Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary

Frank Henenlotter directs James Lorinz, Patty Mullen and Louise Lasser in this trashy yet self aware horror comedy about a garage mad scientist who tries to reanimate his dead fiancée using street walkers’ body parts. 

Tons of sleazy, inspired japes this – not quite as icky and as manic as Henenlotter’s Basket Case, this still sits comfortably within movies like that and ReAnimator’s entertainingly gory transgressive parameters. Strong campy performances from Lorinz as the self lobotomising boy next door and Mullen as the reassembled prostitute monster supply the laughs. There’s a level of commitment here that betrays its low budget and knowingly exploitative concept. Frankenhooker was a video rental cover that always caught my eye as a kid and it has exceeded years of my own fermenting imagined contents now I have finally found access to it.

7

 

Aki Kaurismäki directs Sherwan Haji, Sakari Kuosmanen and Kati Outinen in this comedy drama about a Syrian refugee seeking asylum in Finland. 

A well made and well intentioned bone dry comedy using the absurdities of the asylum seeker’s experience to expose the shifts in Finland’s national identity. The spinal joke is “Why would anyone choose to live in Finland?” The answer: Civil war and happenstance. It is a narrative littered with beautiful losers and moments of static energy. But it all is a bit grim and lacks any real laughs or insights to make it worthy of the subject matter it exploits. There are some nice interludes with rockabilly buskers and a cute dog to keep you going.

5

Joe Lynch directs Salma Hayek, Akie Kotabe and Jennifer Blanc in this independent actioner as a middle-aged sex slave is laid under siege in her apartment full of weapons. 

Everly clearly aspires to be Kill Bill but on Reservoir Dogs’ budget. The one apartment setting evokes Repulsion, the opening gambit of sexual assault as a plot device really should belong to a far less glossy product and Hayek’s performance is strong despite a restrictive script. This kinda experience rises and falls on how it sustains its mania. We receive waves of gun toting hookers, deadly yakuza, sadistic supervillians and easily distracted attack dogs. And that should be enough to overwhelm us over 90 minutes. Sadly pretty much every episodes boils down to a visually stimulating nasty monologuing for just a little too long… while Hayek reaches desperately… for a weapon… if they just shut up and killed her it’d be a shorter film but a far more inspired experience.

4

 

Ray Austin directs Ann Michelle, Patricia Hines and Vicki Michelle in this sexploitation film about a psychic model who makes a powerplay in a coven of witches. 

Surprisingly sweet and wholesome for a quickie made for the dirty mack brigade… No doubt due to the BBC sitcom creatives anonymously slumming it on the other side of the camera. Colorfully shot and quirkily edited, giving loads of room for the girl actors to overpower their archetypical parts. Approach with an open mind and you might just be seduced too.

6

Stephen Sommers directs Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale and Richard Roxburgh in this sloppy wannabe blockbuster using the iconography of the Universal Horror series. 

Fucking awful. The potent imagery of the 1930s classics, Jackman’s normally radiant charisma and a lot of money is drowned out by woefully amateurish CGI and unpleasant characters moaning endlessly during the choppy action. I cannot believe I gave this a second chance. Frankenstien’s Abortion would have been a more apt title.

2

 

Andrew V. McLaglen directs Roger Moore, Anthony Perkins and Michael Parks in this teatime thriller where an eccentric lord leads a diving team against a group of villains holding oil rigs to ransom. 

A bargain bin airport novel given the big screen treatment, this trundles along pleasantly, albeit with very little action. The bulk of the movie consists of talking and sneaking. But what a cast of absolute treats to go talking and sneaking around with for two distractingly old school hours. Moore excels as an anti-Bond; swigging whisky, hating women, doing cross stitch to help him think and leaving the castle estate to his pack of kittens should the rescue mission go tits up. In Moore we trust, the kittens will have to wait to sell off his ancestral pile. In throwaway boy’s own nonsense like this my Bond lives forever.

7

Robert Altman directs Keith Carradine, Karen Black and Ned Beatty in this sprawling ensemble following a week of country music, affairs and electioneering. 

The danger with writing this blog is revealing to my half dozen readers that occasionally there’s a bonafide classic that just does nothing for me. The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, E.T. and this. Other people’s favourites and universally lauded critical darlings that genuinely baffle me with their inertness. I usually enjoy a mosaic narrative (Dazed and Confused, Do the Right Thing and Pulp Fiction are among my favourite films) but this proves dawdling and purposeless. It squanders a good cast and some decent original songs on grating, pointless, obvious sequences that bored the skin off me.

3

Richard Fleischer directs  Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grace Jones and Sarah Douglas in this violent fantasy romp which sees Conan escort a nubile princess to reclaim a jewel. 

Less emphasis on the epic and more on daft kinetics, this is the most watchable of the Conan series. So it’s silly, and Olivia D’Abo is far far too young to be the Tits & Ass for the lads… it powers along through ornate sets and consistent character design pleasingly. And even with almost endless shots of Arnold’s prime warrior slaying physique, Fleischer still somehow finds room for both Eighties faves Sarah Douglas and Grace Jones to vamp it up proper rotten.

6

RZA directs himself, Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu in this wired yet reverent pastiche of retro kung-fu flicks.  

Visually opulent and well cast, this is an amped up, playground run through of all that is great about mad old martial arts flicks. It is a little too jam packed with characters and incidents to ever truly coalesce into a flowing journey. RZA’s vanity casting of himself in the lead role leaves a gargantuan charisma deficit and the jarring use of hip hop language and misogyny tarnish a fair few sequences. Still Russell Crowe and Byron Mann are particularly good value.

5

John Madden directs Jessica Chastain, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Michael Stuhlbarg in this political drama about a hard nosed lobbyist who crosses over to the side of gun control. 

This whole lengthy walker / talker orbits around a supposed powerhouse performance by Chastain. Yet she remains an enigma throughout, blurry at her ill defined edges, inhuman… and not in a dastardly way. As an insight into the world of cut throat influence groups it share more with the pulpy Grisham novels Sloane reads in her downtime than say the high watermark passionate exploration of a The Social Network or a Moneyball. That’s the inimitable power Aaron Sorkin brings to his own potentially dull corporate dramas, a power no-one has ever got close to matching, certainly not here. You feel your own knowledge of this lobbying subculture is being affirmed, rather than expanded. Unforgivably though, the twists are foreseeable, especially the final piece of brinkmanship involving a support member who is too good to be cast aside from the main thrust quite so early. Bragging time, I rarely get caught pants down by a narrative switcheroo these days, I’m as cynical and searching as the avatars here are supposed to be. But a movie like this really should try much much harder to at least obfuscate its surprise coup de grace to battle hardened eyes. Not awful, merely a slick fail.

4