Joseph Kosinski directs Brad Pitt, Damson Idris and Javier Bardem in this sports blockbuster where a Formula One driver comes out of retirement to mentor and team up with a younger driver.
Top Gun: Maverick meets Days Of Thunder. But also just Brad Pitt absolutely louching around in the perfect vehicle for him. This is the closest the A-List handsome goof gets to both serious drama and selling out. It is a true paradox, I know. I do find Kosinski’s visual style to be too clean. He dials back all details and the commercial minimalism often feels distracting. He loves exposition almost as much he adores a white, spotless interior. Give me a director like Tony Scott or Simon West who truly caused a visual ruckus within the Bruckheimer formula. That production pattern means F1 will be endlessly rewatchable (the summer pop soundtrack stoking our emotions, the roar of kinetic action, the light fingered humorous character work). You can even overlook how iffy some the third rung acting is. It puts you in the races. It makes you care about F1 for three hours. I didn’t before and don’t after. It has a scene where Kerry Condon walks out on Brad Pitt because he takes her somewhere where the pints are flat and lifeless. Imagine spending $200 million dollars on a movie and not keeping a head on a beer for continuity?
Danny Steinmann directs Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd and Shavar Ross in this reboot where a Jason spree survivor joins a woodland getaway for disturbed kids… only for the mass slaughter to start up AGAIN.
Grubby. A former porn director asks the question what is we tripled the normal amount of kills? The result = no tension. 90% of the characters we are introduced to last, at best, three scenes. They should have made stand out Reggie the Reckless the Ripley of this franchise.
4
Perfect Double Bill: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
Jeremiah S. Chechik directs Johnny Depp, Mary Stuart Masterson and Aidan Quinn in this romantic comedy where a mentally ill young woman finds her love in an eccentric man who models himself after Buster Keaton.
Homesy and messy. Undoubtedly an afterbirth of Edward Scissorhands’ unrepeatable success, this has to be one of the potentially riskiest bad taste gambles of modern mainstream Hollywood. Everyone involved just about makes it work. The end result is cute rather than near sighted exploitation. Though it does tread a fine line. Melodrama this saccharine ain’t my spoon of sugar.
Roger Donaldson directs Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman and Sean Young in this conspiracy thriller where a naval officer investigates a murder he knows he is being framed for.
Slick but empty. The first half hour, where this is an unabashed erotic thriller set around an affair in the corridors of power, is far meatier than the last hour of triple crosses and chases. The package knows it has the goods in Costner, Hackman and Young but doesn’t give any of them enough to do. An early doors limousine sex scene is the highlight. Has heat.
Deran Sarafian directs Mario Van Peebles, Christopher Lambert and Denis Leary in this action thriller where three wrong-uns race around Mexico to seize a boat (whose cargo is a drug lord’s fortune).
Grubby remake of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. Yes, really. Sleazy banter. Sleazy gunplay. Sleazy cameos from hip hop stars. Sleazy sweaty titty shots. Everything a 14 year old boy wants from a DTV rental. Leary delivers his best villain, there’s just enough action to fill a credible trailer without harpooning the low budget. Beer and pizza night trash that held up beyond deep dive Nineties nostalgia. If you can track a copy down then treat yourself.
François Truffaut directs Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Robinson and Sylvia Marriott in this true period drama of a young French woman who runs away across the globe to pursue a soldier who spurned her.
Sad and stilted oblivion. We get another beautiful / unhinged lead performance from Adjani. Wow! There is no one else like her. To see someone so china doll pretty and fragile destroy themselves through obsession became the actress’ trademark. She makes Huppert seem warm. This isn’t quite Possession, it even feels a little too much like a limited mini series at times in terms of production values. Told with an icy factual bluntness.
Michael Ritchie directs Eddie Murphy, Charles Dance and Charlotte Lewis in this oriental flavoured action comedy where a private detective specializing in missing children is charged with the task of finding a mystical kid whom dark forces want to eliminate.
Maybe a little too gentle and laid back. There are scenes where Eddie has a cheeky riff but we aren’t seeing his trademark motormouth awesomeness that often . There is action but it isn’t very memorable. There are special FX but they don’t dominate. With everything entertaining so dialled back it is hard to tell what the movie ultimately wants to be. Fills a Sunday afternoon nicely but the bar was very high at this point in Murphy’s career ascendancy.
Danny Boyle and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo direct Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Imogen Poots, Robert Carlyle, Rose Byrne, Alfie Williams, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes in this apocalyptic survival horror series where the Rage virus spreads through the population of the UK speedily and the infected chase you to death relentlessly.
Filmed on DV cameras, on location in a central London dawn, before commuters and tourists filled it, the opening act of 28 Days Later has lost none of that ominous power. All the threads are already here. The collapse of society. Families who drag you back but keep you human. Scrabbling for connection in a deserted world full of damaged survivors. Relentless fear. Cillian’s star making lead performance is quietly incredible. Gleeson and Christopher Ecclestone are two sides of the same coin in supporting performances of a ‘no camp’ strength you rarely see in horror. The set pieces are judderingly brutal. You forget quite how grindingly intense this all is. And John Murphy’s score, especially the now ubiquitous “In the House – In a Heartbeat” is a hectoring marvel. I love it. I’m so glad they have found no cure for this franchise.
Let’s try to repopulate London. 28 Weeks Later is every bit the cash-in. The unloved stepchild. A replay. Fanfic from the makers of Intacto. The lack of direct involvement from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland is felt. Still Fresnadillo marries Day Of The Dead to this tale of survivor guilt and family bonds. The US military cause more problems than they solve. Whodathunkit? There are three memorable set pieces; the farmhouse opener, a gleeful extended shot of helicopter rotor blade carrion carnage and a H.G. Wells inspired mist of chemical weapons. Not the stamp of Boyle’s entries but a neat enough meat and potatoes stopgap.
28 Years Later though is pretty special. Mainland Britain has become a regreened wasteland. The infected have mutated into various terrifying sub species. A boy leaves the safety and lies of his compound to go on a quest. He meets the outside world and at least two survivors tinged with insanity. Fiennes is glorious here as the enigmatic doctor defined by fire and skulls. It will ultimately be a movie remembered for its dangling prosthetic zombie cocks and THAT delirious cliffhanger ending. But I found it so incredibly soulful for a horror, while unpretentious for an elevated horror. After the first act the terror sequences ease off, and the overwhelming editing montages normalise (and you get used to Jodie Comer doing another of her extreme accents) but none of this holds the full fat experience back. On first watch I loved it!
Boyle has always had horror in his heart. Shallow Grave, crawling dead babies, crispy skinned sunshine addicts. It almost is a shame when he gives up on his strengths and makes something staid and workmanlike like Yesterday or Steve Jobs. What he is fantastic at is taking our humdrum world and turning it into an expressionistic shared experience. Modern pop music thrums us along while we taste the fantasy in every character’s mind. Go through ‘it’ with them. And it isn’t just the chases that makes our pulse beat as fast the protagonists. Sure, we share their dry throat and fear keenly. Boyle pummels us with allegorical clouds of crows, fire sparks dancing in the sky, Young Fathers smothering us in the soundscape. He envelops us in heightened style, making his best movies a rare communal dream. Or, here, in this series, a never ending nightmare. Time Didn’t Heal Anything.
John Maclean directs Kōki, Jack Lowden and Tim Roth in this period thriller where samurai’s daughter finds herself being pursued across the Scottish Highlands by a gang of murderous thieves.
Very Alex Cox. A few neat moments but often interminable. The kinda movie you want to love for what it is but feels like a lifeless exercise for swathes. Even Tim Roth is subdued. Lush sparse production design and Robbie Ryan lensing.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 