Alienation is good for your art.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

(2015)

(SPOILERS) Not so much flirting with controversial material as belly flopping into it, actress Marielle Heller’s writer-directorial debut adapts Phoebe Gloeckner’s 2002 graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures with winning flair for the visual flourishes of its source material, its protagonist given to flights of fantasy and doodlings come alive. It comes as little surprise then, that Robert Crumb was an inspiration to Gloeckner; there’s a similarly libidinous grotesquery in protagonist Minnie’s style and obsessions. At times, one can’t help but recall Terry Zwigoff’s doc Crumb and the animated parts of American Splendor.

Set in San Francisco, 1976, Diary follows 15-year-old Minnie (English actress Bel Powley) on a journey of sexual discovery, as she is deflowered by her mother’s boyfriend Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård) and proceeds to grow in confidence and abandon, despite being a bit of a geek at heart. Heller’s depicts a San Francisco of generally debauched licentiousness, a fecund setting for such rites of passage, and with a mother (Kristen Wiig) permanently out of it on something, and a stepfather-come-shrink (Christopher Meloni) mostly out of the picture, Minnie is pretty much unimpeded in her experimentation, for better or worse.

Teen angst bullshit can be a bit of chore to sit through, but when it’s infused with such wry observation, visual verve and idiosyncrasy as it is here, it’s frequently a delight (Diary isn’t a comedy, though, however much the larger-than-life elements and poster design may give that impression). Powley (in her 20s, lest anyone be concerned, which given Hollywood’s track record would be entirely reasonable) is marvellously dour as the febrile, heavy-lidded teen with a head full of noise, lust and longing, while Skarsgård is entirely unapologetic as the lustful lust object.

His morally culpable exploiter of teen flesh, surfing the frisson of a free-love licence in the period of Polanski’s proclivities, is perhaps the picture’s biggest risk, since Heller is uninterested in assigning standard-issue judgement calls, confident the audience can make their own minds up. Wiig is strong, but proffered something of a short straw in an underseen and used role (albeit at least partly required by the plot), while Abby Wait scores big with every line reading as a younger sister who manages to make Minnie look the height of cool.

It isn’t all note-perfect; an acid trip scene is unable to offer more than the heights of cliché, as Monroe has a bad one, and sometimes the succession of encounters feels like Minnie, or Heller, or Gloeckner, is ticking off a checklist. So too, the ending is disappointingly staid, embracing the learn-and-grow nature of the teen genre.

But mostly The Diary of a Teenage Girl is a fresh, vibrant movie, one that deserves to sit alongside the most astute charterings of the treacherous waters of teendom. Whatever Heller does next, and Powley for that matter, ought to be well worth a look. The UK 18 certificate seems as absurd as it did for Heathers back in the day, since it excludes the age group who would respond to it most (well, not really – when did a certificate ever do that? – but nominally so). This may be uncompromising, but it isn’t an especially explicit film, except perhaps in the censor’s fetid imagination; what probably most unnerved them is Diary’s reticence in terms of blame and consequence, thus failing to offer acceptably moralistic resolutions.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

The Krishna died of a broken finger? I mean, is that a homicide?

Miami Blues (1990) (SPOILERS) If the ‘90s crime movie formally set out its stall in 1992 with Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs , another movie very quietly got in there first at the beginning of the decade. Miami Blues picked up admiring reviews but went otherwise unnoticed on release, and even now remains under-recognised. The tale of “blithe psychopath” Federick J. Frenger, Jr., the girl whose heart he breaks and the detetive sergeant on his trail, director George Armitage’s adaptation of Charles Willeford’s novel wears a pitch black sense of humour and manages the difficult juggling act of being genuinely touching with it. It’s a little gem of a movie, perfectly formed and concisely told, one that more than deserves to rub shoulders with the better-known entries in its genre. One of the defining characteristics of Willeford’s work, it has been suggested , is that it doesn’t really fit into the crime genre; he comes from an angle of character rather than plot or h

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

The Illumi-what-i?

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) (SPOILERS) In which Sam Raimi proves that he can stand proudly with the best – or worst – of them as a good little foot soldier of the woke apocalypse. You’d expect the wilfully anarchic – and Republican – Raimi to choke on the woke, but instead, he’s sucked it up, grinned and bore it. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is so slavishly a production-line Marvel movie, both in plotting and character, and in nu-Feige progressive sensibilities, there was no chance of Sam staggering out from beneath its suffocating demands with anything more than a few scraps of stylistic flourish intact.

People still talk about Pandapocalypse 2002.

Turning Red (2022) (SPOILERS) Those wags at Pixar, eh? Yes, the most – actually, the only – impressive thing about Turning Red is the four-tiered wordplay of its title. Thirteen-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang) finds herself turning into a large red panda at emotive moments. She is also, simultaneously, riding the crimson wave for the first time. Further, as a teenager, she characteristically suffers from acute embarrassment (mostly due to the actions of her domineering mother Ming Lee, voiced by Sandra Oh). And finally, of course, Turning Red can be seen diligently spreading communist doctrine left, right and centre. To any political sensibility tuning in to Disney+, basically (so ones with either considerable or zero resistance to woke). Take a guess which of these isn’t getting press in reference to the movie? And by a process of elimination is probably what it it’s really about (you know in the same way most Pixars, as far back as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc . can be given an insi

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

You tampered with the universe, my friend.

The Music of Chance (1993) (SPOILERS) You won’t find many adaptations of Paul Auster’s novels. Original screenplays, yes, a couple of which he has directed himself. Terry Gilliam has occasionally mentioned Mr. Vertigo as in development. It was in development in 1995 too, when Philip Haas and Auster intended to bring it to the screen. Which means Auster presumably approved of Haas’ work on The Music of Chance (he also cameos). That would be understandable, as it makes for a fine, ambiguous movie, pregnant with meaning yet offering no unequivocal answers, and one that makes several key departures from the book yet crucially maintains a mesmerising, slow-burn lure.

I only know what I’ve been programmed to believe. But, of course, the same goes for you.

Raised by Wolves Season One (SPOILERS) Ridley Scott’s latest transhumanist tract is so stuffed with required lore, markers and programming, it’s a miracle it manages to tell a half-engaging story along the way. Aaron Guzikowski ( Prisoners ) is the credited creator, but it has the Ridders stamp of dour dystopia all over it, complete with Darius Wolski ( Prometheus ) cinematography setting the tone. Which means bleak grey skies, augmented by South Africa this time, rather than Iceland. Raised by Wolves is a reliable mix of wacko twist plotting and clumsy, slack-jawed messaging; like the Alien prequels, it will surely never be seen through to a conclusion, but as an agenda platform it’s never less than engaging (and also frequently, for the same reasons, exasperating).

You’re like a human mummy!

The Lost City (2022) (SPOILERS) Perhaps the most distressing part of The Lost City , a Romancing the Stone riff that appears to have been packaged by the Hollywood equivalent of a processed cheese plant lacking its primary ingredient (that would be additives), is the possibility that Daniel Radcliffe is the only viable actor left standing in Tinseltown. That’s if the suggestions at least two of the performers here – Sandra Bullock and Brad Pitt – are deep faked in some way, shape or form, and the other name – Channing Tatum – is serving hard atonement time. If the latter’s choices generally weren’t so abysmal and his talent in arears, I’d assume that was the only explanation for him showing up in this dreck.

Okay, just jump right into my nightmare, the water is warm.

Jerry Maguire (1996) (SPOILERS) I didn’t much like Jerry Maguire at the time, which I suspect is intrinsically linked to the fact that I didn’t much like Tom Cruise at the time. I’m still not really a massive fan of either, but the latter at least made an effort to rein in his most irksome traits subsequently. Jerry Maguire , however, finds him drawing on the same “bag of tricks” that mystifyingly transfixed his fan base a decade before in Top Gun . Bonnie Hunt suggested the toughest part of the role was “ playing a character that doesn’t like Tom Cruise ”. I wouldn’t have had that problem. I do not like Tom and Jerry.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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