Steve Cohen directs Rose McGowan, Alex McArthur and Peg Shirley in this erotic thriller where a bad seed teen lands in a new town ready to seduce a teacher, battle her evangelical grandmother and kill anyone else in her way.
The Crush or Poison Ivy but done real cheap and on random settings. Rose McGowan overcomes a very bland obsession interest (he really isn’t worth it) and the fact the producers literally create a character just to inject some occasional nudity into the proceedings. No nudity necessary as McGowan’s tight revealing fits and unhinged behaviour are spicy enough. Terrible film almost saved by its star = The Rose McGowan Story.
4
Perfect Double Bill: Lewis and Clark and George (1997)
Ang Lee directs Tobey Maguire, Jeffrey Wright and Jewel in this epic drama following the farm boys who join the South in the American Civil War but begin to question the values they are fighting for.
Ang Lee’s forgotten good ‘un. Doesn’t sit comfortably with either his indisputable masterpieces or his admirable follies. When it rages and roars with big on-location battles it is very magnetic. The skirmishes are brutish and tactile. The character arcs that scaffold the adventure though are quite brittle. These aren’t the brightest bulbs in the box and their change of heart over the years is not as interesting as anyone who made this clearly thought they should be. There’s a lot of potent talent here so it is somewhat ironic that the two most memorable performances are from the weakest links. Cute, helium voiced pop star Jewel never truly made another proper movie. And Jonathan Rhys Meyer’s baddie, with his unwavering evil and long sleek hair, comes straight from the school of Japanese manga villainy. Everyone else feels a little dampened by the mud and sideburns. Flawed but worth an afternoon.
A spot-on proper acting turn from Jim Carrey preserves this. He treads the line between sincerity and fakeness, naivety and irritating wonderfully. His commitment to “the bit” is a heartfelt tribute to Kaufman himself. Being massively into live comedy personally, there’s a seductive appeal in seeing the birth of the modern comedy boom from the perspective of someone inarguably at its experimental vanguard. This is legend being regurgitated as fact. Appropriately so. I have Bob Zmuda’s biography of his friend and partner in crime AND I’m hyped for Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night. I couldn’t be more part of the target audience for Man On The Moon. Forman’s movie does have an inbuilt problem though. Kaufman nose dived his career by doing repetitive abrasive stunts that soured audiences to him, the man and the prankster were inseparable. Which means after an hour of him gleefully finding a spotlight, you see him push the same self destructive buttons over and over, again and again. And this isn’t presented as tragedy. Framing his final years with this bent makes for an exasperating second half.
John Whitesell directs Danny DeVito, Matthew Broderick and Kristin Chenoweth in this comedy where an arrogant local busy body has his well planned Christmas ruined when his new neighbour decides to decorate the house across the street to excess.
Can’t decide whether it wants to be family or gross out… lands neither. Plenty of convoluted slapstick set-ups but only DeVito’s screen time sings.
4
The Shop Around The Corner (1940)
Ernst Lubitsch directs James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan and Frank Morgan in this classic comedy where a store’s best salesman has a crisis of confidence during the December rush.
A filmed play, famously remade as You’ve Got Mail. The core romance is actually a minor subplot here. Stewart finding his mojo and his saving the day is the magic. The well defined ensemble of players grows on you as Lubitsch glides into his witty groove.
7
The Preacher’s Wife (1996)
Penny Marshall directs Denzel Washington, Whitney Houston and Courtney B. Vance in this fantasy romantic comedy where an angel comes down to save a holy man’s family over a busy Christmas.
The Bishop’s Wife is a five star classic. This remake decides to shy away from any obvious attraction between Denzel and Whitney’s characters for Christian reasons. Meaning it is solely now about two handsome people moaning at a church man for being too busy while he works his butt off to keep his community together. What’s the point then? Whitney does get to sing Christmas songs with a church choir. Fair enough.
4
The Package (1989)
Andrew Davis directs Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy and Tommy Lee Jones in this Cold War action thriller where, after being framed for murder, a Green Beret must figure out why he was tricked into sneaking an assassin into America.
This wintery dry run for The Fugitive includes solid action, a “What If?” end of the Cold War setting that proved prescient and more than a few nods to Lee Harvey Oswald. So there is a lot going on. The first act is a little murkier in its storytelling than is needed but I think that is on purpose. There’s not really enough Tommy Lee Jones. All in all, this killed a Saturday night with my Dad and me in a way that most things floating around on streaming never could.
7
Enemy Of The State (1998)
Tony Scott directs Will Smith, Gene Hackman and Jon Voight in this paranoid conspiracy thriller where a lawyer’s life is destroyed by the NSA when he accidentally receives incriminating video footage.
You are out in the cold. Everyone is wrapped up pretending the world is a hopeful, sparkling place. There’s something about a Christmas time setting that makes a conspiracy thriller bite just a little harder. Will Smith is the everyman-on-the-run. He treats the trap that is chewing him up like an action heavy sitcom episode. He is not paranoid enough, saucily surly. Fuck reality, this is one of his most pleasing, on brand, blockbuster turns. Hackman’s surveillance expert joins the slam bang fun late in the story but the nods to him being The Conversation’s Harry Caul are a cute Easter egg. He’s a bit too testosterone fuelled and macho here to truly be a cover for his best acting turn. There are plenty of winks to The Conversation but this has more affinity to The Last Boy Scout or The Long Kiss Goodnight. Scott loves exploring modern digital tracking and hacking methods with an overwhelming visual full pelt. The movie rarely rings false as a techno thriller even a few decades down the line. The ending is choppy, the cast of a thousand faces are often underserved… Yet as an enthusiastic revival of the Seventies chase thriller Enemy Of The State has a lot, tons, of entertainment packed into it.
8
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
Jalmari Helander directs Onni Tommila, Jorma Tommila and Tommi Korpela in this Finnish adventure horror where the young son of a reindeer hunter begins to suspect scientists have unleashed an evil Santa.
Apart from a slightly rushed ending, this is exactly what I want from a family horror flick featuring a plethora of nude old men. An icy blast.
8
Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
Seth Kearsley directs Adam Sandler, Jackie Sandler and Allen Covert in this animated Hanukkah musical comedy-drama.
Wouldn’t know class if it got bit by it on its hairy ass. Utterly unpredictable. Every minute has a shock decision that feels in terrible taste. A lead character has slapstick seizures. Deer and shit share the frame way too often. The logos of shopping mall storefronts come to life to teach Sandler’s broken loser a product placement heavy life lesson. If you hate Sandler it is all here. Exhibit A through Z. Made post-South Park and aimed at teenage boys, those derided decisions make a lot of sense in actual context. The 2D animation and salty songs hit the spot. We laughed plenty. If you knee jerk hate on this, that’s a technical foul.
Ronald Neame directs Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters in this sinking ship disaster movie produced by the master of the genre Irwin Allen.
Gene Hackman made plenty of action flicks that just happened to be set over Christmas. This one actually takes place on New Years Eve, a festive tree is used as an improvised ladder and he plays a bolshy, turtleneck sporting priest. 75% of The Poseidon Adventure is Hollywood has-beens screaming at each other, drenched in sweat and seawater, populating obvious faked upside down passageway soundstages. I love it. The loudness. The griminess. The regular kills. The philosophical arguments. It is a big, big, big entertainment with just enough gruff grit to feel like it is saying something more. More than let’s flood this set, then blow this set up and feed one more Hollywood also-ran to the meat grinder.
Kenji Kamiyama directs Gaia Wise, Brian Cox and Luca Pasqualino in this animated fantasy prequel set 200 years before Bilbo found the one ring in Gollum’s cave.
Very beautiful but the pace is stately. This can often feel fatal when the second half is a stalemate siege.
Marielle Heller directs Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy and Jessica Harper in this black comedy where a mother feels her life is spiralling out of control to the point where she might be transforming into a dog after hours.
Ultimately an unashamed showcase for the always overqualified Adams. Feels very much like an adaptation of something that worked better as a literary exercise. There are wounding laughs and honest moments… excellent dog and toddler sequences. The feminist empowerment threads don’t bring anything particularly new to the table but Adams takes a fair amount of risk with her glamorous awards darling status. In all fairness a few extra pounds and some messy hair just makes her look a different brand of hot. Probably the biggest swing Heller has taken so far in her exemplary directorial career yet the least exciting.
Meg Ryan directs herself, David Duchovny and Hal Liggett in this romcom where two long separated lovers touch base in an airport waiting for connecting flights.
There’s not much to this stilted, talky two-hander apart from a pair of stars who we have a fair deal of long term affection for sparring and reconciling. The potential is there. Could have been great.
Monte Hellman directs Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton and Patricia Pearcy in this independent drama where a down-on-his-luck cockfighter takes a vow of silence until he can train a tournament winning bird.
Banned in the U.K. because of its continual cruelty to animals, this popped up on Tubi recently. I gritted my teeth and watched solely as I love Warren Oates. Macho character study a-go-go, scruffy edition. This does exactly what it says on the tin. While you get a real behind the scene tour of the bloodsport circuit there isn’t really a compelling 90 minutes of story or development here. More a hangout movie where lots of living things fight to the death or are maimed by the owners for petty reasons. Ugh.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 