Joe Dante directs Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates and John Glover in this horror comedy sequel where “the rules” are again broken and Gizmo’s unwanted offspring take over a NY skyscraper with a TV studio and a science lab within.

If they just let Joe Dante make this (and I mean this) a couple of years sooner it might have been a different story. The appetite for more Gremlins wained while executives fiddled and diddled. Warner Bros. went around the houses trying to cash in on the success of their 1984 smash hit. Many writers uninvolved in the original film were drafted in to try and feed the franchise after midnight with no real progress. In need of a summer tentpole for 1990 and with a potential brand going to seed, they capitulated and offered Joe Dante the chance to return to his own well. His demand – complete creative freedom. Final cut? Warner Bros. ended up with a sequel that was aggressively anti-business, chaotically meta and off its meds. It didn’t make nearly as much money as Gizmo’s first outing but the console game licences, Topps trading cards and mogwai toys probably still turned a tidy profit.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch is a work of looney tune virtuosity and counter culture sensibility. It feels nihilistic. Up against everything except physical effects and anarchic movie references. It is Joe Dante at his most narratively untethered and also his most childlike gleeful. Gremlins sprout wings, get doused in cement become gargoyles, the projection booth is taken over and the movie has to be saved by a heckling Hulk Hogan, the puppet musical parodies are even grander. It isn’t tidy but it is a blast. Gizmo, the flagship brand mascot, is bullied and traumatised. There’s no sensibility Dante doesn’t unravel to get to the joke that is within it. Not only a stronger film than its progenitor but possibly Dante’s best. It is neck and neck between this, Matinee and Innerspace. This is the least neat, most idiosyncratic. The only one that only Joe Dante could make.

Amid all the mania, animatronics and mutated call backs the humans become cattle. It is very much a case of go big or go home. Our returning bland small town kids in the big city are given very short plot shrift once the chaos is unleashed. Cates possibly deserves better but she is at least manhandled by a hundred little green arms in a plummeting elevator and gets to self destruct her iconic “The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas” monologue. Christopher Lee gives good extended cameo as a memorable mad scientist. John Glover’s spoof of one Donald Trump is a lot of laughs and he really goes for it. Someone who definitely gets the memo is Haviland Morris whose cold blooded middle manager is a flame haired resurrection of a Kate Hepburn / Rosalind Russell in a power suit. If the sequel was a bigger hit I reckon her career would have went on a far wilder trajectory. It is Tony Randall’s “Brain Gremlin” though that steals the show. He’s one suave, erudite motherfucker.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Gremlins (1984)

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Frank Coraci directs Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore and Allen Covert in this romantic comedy where a popular wedding singer is jilted at the altar.

The chemistry between Sandler and Barrymore is off the charts. I can’t be the only one who still wants them to make a fourth, fifth and twentieth project together? The Eighties nostalgia is leaned into heavily with cute results. The soundtrack is absolute killer after killer. The bold colours and clean location shoots are vivid. Most importantly, there is at least one laugh out loud joke every scene. Very few comedy flicks have this hit rate. Cameos are smashing, rapping old ladies are divine but Sandler is on fantastic form. He makes for an unlikely romantic lead – complex emotionally, unabashedly entertaining when onstage. The maturing of Sandler’s brash populist manchild schtick into A-List stalwart happens before our very eyes. It is rare for a throwaway studio movie to have this much charm, pep and personality.

10

Perfect Double Bill: Never Been Kissed (1999)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Rich Peppiatt directs Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara and DJ Próvai in this fictionalised and heightened biopic about the formation of the North Of Ireland rap trio Kneecap, where the lads play themselves.

Went into this musical caper pretty blind but had an absolute riot. You could hear all the Irish laughing in the Cameo Screen 3. Kneecap has a true Trainspotting energy to it. Snarling editing, visual garble, adrenaline rush. A self harming sense of humour about itself too. I enjoyed all three protagonist separate mini-plot strands and it almost made me want to listen to Irish language rap away from the movie experience. Almost.

9

Perfect Double Bill: 8 Mile (2002)

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Baltasar Kormákur directs Egill Ólafsson, Kōki and Palmi Kormakur in this time jumping drama where an Icelandic restraunter with early on-set of dementia decides to abscond on a plane and track down his first love just as Covid Lockdown begins.

Not my first choice of movie but solidly crafted and subtly acted. Hits the same flavour notes as Past Lives but with a bit more seasoning and marinade replacing blank obtuseness. There are some unpredictable lurches into dark emotional territory in the third act but the ultimate destination is worth the journey. As a cinematic document as to what March 2020 was like for most people this will be the most accurate. City life grinding to a halt, wiping, distance, sanitiser, old fuckers not covering their noses with the masks.

6

Perfect Double Bill: An Education (2009)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Rupert Sanders directs Bill Skarsgård, FKA twigs and Danny Huston in this remake of the supernatural superhero revenge flick.

Sanders makes beautiful looking movies but this is horrendously uninvolving, spending way too long on the set-up.

4

Perfect Double Bill: Pet Sematary (2019)

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Nathan Silver directs Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane and Dolly de Leon in this romantic comedy where a grieving cantor begins a friendship with his high school music teacher defined by mutual attraction.

Mumblecore? Very sweet but also incredibly anxious. There is a lengthy dinner party scene near the end where the dialogue overlaps and thoughts are never finished… edge of the seat stuff. Ultimately this indie still is a minor movie but in gifting the always fantastic Carol Kane a lead role you can’t help but root for it.

6

Perfect Double Bill: The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Danny Cannon directs Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Brandy in this slasher sequel where a PTSD suffering Julie wins a trip to a deserted resort with her new suspicious pals.

Let’s get the elephant out of the room first. For a movie that sends Jennifer Love Hewitt’s iconic good girl cleavage on a bikini swimsuit island vacation you don’t really see enough of it. Aside from that hard fail, this takes too long to ramp up. The third act just about delivers and I cared more about Freddie Prinze Jr’s B-plot than anyone could ever predict. The state of Jack Black though…ugh.

5

Perfect Double Bill: I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

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Roseanne Liang directs Chloë Grace Moretz, Beulah Koale and Taylor John Smith in this WWII fantasy thriller where a female stowaway on a bomber notices a gremlin tearing up a wing mid-flight.

There’s a decent Twilight Zone tribute here but the pummelling moments of 21st century wish fulfilment feminism ring hollow. When it is pure claustrophobic action and ridiculous physics it ain’t half bad. Chloë Grace Moretz deserves better vehicles than this.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Overlord (2018)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Ulli Lommel directs Suzanna Love, John Carradine and Ron James in this supernatural horror where two abused children grow up in safety but their simmering trauma returns in the form of a cursed mirror.

A cheap chiller that somehow made the infamous video nasty list back in the moral panic Eighties. Creepy and discombobulating. Sure, there are some inventive kills but they happen at a languid pace. Befalling young actors who we’ve only been introduced tangentially to the protagonists moments before. The ending goes for an all out Exorcist / Amityville blow out on a shoestring. The most unnerving sequence though is the prologue where two young kid spy on their mother having an affair through a window. All hell breaks loose when their curiosity is discovered and we only catch elliptical glimpses of the fall out. It is a genuinely icky opener, and the movie always retains that yucky energy. Yet it also feels like a directionless mish-mash made for tuppence. A curio.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Hell Night (1981)

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Andrew Niccol directs Nicolas Cage, Jared Leto and Ethan Hawke in this drama detailing an international arms dealers rise and fall.

Starts with a bravura credit sequence where a bullet goes from sheet metal to child soldier’s skull. And then it is just a heart on it sleeve Goodfellas. Slick yet never fun. Cage is subdued. It is never wholly believable even though it clearly wants to be a geopolitical wake up call expose. I’ll use the Goodfellas comparison again… this world repulses the viewer from the off so you never get that initial rush of seduction. Nobody has ever always wanted to be an arms dealer. So the downfall has less compulsion. Like watching Goodfellas from Jimmy Conway’s cold, reptilian perspective.

6

Perfect Double Bill: War Dogs (2016)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/