David Fincher directs Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton and Kerry O’Malley in this hitman thriller where a professional killer sets his world right after a job goes wrong.
Consummately made, apart from some purposefully frazzled hand held work, but also a tad disappointing. If Fincher was making a film a year this would be a perfectly adequate fallow year, downtime project. But considering what a patient predator he is – meticulous, exacting and expert – The Killer feels quite underwhelming. It is essentially his Bourne or Haywire… but not quite as pleasurable as either. To quote The Strokes… “Is This It?”. Imagine if Kubrick made Running Scared or The Dream Team instead of Full Metal Jacket? Fassbender is sturdy as the cold fish lost in a sea of The Smiths and his own bite sized maxims. Swinton gives her usual David Bowie worthy level of showy cameo acting. Kerry O’Malley stands out in her section as the secretary who knows too much and accepts her fate. She is the only performance that doesn’t aim for a chilled flatline. Action-wise it is slim pickings and the one big fight is dampened by the knowledge that our anti-hero’s slight girlfriend overpowered this seemingly unstoppable nemesis off camera already in the second act. That blink at the end… a sign of humanity infiltrating our protagonist or perhaps he shouldn’t have enjoyed that dram… Still, better than most movies out there… maybe it will grow on me. I love a hitman movie, this has solid procedural work, some smart practicalities. I was just expecting… more.
Jason Woliner directs Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova and Rudy Giuliani in this comedy sequel to the satirical ‘Kazakstan’ prank journalist smash.
The Borat character is too recognisable for this to work how you need it to. The movie acknowledges that, tries valiantly to work around the problem but the live stunts never have the danger or the crackle of the daring original. Bakalova is sweetly awesome as the cage dwelling teen daughter discovering feminism. Probably would have been better to keep this as pure fiction with a tight script and support actors in on the gags… Still, funny in spits and starts.
Richard C. Sarafian directs Gary Busey, Yaphet Kotto and Denise Galik in this cheap actioner based on the song from Rocky.
Busey is the ex con / Vietnam vet who takes down a biker gang. The tone of this is all over the shop. The heartless, darkest moments of pure exploitation like Mad Max meets the finale of a The A-Team episode. Sarafian is a good director of VHS action and knows how to frame his villain. Busey is a little too intense for a vanilla lead but my God I love him. A pass.
Gary Sherman directs Rutger Hauer, Gene Simmons and Robert Guillaume in this action thriller where a bounty hunter tracks a Middle Eastern terrorist.
Big fan of Rutger Hauer but, a few explosions aside, this never really gets going. The poster and trailer are a fond memory from my video rental youth. The movie proves lacklustre and has a weird plot wrinkle in the middle where two major characters are killed off quite shockingly yet there then seems to be very few narrative or emotional repercussions from the deaths.
John Dahl directs Linda Fiorentino, Peter Berg and Bill Pullman in this neo-noir where a woman on the run rules the men in her life with an iron cunt.
A once in a lifetime lead role for Fiorentino. Her Bridget Gregory is a middle class Catherine Tramell. Willing to do anything to win, often exploiting her sexuality over the weak men she can use as a stepping stone, mouth like a marine. Phwoar! Plot has some good twists too. Grainy on-location photography and a sweet noir-ish sax score.
Guy Ritchie directs Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza and Hugh Grant in this espionage movie where a group of private contractors persuade a movie star to help them infiltrate one of his biggest fans: a ruthless arms dealer.
The trademark bramble bush plotting of a Guy Ritchie caper never solidifies here. Action and comedy happen but it all relays back to us really flat and limp. Statham and Plaza have the potential for some unlikely on-screen chemistry but are given little to do together. Only Hugh Grant’s oily but passionate villain has any spark.
Mike Marvin directs Charlie Sheen, Sherilyn Fenn and Nick Cassavetes in this teen sci-fi supernatural revenge car gang flick.
A drag racer remake of High Plains Drifter with an unexplained UFO sci-fi element to it. Charlie Sheen turned up for one crammed day of filming. He’s barely in the movie despite being the lead. So we assume he is also The Wraith, a stuntman permanently in black leather and black biker helmet. He’s getting revenge against a Mad Max style road gang who also therefore have to wear helmets when racing. Safety doesn’t exactly suit their oily punk vibe but hey-ho. A hot and heavy crotch rock soundtrack and a hot and heavy Sherilyn Fenn just about save this. Charlie was unsurprisingly available to film his sex scene. Never boring, rarely coherent. Something something about Clint Howard’s Eraserhead hair.
Darkness falls across the land The midnight hour is close at hand Creatures crawl in search of blood To terrorize y’alls neighborhood And whosoever shall be found Without the soul for getting down Must stand and face the hounds of hell And rot inside a corpse’s shell
The foulest stench is in the air The funk of forty thousand years And grisly ghouls from every tomb Are closing in to seal your doom And though you fight to stay alive Your body starts to shiver For no mere mortal can resist The evil of the thriller… HA HA HA!
God Told Me To (1976)
Larry Cohen directs Tony Lo Bianco, Sandy Dennis and Sylvia Sidney in this paranormal policier where a cop goes down the conspiracy rabbit hole after he keeps arriving at mass murder crimes scenes where ordinary people are suddenly compelled to kill.
Like nothing else. Larry Cohen’s guerrilla no permit New York City street shooting style gifts this an immediacy. The use of vox pox make it seem almost documentary. And then it jumps the rails in the most delightfully fucked up ways. Feels like a progenitor for The X-Files but with plenty of Twin Peaks and Millennium echoing out from the uneven tone too. Pretty much every scene in the second half is a nasty surprise, often with a transgressive leap that makes God Told Me To feel like a true outlier of exploitation cinema. Ahead of its time.
7
Deep Red (1975)
Dario Argento directs David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi and Gabriele Lavia in this Italian Giallo classic where a musician investigates a series of murders performed by a mysterious figure wearing black leather gloves.
The classic giallo. Certainly my favourite. The only eyewitness to a murder tries to solve it. He’s only a pianist and because even he doesn’t believe what he saw, we suspect him just as much as any of the freaks we are introduced to. The atmosphere is seedy and unhinged. The mystery solid. Goblin’s score is an absolute head banger. The killings are a little classier than the norm for the sub-genre but there are bonus shocks as life size dolls come at you from nowhere and clues have further heralds of doom secreted within them.
9
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)
Brian Gibson directs JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson and Will Sampson in this unlikely sequel to the haunted house blockbuster.
“They’re Back!” Nice to see Will Sampson in a lead role after Cuckoo’s Nest. Apart from that though… a completely unjustifiable cash-in. Takes a long time to get scary. Julian Beck’s corpse-like Death Cult preacher will give you shivers but his casting feels a little exploitative given that he was dying on camera essentially. The ending does take the whole family over briefly across into the spirit realm, looks pretty trippy, but we only glimpse the wonky H.R. Giger horrors. A much longer effects sequence has been clearly created and shoddily edited down to the barest of bones. Don’t wear braces.
5
The Lair Of the White Worm (1988)
Ken Russell directs Amanda Donohoe, Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi in this camp comedy horror update of one of Bram Stoker’s lesser novels.
An ancient white worm’s undead high priestess hits the British country side looking for virgins to sacrifice. Doctor Who acting and Famous Five plotting. High camp with leaden humour more at home in a poor Carry On than a tale of terror. Having sad all that, Donohoe makes for a sexy vamp whatever stage of reptilian transformation she is in. She gives it her all and looks stunning in every stage of undress she is slinking around in. The video edited SFX nightmare sequences invade the screen in orgasmic gushes of hyper colour. What we see rush past is acutely phantasmagoric. A cult item a bit too shit to whole heartedly recommend but not without its wobbly charms.
5
Jeepers Creepers (2001)
Victor Salva directs Gina Philips, Justin Long and Jonathan Breck in this creature feature chase movie where two siblings on a road trip fall afoul of monstrous truck driver.
A VHS era monster movie throwback that goes pretty hard. I remembered this being surprisingly good at the cinema on release and it hasn’t soured with age. The Creeper is iconic and has solid lore.
7
Dead Of Night (1945)
Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer directs Mervyn Johns, Googie Withers, Sally Ann Howes and Michael Redgrave in the classic Ealing Studios horror anthology.
Four really gripping tales of terror plus a twee little golfing comedy that muffles the growing sense of dread. Final Destination style premonitions. Ghost children. A cursed mirror (the highlight). And then that infamous ventriloquist’s dummy Hugo. The final 10 minutes are an absolute freak out. Even the comedy section is gently funny… just that it probably should have been programmed as the first or second chapter… not the penultimate shocker.
William Wyler directs Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck and Eddie Albert in this romantic comedy where a journalist and a runaway princess spend a weekend together.
Ciao Bella! Just a big gorgeous slice of lovely. Peck is a plank. Romantic comedy is not his forte, unlike Hepburn who is born to it, but Dalton Trumbo’s screenplay gives them both grit, humanity and uncertainty.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 