Jean Renoir directs Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo and Erich von Stroheim in this WWI prisoner of war drama where French pilots plot their escape.
Sometimes the problem with watching an early classic is that you are watching a base source. The text has been copied and improved on so much over the decades that the original is important only to film historians. I had that fear watching the opening act of Grand Illusion. It felt like a bloodless initial draft of The Great Escape or Stalag 17. Too stoic except for a ratty jester, lacking grit and dynamism. So it got there first… great… I knew Jean Gabin wasn’t going to be flying his motorcycle over barbed wire fences. But then Renoir moves a few of the established character apart to a deeper war camp. The mood reboots. Class and race are tugged at with a playful ridicule. The next big escape attempt allows for a daft little scheme. The antagonist warden, played by von Stroheim, is a layered and fascinating character. The final third is the gold… an exploration of freedom and solitude. Renoir had won me over, pulled my heart strings. The final moments are perfect cinema.
Mitchell Lichtenstein directs Jess Weixler, John Hensley and Josh Pais in this horror comedy where a True Love Waits teen finds her virgin vagina has a nasty bite.
All men are rapists and useless. So you’d think their deaths and castrations to a snapping pussy might be a bit more satisfying or silly. The severed penis FX are effective. But the jokes aren’t. The tone wobbles between scare-free gore and laugh-free humour. Which is a shame as it looks better than most low budget flicks and Jess Weixler puts in a committed and light comedy turn… subtler than anything the script rewards her with.
Joseph Losey directs Julie Christie, Alan Bates and Margaret Leighton in this late Victorian period piece where a young boy becomes the summer holiday messenger between a betrothed beauty and a tenant farmer on her family’s estate.
Harold Pinter adapts L. P. Hartley’s novel about class and inevitability. It is very beautifully orchestrated and bitterly felt but delivers nowhere near enough peak Julie Christie to warrant a rewatch.
Arthur Hiller directs Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder and Joan Severance in this comedy where a blind Pryor and deaf Wilder are framed for murder and go on the lam.
So this probably should have stayed a fond memory. I don’t care that it isn’t PC… it just doesn’t work. They have their one joke and it runs out of workable permutations by the 30 minute mark. Pryor looks ill and uncomfortable, Wilder feels a little miscast as the angry grump. The location work is impressive and Joan Severance’s femme fatale looks a million bucks. But you could turn it off after the big inevitable blind man driving car chase and have missed nothing of note.
Kelly Reichardt directs Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard in this low key thriller where a cell of eco terrorists blow up a dam.
The first half is a procedural where we see three young green activists rendezvous, supply themselves and execute a criminal act. It is dry and the characters prove thinly sketched despite the talent enlisted. Unsensational to a fault but adequately gripping. After they disband we witness just one member’s life fall apart and paranoia begin to consume him. It is a muddy trudge, only faintly exploring the exposed emotions and ethics with any insight or exceptionality. The end result is quite dull and difficult to care about. Succeeds neither as a drama or thriller but has some quiet merits moment-to-moment.
Amber Tamblyn directs Alia Shawkat, Janet McTeer and Rhys Wakefield in this L.A. mystery where, after the death of a handsome young man, his actress girlfriend and alcoholic mother enter into a battle of wills.
Well acted, well directed and definitely great to look out. Surprised to find the cinematographer of this, Brian Rigney Hubbard, didn’t go on to bigger things as his capturing of light and colour is pretty special. It gives up on its hagsploitation leanings a little too early and the artier lurches into identity and controlling mothers distract from what could have been a neat little thriller. Based on a work of literature which might suggest why it abandons the more psychotic showdown we are primed for and relishing.
Frank Henenlotter directs Rick Hearst, Jennifer Lowry and Gordon MacDonald in this horror comedy where a young man conjoins with a charming parasite who gives him addictive hallucinations and just wants to eat the brains of others in return.
A cult gem from the video store glory years. Aylmer the parasite is one charming dude. Softly spoken, intelligent, confident of his upper hand. The violence he causes is manna for us practical FX gore hounds, the comedy he engenders is deftly silly, the trips he injects into your mind are memorable low rent fantasias. He’s the bargain basement punk answer to The Little Shop of Horror and Gremlins. I’ve never seen a Henenlotter production yet that doesn’t look like it would give you all the Hepatitises yet makes you laugh and repulse with unbridled glee. Shame no studio ever gambled and gave his red light district brand of nasty a budget he could have really fucked around with!
Paul Verhoeven directs Elizabeth Berkley, Kyle MacLachlan and Gina Gershon in this sex and showbiz romp where a troubled young drifter grafts and grifts her way to Las Vegas stardom.
I’ve never met anyone who has actually watched Showgirls and doesn’t love it. Is it everyone’s dirty little secret? It tries its best to be an unwatchable mess but it is too fast and sharp and gaudy and thrusting to do anything but enthral. A ridiculous potty mouthed pantomime.
Nomi (an OTT Berkley) is brash, disloyal, erratic. Her awful shock dialogue rarely fits the conversation, her actions are almost exclusively violent outbursts. She is not sympathetic, certainly not appealing. We follow her only as she is the star of this show… we are given no other options. And only in this 130 minutes long world. No one is chasing down Berkley’s next film. We only care as Nomi – the bi-polar thumper with rhinestone pasties for armour – threatens and thrusts her ways through dance numbers, stripshows and sexual encounters relinquishing the focus to no-one else. She exist solely as a showgirl in waiting, waiting to push her way onto centre stage. She cannot navigate the “real world” of even this highly artificial movie. Like a jiggling Larry David she’ll pour petrol onto a social bonfire, like a curvaceous Jake La Motta she’ll turn any business transaction or career opportunity into an chance to tell someone to go fuck themselves. All she can do off-stage is obliterate bridges and leave noses bloody. Self-sabotaging but focussed, vile but talented.
She can learn entire dance numbers moments after being shown the first steps, she will fuck her way to the top but no one other than the top is attractive. She’s not a whore, she owns herself, you have to be able to make her a queen if she is gonna give it up to you. Her attitude to her sexuality is complicated, muddled even. Listen, if you are sincere you bought a ticket to watch flesh and fucking, and if you are cold then you wanted ironic awfulness. So accept it, sex… it ain’t gonna happen sweetly in this world. Love conquers nothing.
On her march to power she loses sight of those who are loyal to her and the ones who at very least have the decency to exploit her to her face. Her Cheetah Club employers (sleazier than the Stardust but honest in what the deal is) are her adopted but rejected family, her roommate her unspoken lover. Not only does no man gets to own her, admirably she never succumbs to or seems at all interested in a studio mandated romantic interest. YOU! GO! GIRL!
You can’t get a fix on this destructive force of nature… she’s more like Con Air or Twister rather than any human character that has ever been presented on screen. A mid-90s CGI wrecking ball with no chain… smashing through side characters and subplots just trying to make it the end credits or unmade sequel with little care for three acts structures or emotional development. You can’t tame it, just marvel in her destructive wake. All she wants to do is headline a show in Vegas. She just wants to dance with her boobs out and her vagina bare. The spectacular dance numbers (whether around cheap pole, elaborate cabaret stage or dressing room rehearsal) are wonderful. Not in anyway sexy. Neither is the walloping routs of actual fucking. Lots of skin is displayed but little seduction or desire is generated. Only Gina Gershon’s glamorous cowgirl Bette Davis to Berkley’s Anne Baxter has any natural allure or moments when she can be nude and not look like tanned meat in a freezer.
If it wasn’t for a nasty final act gangrape, bunged in somewhat callously to catalyse some kinda conclusion, then all the misbehaviour, choreography and glitter of Showgirls would make it a perfectly acceptable epic for teenage girls. Sure there’s gratuitous nudity and swearing but there’s also chimps, and outlandish costumes, and big stage showstoppers, and girl power bonding, and life lessons about avoiding fit men who only want one thing. The message it haphazardly teaches about self worth and not trusting employers and pretty seducers are blunt. Yet maybe more valuable to impressionable women than what Disney or Molly Ringwald films program into them at an early age. Here the princes are rapists, the Blanes are looking to make you their white slave. Don’t be true to yourself, do whatever it take to beat the fuckers who see you only as a soft commodity.
Is Verhoeven’s much derided tits and tribulations extravaganza an intentional satire? Sure, if you want. He rarely makes a work that doesn’t have edge and sophistication. Whether dealing in violence or sex or both he knows he can overpower the viewer with so much hard edged transgression that on first watch they feel they’ve only witnessed a hypersleazy receptor frazzler. And any great directors can make horrendous mis-steps. But Showgirls ain’t it. It is its own beast. The American Dream as random pornography. The 1930s “let’s put the show on right here” musical as a totalitarian rise to power.
Verehoeven knows the only individuals that can win a game as rigged as Vegas / Showbizness / free market capitalism are violent sociopaths. To beat the grind of such a sharp racket a woman needs to gyrate hard and break ankles and fuck only the right dick. Never feel owned. Never get pregnant or emotionally attached… or known. Not be ashamed to use the looks and moves she has at her disposal when they have genuine currency. The director of Godess helpfully lays down the law of this jungle. “I got one interest here, and that’s the show. I don’t care whether you live or die. I want to see you dance and I want to see you smile. I can’t use you if you can’t smile, I can’t use you if you can’t show, I can’t use you if you can’t sell.”
Nomi might not be attractive or relatable to us but we sure relish seeing her trample over all the bullshit of an uncaring, venal, male America. She’s Patrick Bateman for the ladies. The mad psycho who’s transgressions and fantasies we never want to live out but love seeing play out. Watching a sledgehammer break the nightmare system is a great Saturday night in. Don’t worry about your inhibitions, leave your good taste at the door!
Michelangelo Antonioni directs Monica Vitti, Alain Delon and Francisco Rabalin this arthouse classic where an Italian beauty considers a new lover during a stock market crash.
Stunning but obtuse. Given to a vibe where nothing seems to happen but urban alienation or misanthropic beauty. It would be fair to say the tentative, bitter courtship that plays out between Vitti and Delon is sold as a poor investment for our energies. As always, the downside of taking a languid look at ennui is it can be boring. Sure, this allows Antonioni to create blanks. Voids so the viewer can fill in their own importance and meanings into the dead space. Look and mood over plot and interaction. There are sequences that are powerful. The chaos of the overcrowded stock exchange is overwhelming and fused with foolish purpose. They make for dynamic juxtaposition with all the lulling around deserted streets and sulking with outdated compatriots. Antonioni creates a world past its sell by date… a 1962 alternating between dying in its sleep or thrashing out its last gasps. The trickling pace allows us to link scenes with others. The break-up we open with in the modernist apartment feels like the exact negative reel of the sequence where Vitti visits Delon’s old world family home. The art and decor might be from different eras but the frustrated dance that happens is step-for-step in reverse. What point is there to go in if everything has already played out? Natalie (as always far smarter and perceptive that I) pointed out the film’s protagonist sees so little variation or hope in the future that she is essentially gives up in engaging with the present. Romances aren’t worth consummating, rendezvous aren’t worth making. The market has crashed there’s nothing left to anticipate. No destiny has value. This maybe explains the paranoid, doom-laden final montage. The sexy young movie stars abruptly leave the stage. We see the sun set in a series of eerie and disconcerting shots. The streets we have toured, grow deserted. The city becomes a ghost town. Maybe an apocalypse has quietly happened. Nothing is resolved.
Victor Fleming directs Judy Garland, Margaret Hamilton and Ray Bolger in this fantasy musical where a teen is transported via tornado to a land of witches, munchkins, yellow brick roads and emerald cities.
Just timeless movie magic. Every Technicolor moment iconic. Every beat sweet with heart and sour with unusual risk. Judy Garland is beautiful and as pure as a glass of milk. Girl sure can hold a song. She’s the stuff of dreams. One of my faves. Watched in a triple bill with Return to Oz and Oz: The Great and the Powerful.
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 