Julius Onah directs Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford and Danny Ramirez in this Marvel superhero adventure where the new Captain America finds himself caught in a conspiracy.
Flat. Struggled to hold my attention. Ford should have hulked out sooner.
4
Perfect Double Bill: Thunderbolts (2025)
Nicolas Roeg directs Theresa Russell, Gary Oldman and Christopher Lloyd in this Dennis Potter drama about Oedipal fantasies in suburban America and model trains.
Oh to be a Nicolas Roeg completist! This one appears to be leaning way too heavily into being a kitsch cult item and doesn’t even really achieve camp. It is histrionic and grating in equal measures, served up with a melted layer of cheap pretension on top. Like the art school boys directed a Tennessee Williams play in their parents’ house after reading a load of Vonnegut. Oldman is committed and Russell is always stunning to look at if miscast. As with pretty much everything from this era, deja vu kicked in horrendously. I can’t believe I rented this on VHS as a kid but maybe half caught it late night or saw the trailer a few times. That bonus personal mystery didn’t help.
4
Perfect Double Bill: Cast Away (1986)
Umberto Lenzi directs Maurizio Merli, Arthur Kennedy, and Giampiero Albertini in this bitty Italian cop thriller where a detective becomes disillusioned with the lawless streets he must police.
AKA Rome: Armed To The Teeth. A Dirty Harry dubbed exploitation tribute medley where our world weary big cop can’t turn the keys in his car ignition without another crime happening right in front of him. This is sleazy and action packed, randomly plotted. Like The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, a side character, a hunchback sociopath always on the wrong side of the law, damn near becomes the protagonist. Throwaway machismo.
6
Perfect Double Bill: The Cynic, the Rat and the Fist (1977)
I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/ and my own Substack https://substack.com/@edinburghlaughterbulletin
Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones directs Graham Chapman, Michael Palin and John Cleese in this surreal spoof of the Arthurian quest.
Didn’t hit quite the same on this revisit. The incomplete bittiness and indulgences felt more prominent this go around. Still the Swedish subtitles, the insulting French guard, Gilliam’s animations, the Rabbit of Caerbannog and the Bridge Of Death all still made me chuckle. The location shoot and the truncated epic ending add something special to this production. But maybe Monty Python’s cult appeal (Palin excepted) is wearing a little thin in this house.
8
Perfect Double Bill: Monty Python’s And Now For Something Completely Different… (1971)
Daisy von Scherler Mayer directs Parker Posey, Anthony DeSando and Liev Schreiber in this indie comedy where a feckless Manhattan hedonist begins working in a public library.
A sweet little nothing.
6
Perfect Double Bill: The Daytrippers (1996)
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John Milius directs Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen and Lea Thompson in this “what if” war movie where a group of all- American guerrilla teens protect their hometown from a Soviet occupation.
Rough and grim. This is gritty and bruised, rarely fun. The renegade kids are battle hardened and dehumanised fast. Easily the strangest outlier of The Brat Pack era. So right wing, so gruelling it is hard to absorb as a Saturday night entertainment. Feels more like a teen 1984 or Threads. Miserablist Cold War propaganda. And yet my biggest take home was the subplot dry run for Johnny Castle and Baby from Dirty Dancing having a third act promance.
5
Perfect Double Bill: Flight Of The Intruder (1991)
Michael Mann directs Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard in this period true crime drama following John Dillinger’s crime wave in the Depression era.
Still leaves me a little cold. The characters remain distant blanks, the handheld digital camerawork doesn’t suit the 1930s recreation. Fantastic cast, strong action. I expect more from Mann and this can’t help but feel like a misstep in a waxwork museum.
6
Perfect Double Bill: Miami Vice (2006)
I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/ and my own Substack https://substack.com/@edinburghlaughterbulletin
Zacharias Mavroeidis directs Yorgos Tsiantoulas, Andreas Labropoulos and Nikolaos Mihas in the gay Greek comedy where a screenwriter tries to write a romance drama with lashings of sex and nudity after a break-up.
Feels very much like the film Almodovar should have made in the nineties. The leads are likeable even when their characters aren’t. The meta stuff is pitched just about right.
7
Perfect Double Bill: Hot Milk (2025)
Kinji Fukasaku directs Bunta Sugawara, Satoshi “Tetsu” Sakai, Sonny Chiba, Kin’ya Kitaōji, Meiko Kaji, Akira Kobayashi, Takeshi Katō, Mikio Narita, Kunie Tanaka, Shingo Yamashiro, Nobuo Kaneko and Joe Shishido in the Japanese crime series following the internal gang wars between the various Hiroshima yakuza brotherhoods during their formative decades.
The sequels continue the tabloid cascade of hits, failed hits, in house politicking and grovelling betrayals. Don’t get used to any character as they are unlikely to survive longer than three scene appearances. Oily bosses vamp and whine. Brutally honourable men like Bunta Sugawara’s de facto protagonist pay the price for all the back stabbing.
The whole series needs you to be in the right mood to sync with it. It can easily blur into one big roll call of death. Some Japanese B-Movie superstars stand out. Sonny Chiba, obviously. Akira Kobayashi’s cigarette holder wielding suave wiggler also. Yet even though these should all be the stamp of each other the fourth episode left me cold. The only memorable moment over 100 minutes of it was a shotgun with a sawn-off spike bayonet rifle.
I wonder, if like The Wire, the more you rewatch these the more characters you grow to love and detest and care about?
7 / 6 / 5 / 8
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Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris direct Abigail Breslin, Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear in this road movie where a dysfunctional family travel across America so their youngest girl can take part in a beauty pageant.
This gets the sweet and sour mix of emotional manipulation of cynical comedy just about right. It is one of the few movies that has both National Lampoon’s Vacation and The Royal Tenenbaums as touchstones. Far more messy and middle class than Wes Anderson. A strong first act and an iconic finale does mean the middle section of on road disasters and off road realisations plays out a little obviously. But it gifted the world Breslin and Paul Dano! Two weirdo talents I’ll always have time for.
8
Perfect Double Bill: Dumplin’ (2018)
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 