Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary

Steven Spielberg directs Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks and Bob Odenkirk in this political thriller about the Washington Post’s 1971 tribulations in publishing some top secret White House documents, and their female owner facing opposing pressure from her editorial staff, investors and Nixon himself. 

Look who’s back, Spielberg’s back! He’s been treading water with decent if unfussy cinema ever since War of the Worlds back in 2005, but now the wunderkind has recaptured his masterpiece mojo. This is the sorta mechanically elegant, playfully engaging drama he made his name on. While it lacks sharks and close encounters it takes us to another world (the lost analogue printing press rooms and pay phone based, lead chasing research that feels foreign in this age of digital media and “press release” cut and pasting) and relates the stakes to us with a sense of nimble magic. The verbal battles between a persuasive Hanks and an embattled Streep are edited with verve. As the power between editor and owner ebbs and peaks, the shots lose their natural flow and the cuts become increasingly obvious, as fractious as the relationship is under this new strain. The whole Spielberg team is back on form here really with the grainy yet rich cinematography by Janusz Kamiński catching those beams of blinding light emanating from a illicit photocopying session, the brutal maze of highway on and off ramps that frame Odenkirk’s story hound as he goes off grid along a series of payphones. John Williams’ triumphantly jaunty score guides our emotions and energies, the Amblin crew is nothing if not expertly manipulative. It is his first standout soundtrack in years. And stock player Tom Hanks brings his usual star powered humble charm. There’s something so welcoming about his classy Americana and he adds an adult mischievousness – a thrill of the chase- to the barking editor role that showier thesps would no doubt overlook… he now even evokes John Wayne occasionally in his chunky, square saunter and confidence. Who expected that from the kid from Dragnet? I’m usually not a massive fan of Streep but here she shines as the flustered grand dame stepping up to the plate in the male dominated world of executive decisions. She essays an intelligent yet thoughtfully cautious woman very well. The moment when she breaks free from the bullying men, leaning heavily on her, visually and figuratively, is a triumphant use of both directorial framing and acting. She, like Indiana Jones, Oskar Schindler and most Spielberg protagonists is the positive face of capitalism: striving hard against the grip of corruption and oppression but with a healthy profit margin still in sight. Sure, there are schmaltzy moments overemphasising Katharine Graham’s feminist import to the times and contrasting just what a stuffy sausage party seventies’ business and politics were. But if you haven’t come for schmaltz and clean, obvious optical storytelling then you shouldn’t have bought a ticket for a Spielberg film. He’s never been afraid to ram a point home with his camera. At the very least the points he makes so effusively and entertainingly here, points about the freedom of the press and how hard our women have to work to garner equal respect in the workplace, are currently more than worth emphasising and re-emphasising.

9

Nicolai Fuglsig directs Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon and Michael Peña in this modern war movie reimagining the first boots on the grounds in Afghanistan after 9/11 – their mistrust of the local allied warlords and their use of horses to travel the inhospitable terrain. 

Dusty patriotism and familiar action. Watchable but forgettable, more a tribute than an entertainment. Lacks the chicken sweat, chemical burn intensity of 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi and the smirking humanity that so elevated the long forgotten Three Kings. Michael Shannon spends an inordinate amount of the narrative laying down. I wonder if that was in his contract.

5

Jules Dassin directs Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn and Charles Bickford in this prison movie, considered the most violent film produced on its release.

Although tame and cliched by modern standards this made a good double bill with Scum. Lancaster is muscular and convincing, Cronyn excels against type as a softly spoken sadist guard. The prison sets and sequences of violence have an expressionist oppressiveness to them. The orchestration of the prisoners to distract the guards and compel a stool pigeon into a mechanical crusher with blow torches plays out like a wordless ballet. And the final big break is all action, all fatalist grit. A good solid genre progenitor.

7

David Jones directs Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench in this lovely little dramatisation of the correspondence between a gregarious New York writer and the prim London bookshop worker she employs for her hardback needs. 

A delicate wonder of a movie, charting the subtle social changes of the 20th century with pleasing nostalgia and filled with an overwhelming love of books, performance, and words, spoken and unspoken. Bancroft is superb as the unguarded and generous Helene Hanff, her recitation of the real life request letters to the staid bookstore employees being likeable, goading and conspiratorially seductive. This is a real glass of full fat milk and plate of dark chocolate digestives of an experience – sweet and warming, comfort and pleasure. Deja vu, washed over me. I know I read the book it is based on in my twenties but this felt visually too familiar. I must have watched it as a child, and forgotten I had done so. The bookshop on Charing Cross Road is now a McDonalds. One I used to walk past on a daily basis.

9

 

 

Wes Craven directs Brandon Adams, Everett McGill and Wendy Robie in this horror comedy about slum landlords who kidnap the local kids and trap the rejects in the basement. 

A dense and dark romp, almost spoofing the like of The Goonies or It (kids versus baddies), while flirting with an on-point social message. The capitalists who run down black areas with liquor stores and exorbitant rents are the monsters, the child abusers who the police can overlook as a nice, white couple are the real criminals. Now it does brush against some pretty controversial subject matter, and I’m not entirely sure merely raising big issues is the same as exploring them, Wes. But what all this real world meat adds to the often cartoonish chase flick, is a miasma of compelling risk to the proceedings. Horrific honky couple chase a plucky, streetsmart kid around their booby trapped house… in a standard Hollywood flick I reckon the kid is going to make it. But once you bung in all the incest, the cannibalism, the racism, the abused teen girl in the attic, the attack dog, the brutalised troglodytes in the basement, the fact our hero’s own home isn’t any less threatening an environment… suddenly you aren’t so sure the resourceful Fool is going to be able to keep dodging the shotgun wielding, hollering killer in a gimp suit long enough to reach any kinda “happy” ending. Tonally, it is a very silly film – full of salty dialogue and game, pantomime villainy from Twin Peaks’ McGill and Robie. Craven is adept at keeping the cat and mouse pursuits moving at a breakneck pace without becoming too repetitive and he adds a nice subtext of fairytale myth on top of all his other themes. The gold coins, the tarot card prologue, the princess in the turret to be rescued, the misunderstood beasts under the stairs… Why, it could all be a Disney film!? 😉

9

 

My Top 10 Wes Craven Movies

1. Scream (1996)

2.  A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

3. The People Under The Stairs (1991)

4. Scream 2 (1997)

5. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)

6. The Last House on the Left (1972)

7. The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

8. The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

9. Scream 4 (2011)

10. Red Eye (2005)

Jaume Collet-Serra directs Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga and Jonathan Banks in this high concept thriller where a former detective must find a mystery passenger on his train home under the edict of a shadowy conspiracy.

The 39 Stops. Whenever Neeson has to employ his ageing, shovel-like hand to wallop a goon or grab hold of a whirring piece of undercarriage, this Friday night flick is perfectly satisfactory. Whenever it tries to be a glossy Hitchcock it is bafflingly awkward, and bafflingly awkward takes up two thirds of the run time. Lacking the lunatic logic of Non-Stop, where things escalated exquisitely but always with an in the moment cause and effect, this is genuinely difficult to make any heads or tails of. I’m sure if you sat down with a piece of paper you could join up all the twists, justify all the silly… but, put bluntly, there has to be a million simpler, containable, less attention bringing ways to find and kill a secret witness.

4

Na Hong-jin directs Kwak Do-won, Hwang Jung-min and Chun Woo-hee in this Korean chiller about a uniform cop who begins to suspect his town is being possessed by something malevolent. 

I’m quite a fan of Korean cinema but nearly all of what we receive shares similar, repeated flaws; tonal inconsistency, animal cruelty, casual racism and punishing length. The Wailing, a movie with plenty going for it, seems weighed down by these hallmarks more than most. It is an Exorcist evoking chiller that has sequences that feel more in keeping with Shaun of the Dead. The lead a bumbling, loving father seems based on Homer Simpson rather than Father Merrin, likeable and sympathetic but not exactly subtle. We all know comedy and horror can make happy bedfellows, a punchline and a jump scare share the same DNA, but here we zig-zag disconcertingly from farce to full on fear in a blink of an eye. There is an intense scene of animal sacrifice, one that with its cross cutting and prolonged duration evokes Apocalypse Now’s finale. I’m not sure if the creatures in it were actually slaughtered but considering what happens to dogs, octopuses and the like in other Korean movies I doubt anyone batted an eyelid on set. This always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The movie plays with the racist idea that the immigrant Japanese man is responsible for the demonic epidemic spreading throughout the locality, merely as he is the sole foreigner. In a western movie you’d take this as a prejudice being set up to be lampooned but the movie plays this hand with a poker face. Na Hong-jin’s blistering The Yellow Sea had a similar inscrutable casual racism to it. Culturally, it seems only western countries are precious about openly distrusting the other, but the strong reviews of this movie from our countries rarely focus on it… and you suspect the same writers would throw an old Hollywood movie with similar sentiments under the bus. Why is what is now unacceptable when from a different era, overlooked when from another country? And then there’s that length. There’s plenty of bravura sequences – some of the shocks beggar narrative belief but are uniquely disturbing. But then there’s that farcical set-up that could easily be 30 minutes shorter. By the time you get to the suitably drawn out finale, wherein double bluffs are exposed and an agonising choice must be made, you like the protagonist are left exhausted, exasperated, confused and inert. That’s the director’s intention, but it is a frustratingly slow conclusion when you already have had your patience thoroughly tested. If you can break it up over a couple of days, The Wailing is a decent watch… but there’s just too much of everything for one satisfying sitting.

6

Dan Bush directs Francesca Eastwood, Taryn Manning and James Franco in this horror where bank robbers unleash malevolent supernatural forces from a haunted safe.

You cannot set ghosts on fire. Stop chucking petrol bombs at them. Aside from that important safety announcement… the characters are detestable, the twists obvious, the poltergeist element strangely ignored for huge swathes of the second half. Even the “shock” finale, suggesting the money itself is haunted rather than the basement, has no fun with what could be quite a fruitful revelation. Taryn Manning puts in the sole capable performance even if she is essentially only transplanting her Orange Is The New Black persona to a rather poor genre mash-up.

3

Mike Flanagan directs Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood and Henry Thomas in this horror about a woman left handcuffed to her bed with no chance of escape. 

The plus points; Carla Gugino carries on being one of the most overlooked, overqualified genre actresses around and there are truly unsettling moments of gore and delirium. The downside; Flanagan indulges his source material’s weakness to deadening effect. King never knows how to end his thrill rides and Gerald’s Game has one of the worst dismounts ever, here faithfully recreated. Also the author’s obsession with exploring incest abuse in gloopy suspensers leaves an awful taste in the mouth. This time overpoweringly so.

4

 

Penny Marshall directs Drew Barrymore, Steve Zahn and Brittany Murphy in this bittersweet true story of a teen mother facing rejection and disappointment throughout the sixties. 

A quite harsh drama sugarcoated with the comedy acting of overly-likeable performers. It makes for an imbalanced experience. You prefer it when the interactions are sitcommy and colourful, yet the film mines for weird unsettling energies that more ‘serious’ fare often miss when they goes this dark. When Zahn faces up to the fall out of his drug addiction or Barrymore is sidelined at her own wedding or the child is put in peril, it incites an uncomfortably emotive response from the viewer. It isn’t meant to be this hard… life sure, but not a Drew Barrymore movie. The end product is certainly uneven and often a little unsatisfying but has enough strong moments to pad out the quality. Brittany Murphy’s maid of honour speech, Zahn’s holding onto the baby tooth and a sing song car ride with Dad. Feelgood delights in a surprisingly, unsympathetic melodrama.

6