So Yong Kim directs Jena Malone, Riley Keough and Ryan Eggold in this romance between two old friends who go on a road trip together before growing apart.
I could watch Jena Malone in anything but this was too slight and ephemeral to hold my attention.
John Frankenheimer directs Roy Scheider, Ann-Margaret and John Glover in this thriller where an industrialist cheats on his politician wife, attracting the vicious attentions of a trio of blackmailers.
So sleazy it genuinely is a shock to the system. Lashings of nudity, misogyny, exploitation and real life porn stars. Scheider convinces as a man who looks like a pair of well polished brogues but still can pull Kelly Preston’s stripper while not irrevocably ruining his marriage to hot Ann-Margaret. His over-confident protagonist turns the tables on a team of scumbags, getting them to in-fight and show their arses. His brinkmanship in a tight and increasingly deadly spot proves very watchable, the film expresses very few moral judgments on anyone. Rougher around the edges but it acts as a blueprint for pretty much any Michael Douglas star vehicle that arrived over the next 15 years, no discredit to Scheider but it genuinely is weird Michael Douglas doesn’t play the lead here. What really makes this forgotten gem pop though is the antagonists. Three very different but full fat performances from Glover, Clarence Williams III and Robert Trebor. All stand out as well written, juicy villains that the respective character actors clearly had free reign to inhabit with relish. Of course, Elmore Leonard’s source material always showers a plot with great secondary and one scene parts. This is a lot harder hitting than the criminal comedy of manners adaptations that followed a decade later. It really feels more a piece with auteur American cinema like Hardcore and To Live & Die In L.A.. Frankenheimer’s camera is constantly moving, panning, tracking, dangling… when it does stay still for a shot he is making bold choices like split-diopter lenses. It is an excessively mannered slice of directing but it suits the seedy, relentless plot. While it would be easy to dismiss 52 Pick-Up as merely a better acted than average videoshop filler, I almost immediately wanted to watch it again. Hence a generous score…
Kim Jee-woon directs Arnold Schwarzenegger, Johnny Knoxville and Forest Whittaker in this action adventure where a sleepy border town’s sheriff finds himself preparing to stop a fugitive drug baron.
This was Arnie’s big action comeback and it felt a little off the mark at the time. There were too many characters, too much exposition, not nearly enough Arnie. What there is though is great, after all that laborious setting up you get a more than generous wallop of carnage, with the beloved T-800 front and centre, playing a relatively human character. There’s a nice broad sense of humour near constantly at play that is very inviting. It looks gorgeous thanks to Kim Jee-woon unique eye for action and mythology. If you are a fan of Westerns than you’ll appreciate the plotting and form. Now it seems like we won’t be getting that many more pure Arnie action extravaganzas, this proves more than satisfactory in hindsight.
Jonathan Glazer directs Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy McWilliams and Adam Pearson in this British kitchen sink sci-fi art movie where an alien drives a van in and around Glasgow, hoping to pick up men using her attractive human guise.
I can spend thousands of words in these reviews name checking who brought it to a production or noting who hampered it. I find assigning blame and celebrating individual success the best way to catalogue a release’s merits and faults. So, for example, in this striking and often disturbing one-off it is easy to praise Glazer’s Kubrick-ian mastery, Mica Levi’s hauntingly otherworldly anti-score and Johansson’s bravely unguarded physical approach. Yet the person I want to namecheck the most is my friend, James Mason. As the one person who has a massive impact on how I absorb a cinematic trip is who I watch the film with. I know going to see a slasher, musical or Disney movie with my wife will be a heightened experience due to her enthusiasm for those particular forms. The pleasure of watching a Bond sequel with my boy Davey or the new Star Wars release with my niece and nephew or Jerry Maguire with my mum creates a frisson that elevate a film, focuses the creatives’ best intentions so that they leave a harder footprint on both viewers. Watching the right film with the right person is a life event, forever gilding those particular 120 minutes into your pantheon of beloved movies. James’ response to art, philosophy, body horror and the discombobulating mundaneness of the driving scenes MADE Under the Skin for me. I wouldn’t care about the film quite so much if hadn’t seen it with someone who wears simultaneously both a hard leather jacket and a soft cardigan underneath as a point of pride. Who engages with art with a tactile but educated understanding. I don’t think Under The Skin is a truly perfect movie; those full frontal nudity scenes are unnervingly sexless, it can be esoteric to the point of redundancy. But I first watched it with the right cinema buddy and therefore it means more to me than a five star entertainment.
Stephan Rick directs Patrick John Fleuger, Val Kilmer and Colby Minifie in this horror thriller where three janitors of a sprawling apartment building investigate and suspect each other during a rash of murders and disappearances.
Simultaneously glossy and cheap looking, this has little resemblance to reality. If you cared about any of it, you’d question every single writing and performance choice. Some of it is in service of a relatively well obscured twist. At least the killer’s eventual reveal doesn’t feel like a complete cheat but it does leave more questions than answers. This is not an experience you’ll want to revisit again though afterwards. Val Kilmer’s role is especially hard to get one’s head around. His heavily accented dialogue is all dubbed in due to his throat cancer. This gives his moments an echo of giallo about them, a mood you wish the filmmakers aped more given the often bonkers nature of the plotting. Doesn’t make the movie any better or worse but a happy accident in a pretty forgettable, awful release.
Christophe Honoré directs Léa Seydoux, Louis Garrel and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet in this French teen drama where the arrival of a sexy orphan disrupts the various affairs and romances in a posh Paris secondary school.
Based on an 17th century novel but Clueless it ain’t. Everyone be fucking everyone yet this yields minimal nudity and no home life scenes. These characters live their drab little existences in the school courtyard or on street corners. It is winter, get into a bedroom, any bedroom, and enjoy your youth! Boring.
Justin Lin directs Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and John Cena in this action adventure where Dom learns the true meaning of FARM-LEE.
How to judge a franchise that delivers the action, the critics hate and has mutated from an average car racing flick to mega budgeted summer mainstay? Does anyone actually love these characters and this very specialised milieu? Or do we watch them as we would a car wreck? Passing the mangled carnage, expecting the inevitable and slightly repulsed by the human toll? Big cars go vroom vroom, physics are name checked but routinely spat on, here’s another character with a flashback that seems to mean something to someone. Don’t forget the obligatory shot of “bitches” dancing around a car park!
This entry emphasises a lot of worst elements of an F&F sequel but rarely hitting the sweet spot that The Rock, The Stath and CGI ridiculo-scale brought to the better entries. It is the release that finally takes the rag tag hangers on into outer space… just don’t expect anyone you care about to be doing doughnuts and wheelies on the moon in a souped up space buggy. The intergalactic section is less Moonraker-inspired finale more extended side mission for the two regulars in the ensemble you always question the necessity of. In a strange way, that little orbit sequence defines this movie. A moment of overlong excess ruined by bludgeoning exposition, idiot humour and populated by the F-Team. I understand the first two elements are there as the writers correctly assume most of us in the audience are drooling knuckleheads but the sidelining of the bigger names proves continually unforgivable here.
OK… so I concede we have lost Paul Walker. The THEs have flexed their muscles and charisma to spin off away into the Hobbes & Shaw universe. Which leaves us with a whole lotta third rung faces who seemingly couldn’t get along with The Rock and can’t open a movie on their own. Sure, Charlize Theron, Helen Mirren and Kurt Russell are cameoing about in the background but these little legacy moments are swamped by the sheer amount of returning characters who the casual viewer of the soap opera with socket wrenches will struggle to name. I’ve seen 8 out of 10 of these at the cinema and I found myself asking too many questions. Wasn’t he dead? Is that what the kid from American Gothic looks like now? Has Cardi B been in this before? Am I even sure I know who Cardi B is in any plane of unreality?
Entire acts go by that you forget lynchpin and top billed Vin Diesel was even in. The plot splits the “family” up, gives everyone but him their own globe trotting task and it often feels like the whole endeavour has been built around an unspoken agreement that he would only be available for a quarter of the shoot. The Edinburgh chase sequence is conspicuous for both its lack of geographical veracity (I’m a local – shoot me!) and the fact that Dom Toretto suddenly appears as it is winding down, the camera and edit only focussing on him once we’ve grown bored of seeing the comedy sidekicks in the driving seat. Most of the meat of his… I’m looking for the right words but can only think of… emotional arc are handled in flashbacks to 1989. Rather than de-age Riddick digitally the producers have cleverly cast an upcoming actor and had ol’ gravel voice dub him. The conceit works well, these scenes evoke Days of Thunder, the first movie and Shakespeare… but again… it appears like the franchise’s big name got a week off rather than add any anchoring presence to all this formless mess. I’m trying my best not to type the sentence “I wanted and expected a lot more Vin Diesel in this film.” Nobody should have to make such a bold revelation. It ain’t all bad, with Dom working flexi, the always watchable Michelle Rodriguez as Letty gets a bit more spotlight. And never before mentioned, long lost brother John Cena makes a decent fist of the villain – who you know will return as reluctant hero next episode. Side note: He’d make a great Fred Flintstone if they ever do another live action remake of that cartoon again.
Which leaves us with the slam and the bang. You’ve seen the best bits in the trailer. It is all a bit top heavy and front loaded. After land mines are raced through, a car is caught mid air by a drone and Dom swings across a precipice on a bit of old rope the stunt team give up on trying to top things. That’s 20 minutes in. There’s just too many mouths gasping for their subplot, flashback, comedy moment for the script to find room for more than three further action beats. The Edinburgh chase involves powerful magnets being switched on and off, as does the endless truck finale. That feels very rubbery and undercooked in the wake of Tenet’s similar moving heist. In a world were the metal bonnets of speeding cars are the only safe space to land you can’t expect any real danger or consequences. Wouldn’t want them! But a smidge more imagination about what “OTT” could be isn’t too much to ask. Previous entries dragged room sized safes around Rio and jumped the submarine, this movie seems happy trundling along until the baddies’ moving base just gives up and falls apart on a side street. Poor. Lowest common denominator spectacle should not be this habitual.
Christian Charles directs Jerry Seinfeld, Orny Adams and George Shapiro in this documentary following America’s biggest comedian hitting the road again to work up new material after retiring all his “gold”.
A decade ago stand-up was a massive part of my life. Between my now wife, movies and gigging I didn’t really have time for anything else. Not even sleep. I travelled the lengths of the country trying to move up off the lower rungs of the circuit ladder. Trying to work up enough material that landed consistently with audiences, suited my voice and hadn’t grown stale from over repetition. So this is a movie I very much understand. It captures the feel of standing in a liminal space, scribbled notes in hand, waiting to try a convince an audience what you have to say is worth laughing at. And although Seinfeld comes from a rarefied position (who isn’t going to be excited if someone that recognisably funny rocks up unannounced on a bill, he doesn’t struggle for stage time to nail down his new stuff, his joke ideas rarely challenge audience expectations), he is working at coal face he no longer has to and with self imposed disadvantage nobody needs to. Except in the U.K. where established comedians are actually expected to work up an hour of new material each year to sate the needs of the Edinburgh fringe critics and, if successful, the now dominant solo touring market. Watching Comedian from an insider’s perspective is mainly pleasure but also a curse. You wonder if the support act who hitches a ride in Jerry’s private jet had to pay his share of the petrol money? You wonder at what point the circuit hacks he is reconnecting with over late dinners got bored of his philosophical waxings and just wanted the cameras off so they could touch base with their most famous friend while he slummed it, stuff their faces between sets and maybe pick up an audience member? But the project stumbles onto gold when it begins to juxtapose Jerry’s humble quest to start from creative scratch with the fame hungry upstart Orny Adams. Where Jerry is convivial and wise, Adams is abrasively ambitious and brashly rehearsed. Nearly every interaction the overconfident loner has with any long established industry player is an utter car crash to watch. For the middle hour Comedian becomes schadenfreude deluxe viewing as two very different creatures briefly occupy the same territory. Of course Seinfeld and his people have complete control over this production, they control the edit and light “Jerry” the brand is shown in. But I bet everyone let out a little unguarded yelp when a person quite so apposite as Orny Adams proved willing to become the counterbalance to the narrative. It is almost a shame that during the lengthy triumphant wrap-up the walking social disaster is suddenly lost from the edit. As someone who was spending every waking hour with such people in my former life, even was such a person on some occasions, I can tell you there are far more Orny Adams than there are Jerry Seinfelds. It takes a special kinda sociopath to keep hustling for your attention. A few obvious conceits aside, this is a startlingly accurate representation of the hubris, self doubt and drive that goes into making people laugh as a vocation.
Ben Wheatley directs Joel Fry, Ellora Torchia and Reece Shearsmith in this COVID-era inspired horror movie where a scientist and a forest ranger find themselves lost in a wyrd woods relying on two hermits who might not have their best interests to heart.
Ben Wheatley is a director who pitches concepts that instantly appeal to my specific cinematic tastes even if the final products nearly always defy or subvert my expectations. This welcome return to folk horror was made in a mad dash. Written just as lockdown began last year and ready to roll in front of cameras before there was any attempt to ease restrictions. Whereas most movies hurried out in the last year have examined couples forced together like cellmates or kept apart like wartime romances, here is a genre film where two strangers are conjoined by a desire to survive and trapped quite ironically by the expansive great outdoors. A prologue makes references to a third wave of a virus, killing society beyond the tree lines. Face masks, lateral flow kits and hand sanitising crop up. But very quickly the hot topic of COVID fades into the background. Instead we find ourselves in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets the Blair Witch kinda situation, or rather more classily Hansel & Gretel as imagined by Nigel Kneale of The Stone Tapes and Quatermass fame.
The earth is mutating, releasing mind altering spores and with esoteric needs. Our hapless heroes find themselves having to encounter the isolated obsessives who run two camps… one a ceremonial artist who wants to pay tribute to a woodland spirit of a necromancer, the other a reclusive scientist trying more organised means to master the strange environment. Neither seem trustworthy, both hide secrets within the forbidden partitions of their tarps. One question left unasked, but seemingly explicit in this exploration, is whether science (the repetition of actions based on a thesis to catalogue and surmise results) is all that different from ritual? Wheatley gently ratchets up the foreboding atmosphere and then unleashes a cacophony of doom, trippy imagery, sensory shock and blackly comical ultra-violence. Clint Mansell warps and shreds every vestige of hope from us with his overwhelmingly bleak score. Tarantino better look away, as feet are mangled and intruded into with near parodical regularity.
The casting of the small ensemble is proudly diverse, skewering expectations. Fry’s imposing male “hero” is the victim of the bulk of the indignities, the least prepared for the terrors that unfurl and rarely in control of his destiny. Torchia makes a strong impression as the more capable and sensible of the harried survivors. The most subversive piece of casting is working class Squires as the posh, uncaring zealot… it is a coup in British film to see a role that would automatically go to “one of them” be played by one of us, and the results speak for themselves. You wonder just how politically loaded this particular alternative casting choice was in the light of just how corrupt yet inept the establishment have behaved during the pandemic? With the least amount of screentime her Dr Wendle remains the most enigmatic but venal caricature. The always welcome Shearsmith delivers his most disturbing straight genre performance yet… and still manages to land plenty of laughs. Fair to say In The Earth’s lack of resolution and more experimental shifts will not be for everyone, but for those of us who spilled blood for the cult of Wheatley early doors, now we are again rewarded with a fresh pagan scripture, one that demands repeat viewings to unpack and process.
Jon M. Chu directs Anthony Ramos, Melissa Barrera and Jimmy Smits in this big screen adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical about a NY Latinx community facing off gentrification, last chances and unrequited romance during a hot summer week.
Mixing together equal parts West Side Story and Do The Right Thing (and these are the most obvious influences) this aims for hope and positivity over all else. Winningly so. Chu’s brightly hued visual sensibilities are rarely lazy, if he can find an experimental cinematic conceit to open up a stage number then he marries them together with elan. So it can be a little lovey dovey and earnest. Isn’t that exactly the vibe a hit musical should aim for? My main man Detective Bobby Simone cannot sing for toffee. This only adds to the overall spell.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 