Ingmar Bergman directs Ingrid Thulin, Anders Ek and Erik Hell in this Swedish drama where a judge tries to assess a troupe of performers who act out a live work that is considered censorable.
A pretentious and talky chamber piece with spasms of psychosexual violence. The sweaty and garbled paranoia of the first hour in no way prepares you for a finale involving a carved dark wood strap-on. I enjoyed trying to figure out what was going on, but beyond the nasty puzzle presented this would be difficult to recommend or rewatch.
Simon West directs Nicolas Cage, John Malkovich and John Cusack in this ensemble action comedy where a plane full of the very worst offenders in the American penal system is hijacked by the cargo.
An airplane overcrowded with psychos. A script full of zingers. A movie packed with national emergency explosions. A score brimming with triumphant crescendos. A casting agent’s wettest dream collection of slumming it prestige actors and crime cinema background royalty. The maddest action movie premise since Dennis Hopper put a bomb on a bus, executed with the restraint of an asylum taken over by the insane… with access to Jerry Bruckheimer’s credit card.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer had nothing left to prove. He had made serious bank in the Eighties with his flashy work partnered with Don Simpson. Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun. These were the biggest money makers of their respective years. By the 1990s Simpson was succumbing to ego and coke and COKE and EGO. When he died in 1995 his legacy was some of the biggest hits of the last decade and a deal with Paramount to make 5 productions with no creative restrictions for a combined budget of $500 million dollars. That was essentially a blank cheque in end of the millennium Hollywood. Not even Spielberg or Cameron ever had a deal like that. And they blew it with the middlingly successful Cruise / Nascar vehicle Days of Thunder. A movie I like more than Top Gun but damagingly being their only release in 4 years and not long before the partnership was dissolved by overdose. I get the feeling the spiralling Simpson with his unfettered spending and unpredictable demands would have dragged the dream team under if he lived past Bad Boys and Dangerous Minds. His untimely death righted the ship, Bruckheimer was back on course making crowd pleasing and profitable slickness.
Not that Jerry was put off by excess of a different kind. Days of Thunder might not have met expectations. Might not have given Paramount their money’s worth but Bruckheimer made a new deal with Disney and started making ensemble blockbusters. Days of Thunder had a cast so packed tight with talent that bonafide movie stars in their own right Cary Elwes and Randy Quaid were fifth and sixth billed. If you could overfill a glossy action flick with thespian talent, rising stars and big names looking for a comeback you could make a more exciting playbill for less cost than a peak asking price Tom Cruise or Eddie Murphy would set you back. You see this economic logic at play in The Rock, Armageddon, Pirates of the Caribbean etc. And Warner Bros has since picked up the ball with this non-megastar led deal with their Dark Knight trilogy, Harry Potter and Ocean’s films. The right combination of B and C listers is more enticing to the public than just 1 big name bet.
Con Air though is the zenith of this ensemble package theory though. Three years after Pulp Fiction had suddenly made household names of a load of cult, quirky indie actors talky, unpredictable crime cinema had become decent business. If you had a script with an attractive amount of distinctive back-and-forth plus the occasional hip monologue then you were in the game. Tarantino was the King, but there were a million script writing pretenders to the throne who had their gangsters swear every other word while obtusely recommending their favourite Seventies sitcom. Cast a cool face like Ving Rhames, Danny Trejo or Steve Buscemi and you had a film with an inbuilt home video audience. HOLY SHIT! Con Air has all three lurking around the backseats. Bung in energetic performers like Dave Chapelle, Rachel Ticotin and Colm Meany and you already have a film worth watching. The genius was to take the violence and squaring up away from nightclub backrooms, warehouses and safe houses and put it in a mega budget “Die Hard in a fever dream” rollercoaster. Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead & Beautiful Girls screenwriter Scott Rosenberg deserves an Oscar for his work here. The script doctors who took later cracks can all have a Bafta and Golden Globe each. Every line of dialogue is cool as fuck, or silly as soap. Often both:
“Put… the bunny… back… in the box.”
“I think you’ll like it, Cyrus. It’s called “I’ll Never Make Love to a Woman on the Beach Again”, and it’s preceded by the award-winning short, “No More Steak for Me, Ever”.”
“Name your cliché; mother held him too much or not enough, last picked at kickball, late night sneaky uncle, whatever. Now he’s so angry moments of levity actually cause him pain”
“”Thesaurus Boy” I think is more appropriate.”
“DON’T. TREAT. WOMEN. LIKE. THAT!”
“Nothing makes me sadder than the agent lost his bladder on the aiiiirrrrplane!”
“I’m going to show you God does exist.”
Now just imagine those in context…
And the context is excessive mayhem. Con Air hurtles. Plumes of hellfire billow. Steel is torn through like wrapping paper. Bullets fly like confetti. Inbetween the prison banter and lunatic posturing there is hurly burly a plenty. Want to see a custom built sports car keel hauled through the skies? Done! Nicolas Cage mullet punch his way through an entire seating section of hardened cons? Here! Las Vegas tore up like cardboard by a plane acting like a box cutter? Yours! Con Air is so excessive that even once it’s all over you still get a bonus motorbike versus fire engine chase through what is left standing of Sin City. OTT is its prime directive.
The salty dialogue, the dream cast of dirty faces and the epic pyrotechnics would all be nothing if it wasn’t for the three top billed stars. All at the peak of their popularity. Cusack is doing one for them, hates to talk about the film where he first sold out even now. Yet his nerdy sandal wearing Vince Larkin still makes it into any fan of his’ Top Five. Malkovich was clearly growing bored of mainstream villainy by this point so makes Cyrus the Virus so charismatically vile he needs to be killed three times at the end of play. This might be a hard earned paycheck for them but one man is treating it like the blast it should be.
And Nic Cage coming fresh off an Oscar win and new action hero direction with The Rock is THAT MAN! He plays his saintly hero so unrestrainedly good hearted that you forget he barehanded kills more shitkickers here in a day than any of the nutballs he hitches a ride with. At the end of two fist-pumping hours you just wanna see your good guys be the best guys – Bruckheimer and Cage know this. Cameron Poe is a hillbilly knight valiant. Ready to outrun a fireball, weave and muscles pumping. Spending his prison time self improving in a montage sillier than anything in Airplane! And bringing the mushiest mawk to scenes where he reunites with his gorgeous family. When Cage is on screen putting in full effort there ain’t a dry eye in the house, or fresh ham cooking in the oven. All the pulled pork and crackling has been used up! Ridiculously rewatchable stuff. “Why couldn’t you put the bunny in the box?”
Joel Edgerton directs Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe in this true story about the son of a preacher who is enrolled into gay conversion therapy when he starts to explore his sexuality.
There’s been a few of these recently. The Miseducation of Cameron Post was a bit more fun, and (I assume) more accessible to actual gay teens. This wants to explore the therapy itself. The harm and exploitative nature of it. The film suffers slightly from the fact that our real life source, Garrard Conley, only spent a few days in the indoctrination stages of his “clinic”. He feels like a lucky one but it doesn’t help the film. He comes from a loving if misguided home and has the self worth and strength to walk out when it becomes clear the scam psychology being used is there to trap these poor kids into continual harmful therapy. This works better as a family drama than as an expose. The acting is superb, with Kidman and Crowe proving their worth as the well shaded, fallible parents. Edgerton is a great director of movie stars and he strives to make every shot impactful.
Deniz Gamze Ergüven directs Günes Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu and Tugba Sunguroglu in this teen drama where 5 Turkish children are imprisoned in their home and married off when their grandmother and uncle realise they are becoming women.
I usually find self-consciously preachy films distasteful but this really caught me. It is frank and takes great pleasure in not being judgemental of the girls, not painting them as saints or victims. There are unexpected bursts of mordant humour among the languid suffering and sunny dread. Looks fantastic too. A modern day fairytale. Princesses trapped in a castle, quests, ogres, an ending laced with a little hope.
David Lynch and Monty Montgomery direct Alicia Witt, Harry Dean- Stanton and Deborah Kerr Unger in this anthology where couples with secrets take a room in an ill-fated hotel.
Three episodes of a series glued together as a feature presentation after they went nowhere. And these really do go nowhere. There’s no issue with the single set format or the deadpan actors but Christ nothing happens with these set-ups primed for murder, sex and reckonings. Nothing happens painfully.
Clint Eastwood directs himself, Chief Dan George and Sondra Locke in this classic western where a deadly Civil War confederate is hunted by the men who raped and killed his family during the war.
What starts out as a red paint for blood violent and satisfying chase movie slowly warps into something warmer, more humorous and humane. Josey might be real good at killing and brutalised by his time in history but he somehow keeps picking up lost souls while on the run. In between shootouts and stand-offs he ends up building a little unintentional replacement family around him and slowly finding a way to exist that doesn’t involve reaching for his irons, unleashing hell. Clint doesn’t just outsmart his pursuers but outthinks the government and criminals who only see murder as a solution. The film stays action packed, never feels heavy handed, even while slyly essaying a way to peace. Damn funny too. Chief Dan George is a hoot and a poor, permanently spat on dog makes for a great running joke. These days are clearly troubled times… I’m not saying what the world is going through now in 2020 is anywhere near as bad as the wounds caused by that Civil War and the Reconstruction… but right now it is about as cataclysmic as the last three generations of Western society have had it. Watching Josey Wales slowly rebuild a life and humanity and community after a period of hate and chaos… and for it not be any big thing gives me more hope for the future than a million memes and untrustworthy news reports. Hell, even Sondra Locke isn’t too annoying here! Life is pretty good.
Jean-Pierre Melville directs Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani and Jean Desailly in this French crime thriller where a recently released burglar wants revenge on the associate who keeps snitching on him.
For the first two acts we track two very unsympathetic criminals. They seem on course for a showdown. One has been informed on and wanted by the law, only days after a four year stretch. The other is playing two molls, the cops and the local mob off against each other and treating the fugitive like a pawn in some mysterious powerplay. Belmondo is a brute – torturing girls who withhold secrets and setting up anyone who might threaten his obscure masterplan. Occasionally his machinations leave a loose end or a mumbled over mystery. As the motivation behind his violence and conspiracy is always internalised we have no idea of his endgame. We just see the negative short-term fallout of his crimes and betrayals. You can’t sympathise with Belmondo, yet our other sweaty, vengeance seeking yegg is taken out of play with each move the smarter man makes. Stunted, blocked, impotent. Who are you the viewer gonna follow down into the labyrinthian plot? Can you throw your weight behind the handsome but inscrutable misogynistic beast who seems to be destroying lives for his own gain and amusement? Or the frantic mope, who is constantly one step behind and appears doomed to serve another sentence before he has even washed the last prison smell off of himself? Melville uses ill-fated nihilism like an artist uses paint, he treats “honour among thieves” as a punchline! Eventually the plot realigns itself. The narrative snaps into shape and a true anti-hero emerges. All those doubts and risky elliptical storytelling choices that leave you lost and cold suddenly make sense. Yet we are still doomed. Urban malaise, existential dread, hard slaps, supercool, bad shitty luck. This might be easier to warm to on a second watch once you realise not every player is an utter bastard.
Alex Ross Perry directs Elisabeth Moss, Cara Delevingne and Dan Stevens in this rock drama where a demanding female singer breaks up with her band and breaks down from reality.
A camera sneaks and dodges around the backstages, studios and retreats of a Cortney Love / Kim Deal style figure. We watch her disintegrate over play-length scenes. Moss behaves awfully, often only communicating in thrashing out or Shakespearean soliloquies that barely reflect her current situation. Spoilt, self-destructive, sad. It is not a pleasant or settling watch for at least the first hour. Like the similar themed but very differently formatted Vox Lux, it does circle back to a sorta redemption. Moss sells the panic attack as default setting. More admirable than enjoyable.
Ted Kotcheff, George P. Cosmatos and Peter MacDonald direct Sylvester Stallone, Brian Dennehy, David Caruso, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Steven Berkoff, Martin Kove, Kurtwood Smith and Marc De Jonge in this Eighties action trilogy where a Vietnam vet John Rambo can’t find peace and keeps being dragged into wars where he has to be an Army of One.
I was always an Arnie guy from Ages 7-40. Can’t see that changing anytime soon. Contrarily, I wasn’t into Rambo though. I didn’t care for Stallone. Make a Top 10 of my favourite action stars I doubt Sly’d make the cut. For little Robert Carroll, this shaggy haired mope was a lunk, slurry, seemed to have no broad sense of humour (I was wrong) and The Terminator could have turned him into rigatoni. Growing up I definitely watched a few Rockys and Over The Top… the arm wrestling Rocky for kids. I enjoyed Tango & Cash but I would have rented that more for Kurt Russell. I went to the cinema to see Stop or My Mom Will Shoot! He wasn’t helping himself. Then he had an underrated period of good ‘uns that turned me around a bit as I entered my teens; Cliffhanger, Demolition Man, The Specialist, Judge Dredd (I like it!), Daylight, Copland. It wasn’t just sequels to films that had left me cold as a kid. He suddenly had bonafides. So there’s no nostalgic affection for Stallone or Rambo or red bandanas or massive knifes or bigger bows and exploding arrows programmed into me. Time to revisit a trilogy that is more yours than mine.
First Blood is not what you now expect from a Rambo film. It is more like The Deer Hunter or Taxi Driver Meets Deliverance or Standing Tall. That’s a good mix. Sensitive vagabond Stallone wanders muddy North America until a small town sheriff pushes him. Dennehy doesn’t want homeless veterans bringing down his neighbourhood. So he pushes John Rambo. “Why are you pushing me?” Won’t let him stop in town for a warm meal or a gentleman’s wash, arrests him, his deputies torture him like some kinda hippy. This sensitive soul fought for his country. The sensitive soul takes out a whole police station from cells to carpark. He escapes into the wilds leaving a motorbike chase of well orchestrated chaos in his wake. It is a brilliant fast moving extended action sequence. Not a soul dies during the rapid, constant escalation of scale.
And that pretty much defines First Blood. Rambo evades, survives, stalks, threatens. But he doesn’t kill… he might cause a fatal accident… but he isn’t a machine gun blasting death machine… yet! The excellent forest section has the same vibe as Southern Comfort. Or Predator. But Stallone is the Predator. The law and the National Guard are the helpless prey. They just don’t know it. Vietnam is replayed. Guerrilla survives onslaught from better armoured but overconfident invaders. It ends with a finale more suited to a Western. Stallone tears down the town in an act of redemptive vengeance. It is mindless carnage. Mindless carnage would define the future films. Getting bigger and bigger. But as a stand-alone First Blood is still a great action flick.
Not perfect. It is mawkish. Stallone might have been attuned to what cereal box humanity the shitkickers and trailer park video renter wanted in the mid-80s but that was the mid-80s. The stew of tone deaf sentiment and ultraviolence doesn’t sit well. Sure, the local cops were horrible to him but he terrorises an entire community in the final act, risks burning down homes, small businesses, schools and hospitals… all because they voted in a slightly over zealous public official? Then marches out triumphant and patriotic in handcuffs like he is a chickensweat honky Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. Troubling. Troubling politics would continue to mar the less sophisticated instalments.
First Blood was never made with mega budget sequels in mind. But then Rambo started getting assigned missions. Started trotting the globe. Now, instead of stabbing young David Carusos in the ass and telling them to go home before they killed, he was mowing down hundreds of faceless exotic commies with AK-47s, land mines, M68 Fragmentation Grenades, mini-guns that shoots a 7.62 round at 3600 rounds a minute, explosive arrows, a bazooka AND his trademark knife. He is not at risk during these bulk executions. Only when captured does Rambo 2.0 become skin surface vulnerable. He is tortured. Like an impervious Jesus Christ on the cross. America’s sins are his to be endured for, Johnny Foreigners despotic politics are his to absorb and shield us from. You wanna queue for bread or watch Sly cauterise hit bullet holes with a burning stick and gunpowder? This is slick poster boy patriotism as a gung-ho capitalist passion play.
The only carry over from the relatively small scale and natural survival pic we enjoyed a few summers back is John is a well trained killer and naturally quiet soul, he starts off in a hard labour lock-up for his previous actions, Richard Crenna is still a shadowy Army higher up with soft spot for him and we all feel the government owes an unpaid debt to the vets of Vietnam. In 1985 there were close to 2,500 Vietnam vets still Missing-In-Action. Rambo gets them out of their bamboo cages and flies them all home in a hijacked Soviet chopper. He massacres gormless gooks and slimey Spetsnaz like they are fish in a barrel. Nobody gets a human emotion, only Rambo feels temporary pain. Soft rock soars over the credits.
Regan-era blunt unashamed bad taste and monotonous kill frenzy aside, Rambo 2 is pretty cheap looking. The location work in Asia never seems to venture beyond one rice paddy and a secret camp. The footage has the nasty sepia tinge of Seventies exploitation. Look at Commando… mindless action movies didn’t have to look diarrhoea brown in 1985. And this film was the widest blockbuster release of its year. There’s little to distinguish it in production values from a Chuck Norris Cannon video rental. Very little to distinguish it all. James Cameron wrote an early draft of the screenplay. The military tough guy speak rings true. The final swathe of action stands out; we get a fight on a helicopter and then a duel between helicopters that pretty much reinvigorates a ropey, stale film. Just enough climatic endorphins to rescue an average experience.
This isn’t really a sequel to First Blood. That story and vibes is left back in the States. The character of Rambo loses all perspective. He kisses a helpful local girl, so they kill her off seconds later so that any further romance doesn’t get in the way of juddering pectoids. Rambo’s war record says he killed 59 people during his tours, here he beats that record in one weekend. The film doesn’t even know what to to do with him at the end. He is left floating down river, leaving the homeland were he’d be shunned as a mentally unstable vagrant behind him for a future God knows where…
The polished but soulless Rambo III is that future. John has been working as a stick fighter and Buddhist temple restorer in Thailand. Crenna asks him to help sneak ground-to-air arsenal into the Middle East and assist the Taliban against those pesky Commie fast food and MTV haters. Rambo says no. Nothing to do with the murky ethics of treating the thoroughly un-American Mujahideen like freedom fighters. He just likes the Thai stick fighting scene and in all honesty he’s not wrong. That stick fighting is the highlight of the film. Crenna gets captured so Rambo volte faces and takes on the entire Russian army with a bow and arrow, bandana, some tubes of blue chemiluminescence and an annoying local boy he can’t get rid of. Everything that happens is rote and millions miles from the neat, little anti-war, pro-Veteran survival thriller we enjoyed in the forests of Portland years ago.
At a budget of $63 million this was the most expensive film ever made before Total Recall and T2 made some significant use of a ridiculous production spend. I’m not saying the scale is not all up there on screen. It is a BIG movie. Rambo genuinely faces down the Kremlin’s entire defence arsenal at one point. But there’s very, very little that gets the blood pumping. Like a dusty destruction orgy porno this plays out very much like too many blank eyed nameless studs pumping away for a paycheck. They’ve got the biggest dicks, the most dicks ever put on screen but there’s no heat or chemistry to what they violating and thrusting at. So little personality or intelligent thought… No doubt that cute Jihad kid went on to mastermind 9/11. We have had a better belated sequel most recently… Rambo: Last Blood. And these cash-ins did their job back in their day if you can ignore the inherent one-dimensional racism and dodgy self belief. But that’s about it. Let’s leave them in the past. They don’t have the wit or tension of The Running Man or True Lies. If you must watch Sly on a rampage then please stick to First Blood.
John Hughes directs Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan Mitchell-Smith and Kelly LeBrock in this teen comedy where two horny posh kids make an absolute babe on their computer who comes to life and grants them endless wishes… so they try to swap her for two mindless mallrats going out with their bullies.
Sixteen Candles all over again but consistently, stinkily out of date. This has aged like vinegar. I only have vague memories of it as a kid and while I wouldn’t have shared the strangely chaste juvenile male sexual fantasy of it all at that tender age, I definitely must not have found the surrounding “anarchy” funny. LeBrock looks superb and does her best Playboy Mary Poppins impression. Bill Paxton punches through as the one character we are MEANT not to like. To be honest, his aggressively obnoxious bully at least has some goofy humanity and wit. Which is more than can be said for pubescent Brett Easton Ellis characters we are meant to chuckle and lust along with. The soundtrack and SFX are alright. Nah… it had its day.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 