Greta Gerwig directs Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and Will Ferrell in this blockbuster comedy based on the Mattel doll where Barbie leaves her world of innocent play and empowered positivity to experience the real world.

Can’t believe that Tom Cruise dangled and leapt through a careening Orient Express for absolute reals but this muddled corporate feminism rip-off of Elf based on a problematic dolly was the movie to save cinema!?

4

Perfect Double Bill: Birds Of Prey (2020)

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/

Don Hahn, Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, James Algar, Francis Glebas and Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi direct Steve Martin, Bette Midler and James Earl Jones in this anthology of animated music videos to classical arrangements.

Was never going to be a favourite but the guest hosts are a fantastic addition and Eric Goldberg’s Rhapsody In Blue segment is worth the price of admission alone. Better than the original butt number.

6

Perfect Double Bill: Fun & Fancy Free (1947)

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

George Stevens directs Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Fay Bainter in this romantic comedy where a sports writing bloke falls for a very successful and far more famous female journalist.

You can approach Woman Of The Year in two ways. A role reversal comedy where a man’s man is made to feel like the inferior little lady at home when he marries someone far more accomplished than him. Or a sexist attempt to take careerist feminists down a peg or two by showing them the topsy turvy world they create when they try to be better than men. I prefer the more innocent first reading. It allows you to enjoy the bristling chemistry between Tracy and Kate. And you can just laugh at the slow burn finale where Hepburn is completely bamboozled by modern appliances in the kitchen. As a sustained sequence of slapstick chaos, it is quite magical.

9

Perfect Double Bill: Pat And Mike (1952)

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/

James Glickenhaus directs Christopher Walken, Michael Ironside and María Conchita Alonso in this action thriller where a Vietnam vet puts together a squad to take down a South American dictator.

A good film? No. Even to a beer a pizza standard? Get outta here. But there is always something extreme and bonkers happening to fill the runtime. A thousand Fillipino extras pretending to be Latinos! Mafiaso being dangled off skyscrapers! A thousand Fillipino extras being blown up and shot down in a fever dream of tax shelter carnage! Luis Gusman as a crack dealer giving a lesson on free market economics! Walken pretending to be Mossad for one scene and one scene only! An extra getting his hand caught in a tank rifle after lobbing a grendade down it! Vietnam death camp prologue! Hungover banter! Ironside with a ponytail! Top Gun with remote control fighter jets! María Conchita Alonso riding a donkey from Columbia to Brooklyn to a power ballad! McBain is a shit fudge of a movie with three great leads slumming it, it really doesn’t work and yet the constant strange mega violence of it overwhelms you.

6

Perfect Double Bill: The Dogs of War (1990)

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

Mike Leigh directs Tim Roth, Phil Daniels and Gary Oldman in this British kitchen sink drama about two unemployed brothers living an abrasive, unfulfilling life in Thatcher’s Britain.

One of Leigh’s better ones in that the class caricatures seem a little more complex and far less prescribed. There’s nothing snide about Meantime. These days it is Oldman’s smaller role as a skinhead that gets the movie re-released but in all honesty the central turns from Daniels and especially Roth still have a thumping power. How do I feel about it all? A life on benefits conditions the dispossessed to fear work and cancels any chance of a future… I don’t know. I agree up to a point but I think that ultimate message, though sincere, plays into the Tories hands a bit too readily. Yet it is absorbing to watch a film that asks a lot of uncomfortable, and still valid, questions about this country without having all the answers. And Tim Roth’s useless herbert is heartbreakingly funny, innit.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Naked (1993)

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/

George Stevens directs Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman in this screwball comedy where a distinguished law professor finds himself sharing a holiday let with a death row inmate on the run when his scatty landlady hides the condemned innocent there.

An unlikely but very pleasing romantic triangle ensues. One where you’d be happy with any eventual outcome. Jean Arthur is fantastic value in this, she always seems to add to these flicks with her light but accurate comedy performances. The going gets pretty heavy in the second half… as is often the case with this genre. And I agree with its politics so I don’t mind the drastic shift from farce to polemic.

7

Perfect Double Bill: A Foreign Affair (1948)

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

Jaromil Jireš directs Jaroslava Schallerová, Helena Anýzová and Petr Kopriva in this Czech folk horror where a young girl fends off vampires, priests and carnies of all genders to preserve her innocence.

Bonkers nonce bait. The dreamlike narrative means you either get lost in it or feel abandoned by it. I didn’t get lost in it.

5

Perfect Double Bill: In The Company of Wolves (1984)

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/

Tarsem Singh directs Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn and Vincent D’Onofrio in this science fiction thriller where a child psychologist uses an experimental technology to enter the mind of a comatose serial killer.

Visually this might just be one of the most boundary pushing narrative films ever made. Dali. Giger. Hirst. Chris Cunningham. The Quay Brothers. PlayStation adverts of that era. Guinness adverts of that era. All evoked in a thriller where J-Lo and Vinny Vaughn feel miscast. The plot is solid… a race against the clock to decode and survive the psyche of a psycho. It kinda wraps up weakly but the journey looks fantastic. Vincent D’Onofrio’s sicko really is outstandingly creepy and dangerous. There’ll definitely be imagery centred around him that will make you feel both queasy and transfixed. If you could just watch with the dialogue off it might be a five star experience. As it stands I will give Singh credit for at least trying to deliver something to the Se7en fanbase that markedly always tries to go the other direction. Just bask in that blazing sunshine, for example. The brightest monstrous serial killer nightmare ever made.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Copycat (1995)

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

Aki Kaurismäki directs Timo Eränkö Kari Heiskanen and Asmo Hurula in this Finnish punk comedy where over a dozen losers named Frank decide to adventure across the city committing petty crimes.

Looks iconic but does get very repetitive after a while. Bad behaviour, deadpan jokes, don’t be a woman.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Crime & Punishment (1983)

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/

Michael Powell directs John Laurie, Belle Chrystall and Eric Berry in this drama based on the evacuation of the Scottish archipelago of St Kilda.

Powell just before Pressburger. This tale of an island slowly shutting down as the generations leave for better fishing opportunities is sweet and never dull. Compared to his later work as The Archers it is a little dour and drab but consider the setting. A midway action sequence where two suitors dare each other to climb a perilous cliff face really sparks.

7

Perfect Double Bill: Whisky Galore! (1949)

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