Todd Solondz directs Heather Matarazzo, Brendan Sexton III and Eric Mabius in this teen comedy where twelve-year-old Dawn Wiener is continually bullied by her school peers and her suburban family.

Matarazzo puts in one of the great coming-of-age lead turns here, up there with Léaud’s Antoine Doinel and Bel Powley in The Diary Of A Teenage Girl. The film is funny but pummelling. Bleak and without respite or judgment or moralising or hope. Welcome To The Dollhouse is an acidic independent but I’m not sure it has much more to say than the world is a hopeless hell of mediocrity and pettiness. And as much as I love glossier studio contemporaries from the Nineties, this feels like an outlier that almost needs to exist as a counterpoint. A good proving ground for Solondz’s ultra anxious, hyper cynical Happiness, I do wish he’d go back to basics and make something of this or that ilk again.

7

Perfect Double Bill: The Diary Of A Teenage Girl (2015)

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

George Cukor directs Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell in this lengthy drama about a doting society wife who discovers her husband is cheating on her long after the rest of her friends and enemies do.

Famous for its all female cast, this expansion of the stage play absolutely rocks when it is catty, camp and couldn’t give a hot damn about The Code. To these modern eyes Shearer is a bit of a drip so it is a trudge when we focus too much on her. Russell is a genuine hoot however as the back stabbing, gossipy mega-bitch and everyone else looks alluring to a fault. There’s a Technicolour disruption at a fashion show, a wrestle at a divorce ranch and a farce finale. Though now more of a museum piece than an out-and-out classic there still plenty of pleasures to be sifted out here.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Grand Hotel (1932)

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

Stephen Anderson directs Daniel Hansen, Jordan Fry and Wesley Singerman in this sci-fi Disney animation where an orphan inventor kid gets dragged into the future to meet a family of whack-a-dos.

Very chaotic but looks blocky and textureless. Unfinished. Would make the basis of a fine Saturday morning kids cartoon but never really settles as a single grand narrative.

Ron Clements and John Musker direct Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos and Keith David in this classic Disney animated romance where the fairytale is updated to the Jazz Age in New Orleans.

And we are back on track!

It is not just the detailed and lovingly hand drawn animation that makes this a winner, it is the showtune big numbers, the clear villain and the focus on the simple values of family entertainment. Genuinely feels like night and day compared to the dreck that preceded it. Back to basics would be the wrong terminology. Much like Apple can afford now to pump out a prestige awards drama with a blockbuster budget twice a year, surely Disney could keep their hand in by at least trying to make one of this quality and craft every half decade?

4 / 8

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

1. Air

2. Babylon

3. Mission: Impossible 7 – Dead Reckoning Part One

4. Sisu

5. Napoleon

6. Talk To Me

7. The Creator

8. Anatomy Of A Fall

9. Cobweb

10. Infinity Pool

11. Master Gardener

12. Justified: City Primeval

13. John Wick: Chapter 4

14. Asteroid City

15. Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret

16. Evil Dead Rise

17. Bottoms

18. Fast X (Oh Yeah!)

19. Scream VI

20. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse

Bubbling Under: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour / Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves / Broker / Ferrari / Knock At The Cabin

Still to watch: The Boy and The Heron / All The Beauty and the Bloodshed / How To Blow Up A Pipeline / The Innocent / The Night of the 12th

Old Classics to You, New Favourites for Me: Top 5 Discoveries of the Year

1. Thieves’ Highway (1949)

2. La Jetée (1963)

3. The Earrings of Madame De… (1954)

4. The Young Girls Of Rochefort (1967)

5. Woman Of the Year (1942)

My wife and I 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/

Blake Edwards directs Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard and Mickey Rooney in this romantic comedy about a fragile socialite and a struggling writer who fall for each other while the wealthy folk of society prey on their youthful sexiness.

Some movies are perfect, in spite of their flaws. I’m going to gloss over the dated aspects of Breakfast At Tiffany’s. It is set in a world far harsher, far more exploitative than its baby pink and jewellery Hooray For Hollywood reputation ever prepares you for. I just love its vibe, its deep Technicolor look, its darkness. It is the Citizen Kane of frothy whimsy. We slowly unpeel every troubling layer of Holly Golightly’s backstory while partaking in a chic seduction. Hepburn is absolute perfection in the iconic role – gorgeous, flighty, daft, vulnerable. Watch her serenade her cat with Moon River and your heart melts. Watch her stroppily abandon her cat in an alleyway and your heart breaks. This is a sheeny surface flick with wells of sadness and grit. Let its smooth, cynical magic spell wash over you. Authenticity is what you make of it.

10

Perfect Double Bill: How To Steal A Million (1966)

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

Will Gluck directs Glen Powell, Sydney Sweeney and Bryan Brown in this romantic comedy where two singles who hate each other must make nice at a wedding.

Wealth porn and a surprising amount of nudity. An even more surprising amount of slapstick. There’s slatherings of clumsiness but not much wit. At least it is also sex positive. This is very contrived and no matter how many allusions to Shakespeare there are (and tanned flesh on display there is) Gluck can’t distract from the fact the central couple have minimal chemistry. Powell is game and I hope he gets a better vehicle than this before he goes the way of Nathan Fillion or Jon Hamm. It would appear Hollywood no longer knows how to make money out of this level of charisma. Mindlessly watchable.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Holidate (2020)

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

Zack Snyder directs Sofia Boutella, Ed Skrein and Charlie Hunnam in this sci-fi epic where a band of rebels are recruited to protect a peaceful planet from enslavement.

Space vagina. Intergalactic Inglorious Basterds. Intergalactic Frankenstein. Intergalactic Magnificent 7. Intergalactic Star Wars. Jena Malone as a xenomorph spider. Intergalactic Anti-Climax. You get the picture. It is very derivative. Very pompous. Very slo-mo heavy. The cast isn’t the most exciting bunch of almost names and character actors. Yet I kinda dug it. Much like The Creator I didn’t really care how unoriginal it was as the visuals struck a deep pulsing nerve in teenage genre fanboy me. This is like a load of Heavy Metal album sleeves and forgotten single run comic series come to life. It is a shame we don’t get to experience Snyder’s grand, sincere, loopy tributes in the multiplexes anymore. As follys go, I’d watch Rebel Moon again with little coercion. Skrein and Boutella did well. A man tames and flies a giant crow griffin. Sign of the intergalactic devil!

6

Perfect Double Bill: Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver (2024)

My wife and I 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/

Richard Franklin directs Stacy Keach, Jamie Lee Curtis and Grant Page in this Aussie road thriller where a trucker begins to suspect there’s a van driver in the outback killing sexy hitchhikers.

Future Psycho 2’s director Franklin proved his Hitchcockian bonafides with this quirky and strange little etching of a movie. I’m sure I must have watched it as a teen… for while I never logged it as something I’d consumed on late night TV back then this all felt too familiar. The ultra patient opening with the bin bag and the dingo outside the motel. That weirdly expressionistic scene of the first murder involving a faceless pair of surrogates for the top billed stars. Keach’s barnstormingly awkward lynchpin protagonist. Almost like a kindlier, cuddlier Oliver Reed gone doolally from isolation. The comical cast of irregular drivers who our paths cross cross with between the thrills and the paranoia. Jamie Lee and Stacey hitting it off in the remains of a sand flooded township. The surprise twist when they find the van parked. The frightening mob mentality of the ‘all seems lost’ conclusion. Brian May’s bonkers, discordant score. A gem from Oz.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Wake In Fright (1971)

My wife and I 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/

Kevin Smith directs Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson and Jason Mewes in this legacy threequel to the View Askew original where Randall decides to make an indie movie based around all the strange interactions the Clerks have had at the Quick Stop over the years.

1. I want a Big Choice Video T-Shirt.

2. Jason Mewes’ new teeth are terrifying but I’m glad he’s still going.

3. Unless you love Clerks and Clerks II, I doubt there’s much for you here (as it is so meta and so for Smith heads) but Natalie and I laughed loads so it felt like a gentle, nostalgic return to Generation X’s own Woody Allen’s glory days.

4. I’m not sure I can find 33 more dicks to suck here.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Jay & Silent Bob Reboot (2020)

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

Chris Williams and Byron Howard direct John Travolta, Miley Cyrus and Susie Essman in this Disney animated action comedy where a stunt dog on a hit television show believes his mission and the dangers he faces are reality.

OK… so it’s the Buzz Lightyear joke from Toy Story played out with animals. I’m cool with that. What in 2008 seemed like Pixar lite, these days plays like Pixar done right. And I’m sorry Inside Out fans but that’s a rarity recently from the actual studio that invented the formula. The grand scale action and buddy comedy chemistry are on point, the CG animation ambitious compared to what has been shat out before. Nice to end the Disney doldrums period on a surprise high.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Strange World (2022)

My wife and I 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/