The crew go continental! Breezy, spritzy and jaunty. Also laidback to the point of obsolescence. This truly is a hang out movie. It actively avoids being anything else. The third act gambit involving the famous person who Tess looks like is a meta treat. Vincent Cassel’s rival cat burglar is an arrogant bonus. It does feel like we don’t really get enough from first movie favourites like Elliot Gould, Bernie Mac or Casey Affleck. David Holmes’s funk jazz score keeps things bopping along even when nothing much is happening. Soderbergh evokes various sixties Euro new waves in his fractured glossy sheen. Cappuccino foam – there’s an art to it, it’s nice but it ain’t meant to last forever.
Martin Bell directs Erin Blackwell, Dewayne Pomeroy and “Little Justin” Reed Early in this intimate documentary following the lives of the kids who live and hustle on the streets of Seattle.
Sad, so sad, but the access is incredible.
8
Top Secret! (1984)
Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker direct Val Kilmer, Lucy Gutteridge and Peter Cushing in this spoof of the spy film.
Not as non-stop scattergun as you might have anticipated but there’s an inspired visual gag so perfect every ten minutes or so that is hard to resist. The cow had Natalie in fits of giggles and that makes me very happy
7
Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
Jim Jarmusch directs John Lurie, Richard Edson and Eszter Balint in this road movie where a New York hipster begrudgingly lets his Eastern European cousin stay with him and then travels across states to see her.
His first proper feature length movie is one of Jarmusch’s best. Lo-fi absurdism where there is heart and meaning hidden between the blanks. Everyone is giving these slow, spaced out performances but it means you cling on to everything unsaid in the interactions. The deadpan hollowness carries weight. There’s also something quite Bukowski-esque in the shitty apartments and desolate streets. Poetry in the bleakness.
9
The Brother From Another Planet (1984)
John Sayles directs Joe Morton, Rosanna Carter and Ray Ramirez in this socially conscious sci-fi where a mute alien with the appearance of a black human settles into a new life in Harlem.
Very unassuming, shoestring budget. There is just enough sci-fi action to fill a trailer and the rest is social commentary. Often other characters perform didactic monologues while Joe Morton’s alien humanoid passively listens. Fisher Steven’s subway card sharp and an unlikely seduction are the highlights. This is more a mood than a fulfilling narrative.
6
Trancers (1984)
Charles Band directs Tim Thomerson, Helen Hunt and Michael Stefani in this sci-fi adventure where a future cop travels back in time and takes over the body of his Eighties ancestor to catch a killer.
Scrappy. Pre-dates Quantum Leap by 5 years. And is a funky bargain basement rip-off of Blade Runner until we get time travelling. It is totally cartoon-ish and smarter than it needs to be. The kinda movie that could survive the stock cull of a video rental place every year. It has a time freezing gadget gimmick, barely legal Helen Hunt as a love interest punk, a shlubby but likeable anti-hero. Exactly the calibre of schlock title Bret Easton Ellis would name check in The Shards 2.
Eli Craig directs Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk and Katrina Bowden in this slasher spoof where two sweet redneck pals are mistaken for crazed killers by a bunch of college students…
…Who then keep having ridiculously gory accidental deaths trying to “survive” the backwoods encounter. It is a dumbsmart concept, cartoonishly executed. A lotta lotta heart helps. Tudyk and Laine have a sweet buddy dynamic and the romantic subplot just about works. A stupid bloody blast.
David Cronenberg directs Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce in this erotic thriller where a widowed tech millionaire has created an app where he can watch in detail his wife’s corpse decompose within her tomb.
There is a spectacular sex scene. And before that a shocking one. This is on the whole Cronenberg’s best since A History Of Violence. The through line satire about a life lived on apps has a real “I told you so” energy to it. Let down only, but almost fatally, by an interminable final half hour. Every mystery has been resolved. We understand the themes of moving on from grief and sexual desire in sickness as much as health. So why drag it out with the same old impenetrable techno conspiracy that Cronenberg has been dangling like an obtuse prankster in front of us since the Eighties?
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.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 