Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary

Rob Zombie directs Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips and Daniel Roebuck in this prequel / reboot to the beloved Sixties horror sitcom.

Flat, cheap, obviously filmed in Eastern Europe. Works better when watched as five sitcom episodes strung together to make a feature length release. The jokes are corny but fair tribute. Everyone seems to have fun, Sherri Moon and Jeff do a lovely Lillian and Herman impression. I’m just not sure that’s enough to justify a movie. I expected more… some gore… but this is just a very unlikely, very colourful family film.

4

Perfect Double Bill: Dark Shadows (2012)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Michaël R. Roskam directs Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini in this crime thriller where a bartender sees his quiet life going sideways when adopts the wrong dog and his bar gets robbed.

Hardy playing a soulful brute enigma. Gandolfini, a schlubby threat. Rapace, a flinty vulnerable decent person. Three fantastic leads doing what they do best. Dennis Lehane wrote the screenplay and his understanding of the mechanics of modern crime are second to none. Wintery, petty, a cage. The Drop is first and foremost a character piece, never bombastic, very humane. This overlooked gem is one of the best neo-noirs of this century.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Gone Baby Gone (2007)

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Woody Allen directs himself, Diane Keaton and Don Keefer in this sci-fi comedy where a Seventies health food store owner wakes up in a dystopian future.

There’s a couple of OK homages to silent cinema but this feels very dated.

3

Perfect Double Bill: Love And Death (1975)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Michael Soavi directs Barbara Cupisti, David Brandon and Giovanni Lombardo Radice in this slasher where a killer kills a bitchy theatre troupe wearing a massive owl mask.

Self consciously sleazy, arty and catty. This is as close as euro trash slashers ever get to beauty. No whodunnit but some dance numbers. The third act tableaux where the killer arranges his bodies and sits down to relax with a cat purring on his lap and feathers blowing everywhere is one of the most dreamlike moments in Eighties cinema.

7

Perfect Double Bill: The Church (1989)

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Yasujirō Ozu directs Chishū Ryū, Shima Iwashita and Keiji Sada in this classic Japanese drama where the patriarch of the Hirayama family eventually realises that he has a duty to arrange a marriage for his daughter.

Unpopulated establishing shots, expansive cast of memorable characters. Low angle framing, clean Technicolor pop and a never-moving camera. People say this is a masterpiece of humanism. The roots of loneliness and the shift in Japanese society quietly explored. I just see a nice gentle man who absolutely lives for the sesh. So much boozing. No misbehaviour What a lad. My people.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Tokyo Story (1953)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn directs Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine and Alan Tudyk in this Disney animation where a potential apprentice to the sorcerer learns a disturbing secret about the wishes the population give on their 18th birthdays.

Unmemorable songs, flat CG animation that tries to mimic 2D watercolours, a story that feels like a thin thread to bead on Disney Easter Eggs. The voice cast is good but nobody is given enough time to marinate. There’s nothing particularly awful about Wish, it feels like something that has been made to be half watched on a constant loop but my standard for a Disney fairytale is so much higher than “Will this do?”

4

Perfect Double Bill: Cinderella (2021)

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Sidney Lumet directs Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon and Martin Balsam in this heist movie where a just released convict attempts to rob every home in the swanky apartment building of his girlfriend.

Told in flashback from an uncertain aftermath and with a particular emphasis on new surveillance technology, you can see what attracted Lumet. It is a gentle caper that builds to a meh punchline. Christopher Walken gets his official debut and Martin Balsam’s take on a gay art dealer is dated but amusingly so. Horrible whiny score, terrible garish end credits.

6

Perfect Double Bill: The Offence (1972)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Thomas Schlamme directs Mike Myers, Mike Myers and Nancy Travis in this dark romantic comedy where a beat poet begins to suspect his fiancée might have killed all her previous husbands.

Myers is working very hard in dual roles as the smarmy lead and his obnoxious Scottish dad. But Nancy Travis is a hollow foil. They should have also let Sharon Stone play dual roles like she wanted. There’s a better film here lost in a script that just doesn’t gel.

5

Perfect Double Bill: Clean Slate (1994)

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‘The Cyber Issue’ Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. Big Movies Reviewed are Requiem For a Dream and Nurse Betty. Packed full of fag adverts plus Ask Jeeves also gets a promo push. Most home retail releases can’t decide whether VHS or DVD should be the adverts focus.

An article on auteurs who moonlight making commercials. Tim Burton and Doug Liman are less surprising than The Coens and Kevin Smith.

Cameron Crowe’s beloved Almost Famous is devoted the most ink. The only telling revelation is they only had Philip Seymour Hoffman for 4 days of shooting and he spent a lot of that time hiding in his trailer “with flu”. Riggghhht! Check out that Sony DVD player ad where the couple get horny watching Wild Things…

A gore piece about Mike Myers and Universal Studios suing each other after an aborted attempt to turn his SNL character Dieter into the next Wayne’s World or Austin Powers. Gets really nasty and candid about Myers’ controlling nature on set and accusations of anti-semitism to destroy his standing in Hollywood.

Björk profile for Lar Von Trier’s Dancer In The Dark where the interviewer seems utterly baffled by the Swedish art popstar’s inability to play the promo game.

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/

Orson Welles directs himself, Oja Kodar and Elmyr de Hory in this documentary about forgers and flim-flam.

6 parts -we hung out with these two infamous con men. 4 parts – look how hot my current bird is. This is easily the most fun Welles flick ever. A collage and kaleidoscope of incomplete footage and teasing narration, the editing is very experimental. Both art forger Elmyr de Hory and his bullshitting biographer Clifford Irving are top class characters but there’s not nearly enough definitive meat in the parties and interviews Welles has filmed. So he reassembles a distracted jigsaw, does a bit of close-up magic and lenses his new girlfriend in narrative glamour shots. It works. It is daft. And it is art.

Watched at the NFT Southbank!

Perfect Double Bill: Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010)

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