Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary

Joseph L. Mankiewicz directs Marlon Brando, James Mason and Louis Calhern in this stodgy adaptation of Shakespeare’s epic Roman Empire tragedy. 

I had high hopes for this “classic.” The play is my favourite Shakespeare but Mankiewicz is way too beholden to abridgement. When he does linger faithfully, we stay on the same sets for so long, with no instinct to open the play out, so that it all feels constrained and unambiguous. Brando is adequate as Marc Anthony but given little screen time, Mason’s Brutus is sweaty and broken from the off, only Louis Calhern’s Caesar breathes any true vitality into the text. And I say that knowing Gielgud (surely a duck to the Bard’s waters) is in the cast. Unambitious and underwhelming.

5

Paul Thomas Anderson directs Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville in this 1950’s fashion world drama observing the whispering power struggle between a renowned designer and his latest muse. 

A lush movie – everything from the plonking score to the generous breakfasts to the measured pace (and obviously the convincing and gorgeous standout costumes) screams quality. Gripping yet bitingly funny. Kubrickian in both its sly wit, care of manufacture and glum view of humanity. Day-Lewis’ “last” performance may just be his finest. Reynolds Woodcock is a refined beast, timid yet definite in his words and movements and look, so that when his voice raises, when he curses, the invective is truly felt. The spoilt ogre appears from behind the beautiful masquerade, the shock is devastating and knowingly amusing, each and every time. His is among the most quotable of characters, a new cinematic icon. And yet DDL doesn’t walk away with the movie. Our protagonist is newcomer Krieps. She more than holds her own, the ingenue next to the towerhouse. Seducing him, and us, by refusing to be merely another disposable, discardable mannequin for him to pin his designs and fleeting affections on. You see her moving against the tide of the long established Woodcock cycle, overcoming the whirling pull through strength and guile. Just as Day-Lewis’ impeccable tyrant never loses his essential mystery to us, Krieps never succumbs into a stock femme fatale. Yes, she proves manipulative, deadly even, but we still root for her to carve out a new place in this long finished and varnished set. She utterly won me over, it is the first time I remember seeing an actor blush on screen. Her character, Alma’s, gambit of realising the outwardly strong man needs to be weakened, mothered, babied is risky but successful. A pessimistic summary of all relationships perhaps, you have to kill a bit off of the other person to make room for yourself to become a part of them? Is Phantom Thread a gothic romance? A satire on creativity? Or a decadent celebration of monogamy? Or even a ghost story… one appears in a fever dream, for sure. And doors open of their own accord, something undefined often lingers in the background. Like the finest movies, these layered secrets and the wilfully enigmatic finale, open it up for repeated viewings. PTA seems at his strongest when he gives up on his Altman inspired shaggy meanders and narrows in on one core pair of lovers… see also Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood.

10

My Top 10 Daniel Day-Lewis Movies

1. The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

2. Phantom Thread (2017)

3. In the Name of the Father (1993)

4. The Age of Innocence (1993)

5. There Will Be Blood (2007)

6. My Left Foot (1989)

7. A Room With a View (1985)

8. Gangs of New York (2002)

9. The Crucible (1996)

10. Lincoln (2012)

 

 

 

Wes Ball directs Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario and Will Poulter in the YA sci-fi mystery about a tribe of kids dumped in the middle of a killer maze.

Cube for twinks. The bland chosen one survives and completes in a few days, what no else could manage after years of trying. The end? No… a cliffhanger. We have two sequels waiting in the wings. The arena is well designed, and the maze sequences have a brittle stalk and dash energy to them.

5

Walter Hill directs Ryan O’Neal, Bruce Dern and Isabelle Adjani in this crime thriller about a getaway driver trying to stay ahead of the maverick cop who sets up a heist to catch him. 

Perennially underrated action auteur Walter Hill doing urban car chases. Scruffy Bruce Dern as a cocksure, brinkmanship playing, major crimes dick. Isabelle Adjani in loose suits and massive brimmed hats. It should be perfection. It isn’t. The middle hour stalls with nowhere near enough plot in the tank. The dialogue and the characters just loop over the same scenes in different locations and costumes. Considering a lot of it is already obviously retrofitted spare parts, recycled from Walter Hill’s own screenplay adaptation of The Getaway, this feels especially creatively cheap. As a mood piece The Driver just about slips through the dragnet, and as a showcase vehicle for Dern it rocks. But he ain’t the protagonist. A vacant Ryan O’Neal is.

6

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