Joachim Trier directs Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie and Herbert Nordrum in this Norwegian romantic comedy where a restless young woman struggles to settle on the right man / career / lifestyle / path / hair colour… and that’s OK.
Insightful, well made, some neat moments. I can see how millennials might really embrace this, see their lives reflected in a way that doesn’t match their instagram feeds. But that leaves me sharing one part of the love triangle’s fate… standing abandoned, dick out and vulnerable. Wondering what’s in this for me when I really couldn’t vibe with it. The miserable last third over extends itself but speaks to me more, I just know I’m out of the loop and five years too old to fall for this. Let the young people have their fun before they too reach middle age. I’ll go watch Amelie or Singles or summink.
Michael Bay directs Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Eiza González in this action thriller where two bank robbing brothers try to make their getaway in the very ambulance containing the cop they didn’t really mean to shoot.
A big project stalled, the pandemic keeping him housebound, Michael Bay declared he wanted to make a small, character driven movie in a claustrophobic setting. Two hours and twenty minutes of luxury cars, assault rifles and fender benders later … Ambulance is clearly his tribute to Bergman and Ozu. I’m no snob. I loves me some Bayhem. The polish and glow he adds to everything, his love of that neon toxic spill green colour, the epileptic fit editing, the schmaltz. This ain’t the movie for him though. The plot hook feels like a throwback to the glorious 1990s where he made his name. Physical stunts, automatic weapons a-go-go, high concept, not a cape or a cowl or a children’s toy IP in sight. Even a comedy cute farting dog is included in the action. Roland Emmerich looks across the crowded room at Michael Bay and raises a glass in tribute, Bay shoots finger guns right back at him. These are not men concerned with making great art, these are titans who want to inflate and overwhelm a marketing idea and spank their audiences into a slap happy submission with sheer god-damned scale of the back of their hands. For an hour I was a happy victim of abuse. It felt like dumb Speed, or stupid Heat, or present day Mad Max: Fury Road only made by a team of creatives who thought Con Air needed twice the amount of bickering cops playing catch up on the ground and To Live And Die In L.A. was lacking in drone shots where we race up and down the side of skyscrapers in place of static establishing shots for us to get our bearings. Beating? Bearings! I’m not complaining about being pummelled, seduced by the sheen. Dragged across tarmac. I just realised too soon that once we were racing across freeways, backstreets and sewers, Ambulance didn’t know what to do with itself. It really is just two men shouting relentlessly at a foxy paramedic while helicopters hassle them. No memorable set piece emerges from them careening around L.A., treating the City of Angeles like their own demolition derby. They just scream, bicker, bond, and try to keep their shot cop alive while a dozen others faceless cops are killed in car wrecks and explosions the wake of their deadening escape causes. Gyllenhaal approaches his chatty bad egg with relish, the acerbic lines just aren’t written down to match the performance. Everyone else is boiled in their own stock. The two extended finales both stall, neither keeping all that unexploited momentum in play. We stop the pursuit, leave the locomotion. Mexican stand-offs when we wanted bright green ambulances flying through the air or scraping through roadblocks. At the two hour point there’s nothing left in the tank. Yet we are being kicked to death by melodrama, everyone gets a teary epilogue. Slow-Mo sad eyes, a hint that a happy ending might be possible even for the arrested, guilty, the traumatised and exhausted. This doesn’t stick the landing, it besieges the runway and mutilates the terminal building. I should have at least liked this, instead I couldn’t wait for it to flatline. Too much, not enough, all in the same near endless sitting.
Ti West directs Mia Goth, Brittany Snow and Jenna Ortega in this slasher horror movie where a film crew pick the wrong farm in Texas to shoot their porn movie at.
West’s most approachable, accomplished and satisfying movie to date. He knows he’s making Texas ChainSaw meets Boogie Nights and doesn’t colour too far outside of the lines of that simple enough diagram. For a sleazy movie, it proves very sex positive and the female characters are granted a pinch more complexity than you’d expect. Of course, West is an old hand at the slow burn, so there’s plenty of room for him to scribble a little shading and messaging while we await the carnage. As things come to the boil he even distracts us with a potential unexpected killer. One of our victims comes very close to a schizoid breakdown themselves. The set pieces are solid, consistent. It is the mood and the tactile sensation the movie illicits that is most satisfying. It is just nice to see something like this crafted so well – the editing, the soundtrack, the make-up, the nudity and the dialogue. All elements come together in harmony, even finding space for a few neat callbacks to Hitchcock’s Psycho. Clearly West is trying to say something about youth being restricted and exploited by the older generation here but he doesn’t ram that message too far down our throats. He knows ultimately we came to see Mia Goth’s now near mandatory naked body and then heads going squelch. I can’t think of many better ways to spend a Saturday. I hope the home video market takes off for these kids.
Carol Reed directs Ralph Richardson, Bobby Henrey and Michèle Morgan in this drama told from a child’s point of view, where his beloved butler finds himself entangled between a shrewish wife, a doomed affair and, eventually, the suspicions of the police.
Great movie. Featuring a one-of-a-kind child performance. Reed kept the camera rolling on the lad, hoping that like a stopped clock, a mixture of restlessness and off camera stimulus would illicit the needed reactions for each scene. That patience worked an absolute treat. Little Bobby Henrey got bored with filming midway through the shoot and started misbehaving allegedly. It doesn’t show here, but it is in keeping with his character, who like all children is a curious little sociopath capable of callous strops and unguarded obsessions. And completely getting the wrong end of stick when trying to fathom the adult world. A trip to the zoo and snake’s hiding place (“McGREGOR!”) both lean into visions of being trapped and caged… in a way, the little tyke wants to keep his hero Baines in much the same captivity. Not realising the poor bugger, lovely and dedicated as he is to his young ward, is constantly stuck behind bars from the off, seen and unseen.The adult performances are somewhat secondary to our protagonist but quite compelling. We never truly plumbs the ultimate depths of these tragic figures and their squalid little love triangle, though Sonia Dresdel’s spurned tyrant is particularly affecting. Set mainly in a vertiginous diplomat’s townhouse, this could easily have felt like a mere filmed play. Reed explores young Philippe’s mini fiefdom with his trademark flair for the askew, meaning the interiors feel infinite and fantastical. Truly cinematic, well worth seeking out.
Steven Soderbergh directs Zoë Kravitz, Byron Bowers and Rita Wilson in this David Koepp scripted thriller where an agoraphobic tech worker discovers recorded evidence of a violent crime but is met with resistance when she tries to report it.
“O.K. Google… I want to watch Rear Window.”
“Rear Window is not available on any streaming service.”
“Alexa… I want to watch Blow Out.”
“Blow Out is not available on any streaming service. Did you mean Get Out?”
“Siri… play The Conversation.”
“Please repeat.”
Not a bad wee techno thriller. Kravitz gives her best performance so far, very physical and attractive. The way she airclaps her hands compulsively after sanitising = the epitome of cute. Soderbergh has the most pleasure in getting his flinty, horny agoraphobic outside into the world, turning Seattle for about 10 minutes into a blocky level from a console game of old. At least that’s what the framing invoked to me. His understanding of tech, privacy and corporations probably matches my own slightly detached, slightly under educated ideas of how the world currently works. We both are probably quite naive, as I’m guessing this is an airport thriller level of knowledge and insight.
John Lee Hancock directs Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto in this cops hunt for a serial killer thriller.
They used to release a movie like this every week. Denzel has even starred in some of the better ones. Cliched and trudging. Too miserable to enjoy. The ending throws up a few neat ideas but you are so disengaged from the variable leads by the showstopper that you are unlikely to care about the thorny ethical issues it churns over.
Kevin Lewis directs Nicolas Cage, Emily Tosta and Beth Grant in this horror comedy where a silent drifter is tricked into spending a night in a family fast food restaurant where the animatronic band puppets have been possessed by killers.
Does exactly what it says on the tin. If you’ve come for fully committed Cage rage weirdness then this delivers. If you want one joke violence and trace level creepiness then this just about scrapes up enough of both. Anyone watching this must be primed for a feature length meme, nobody is choosing this casually expecting a great movie. Considering the low bar the filmmakers set themselves, Willy’s Wonderland is shockingly competent.
David Mirkin directs Mira Sorvino, Lisa Kudrow and Janeane Garofalo in this comedy where two gauche high school best friends, who have stayed together, head back to the hometown reunion worried they have little to show for their ten years after graduation.
Bubblegum look, top pop soundtrack and a couple of good laughs. Let’s say three. Hard to see its cult appeal, but R&M is undemanding and cute – surprisingly low energy too.
Brian De Palma directs Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins and Connie Nielsen in this sci-fi adventure movie where the first astronauts to land on Mars suffer a tragedy and another crew is sent to rescue them.
Plodding and lacking atmosphere. This is not exactly the sexiest cast ever for a blockbuster and the dialogue is very meat and potatoes. De Palma gets away with a decent middle act as extended set piece where everything that can go wrong does go wrong during the approach to the planet. He also pleasingly makes it quite clear he’s happy to kill off anyone and everyone. It is the controversial first sequence of his Mission: Impossible all over again. Yet once we touchdown on the red planet, things go all diluted Close Encounters / 2001 / Contact and it really feels like an adaptation of a Disney theme park ride you might not bother waiting in line for. Adequate but uneven.
Elie Wajeman directs Vincent Macaigne, Sara Giraudeau and Pio Marmaï in this Paris-set neo-noir where a philandering but good hearted GP makes his nightly house calls to addicts and the infirm while pressure is put on him to write fake prescriptions for fentanyl.
Not ground breaking but adequate. Mean Streets and Taxi Driver are obvious influences on the plot and you’ll know where this is ultimately headed to very early on. Vincent Macaigne is not an obvious sex symbol but in French cinema anyone with access to a leather jacket seemingly can have a gorgeous wife and one or two ladies on the side every night.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 