reputations and sincere performances.

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Tim Story directs Samuel L. Jackson, Jessie T. Usher and Regina Hall in this father and son buddy cop comedy where a straight-edge millennial FBI analyst teams-up with his blaxploitation legend father to solve a mystery.

Has the colour, the shape, the dynamic, the form, the plotting, the humour and the action of a TV movie for kids. But for adults? Crass, lowest common denominator stuff, minimal effort has been put into nearly every aspect. Jackson is as ever watchable, game even, but the only ambition of everyone else involved is to be inoffensively adequate.

3

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Karyn Kusama directs Nicole Kidman, Toby Kebbell and Sebastian Stan in this neo-noir where a self-destructive L.A. cop pursues demons from her corrupt past.

This is a flawed film – often dull, cliched and hard to warm to. But I’m going to give it a pass. Kidman plays against type and convinces. There are two really intense heist sequences that echo the quality and immersion of Point Break. There’s even quite a good rug pull at the end… I’m rarely caught off guard by a twist. It has the structure of a classic L.A. detective novel… Kidman’s grizzled cop chases down leads from the sleazy dying, the relaxed corrupt, the mansion-bound powerful in a way that echoes the plotting of hard boiled masters like Chandler or Hammett. This is the shit I like. Now there’s a lot of reaching and affectation of importance that slows things down and dilutes the good stuff. Let pulp be pulp… even if you have a classy thesp slumming it in the lead. Yet I’d watch this again a decade down the road. Hence the score of…

7

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Gary Felder directs Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd and Cary Elwes in this serial killer thriller where genius detective Alex Cross gets personal and chases the murderous kidnapper who just added his niece to a menagerie of beautiful captive women.

OK… so it’s not Se7en. It still satisfies as a throwaway Friday night thriller. I would buy a ticket to one of these if they still made three of them a year for the last two decades. Expensively shot, well cast, moving at a pace so fast you can’t really pause to question just how rickety it all is. Just like one of Patterson’s airport page-turners then. They weren’t original or particularly well written but the chapters last three pages max and neatly always ended on cliffhangers and tantalising question marks. I used to read them on my bus journey home from my first pub job and it would be a race to cram in as many twists and turns as possible. This is Morgan in his comfort zone – a star who oozes wisdom, class and educated masculinity – solving a mystery by being the smartest guy in the room. He’s a joy to watch even in formulaic pap. It is fair to say the film doesn’t fully squeeze all the juice from a gleefully exploitative premise. Felder plays it maybe a setting too tasteful. Yet you have to give the director points for making the identity of the killer so so obvious that you spend the final half constantly second guessing yourself that he must be a bright crimson red herring and someone… anyone… else will be revealed to be the big bad! That is brinkmanship of the highest order. Judd is as good as she gets too.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/

Joseph Losey directs Dirk Bogarde, James Fox and Sarah Miles in this Harold Pinter scripted thriller where a man-servant takes over his new employer’s life and home.

If you loved Parasite then this will blow your mind. Bogarde is utterly brilliant as the ambiguous, elusive and insidious butler. His motivations never fully revealed, he seduces and ingratiates his way into dominating his employer completely. He starts quiet yet slowly becomes rampant – a sexually attractive and threatening presence living in the other half’s home. And he likes how they live. You never have a doubt he isn’t fully in control of events even if his devious plan seems riskily counterproductive at junctures. The great thing about Losey’s direction is you can approach The Servant as a spot-on class allegory that essays and predicts the era’s societal shifts, an unpredictable noir mystery or a very daring, dark romance. Losey and Pinter approach desire as oblivion and attraction as a weapon. This is the finest variation on the director’s house themes and style I’ve yet watched.

9

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/