Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary

Camille Delamarre directs Ed Skrein, Ray Stevenson and Loan Chabanol in this far far too soon reboot of the Jason Statham franchise.

The Europa Corp blend of world weary yet unstoppable lead, cool cars, hot chicks, continental setting and inventive action noticeably fails here. Skrein looks more like Nicholas Hoult after a rough stag party than a force to be reckoned with, even if his Stath voice convinces. The fitted as standard ogling-a-saucy-bird-while-some-exposition-is-spurted-out factor is somewhat diminished by the fact we know they are, to the very last one, all sex slaves since children from the off. This puts a really dampener on all the poolside panties gyrating and Bridgette Nielsen in Beverly Hill Cop 2 lite robberies. And the action feels weakly conceived and half heartedly executed, rationed out too… I can’t remember anything pulse raising occurring in the first half. We are a long fucking way away from Stath’s Frank Martin oiling up for a rumble in a garage slick followed by a car chase followed by another fight glory days when it eventually does get a bit aggro. All in all it doesn’t even match the cheap and cheesy TV spin off, let alone the fun but disposable originals. But there is a incandescently bright flame in all this murky disappointment; Ray Stevenson, camping it up something horrid and having them time of his life, as The Transporter’s dad. I cottoned on to the fact they were going for a Sean Connery in Last Crusade dynamic a few minutes before he started calling Skrein “Junior!” every other scene. Stevenson may never have broke out but he is miles better than this, as evidenced in every single scene he brightens up. Makes you wonder how much fun it would have been if our Jase returned and Ray’s part was redacted to paternal older brother… Or why not just reboot it with his loveable, manly, couldn’t give a flying fuck presence in the lead instead? A palpable wasted opportunity.

4

Quentin Tarantino directs Harvey Kietel, Steve Buscemi and Michael Masden in this independent heist goes wrong thriller.

As calling cards go this is a bold declaration of intent and showcase of talent. The script pops with great exchanges. Its overwhelming distinctive-for-1992 quality netted quite the cast of then unappreciated talents and eye catching faces. There’s never been quite such a well-acted, low-budget genre film. Tarantino’s direction lurks and lingers on these good performances, let’s them shine. And his tricksy structure allows him to slice off as much cliché  as possible so there is rarely a dull moment unless he is purposefully luxuriating in the every day (killing time at breakfast, the washing of hands, stalking Mr Blonde out to his car and back). These mundane pauses, pregnant with threat, before the debates, fights and violence escalate show an author in complete control of pace, character and audience, rather than a one trick pony who merely knows the right movies to sample and the best way to make cool characters sound even cooler. Now having said all that, and it should be obvious I am a Tarantino fanboy, this is not a perfect experience. The various Misters and Nice Guy might be well defined in dynamic but they all do speak in that same voice, with the same concerns and same obscure cultural touchstones. It wouldn’t be until Inglorious Basterds that QT would be comfortable creating dialogue for characters who didn’t spraff away in his unmistakable Tarantino rhythm and argot. And as iconic a piece as it has become, Dogs is not quite Goodfellas or not nearly Pulp Fiction. There no real depth to it, it is a little too tightly wound to exist beyond what is seen and heard. As a writer/director doing loop de loops and nose dives for the spectators, it feels like a practice run and therefore doesn’t quite marvel and charm and thoroughly impress as those outright classics. In fact, by credits roll I felt the more throwaway, derivative types of Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead or 2000’s Ocean’s Eleven now prove more satisfying repeat view capers to these modern eyes. Once you know the secrets and solved the tricks there is very little to it but some funny, hip back and forths – Reservoir Dogs works best nowadays as a very sick comedy… a morgue set farce. But the imperfect debut’s importance cannot be understated; without this no Tarantino, no none of those other rip off films that followed in its wake either. Like Mean Streets, it may have seen better days but it’s scrappy energy and smart experimentation kicked the hatch open so some absolute classics could then escape. Reservoir Dogs dug tunnels like Charlie Bronson.

8

Nora Ephron directs Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks and Greg Kinnear in this product placement heavy merging of The Shop Around the Corner and Sleepless in Seattle.

A handsome enough attempt the rekindle the fire that roared, crackled and warmed in Sleepless in Seattle. The problem here is Ryan seems at best on autopilot and at worst visibly overacting to get herself through the myriad of superfluous scenes with almost endlessly pointless interactions with superfluous characters. She was clearly tired of being America’s Sweetheart but the paychecks kept rolling in. Add to that a rather sour but predominant  “corporate is best, therefore the time of the quality family business is over” message that matches the thinking behind the production but not the politics of the intended audience. Luckily Hanks brings his incomparable A Game which not just cements over the cracks buts adds a lovely colour and an expensive gold leaf frieze. Really though this feels like a stew of leftovers chucked in with no consideration as to whether they compliment each other at all.

5

David Michôd directs Ben Mendelsohn, Jacki Weaver and James Frecheville in the Aussie crime family drama.

Stunning performances and measured direction elevate this above it slightly “been there, done that” plot. Weaver, Joel Edgerton and Guy Pearce all do interesting stuff but it’s Mendelsohn’s stand out dead eyed shark amongst the pack of wolves that wins. If it wasn’t for all the interesting stuff happening in camera then the final half hour’s languid unraveling, when we already know pretty much exactly were all the tragedy is heading, would be a slog.

7

Stanley Kubrick directs Peter Sellers, George C Scott and Sterling Hayden in this Cold War comedy.

The second Kubrick I’ve watched this year that has gone down just a slight notch in my estimation. The slow methodical pace gets a little in the way of the satire, there’s definitely room for a few more gags. That does not downgrade its masterpiece status though. Still as a comedy it aches in your bones afterwards, as an imaginative take of the how world might have ended it feels eerily accurate. Superb production design, a relatively restrained Sellers straightmanning while “proper actors” Scott and Hayden blast out these big, masculine but terrifyingly daft turns cut this above pretty much any comedy churned out by professionals clowns. Amazing stuff moment by moment.

9

Thea Sharrock directs Emilia Clarke, Sam Claflin and Charles Dance in this quirky carer falls for a Dignitas bound posh cripple romance.

Efficiently done charmer which remarkably skips over any potential bad taste moments the pairing and plot inherently throws up – the devaluing of disabled life, the class issue, the hints of rich family instigated prostitution and the awkward business of consummating the pairs’ obvious horn for each other. These issues are lightly waltzed around, leaving a chocolate box Beauty and the Beast style romance that just happens to end at an infamous Swiss Clinic. Claflin cuts a dashing figure (Bond in a decade?) while everyone’s favourite Khaleesi manages to overcome some mightily silly outfits (meant as shorthand for her untapped creative potential and positivity) and some initially grating facial mugging to win her first big screen success. Her headlining turn in this wholesome weepie should continue to keep her in leading parts once her Game of Thrones beauty meets the inevitable chop.

6

Roland Emmerich directs Jeff Goldblum, Liam Hemsworth and Maika Monroe in this late to dinner sequel to a key 90s blockbuster.

Imagine you’ve been invited over to someone’s house for a beer and movie night and your host suddenly decides, just as you settle into the armchair, that he wants to watch the last four episodes of the eighth series of a sci-fi show (one you only ever gave the pilot a chance way back when) instead. That’s what buttnumber Independence Day 2 feels like as an experience. It also feels like three hours despite clocking in at 120 minutes. Characters you’ve got only vague memories of, interact over back stories you’ve clearly missed, while others are missing, been retconned, recast or replaced with facsimiles. Jeff Goldblum’s in it so it must at least be watchable? He’s a bit half arsed and only really book ends the film.  Bill Pullman seems to have had some kind of stroke / breakdown in the real life interim and they’ve just wrote his returning part around that problem. The audience feels awkward whenever he’s onscreen. What about the new guys? Frustratingly I still can’t tell the Hemsworths apart onscreen  but I am pretty sure the guy playing dead Will Smith’s son is actually in a hastily rewritten part originally intended for alive Will Smith. That makes the most sense given how he interacts cool but fatherly with everyone whether they be younger or older than him… And if that is true it can only mean whichever Hemsworth is trapped in a rewritten role originally intended to be for alive Will Smith’s son (let’s assume the fictional one even if Will Smith didn’t). Mind bending that such noticable tweaks are snagging all over the compromised production. And why do I care? Nothing exciting comes of any of this… Not even when the troops are tantalisingly left behind enemy lines on the mothership at the midway point, only for that idea to be abandoned after one cheap Falling Skies shoot out. Maika Monroe and Angelababy at least get a couple of sexy tough moments, like diluted Vasquezes with access to some hair straighteners and foundation. Speaking of Aliens, the film finally kicks into life once you have long, long given up on it in and are collecting your bags and coats. After the big finale the franchise’s wriggly counterfeit of the Alien Queen chases a school bus through the desert. That bonus level epilogue is the first time human characters are put in engaging peril, the destruction is given some recognisable people-in-shot scale to compare it to, and Emmerich returns to his trademark series of cool trailer moments stylings that he made his daft name on (see Independence Day, Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow and White House Down… And yes I did mean to include Godzilla 1997 on this list). Whereas the 1996 entry was a pop disaster movie with an achingly of its time cast and bit of UFO Top Gun as the cherry on top, this is a begrudging futurist war movie with no idea what blockbuster it wants to rip off… Independence Day would have been my suggestion.

3

Matteo Garrone directs Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassell and Toby Jones in this gory and sexy blend of forgotten fairy tales.

Bit special this. There’s me complaining just last week, what with Warcraft and Gods of Egypt, there are no good fantasy films these days and then this sumptuous treat comes along. Long takes of believable unbelievable beasts, gorings and beheadings plus a flaying, beautiful dresses, albino twins, ogres, soothsayers, princesses who want love, kings who get distracted, queens who get more than they bargained for, orgies, hags, castles from Escher’s doodle pad  and a big bear hula hooping. A heady blend of The Princess Bride, early Gilliam and The Beast. The Pulp Fiction of magical adventure films if it hooks you. There were restless people in our screening, considering the length and the lack of obvious narrative progression at times… but not in these seats.

8

Norman Jewison directs Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger and Warren Oates in this seminal black detective solves a crime in a whistlestop racist town thriller.

A lurid Deep South detective mystery given added depth by dropping (like an atom bomb) Poitier’s defiant and superior Virgil Tibbs into its racist milieu. The tension his skin colour, education and obvious unmatched policing skill generates in this backwards society gives every scene, every interaction a palpable charge. The mystery itself is lightly sidelined, and the dismount at the end when Tibbs is so close to cracking the case but with a lynch mob three paces from his neck, are the only false notes. Everything else pops with believable sweat, anger and hate. Poitier has always been a better actor than the worthy roles his symbolic central casting allowed him during the civil rights era so it is Steiger as small town sheriff, used to lording it over everyone but with little connection to his citizens, who really walks away with this. He gets a complex character, predjudiced but open to change, lonely and disgusted in life but stuck having to keep the wheels falling off his far worse hometown. The quieter, almost flirtatiously respectful, moments between him and the star contain even more controversial power than the shouty, slappy famous bits that get all the praise and made this a classic.

9

Jonathan Demme directs Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels and Ray Liotta in this American road movie where a sweet couple of just-mets break the law, attend a reunion and get cornered by a violent ex.

Now here’s a film I probably should have watched years ago. It feels like an adult John Hughes movie (WOW!) then Ray Liotta turns up and it becomes something even darker and violent without losing any of that quirky, pop charm. You could watch it in a 1986 triple bill with Ferris Bueller and Blue Velvet, with Something Wild managing to be the perfect bridge between those two disparate greats. If I watched it on release I reckon this would be a personal favourite, and despite a certain scatty slightness to proceedings and a few scenes that don’t work quite as well, nostalgia and energy would keep it high in my personal esteem. I’m actually gutted I’ve caught Something Wild so late in life (don’t worry I’m not dying) and of all the brilliant films I’ve watched this week Jonathan Demme’s crazy, colourful weekend fling pic is the one I want to watch straightaway again. The soundtrack is a still hip marvel, the cast a rogue’s gallery of cult faces. Tracey Walter, John Waters and Jack Gilpin all pop up. Ray Liotta lands his first significant movie blow here – a charismatic but deadly psycho who turns the film on a hinge when he arrives. Jeff Daniels is fine as the Everyman whose minor rebellions lead him away from a path of sadness and to an unexpected jolt of attraction and self determination. Melanie Griffith is a revelation though. I always enjoyed her in Body Double, Working Girl and Cecil B Demented but here she shows chops beyond her lovely Betty Boop voice and sex appeal. It like finding the missing jigsaw piece in the puzzle of her success. Her Lulu is an iconic star turn. I get the feeling this will get rewatched a few times this year, mainly to be seduced by her bipolar siren and the below score will rise until familarity breeds into blissful movie heaven content.

8