Yorgos Lanthimos directs Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe in this steampunk sci-fi sex satire where a mad scientist puts a baby’s brain in their dead mother’s corpse then she discovers fucking and the cruel realities of the world.

If The Favourite was Lanthimos’ Barry Lyndon, then Poor Things is his Clockwork Orange. Frankenstein by way of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Recreating big fake sets and baroque mise-en-scene of Neo-Expressionistic masters like Gilliam or Lynch. A sex romp that takes place in an unreality that feels historically accurate. Is it feminist? Is it socialist? Does the movie based on a nationalist author’s novel really celebrate any “isms”? All I know it is bawdy and silly and brutally cutting. Sex and humanity are carved a new one. Emma Stone gives her finest comedy performance, worthy of Peter Sellers. Her creation feels pregnant with complexity and import. Squish. Squish. Squish. Ruffalo’s cad and Kathryn Hunter’s amused brothel Madame are also award worthy. Prestige cinema with nudity, gore, hybrid beasts, SFX, short skirts, peephole bras, dead genitals, unnecessary surgery, gastric bubbles, cynical men, poverty, various male cages and fairy tale twists and turns.

9

Perfect Double Bill: The Favourite (2018)

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David Ayer directs Jason Statham, Emmy Raver-Lampman and Jeremy Irons in this action flick where a retired secret special ops “righter of wrongs” has his time keeping bees interrupted by institutional corruption that goes to the highest level.

Obviously has London filling in for America. Oscillates between cartoonish and maudlin. Statham really just plays an unstoppable, near silent cypher here… which is hardly the best use of his strengths. The action is violent but repetitive. It feels like the same call centre set piece gets stuck on a loop but at least the last iteration ends with a gory elevator switcheroo that made me sit bolt upright. The investigating FBI partners have a nice energy together. Popcorn-wise The Beekeeper scratches a multiplex itch I enjoy being scratched by any old tosh but I’d prefer it if any other potential The Stath franchise got another entry over this.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Safe (2012)

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

Antti Jokinen directs Hilary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Christopher Lee in this chiller where a recently dumped doctor bags a dream apartment only to discover the hunky building owner is doing more than fixing the place up behind the scenes.

Strange that Hammer Studios chose this near ambient, mahogany retread of Sliver to reboot their brand rather than a period monster flick. Dracula, Frankenstein and She are what everyone associates the words ‘Hammer Horror’ with yet the studio out in Bray made plenty of flat thrillers like this too in their heyday. At least Christopher Lee is back in what amounts to a glorified legacy cameo. That is also the third biggest part. Essentially a two hander between two very beautiful, ultra charismatic B-listers, the tension doesn’t come from when she’ll find out what her landlord is up to… but whether she’ll care. There’s a far more exciting movie to be had if her reaction wasn’t the most obvious one. Or if there were a few more characters to get ground up before she twigs all is not dreamy in her dream home. Still this is undeniably attractive to look at so you can just let it wash over you.

5

Perfect Double Bill: The Hunt (2020)

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Leonard Nimoy directs William Shatner, DeForest Kelley and Christopher Lloyd in this direct sequel to Wrath of Khan.

The one we had on VHS therefore I have a huge soft spot for it. More a drama about grief in space than a rousing adventure I really like it. Kirk plays a to the death chess game against some Klingon separatists. It gets quite intense. And then the ending is really heartfelt.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (1982)

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

Rian Johnson directs Daniel Craig, Edward Norton and Kate Hudson in this murder mystery set on tech billionaire private island.

As much a lampoon on the 1%-ers as a Poirot update, Johnson’s Benoit Blanc movies are starting to find their groove. Knives Out was overhyped and pretty basic but this has some more unpredictable twists and a far more satisfying denouement. Craig’s bold character moves just a little back to allow the rich ensemble to stew (Norton, Hudson and Dave Bautista are all excellent sports) so that you actually look forward to him stepping forward to dominate the puzzle later. A gorgeous looking and knowingly silly update on the Agatha Christie sub-genre. “It’s so dumb, it’s brilliant!” “NO! It’s just dumb!”

7

Perfect Double Bill: Knives Out (2019)

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Joseph Zito directs Kimberly Beck, Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover in this slasher sequel where Jason is back to hack up not only some horny teens but the siblings in the cabin opposite too.

The entry I’ve watched too often by mere chance. Crispin Glover crazy dancing. Jason using anything but a machete. Corey Feldman’s room of monster movie props. Aside from these flickers, the needle barely moves.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Friday the 13th Part 3D (1982)

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

Mark Waters directs Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Tina Fey in this cult teen comedy where a new girl is thrown into the deep end of high school as she navigates all the cliques.

A soft Heathers but still very witty and colourful. LiLo puts in her best lead turn, the script has an emotional maturity without feeling like an after school special and there’s enough gentle weirdness to keep you coming back. Sure, I’m a little too old to fully embrace this one but you can tell why it is so highly regarded by the next generation without interrogating everything aggressively. Shout out to an early Amanda Seyfried who lands plenty of laughs in the smaller airhead role.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Baby Mama (2008)

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Jonathan Mostow directs Kurt Russell, J. T. Walsh and Kathleen Quinlan in this road thriller where a man loses his wife on the hard shoulder of the desert and nobody believes she has been kidnapped.

Tight as a drum, the escalations in tension here are a beauty to behold. Mostow maintains the grip right up to the end credits masterfully. A late entry into the VHS rental era minor classics hall of fame. J. T. Walsh RIP.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Executive Decision (1996)

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

Bruce Robinson directs Richard E Grant, Paul McGann and Richard Griffiths in this cult British comedy where two out-of-work actors escape the poverty and haze of bedsit London in the Sixties and go “on holiday by mistake”.

Withnail & I is a unique cinematic experience. There’s been comedy about misery before. Tragedy plus time and all that. The key to a good sitcom is characters trapped together by the set. British comedy anyway. Yet the destitution, cowardliness and grimy irresponsibility of Bruce Robinson’s recollections of his struggling actor days are a whole other level. You can taste the cold wobble of a greasy spoon egg, feel the rotten cat hair over Monty’s furniture, smell the stink of unemptied ashtrays in the pub. There’s nothing nostalgic about the shit end of the Swingin’ Sixties. No one is having free love here, or is easily upwardly mobile. This is the underbelly of London at its apex, where the shit rolls downhill. A countryside lost in the past, scary from its conservatism. A London of violence and rainy disarray. There’s no Go-Go girls dancing around Carnaby, just rejection. Leaning into a tattered, unkempt desolation of alcohol and terror that will only pull your further down the “matter” filled plug hole. And even then, as you see this depressing counter to counterculture, there’s the fact that as a child when Withnail & I came out this was a film that I have inherited from a previous generation. They quote it, they celebrate its grubby excess. The students of the Eighties. It throbbed through the pages of film magazines and retrospectives as THE cult item that my younger lot just had to get on board with. It holds up better then and now than Spinal Tap or The Comic Strip did or does. Withnail & I actually is funny but terrifying and sad. Boorish but heartfelt, cowardly but enticing. The paranoia imbued into every interaction is palpable. A world where everyone wants to fight, bugger or subjugate you. Grant’s big glorious luvvy blowhard destitute is still amazing to behold, McGann’s reactive cypher quakes in his long shadow. Yet the older I grow, it proves Griffiths’ Uncle Monty who steals the show for me. Predatory, a chess master of getting his bum hole, as he corners McGann’s I with unwavering practice one can’t help sorry and repulsed by the generation that came before even these lost souls. How much youth and talent is left to the wayside of unfulfilled dreams, loneliness and addiction? Why must one generation feed on the weakness of another with such callous entitlement? At least Withnail & I had each other, until that closing moment where they savagely don’t.

8

Perfect Double Bill: How To Get Ahead In Advertising (1989)

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Kenya Barris directs Jonah Hill, Lauren London and Eddie Murphy in this romantic comedy where an interracial couple do an awful job of navigating their parents’ predjudices.

There’s actually quite a sweet if laboured romantic comedy in the first act. Jonah and Lauren London have millennial chemistry. Once we get into Guess Who’s Coming For Dinner 3.0 territory it just never really reaches a comedy boiling point. Eddie feels underserved in a role I suspect was written with Denzel in mind. And then it goes on forever. I watched for Hill and Murphy… they never aren’t watchable but your expectations are so much higher for what laughter should be generated from the pairing. And while the racial element feels all over the shop the generational anxieties have a certain degree of truth. The forced editing (slow burn scenes shift abruptly with a shock of quick location flashes) is irritating and disruptive.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Cyrus (2010)

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