Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary

Akira Kurosawa directs Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō and Takashi Shimura in this tale of a murder recalled from 4 different viewpoints.

This is a moment I feared when starting this movie diary. Watching a classic I should have made time for years ago, finding it merely OK, then having to publicly say so. Now all 4 readers are going to know I prefer Fast and Furious films to bonafide masterpieces. Rashomon is a fine little film – the beautiful framing of the shots imaginative, the performances strong (if a little overwrought) and the spartan use of three simple sets an impressive trick. The truth is something we decide, and sometimes, for our own sakes,  we choose not to see the woods for the trees. Got it. Our take on reality is corrupted by our own weaknesses and doubts, memory is the first casualty. Great. But aside from an exhausting scrabble in the woods (where two combatants grow even more breathless as they fight on and on) plus an id driven turn by a randy, unfiltered Mifune, you watch Rashomon for its historical importance and its revolutionary filmmaking not for any real entertainment value or modern emotional relevance. Important but no longer essential viewing.

6

Lesley Manning directs Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene and Craig Charles in this “live” ghost hunting reality show mockumentry that shocked a nation.

So Film of the Week isn’t a film… Sorry. There’s a part of me that wanted to leave the suppressed by the BBC since broadcast Ghostwatch alone, unrefreshed as a formative memory of my childhood. I watched it live that Halloween in our Bordars Road terraced house only a mile or so from the Northolt setting. I remember not being convinced entirely, it came with a “written by” credit at the start, but there eventually were two or three effective scares that have lingered with me over the next quarter decade. Like many people of my vintage, Mr Pipes stayed with us. This, with Jacob’s Ladder and The People Under the Stairs, was one of the first chillers I remember choosing to watch. As a national hoax, intended or not, Ghostwatch took enough people in. Handovers from studio to location are familiarly flubbed, the 0181 811 8181 number to call in on was the same used for any live program, it all convinces. The real life presenters (exactly the type of personalities who would be roped into this if it were an actual BBC live event in 1992) thrown into the narrative hit their marks well and any falseness in their or “the family”‘s performances can be excused as much to the stilted artificially of a live TV broadcast in the 90s as unintentional bad acting. No one really ever revealed themselves with cameras so obviously watching back then (if even now) and the professionals are used to faking enthusiasm to keep the broadcast watchable. So once the subtle scares start coming you could get caught up in it. In context. See that context was important… Once you know it definitely is a work of fiction Ghostwatch can be a drag, especially in its first half. In its need to “pass” as a real live broadcast very little happens for 45 minutes so as in any good swindle the fix is established before the hurrah. So watching it as a retrospective experience with no nostalgic attachment must be frustrating. Like I say, I was uncertain about revisiting it for fear of discovering it wasn’t all that good and only really sought it out as The Conjuring 2 shared so much with my static filled memories of  a young girl talking as Mr Pipes. Both sets of writers used the historic Enfield Poltergiest as a synoptic starting point, and I’d be shocked if the modern blockbuster’s crew hadn’t at least had a screening – much like the clearly inspired but superior Blair Witch Project’s directors must have. Found footage horror, a cycle that has just now ended, took its first steps here. Cinematically, Ghostwatch the one-off, never rebroadcast TV gamble is a key work in horror.  But then in that final half the show begins to creepily spook you out – there’s no Grand Guignol, no jump scares. In fact, it all stays pretty much just out of sight. Your imagination starts to take hold to fill the blanks between the small occurrences; objects smash and move, noises distract the crew, the kids grow more and more distressed, a shot appears on the screen that suggests calm has been restored but in your heart you chillingly know that Pipes now is in control of OB van’s mixing desk… plus a possession and then someone goes under the stairs. It’s still all relatively PG / Lemon and Lime marinade heat stuff but remember people watching couldn’t be sure if it was legit or not. And then there is a nastier, more disturbing undercurrent beyond the disorienting con. The talking heads, phone-in voices and vox pops from the locals are filled with short bursts of campfire ghost tales filled with inception igniting imagery like dog foetus’ strewn and faces eaten by cats. Outside all the “real time” razzmatazz Ghostwatch is riddled with good, old fashioned spooky storytelling, each one building in ferocity and intensity. There is also the subversive use of the word “Gloryhole” frequently said by a key children’s presenter and the almost subliminal shot of her opening a child’s drawing of a spunking cock and having to move swiftly on. A twisted mind is gently working the audience at home while showing very little obvious horror. As a cold experience for the uninitiated it probably should deserve a lower score but I was part of the generation that is a key touchstone for, I rate the trickery, and as a delivery system for some Halloween spoken word chillers, Ghostwatch achieves even more than its smoke and mirrors controversial reputation promises.

8

 

Walter Hill directs James Keach, David Carradine and Stacey Keach in a western following the dissolution of the real life James-Younger gang.

I’m a big Western fan. I’m a big Walter Hill fan. So The Long Riders should be mash potatoes and gravy. But when previously broadcast on telly late night I found myself twice giving up twenty minutes in over the years. I always put that down to tiredness so this week I pereservered. I watched it in four 30 minute rough chunks over six nights, not a perfect viewing experience I know. But there’s something about this slow, jerky blend of diluted Peckinpah style action (in a final escape everything slows to a wailing, howling grind that induces intended nausea among the spraying squibs, shattered sugarglass and endangered horses) and dull woodland set soap-opera that just doesn’t grip. There are things to like – costume design for one is simple but convincing, the hard cuts between scenes can be artful and Ry Cooder’s musical contributions fit. Some performances get lost in the edit but David Carradine’s Cole Younger stands out. It’s also a bit dissonant to see Pamela Reed playing his brazen whore love interest (nudity and all) when you consider she’s mainly known for playing the female foil in Arnie family comedies – for my generation it’s like seeing your next door neighbour in a porno mag. So when in one scene James Remar turns up dressed like Sonny Ladham to have a close quarters Bowie Knife fight to defend her honour you can’t help cheering him on. I guess you’d have to be a Walter Hill fan for that sentence to make any kind of sense… but if you are, then you already know this particular scene makes all that weaker stuff worthwhile.

5

Frank Oz directs Michael Caine, Steve Martin and Glenne Headly in this con man comedy.

Never really laugh out loud funny but consistently amusing throughout – an innocuous little time waster. Star power keeps it coasting along and Headly is the highlight as the naive tourist they set their sights on. Much more than a foil to the big name improvisation and mugging she really should have gone on to bigger things after such a delightful breakout role.

6

Duncan Jones directs Toby Kebbell, Travis Fimmel and Ben Foster in this Orcs versus Human epic… but with orcs versus orcs and human versus human subplots… plus some occasional dwarves. 

Who remembers Willow? Hands up. It wasn’t great was it? Keep your hands up. Not perfect. But fuck me, it was fun. There were jokes, stunts, fantasy elements you marvelled at when they fleetingly appeared in betwixt the swordplay and hobbit banter. Big budget fantasy films should stop trying to be Lord of the Rings and start trying to be more like Willow. Why? Because Lord of the Rings was based on a literary classic, beloved by many and crafted over decades by a genius (Tolkein or Jackson, take your pick)… while Willow was scribbled on the back of a fag packet by people who wanted to make a Star Wars with a lot less time consuming miniature work and more Val Kilmer. You try to match a classic when your source material is a derivative video game and you are going to come off looking like a bit of a divvy, whereas if you tried to match Warwick and the gang… You’ve got my drift already? Okey dokey, you can put your hands down now. Lesson hopefully learnt. Warcraft isn’t enjoyable. It confuses crowded narratives with scope, clangy and slashy movement with action. Only one midway battle at a failed negotiation in a chasm engages, everything else is just a well-costumed rumble featuring humans whose names you haven’t learnt. A bit of star power was really necessary here, not just for box office, nor even to piss away into the charisma vacuum, but to just have some recognisable facial landmarks in the proceedings. A Sam Rockwell here or a Jake Gyllenhaal there (the usually exciting director Jones has these phone numbers) would fill in for the lack of backstory and wisps of invested personality. A good likeable star does a lot of heavy lifting when you don’t have time to give your avatars any human dimensions. The sky is blank, bereft of much needed twinkle, and proceedings only become marginally more involving in the Orc camp. They at least have doubts, believable relationships and clear motivations. Warcraft would have been a better first chapter if the filmmakers just focussed on the realistically achieved Orcs’ politics, dilemmas and struggles. Introduce the humans in a sequel where they’d have a bit more room to breathe and come to life. Or better yet watch Willow, and not bother with this borer at all.

3

Alex Proyas directs Gerard Butler, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Brenton Thwaites in this adventure battle between honky Egyptian gods.

Part of a “Why do I do this to myself?” double fantasy bill with Warcraft yesterday afternoon, I walked into this with low expectations but the hope that one, or the other, would exceed their collective awful reputations. There’s actually some epic, almost surreal, production design and some OK action here dotted about a plotless wander. Not enough to stop adult me from having a little nap before the last battle but I’d bet a less jaded, juvenile me would have at least walked out looking forward to circling the action figures in my Argos catalogue after. This actually feels like a big budget remake of forgotten 80s toyline schilling cartoon serial; see Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light, Ulysses 31 or MASK. And if an 11 year old me had gone to this then I’d probably have found more currency in the constant cliches and cleavage on display. Butler, still terrible but the best of bad bunch of performances ranging from worryingly senile to wonkliy one take worthy, seems to have rubbed his porky pig in Bisto… Which won’t help those accusations of whitewashing. So daftly awful that the Scottish, Swedes, Aussies and whatever nationality Thwaites is should right now be protesting and boycotting so their collective race are never again associated with such golden showers. If you can judge a film by how many loners carrying two stuffed bags for life came in late to a matinee screening,  then Gods of Egypt is a “six seperate rattling mentals” barnstormer.

4

James Wan directs Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson and Frances O’Connor in this London set sequel following real life Catholic “ghostbusters” Ed and Lorraine Warren saving another working class family from a diabolical haunting. 

Nitpickers beware! You will see the problems first, front and centre, when settling into this effective genre sequel.  1) a creaky, cliched opening, 2) actors of various nationalities trying on “sausage era” Grange Hill accents for size and being swamped by them, 3) the incongruous CGI Crooked Man… UGH! Who signed off on that in the final edit? 4) anachronisms on the soundtrack and the telly 5) the kid with a speech impediment, obsessed with biscuits whose bully can do a better fake stutter than the poor tyke cast. These wobbles aside, this proved a great date night for a pair of horror aficionados. The 2 hour length makes the film feel appropriately like an exhausting epic for our heroes and if you are gripped by the constantly ratcheted sense of dread, which I was, then the pay off contains some of the best action storytelling in a finale for years. The nun sequences are genuinely intense – both the painting scene and the Bill Wilkins reveal involving “it” will be held up as high watermarks in big screen scares. Vera Farmiga adds a rare touch of acting class to the proceedings (as always – I’m annoyed with myself I never got into Bates Motel), while Patrick Wilson is still an enigma to me – managing to be both vanilla and creepy, bland yet mysterious in pretty much every role he’s in (I can’t pigeon hole his appeal or success, can anyone?). The faith subtext was nicely handled even for my lapsed agnostic sensibilities and it’s just winning to have a blockbuster series centred on a mature, loving married couple rather than more chosen one kids or Megan Fox or “stars” who can’t open a movie without a cowl or cape. I’ll repeat there are niggling problems throughout and this style of scare storytelling is starting to already show its age and needs a shake up… but there are also those previously stated moments of brilliance too. James Wan grows more assured and masterful in the genre every sequel and spin off he sets to. As a piece of horror entertainment it’s well above par in term of quality and I’d happily see The Warrens become a summer fixture over Deadpools, Turtles and orcs. And – for all my grumbling about unfortunate  forger’s notes in the recreation of a 1977 London council house -the Woolworths Christmas decorations, wooden telly, British Rail train carriages, wasteland gardens with iron swing sets, and especially the toys and the clothes, all feel spot on to my similar , poltergeist free, early childhood.

7

Daniel Schechter directs John Hawkes, Jennifer Aniston and Tim Robbins in this adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Switch which features early incarnations of Jackie Brown’s key players.

Colourful and well cast, but doesn’t get the rhythm of the distinctive dialogue or plotting right. Once we settle into ransom demands the pleasing early gush of hairboiled zest just slows to a trickle through. As an unofficial prequel to QT’s superior Leonard adaptation, Jackie Brown, is where most of the value lies…How close will it line up so you can pop Pam Grier and Robert Foster on straight after and not feel disorientated? (Hey, I don’t know what goes about in your head but this is the exact stuff that keeps me awake at night.) The loveable Hawkes makes a really decent fist of a sweeter, more clued-up, pre-long stretch Robert DeNiro’s Louis Gara, Mos Def can’t hold a candle to Samuel L Jackson and Isla Fisher is an anachronism as conniving surfer chick Melanie. Still gorgeous in bikinis and Christmas jumpers but her age is starting to show, so casting Fisher as a younger version of an in her prime Bridget Fonda feels like when Dalton replaced Moore but with all of Bond’s history still lingering. You probably won’t mind the paradox quite so much, and the filmmakers probably were just happy to have another bankable comedic talent join the roster. I really can’t believe I’m moaning, over multiple sentences, about Isla Fisher being in a movie, either!

5

George Miller directs Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron and Nicholas Holt in this non stop chase through the maddest evolutionary leap in his long abandoned movie landscape. 

Just perfection. The action is adrenalin fuelled mentalism, the overriding attitude is “no fool ever dared this before”. Sure the scale loses something on the small screen but you can focus on the marvellous – yet admirably sexless – chemistry between Tom Hardy’s near feral Max (I love his grunting, cautious delivery) and Theron’s unstoppable hero instead. Often wordless so as to let the multicolour visuals override, Miller let’s the action do the talking. Action! Action! Action! But don’t let you think that this has nothing to say. There are enough barbed reflections of our own society’s ills and concerns in this apocalyptic horror show that you can hang just about any reading onto the characters and their survival. Pretty much the best action film / sci film since the Alien series heyday adding an increased British comic book aesthetic to its pre-existing Aussie world’s already potent palette. What a lovely day!

10

Ian Fitzgibbon directs Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson and Jodie Whitaker in this Irish crime farce.

This kind of tosh that you can watch post pub and still be disappointed – even though you can join it halfway and know exactly where you are (despite all the characters and their seperated plots), or fall asleep at the same point and not feel you’ve missed any surprises before the credits. The kind of tosh that became funded ten a penny after Lock, Stock and this feels like the tenth one made on the final greenlit penny – London stands poorly in for Dublin as a location whenever passable and even then when not (nit picky but sometime you really can’t see the mange for the nits). The kind of tosh that wastes Brendan Gleeson, Cillian Murphy and Liam Cunningham in undemanding one dimensional roles they have all done better in various point in their careers. No laughs come, no shocks, just the rote. Only the narration by a gloating, mysterious figure (Death? God? Gab Byrne?) feels like a ghost from a marginally more ambitious film.

2