Thoughts on Brigsby Bear

On Hulu this month, I was happy to see they added Brigsby Bear, this 2017 comedy that got very little theatrical release and seemed fairly obscure or under the radar, and I had heard of it but hadn’t seen it. It starred Kyle Mooney, and was a unique premise about a guy named James who got abducted as a baby and raised by a couple in an underground bunker, where he grew up watching a children’s TV show called Brigsby Bear, a fantasy show with a giant bear and wizards and magic, that was in reality created by his captors (Mark Hamill and Jane Addams) as a tool to control and manipulate him. He gets rescued, placed back with his biological family, and though he’s 25 now, he is still very childlike and obsessing with wanting to recreate Brigsby Bear for his own movie, essentially still being emotionally tied to the character because it was the only art connection he had to the world, no other media, and it always made him happy throughout his life.

I really liked this one a lot, it’s both weird and wholesome. Like Kimmy Schmidt, it straddles this line of being upbeat while treading over darker material, where the hero is an optimist who acts very childlike for their adult age, like how Kimmy would still act 14 as an adult because it was when she got abducted and her development was delayed. Similarly, I was unsure at James’ age, thinking he was in his late teens, and was surprised when they said he’s 25 (Mooney was in his thirties at the time). He mostly hangs out with teens, which is a little strange for him being an adult, but I could get that due to his immature development, he connected more with them than people his age. I did like his friendship with Spencer (Jorge Lendeborg, Jr.), an Afro-Latino nerd into sci-fi and horror with AV interests who helps James get into filmmaking to create a Brigsby Bear movie in a lo-fi, homemade kind of way.

I did have issues with how, when he’s returned to his family, they don’t put him into counseling or do any kind of rehabilitative treatment for the trauma he’s going through, rather just assuming he’ll just fit right in with his family, who are strangers to him, forcing family togetherness with a list of “fun” things to do. They only bring in a therapist (Claire Danes) when he needs an intervention, like when he’s obsessed with Brigsby Bear and it leads him into trouble. For a movie that felt grounded in balancing PTSD trauma with a hopeful survivor, it did bother me how clueless his family was being in thinking he’d just snap right back into place as their son as if he was never stolen from them all his life.

I really liked Greg Kinnear in this, as the sympathetic detective who is in a weird place of wanting James to move on, but also wanting to help him where he’s at right now. Kinnear just played him with warmth and likability, and I enjoyed their connection together.

I did have questions as to why the couple abducted James for so long, beyond just wanting a child. The movie glosses over that, as the film is obviously about the survivor and not his captors, but the story doesn’t give a decent explanation for it, like holding him in an underground bunker for so long, though the fake TV show is explained as Hamill’s character had created a Teddy Ruxpin-like toy in the 1980s and had the toys and props for his own propaganda children’s show for his abductee. While it did skip over some of the more worse aspects just to keep the movie a light comedy about using art to follow your dreams and be creative, especially being inspired by childhood nostalgia, I did enjoy the movie, so I’m fine with that.

Thoughts on Peggy Sue Got Married

I hadn’t seen Peggy Sue Got Married, Francis Ford Coppola’s film from 1986, and only loosely knew what it was about (woman in an unhappy marriage time travels back to her high school days), but watched it last month when it came on Hulu, and really liked it a lot. It’s a weird movie that has the nostalgia of a late 1950s teen life (1960, but it might as well still be the 50s), but with this warped dreamlike feeling, and this melancholy and sadness of a middle-aged woman (Kathleen Turner) among her teen friends knowing the future and dreading her future with her high school boyfriend who she would marry into an unfulfilling life. I liked how it feels off-kilter, like if Peggy Sue really is dreaming or if she had time-traveled, and it’s like a teen film but for middle-aged adults.

This happened to come out a year after Back to the Future, with similar themes and setting, and they even dub over Kathleen Turner in one scene to say she’s “come from the future,” when her lips says “back from the future.”

Nicolas Cage, as Peggy Sue’s boyfriend and future husband, makes an inspired choice with his voice in the film, basing it off of Pokey from The Gumby Show, and having this stuffed-up nasal voice which sounds off-putting, but I got used to it. Jim Carrey was fun as Cage’s goofball friend, and I liked seeing Joan Allen in an early role as one of Peggy Sue’s friends. I really liked Barry Miller as the future science genius Richard, he had a lot of sweet sensitivity to his part, and it was cool also seeing Kevin J. O’Connor in an early role as the beatnik poet outsider teen. And it’s a little weird when seeing Sofia Coppola as a kid in acting roles, because she just isn’t an actress, she comes off as stiff onscreen, and clearly found her place as an artist behind the camera, including directing Turner as the Lisbon mother in The Virgin Suicides over a decade later.

Kathleen Turner was great in this, I liked the contrast of her deep husky voice among the “teen” characters to show how much older she is than everyone else, even if they all see her as a teen. I liked her out of place feeling, and her conflicted feelings of not wanting to repeat her marriage while also not wanting to erase her kids from the future. Her emotions at talking to her long-deceased grandparents (especially Maureen O’Sullivan in a cameo) was so touching and real for me.

So I’m glad I watched this, this is a beautiful and melancholy film. I included a video of filmmaker Ti West giving his thoughts, which I concur with.

Thoughts on Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (aka Átame!)

On Criterion in March, I watched Pedro Almodóvar’s 1989 film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (aka Átame!), a dark romantic comedy where Antonio Banderas plays a recently released patient from a mental institution named Ricky, and abducts an actress named Marina (Victoria Abril), holding her hostage in her home because he is obsessed with her, especially after a brief one-night-stand they had a year ago when he had escaped from the institution. It basically takes a horror movie premise of stalking and obsession and plays it up in a darkly comedic way, where it’s likable because the two leads are charismatic and attractive (like how Overboard has a somewhat similar premise but gets a pass because of the great chemistry between the leads), but knowing it’s messed up at the same time, especially when it starts getting into Stockholm Syndrome territory.

I did like this a lot, and I hadn’t seen Almodóvar older films, so it was fun seeing Banderas in an early role, and I like seeing how the warm colors just pop in Almodóvar’s films. I liked the busy environment of the the film shoot where Marina is working, like her sister and best friend Lola (Loles León) who looks out for her, and the eccentric and vibrant director (Francisco Rabal) who’s a paraplegic from a stroke. Rossy de Palma has a small part as a drug dealer who Banderas tries to score from to get morphine for Marina’s toothache, which she needs stronger drugs for because she was an addict and painkillers are too mild for her.

I do like the humor, like him thinking getting softer rope and tape is him being “nice” to her while he’s holding her hostage (there’s a brief scene where he’s buying the tape and mentioning that “his girl” would like it better because it’s softer, the clerk missing the implications), or him trying to woo her by writing out a map of his life via a subway line, to seem more sympathetic as an orphan put through the system, and romanticizing his interest in her instead of as a stalker obsession, especially since she had previously done pornographic films and could attract stalkers like him.

I felt for her during the movie, and kept wanting her to escape, and felt like she mainly fell for him because he’s handsome and charismatic, which felt very surface to me. It still felt like he had a fixation on her because of her looks, and didn’t really get to know her through the film, just seeing what he wants to see. The movie ends with them being happily together, whereas I felt he would still be an abusive and possessive person, now that his obsession and kidnapping had “won” her. So I liked the movie, and liked the chemistry between them, and felt it was a messed-up romance in a somewhat enjoyable way to watch as a movie fantasy.

ETA: on reading IMDB reviews, the general theme of this movie is that it is a satirical farce making fun of marriage and courtship, like exaggerating it to a ridiculous degree, with kidnapping and forcing someone to love you, which does make sense in a more over the top way.

Thoughts on Losing Ground

In March on Criterion, I watched Losing Ground, a 1982 drama by director Kathleen Collins, that had a quiet, slow, and laid-back atmosphere that I really liked. It’s a drama about an opposites-attract married couple, the bookish, restrained professor Sara (Seret Scott) and the loose, casual painter Victor (Bill Gunn). They’ve been married ten years, and going through some strain and clashing in their relationship, as he sees her more for her beauty than seeing her inner self, so they go away to the country for the summer, each finding their own individual paths of joy and enlightenment, but also growing apart as different people.

I liked the slow pace of the film, how it was very much a talky movie, and how early on, the couple do have contrasts that initially work together, as she needs to loosen up and he needs to get more serious. I liked scenes like him teasing her when he’s painting her, or her having conversations with her easygoing but honest mom, or her working on her academic research but learning to have more fun when dancing in an artistic project with friends. Seret Scott was really wonderful in this, playing both the cold nerdy side of Sara and the sexy, happy side when she’s dancing.

Victor was charming, but not really as sympathetic, as he proves to be more immature over the course of the film, like openly flirting with a female neighbor and falling back on his bad philandering habits. But I still liked Bill Gunn’s performance, and knew of his name a little from the cult 1970s Black vampire film Ganja & Hess. He had a long career in television and film, and was friends with James Dean way back in the 1950s.

I didn’t realize that Duane Jones, the hero from Night of the Living Dead, was also in this in a supporting role as a friend and potential lover to Sara.

The writer/director Kathleen Collins, who passed in 1988 of cancer at just 46, was a filmmaker, writer, and teacher. She only directed two films in her lifetime, her daughter working to resurrect her films posthumously, but according to her IMDB bio, she also created a film program at City College of New York, was an editor on Sesame Street, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and was a memorable teacher. I’m happy I checked this film out, it had a chill pace to it that I really enjoyed sitting with.

Thoughts on The Addiction

In February, I went to the Museum of the Moving Image screening of Abel Ferrara’s 1995 film The Addiction, and, not having seen the film since I was a teen and only vaguely remembering it, really enjoyed it a lot. It’s a black and white vampire film where Lili Taylor is a grad student named Kathleen who gets turned into a vampire by a mysterious Annabella Sciorra, and her cyclical existence of binges and painful withdrawals are meant to mirror heroin addiction, especially comparing it to other random people struggling with addiction in the film. Such quotes from Taylor are “We drink to escape the fact we're alcoholics. Existence is the search for relief from our habit, and our habit is the only relief we can find,” and “Dependency is a marvelous thing. It does more for the soul than any formulation of doctoral material.”

I really got into this. I like the shadows and light in the black and white cinematography, the way the light casts across the actors’ faces, or in one scene, light from open window blinds slowly making their way down the wall to Taylor in an attempt at suicide that was beautifully filmed. I liked the mid-90s NYC-centric hip-hop soundtrack, the haunting look of downtown NYC at night, how the film featured future Sopranos cast members (Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, Annabella Sciorra), Taylor’s purely physical performance as a woman who is empty inside like a hollow shell but thrives on blood binges to survive, and Christopher Walken in an extended cameo as a longtime proselytizing vampire who has fasted for years and sees Taylor as weak without self-discipline, which doesn’t help when she’s curled up on the floor and clutching her stomach in withdrawal pains. Walken as Peina states “You know how long I've been fasting? Forty years. The last time I shot up, I had a dozen and a half in one night. They fall like flies before the hunger, don't they? You can never get enough, can you? But you learn to control it. You learn, like the Tibetans, to survive on a little.”

I liked the random dark humor in it, like Taylor just attacking a random guy trying to help her or blaming a young and freshly bitten Kathryn Erbe for trusting her.

This is a great and unusual vampire film that felt like its own strange thing, I liked it a lot.

Thoughts on Belle

At the Museum of the Moving Image, I enjoyed watching the 2021 anime film Belle, directed by Mamoru Hosada. It was a gorgeous film that looked beautiful on the big screen, using a lot of CGI technology to give the film a larger, 3-D look, as a lot of the film takes place in an online virtual community where people use avatars to either hide behind or enhance their hidden strengths.

The film centers on a shy schoolgirl named Suzu, who deals with a lot of anxiety and social awkwardness, and feeling distant from her father ever since her mother died trying to save a drowning child, and getting Internet hate for it. She loves music, but has withdrawn from it since it was her mother who taught her how to sing and create music. Suzu is introduced to the virtual community of U by her techie friend Hiro, and Hiro creates a pop star avatar for Suzu, highlighting her talented singing voice behind a flowing pink-haired Disney princess-looking star named Belle, who quickly blows up in popularity on the app, with contentious debate from fans and haters alike. As Hiro points out, talented favorites usually have small cult communities of fandom, while bigger stars have more mixed reaction and controversy.

The movie expands more to not just be about a shy girl learning to express herself, but is a funny reflection of Internet comments and videos fighting each other on fan theories on Belle’s true identity, as well as the identity of “the Dragon,” a beast who eliminated avatars in martial arts battles and crashes into other virtual worlds, and comes off as an angry bruised beast, being hunted by Thundercats-looking superheroes, but Belle is drawn to him and his pain. Then the film starts a recreation of Beauty and the Beast in the app, lifting influences from the Disney version and the Cocteau version, and it blends together well with the mix of fantasy as a shield for people’s realities, and gets more absorbing to watch.

Some of the funniest moments in the film were simply teens in the real world having crushes on each other and being terrified to talk to one another. The animators would have just a frozen still of a character with a gaping mouth or hiding their face while beet-red, and just hold on that image for a few seconds like time froze for them, and it was absolutely hilarious, especially if they stay frozen while others are reacting.

Another great moment was when Suzu is trying to reverse a rumor going around (“He held her hand - it’s going viral!”) by texting the more reasonable and influential girls in the class to set things straight, and flipping her peers like they are virtual coins.

I’m not a big anime fan, and am out of the loop of most anime series, but I do see one-off movies like this sometimes, and really adore them. This was a really beautiful, funny, and thoughtful film to watch, I’m happy I saw it.

Thoughts on Titane

On Hulu, I watched Titane, Julia Ducournau's 2021 film and her follow-up to her cannibal film Raw. I generally liked it, going into it cold and going along with the weird turns the film took. I felt the first half is a lot more loud and busy and more like an exploitation film, and the second half is a lot slower and feels more like a family drama about grief and loss. I don’t think the two genres really went together, as it had a weird tonal shift, but I did like that the film didn’t hold back in its emotional and physical rawness.

Alexia (Agathe Rouselle) is a dancer/car model in the South of France who survived a car accident as a kid, had a titanium plate put into her head, and develops an erotic fixation on cars. She’s a serial killer who stabs people with knitting needles, and is on the run, and, in the second half of the film, ends up in a situation under false pretenses, and the film takes a slower turn from the bloodiness and synth music stings into something more sad and emotional. There’s a lot more unusual details, but I don’t want to give away too much.

I preferred Raw more, I liked the dark comedy with the bloody cannibal stuff and expressive colors in a giallo kind of way, and felt more connected to that story, as it’s about a shy young woman in veterinary school who goes from being a vegetarian to craving raw flesh, undergoing a huge transformation as a person coming of age. Whereas this one felt a little more remote because Alexia essentially feels empty, and doesn’t seem to have much purpose in her life beyond mere survival. She obviously has mental health issues, and seems like a sociopath or psychopath, whichever one. So it’s more like watching her from a distance rather than really understanding what’s going on with her emotionally.

I’m not as into the hype as this being one of the best films of last year, but it’s very good, and stands out as being weird and naked and unique. I’m glad I finally got to see it when it hit Hulu.

Thoughts on Spencer

I watched Spencer, directed by Pablo Larrain (Jackie), as it just hit Hulu, and really liked it a lot. I normally am not interested in anything about the British royal family, but I liked how this felt more like a psychological horror film. They could have dialed it back on the screeching string music, but I liked how it depicted Princess Diana feeling like she was going to hyperventilate from being stuck with the stifling royal family that are all about appearances, and how she and Prince Charles seem to be married in name only, as they are often distant from each other and Charles speaks to her in obvious contempt, viewing her as “hysterical.”

Kristen Stewart really was great in this, I had my doubts. But she embodied this role, with this pained smile, tight body language, posh accent trying hard to sound polite but cracking underneath, and seemingly only being her fun, genuine self with her sons and friend Maggie (Sally Hawkins, playing a warm and funny confidante as a connection to the “real world”). I’m hit or miss on Stewart, mostly liking her in Still, Alice, Personal Shopper, Clouds of Sils Maria, and older films like Speak and The Runaways, but she was really good in this.

I liked the slightly grainy film quality, and how it felt like a haunted house movie, with Diana having visions of Anne Boleyn as a grim foreboding future as a prisoner in this elite family. While I generally don’t care about the royal family drama, and never watched any of the Princess Diana TV/film depictions prior to this, I did like the claustrophobic feeling of this film, and how isolating it looked for her to hardly have any friends while being stuck out in a country estate with her family. I’m glad it got some Oscar recognition, it deserved it.

Thoughts on Kansas City

Kansas City (1996) directed by Robert Altman. This felt like Altman, in tribute to his childhood of 1930s Kansas City, wanted to make both a gangster film and a musical, and tried blending it together. It did feel disjointed at times, where Altman clearly seemed more in love with the long free-flowing jazz scenes than the gangster plots, which felt more average to me, save for the performance of Harry Belafonte playing against type as a crime boss/club owner named Seldom Seen, coming off as both charming and menacing.

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a Jean Harlow-wannabe gun moll named Blondie whose loser husband Dermot Mulroney crossed Belafonte’s gang and is being held prisoner, so she abducts Miranda Richardson’s opium-addicted society wife Carolyn to blackmail her campaigning politician husband to get the crime family to release Mulroney in exchange for Richardson. The plot is a long winded mix of political corruption, gangsters, racism (CW: white characters drop racial slurs a lot in this movie), and Depression-era struggles. One of the subplots that interested me more was for a pregnant 14-year old Black girl from Joplin who came to KC to have her baby, and is being guided by a teenage Charlie Parker(Albert J. Burnes). She is largely outside of the main plots, and is like the audience perspective in entering this messed-up world, and largely stays out of their corrupt business.

The movie felt like it jumped around a lot, trying to be loose like jazz music, but also felt like it was all over the place, and more into the fun of its period setting than the story as a whole. I liked the music scenes a lot, and though I usually like Leigh, her “gun moll” voice felt very self-conscious and put-on, like an exaggeration of 1930s Pre-Code heroines, which her character clearly models herself after. I did like how Richardson’s character comes off as a vapid society wife lost in her mind on laudanum, but can be subtly funny, and had this weird dazed vibe to her that I liked, it stood out as more interesting to me.

So I thought this was fine, with good music and some standout performances spread around, but not really great as a whole. But this jazz battle scene is pretty awesome, so I’ll share it here.

Thoughts on Running on Empty

Running on Empty (1988) directed by Sidney Lumet. I had seen this before, and liked rewatching it on Criterion. It’s a family drama where Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti play former 60s radicals whose anti-war bombing of a lab nearly killed someone, and they’ve been fugitives ever since, dragging their sons along to change aliases and backstories every several months, while relying on an underground network of supporters to get by.

Their graduating high school son Danny (River Phoenix) is burnt out by all the moving and secrecy and constant change, and when he has a potential future as a talented pianist and having a loving sharp girlfriend (Martha Plimpton), it threatens to blow up their nomadic life on the run. Phoenix was really great at playing a more adult role while still seeming like a frustrated kid, and I adored Plimpton as this funny rebellious teen girl who felt more fleshed out and not a stock love interest.

I really liked this film because it’s a tight family drama where they seem incredibly loving, but also lowkey abusive and toxic, where the parents are pressuring their sons into never leaving their “unit” and living with the stress and consequences from a crime they weren’t responsible for. I really didn’t like the father, Arthur, who may have been a liberal radical but acts way more like a conservative Boomer, barking orders at his family like a drill sergeant. He just frustrated me whenever he’d shut down dissent or snap at anyone who questioned how unhealthy their way of life was for their kids, and put guilt on them for any kind of social outlet they wanted to have.

Danny is the obvious protagonist to feel for, but I really felt for Lahti’s mother figure, Annie, who is mixed between feeling guilt and remorse for her past while wanting to keep her family together and avoid the Feds. Arguably, one of the best moments of the film is when she sneaks a restaurant meeting with her long-estranged father, reconnecting over their conflicted past in which she blamed him for the war and prejudices, her immature rashness as a youth while still believing in her politics, and trying to set up a safe way out for Danny’s future. Lahti and Steven Hill as her father played this with a lot of heart and weariness, where you could feel both the history and distance between them.

This is a great film, I’m glad I watched it again.

Thoughts on Nightmare Alley

Earlier this month, I watched Nightmare Alley, directed by Guillermo del Toro, as it just hit Hulu. I was mixed on it, as it has a great cast, except for Bradley Cooper. He just seemed miscast, like he doesn’t really belong in a 1940s noir, playing a con man mentalist, and seems too much like a modern-day frat bro type to fit in. I also didn’t like how, despite that it was trying to have an old-fashioned carnival look, it looked too slick to me and artificial, like too much CGI. I think Carnivale, way back from HBO, did it better in making the 1930s carnival look more grimy and lived-in.

The good was that I liked the rest of the cast. Cate Blanchett as a femme fatale in the second half stole the movie and had this slow purring quality to her that I liked, ensnaring Cooper in a scheme to con rich people with fake mind readings that he’s too thick-headed to see how he’s being played. Rooney Mara has this wide-eyed Gothic cartoon look to her that I like, but she also works well in period films, like playing a 1950s shopgirl in Carol. Here she’s a carnival performer with an electricity act who Cooper falls for. The rest of the carnival cast is rounded out by Ron Perlman, Willem Dafoe, Toni Collette, David Strathairn, and Clifton Collins, Jr. There’s also a nice cameo by Tim Blake Nelson in the finale, Mary Steenburgen as an older woman grieving her late son through Cooper’s phony séance work, and Richard Jenkins as a seemingly clueless mark.

Toni Collette has a lot of charm in this as a fake mentalist, with long Veronica Lake-style hair, and I thought she was fun, especially with her and Strathairn playing a married couple and teaching Cooper their theater tricks. She isn’t in the movie as much, and I did miss her presence later on.

I felt it was long at two and a half hours, and that while I liked the carnival stuff, it didn’t seem to have much of a plot going on as it was just spending time with characters, and only really got going more once the Blanchett character entered the film (and I didn’t even realize she had a Carol reunion in this with Mara until afterwards). I haven’t seen the original 1940s film, so I can’t compare, but I felt like I enjoyed it in parts, but that the pacing dragged, and that Cooper was badly miscast, he just looked confused and out of place. I’d still recommend it if you want to check out the rest of the cast, the carnival scenes, and Blanchett’s performance.

Thoughts on Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken and White Fang

Last month, on Disney Plus, I watched two early 90s movies I had never seen: Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken and White Fang, both from 1991.

I had vaguely heard of Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken as a kid, from the memorable title, but didn’t know what it was about until many years later. It’s an inspirational horse girl movie about a real-life stunt diver named Sonora Webster, who in the 1920s (1932 in the film) performed in a diving horse show in circuses, which looked pretty cruel and thankfully has been phased out. (Though the movie did take safety measures to protect the horses and the jumps were only from ten feet up, but using optical illusions to make it look like forty feet from a distance). Gabrielle Anwar played Sonora, and did a pretty good Southern accent for a British actor. She’s an orphaned teen in the Depression, whose aunt sees her as a problem and disowns her to an orphanage, so she takes off and ends up joining the circus, learning the craft from the real-life Western figure Dr. W.F. Carver (Cliff Robertson) and his son Al (Michael Schoeffling). I liked her spunkiness and being pushed to succeed past her limitations, even if I didn’t like the stunt she does. She goes blind from an accident, but learns to continue through vibrations and touch, and did it for another 11 years, and lived a long life, dying at age 99 in 2003.

It was a pretty good movie, and Anwar was very likable and charming in it. I did laugh when, for the first half of the movie, she is costumed to look scrappy and disheveled, so much that the diving girl who she eventually replaces tells her that she has “no natural beauty,” when she is obviously beautiful. But I felt the same way with the 1994 Little Women adaptation, when Jo cuts off her hair and is met with being told she lost her “one beauty,” which would make sense if a plainer actress played her, not the gorgeous Winona Ryder.

Michael Schoeffling was handsome but dull as an actor, this was his final acting performance before he retired to create a successful furniture business. I ended up liking Dylan Kussman more as the dorky redhead teen boy who is a hired hand and has an obvious crush on Sonora but no real chance with her next to Schoeffling.

I watched White Fang, the 1991 one with Ethan Hawke. I liked it, it felt a little slower to get into. It felt a little rougher than usual Disney movies, because it starts and ends with disclaimers assuring that animals were not harmed in the film, as there are several dog fighting scenes in the film, a cameo from Bart the Bear, and wolves vs. dogs. It takes place in 1896, and Ethan Hawke plays an orphaned teen boy or young adult who travels to the Yukon Territory from San Francisco to pan for gold and continue his absentee father’s work, and pairs up with guys on a dog sled team to transport a body and search for gold. White Fang (played by Jed, a wolf-dog from The Thing and The Journey of Natty Gann) is a wolf-dog hybrid played by adorable pups whose mother is killed in self-defense by the men, and who dies in front of her pup, which was sad to watch. White Fang is adopted by indigenous people, then blackmailed into selling by an abuser (James Remar) who forces the dog into vicious dog fighting and cages and starves him. Ethan Hawke, who had encounters with the dog, including the dog saving his life from Bart the Bear, rescues White Fang and rehabilitates him to accept love and trust again.

I generally liked it, it didn’t feel as cutesy or as light due to the dog fighting scenes, as well as the frozen dead body being shown, and everyone being rough and a little gruff because it’s how to survive among wolves, bears, and greedy men. I did like that the movie ends with a card saying that wolves shouldn’t be hunted or demonized, and for them not to be endangered or vilified. I thought it was a nice message to end on.

Thoughts on Stormy Monday

Thanks to my friends, I checked out the 1988 British gangster film Stormy Monday, and liked it a lot. It’s the theatrical directorial debut of Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, Internal Affairs, One Night Stand), and stars a young Sean Bean as a guy in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne who is just kicking around with a rough past, and goes to work odd jobs for a well-connected nightclub owner (Sting in a quiet and restrained performance). Melanie Griffith is an American waitress who has some charming meet cutes with Bean, but is connected with Tommy Lee Jones’ sleazy corrupt businessman, who’s in town for American Week, and trying to connect a deal with Sting to take over his business, but Sting’s not a pushover, and has his own backup.

The film has this rough charm to it that I liked, and it was refreshing to see Sean Bean in an early role where he’s the hero and a somewhat nice guy, as a contrast to his later Hollywood career as “U.K. villain who gets killed by Harrison Ford or Robert DeNiro or Pierce Brosnan and gets shot/blown up/falls to his death.” It’s just nice seeing him play someone normal.

Griffith was really sweet and cute in this, and her hair looks like it’s leftover from her punk role in the apocalyptic cult movie Cherry 2000 (1988). It’s also funny to see how in young Griffith I can see where Dakota Johnson got her features.

Sting’s character is a jazz fan, so there’s a couple of really cool scenes of live jazz music playing in his club, and it adds to the neo-noir mood of this film that I really sank into and enjoyed.

There’s a fantastic long tracking shot by cinematographer Roger Deakins following Jones and Sting as they have a discussion about Jones’ sleazy tactics and threats to Sting’s life, that is shot from a distance and pans past columns that I really adored. I also really liked a little sexy quiet slow dance scene between Bean and Griffith in a bar as Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” plays on the jukebox, it’s a nice intimate moment between them before shit gets real again with the crime stuff. I included a scene of Griffith late to her waitressing job and having some cute banter with Bean while taking his order, it’s a nice moment that seems mundane but is fun and flirtatious.

Thoughts on Bergman Island

I really enjoyed Bergman Island a lot, a 2021 film by Mia Hansen-Løve that is this slow, walk and talk, artsy movie about art and life blending together, as a filmmaker named Chris (Vicky Krieps), visiting the Swedish island Fårö Island with her filmmaker husband (Tim Roth), is on vacation, doing a residency with her partner as prep for writing screenplays for film projects, and doing some Ingmar Bergman tourism, as Bergman had filmed his 1973 series-turned-compiled film Scenes from a Marriage there, and they stay in a cottage Bergman had lived in, and while Chris’ husband is being celebrated at a local screening of one of his films and taking a guided Bergman group tour, she is wandering around on her own, trying to work out a story for a movie about past loves and attempts at rekindling the nostalgic moments, played out as a story within a story with Mia Wasikowska as Chris’ stand-in.

I liked how quiet and chill this movie was, how it could seem slow but had a good pace that kept it engaging, and though I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Bergman film, I did like how the characters are fans of him while acknowledging his faults, like being an absentee father or having overrated films. I liked watching Wasikowska in the internal story, how she comes off as very relaxed and doesn’t have to say much to express her character’s inner anxieties about wanting to rekindle her love with her ex even though they are both partnered, and trying to seem casual on the outside but being psyched by the breadcrumbs of affection he gives her.

I included this Vox article from last year on the film, because the movie ends up blending both the main story and Chris’ fiction story in a way I didn’t get at first, and had to read up on afterwards, as well as how the film is very much about creative artists trying to use the ghost of another visionary artist for inspiration, dealing with love in a long-term comfortable relationship vs. the spark of exciting passion, and how it affects their subconscious as people.

Tribute to Sidney Poitier

Goodbye to Sidney Poitier, a trailblazing actor and civil rights activist. This is from his directorial debut, a 1972 Western titled Buck and the Preacher, which costarred Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee. In this scene, he’s speaking with indigenous people to ensure safe passage for Black people through their land.

Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes in Edge of the City, an excellent 1957 drama where they play friends who are dockworkers and fighting their racist foreman (Jack Warden) trying to drive them apart. Ruby Dee costarred as Poitier’s wife.

A fun clip from Sneakers (1992): “"Did I ever tell you why I had to leave the CIA?"

Thoughts on Fishing with John

The musician and actor John Lurie had a brief reality show of sorts in 1992, Fishing with John, that seems like at first a fishing show with celebrity guests, but turns out to have a kind of weird sense of humor, where the narrator overdramatizes mundane moments with big music and jumpy editing (like John Lurie and Jim Jarmusch “catching” a shark and making it look like Jaws), and it gets sillier. There’s an episode where John and Willem Dafoe are ice-fishing in Maine in a makeshift hut, and the story arc makes it seem like as if they were stuck there for a week before dying of malnutrition and starvation, then the next episode (where John is in Thailand with Dennis Hopper), the narrator is like “I was wrong! John is alive!”

It’s a weird and funny show, with behind the scenes facts like Tom Waits hating their fishing trip on this rust bucket of a boat in Jamaica and reportedly not talking to John for two years, or Matt Dillon looking straight off of filming Singles and just looking confused and out of his element, as John Lurie wanted Flea but the producers didn’t think he was enough of a big name to have on the show.

The theme song is very Twin Peaks-esque. John Lurie had a sequel of sorts last year with HBO’s Painting with John, as he shifted his focus to being a painter after being diagnosed with Lyme disease in the 90s.

Thoughts on The Three Faces of Eve

The Three Faces of Eve (1957) directed by Nunnally Johnson. This is a 1950s movie in which Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for playing a woman struggling with dissociative identity disorder (back then called multiple personality disorder), based on a real person, and while I don’t know how accurate the portrayal of this disorder is in the film (as the movie has her “switch” between identities by just looking down and up), I can say that Woodward was fantastic in this, and was really engaging and captivating to watch. I loved how convincing she could be as a scared housewife unable to remember her other identities’ actions like buying expensive clothes and being confused at her abusive husband’s accusations, to acting like a flirty Southern charmer straight out of a Tennessee Williams play, trying to score a date with her psychologist and having an awareness of her “main” identity and struggling to come out. I hadn’t really seen Joanne Woodward in much aside from The Long Hot Summer, Sybil (in which she is the psychologist to Sally Field’s character struggling with the same disorder), and narration in The Age of Innocence. She’s 91 now, and has worked in films and TV well up to her eighties.

I liked how sympathetic her psychologist (Lee J. Cobb) was to her situation. He was compassionate, not condescending, didn’t dismiss her or treat her like she was insane. It was a really nice and humane treatment that he gave her that recognized her as a person, taking her seriously while still wanting to help her live a healthy life. The ending is way too pat in claiming that she’s “cured” from her mental illness based from recounting a long-buried childhood trauma, but I was fine with the therapy depiction for the most part. The film can be seen on Criterion.

Thoughts on Don't Say a Word

Don’t Say a Word (2001) directed by Gary Fleder. This is a pretty decent thriller, where psychologist Michael Douglas’ daughter (played by then 8-year old Skye McCole Bartusiak, who I used to confuse with Dakota Fanning back then, and who sadly died in 2014 at just 21 of an accidental drug overdose) is abducted by Sean Bean and his crew of thieves, and Douglas, on order by Bean, has to interrogate his patient Brittany Murphy to get some number code related to her dad’s murder by Bean’s crew a decade ago.

It’s an average thriller, hitting the usual notes, but Brittany Murphy elevated it. I’m not just saying that because she also tragically died young, but she brings this hidden and weird vibe to her institutionalized patient character that is repressing deep trauma from her dad’s death (she witnessed his murder in NYC, and was found miles later on Hart Island hanging around his coffin), and gives her a lot more depth and sensitivity than this movie deserves. She had this fragile look, being very thin with huge eyes, but was also really captivating to watch, and was fully tapped in. She plays games with Douglas, withholds information when she knows she’s being used, and only gives her trust much later when she wants to help rescue his daughter, especially when Douglas is like “My daughter isn’t strong like you are, she can’t survive on her own like you were able to as a kid,” playing to her childhood trauma of navigating her way around NYC practically in a fugue state right after her father’s death. It was Murphy’s idea to whisper sing the line “I’ll never tell,” which is all the movie got associated by at the time. I generally like the movie as an average early 2000s thriller, but Murphy made it way more memorable. It’s on Hulu.

Thoughts on The Florida Project

The Florida Project (2017), directed by Sean Baker. I finally watched this last week, and I liked it a lot. The basic plot takes place at this purple-painted motel just off of the strip in Orlando, on the outskirts of Disney World, and local businesses like diners and ticket booths and motels get by on tourism. The motel’s residents are a mix of single moms with their kids, where the moms are eking out a living to get by, be it waitressing or hustling, and their kids just run around the motel and across lanes to nearby businesses like it’s their giant playground.

It took me a while to get used to the kids, because I found them annoying, and I wavered between not liking Moonee’s (Brooklynn Prince) mom Halley (Bria Vinaite) for her volatile jerk attitude and having some sympathy for her as a lonely struggling mom, but I liked how it felt like this weird offbeat world just off the strip mall, and Willem Dafoe was great and fit right in as the motel manager, who was frustrated at Halley’s outbursts but couldn’t kick her out because she has nowhere else to go, and he clearly has a soft spot for the kids and their well-being. It’s always nice to see Willem Dafoe play a good guy. I loved this whole long take shot of him distracting and escorting a sexual predator away from the kids, culminating in a great moment with a soda can.

It’s mean of me, but I didn’t feel sorry for random guys who got scammed by Halley because they chose to hand over a lot of cash to just some random chick and her kid in a parking lot of a tourism center based on her claiming she can “get them a good deal” on passes at Disney World.

While the kids as a group could bug, I did like how it showed them being messy and loud and acting like real kids (mostly played by non-professional actors), like when they are trying to get a random woman to give them money for ice cream by making up some sob story, and she’s just like “Kids, here’s $5, I don’t need this whole story.” It was a cool and interesting movie to watch, and deserves its acclaim. It’s on Netflix.

Thoughts on High Art

I rewatched the 1998 indie film High Art (directed by Lisa Cholodenko), I hadn’t seen it since I was a teen. I remembered it being a big deal back then, as a more mainstream LGBTQ indie film, a brief comeback for Ally Sheedy that won her awards, Radha Mitchell’s early notable film role (where I was surprised to see how young and baby-faced she was when seeing it now), and Patricia Clarkson’s breakthrough as a German artist addicted to heroin. I still like it a lot, even if it now very much feels like a movie of its time, it’s very “late 90s indie film,” I don’t know how to better describe it.

I do like that watching it now, I can better see it as a movie about two women using each other in selfish ways. Radha Mitchell’s character Syd is an immature young intern turned editor trying to get a leg up in the art world by connecting with a once-great art photographer, Lucy, played by Ally Sheedy, who is talented but unreliable because she doesn’t want her art world fame anymore. They get into this relationship with each other that seems mutually beneficial but isn’t healthy at the same time. Lucy is trying to leave her toxic relationship with Clarkson’s character Greta because they are both dealing with substance abuse, and Syd is more of the innocent nice girl type that Lucy is using as a way out. I did like how it was messy and how everyone’s an asshole while their actions can be understandable to a degree.

Thoughts on Johnny Suede

I had heard of this 1991 Brad Pitt movie Johnny Suede, but hadn’t ever seen it until it hit Criterion this month. I was mixed on it. The good is that it’s an offbeat indie film where Brad Pitt plays an aspiring musician who wants to be a neo-rockabilly star, with a big pompadour (that Johnny Bravo was modeled after) and some black suede shoes literally drop into his life. He’s trying to get his tape around to make it big, but the bad is that he’s not that interesting. His songs are OK, but Johnny himself is so thick and so dumb that he barely has any personality in the music, he’s basically just imitating Ricky Nelson without bringing anything new.

The other good parts are a semi-cameo by Nick Cave as a local music guy with a high white pompadour who belts out some good a cappella singing, and Catherine Keener was fun, bringing some real world snarky attitude as a normal person amongst a lot of the heightened reality types in this. Samuel L. Jackson appears very briefly as a guy in Johnny’s band.

Brad Pitt ends up talking more like his character in Cool World, in that 1940s/1950s jazz hipster way, and in Johnny Suede, looks like when his character becomes a cartoon at the end of Cool World.

The director Tom DiCillo went on to make a much better movie with the indie movie satire Living in Oblivion, where James LeGros played a pretentious actor that was allegedly a stand-in for Brad Pitt because DiCillo hated his acting and thought he made Johnny Suede more stupid than childlike.

So I liked finally getting to watch it, it’s just not that good aside from some quirks, the Nick Cave cameo, and Catherine Keener’s performance.

Thoughts on Holiday Affair

This month, I watched Holiday Affair, a 1949 Christmas romantic comedy that starred Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh. I watched it because it seemed weird to see Robert Mitchum in a romantic comedy, and IMDB trivia stated this was a PR move to clean up his image after he got arrested for something, which makes way more sense.

It’s a love triangle story where Robert Mitchum works at a department store (like Gimbel’s or Macy’s) and Janet Leigh works as a spy for a competitor, buying items as “comparative shopping” to return later. Mitchum calls her out on it, but he gets fired when he doesn’t kick her out, and he’s got two weeks left until he starts a new job lined up in California. She’s a WWII widow still mourning her late husband, caring for her talkative young son, and is soon to be engaged to a straightlaced dork lawyer.

Mitchum and Leigh keep running into each other, in part because he overhears that her son wants a train set for Christmas and he buys him one for $80 (which the trivia said is equivalent to $900 today, Jesus), and it gets to be these mixups where the fiancé is jealous and annoyed and Mitchum is blunt about wanting Leigh (who was cast at a very young 22 years old) and she’s just caught in the middle of all this.

It’s a lot of contrived plot conveniences, and the kid can be a little annoying (though the actor grew up to be a respected architecture professor and is 80 years old today), but I enjoyed this as a light comedy and the oddness of seeing Mitchum in a holiday romcom.

Thoughts on Two Friends, Leave No Trace, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, Night and the City

I watched a lot of movies this past week on streaming, so I figured I’d write some blurbs about them.

Two Friends (1986), directed by Jane Campion. I liked this, it was a TV movie originally in installments about two teen girl best friends, Louise the straight-laced A student, and Kelly the punk rock girl from a troubled background. The story is told backwards, so the movie starts with them already drifted apart and Louise reading a letter from Kelly, and the events told in reverse show how their friendship fractured but began as very close, with a lot of little moments and tensions that ultimately drove them apart. I thought it was nice, I like hearing NZ accents, and the storytelling was creative, it was cool to see an early film of Campion’s. It’s on Criterion.

Leave No Trace (2018) directed by Debra Granik. I’ve seen this a couple of times, and found it very touching and affecting. Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie play father and daughter, who are unhoused and live in a woodsy park in the Northwest, where Foster is a widowed army veteran who is struggling with PTSD and mental health issues, and his daughter feels safe with him living off the land, until they are discovered and social services puts them into custody and are trying to put them into government housing, but Foster is distrusting of the government and keeps taking him and his daughter on the run. She loves her dad, but is getting worried about his mental health and need to constantly be on the move, at the risk of her own health and safety. I liked how this movie was an intimate character study of a father and daughter who love each other, but have a complicated relationship. And that some people are more comfortable living a rural nomadic life on their own than being forced into general society, though it was coming at the risk of his health as well. It’s just a really great movie, and McKenzie’s star has risen further after this film, being in Jojo Rabbit and Last Night in Soho. It’s on Hulu.

The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995) directed by Maria Maggenti. I hadn’t seen this since I saw it on Bravo way back when I was a teen, and it held up pretty well as a cute story of first love between two teen girls. It’s a romance between Randy (Laurel Holloman), a white working-class tomboyish girl working at her aunt’s gas station and living with her lesbian relatives, and Evie (Nicole Ari Parker) a well-off preppy Black girl with a boyfriend. They develop a cute relationship, but face a lot of homophobia from Evie’s mom and friends, as well as school peers and the husband of a woman cheating on her husband with Randy (the movie doesn’t linger on the fact that the woman is a sex offender by preying on a minor, even if 17 could be the age of consent). I’m glad this got onto streaming, it’s a sweet and funny movie about first love between two queer teen girls. It’s on Criterion.

Night and the City (1950) directed by Jules Dassin. Richard Widmark stars in this noir as a hustler who gets involved in the wrestling scene in London to make fast money in schemes in the underground world, and gets in over his head dealing with shady and crooked types. I couldn’t get into this much, I didn’t find it very compelling. There is an effective scene of two wrestlers fighting to the death, and Widmark’s rat-like self getting double-crossed and his face having a “oh shit” look on it, like he’s marked for death, but otherwise I just couldn’t connect with this. It’s not bad at all, just not for me. It’s on Criterion and Hulu.

Favorite Films of 2021

For best-of end of the year lists, I normally would talk about my favorite new movies that came out, but I didn’t see much new movies this year, I just watch a lot of older stuff on streaming. So this is a much smaller list of my favorite new movies.

The French Dispatch, directed by Wes Anderson. I really enjoyed this a lot. I’m hit or miss with Anderson’s quirky style, but this I liked. It was detailed with rich character performances, an incredible ensemble cast, was a mix of dark humor and emotional moments, and it felt peppered with a lot of small details that I’m sure I’ll catch on a re-viewing.

Together Together, directed by Nikole Beckwith. This was a unique romantic comedy of sorts where Patti Harrison is a twenty something loner who becomes the surrogate for Ed Helms’ single middle-aged guy who wants a kid. They don’t fall in love or anything like that, but it’s an interesting movie about this relationship between these two people that is transactional on the surface, but becomes a much more meaningful friendship, with complicated feelings involved. Harrison’s character was a teen mom who gave her child up for adoption, and is estranged from her family as a result, and Helms’ character didn’t get to have a kid with his ex of eight years and wants the same love of fatherhood that his partnered peers have. It’s a really good movie on Hulu.

Passing, directed by Rebecca Hall. This was both a beautiful and somber film about two old friends (Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga) who are Black women in the 1920s and can both pass for white, which brings on a lot of issues about race and class, as Negga’s husband, a blatantly racist white man (Alexander Skarsgaard) doesn’t know she’s Black. The film’s themes are very deep, and I enjoyed how beautifully shot the film is in black and white, and the loving and warm connection that Thompson and Negga portray as old friends reuniting, they had great chemistry with each other. It’s on Netflix.

Plan B, directed by Natalie Morales. I’ve liked Natalie Morales for years, a funny and sharp actress who has the bad luck of ending up on shows that get cancelled (Santa Clarita Diet, The Middleman, some forgettable Fox sitcom), and deserves a bigger career. She directed this really good teen comedy about two best friends, both nerdy girls, who are on a quest to get the morning-after pill after one of them loses her virginity at a party and is freaking out the next day. They are denied the pill at a pharmacy according to a sexist law where the pharmacist can deny teen girls the pill based on their moral judgment, so they have to drive out of state to get to the nearest Planned Parenthood. It’s a road trip comedy featuring an Indian and Latine best friend pair, they run into weird situations, one of the girls is queer and finds a connection with a cute acquaintance, and the story hammers home how important it is for women and girls to have access for their reproductive health. It’s on Hulu.

Pig, directed by Michael Sarnoski. This is a quiet and meditative drama on grief and loss where Nicolas Cage plays a former chef turned truffle hunter who lives out in the rural wilderness of Oregon with his pet pig, and one night, his home is ambushed and his pig is stolen. He goes on a journey to his former home of Portland to find his pig and get it back, but this isn’t John Wick, it’s not a vengeance killing spree. It’s a slow burn drama, that’s quiet and moody and sad, and I feel like I should watch it again to really get it. Cage is really good in this, it’s always nice to see him show he knows how to act with subtlety when he has a really good script. It’s on Hulu.

The Harder They Fall, directed by Jeymes Samuel. This was a really fun and stylish Western featuring a majority Black cast that is both a revenge drama and a war between two outlaw gangs. The film is just packed with talent like Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, Regina King, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, Damon Wayans, Jr., LaKeith Stanfield, and others. I was thrilled to see the singer Alice Smith in a saloon scene, as she’s been making more of a comeback lately after a long music hiatus, and I loved Regina King’s long button-down coats that fit the badass outlaw look that she had. It’s on Netflix.

Thoughts on Magnolia

Last month, I watched Magnolia for the first time, Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film and big follow-up to Boogie Nights. It’s a long movie at 3 hours, so it took me some time to get into it, the first hour mostly felt like exposition and setup before it got deeper into the story. There was a lot going on with so many characters, and I did have to remember who were the kids of Jason Robards and who were the kids of Philip Baker Hall. I thought it was generally very good, very epic, even if I didn’t really feel connected to several of the characters or their story arcs.

Melora Walters was my favorite, as a young woman named Claudia using drugs and forms of self-harm because she was sexually abused by her father as a kid, and is scapegoated by the family as the problem daughter because of her addictions. I just found her to be sweet and sensitive, and loved Walters’ portrayal.

In the whole movie, this was one of my favorite scenes, where she is on a date with the awkward cop John C. Reilly (who also was one of my favorites in this movie, next to William H. Macy and Philip Baker Hall), who initially came to her apartment on a noise complaint before they eventually bonded, and she’s embarrassed to tell him that she’s a cocaine addict, was abused, and anything else that she fears he will reject her for. It’s a really sweet date between two nervous people, and I adored their performances in this scene.

Thoughts on Barton Fink

I rewatched Barton Fink on Christmas last year, and I hadn’t seen it in many years. It’s a 1991 film by the Coen Brothers, a dark comedy (though I mistakenly remembered it as horror) where John Turturro plays a 1940s NYC playwright named Barton Fink (who looks like a cross between Jack Fisk in Eraserhead and stereotypical “New York Jewish guy” looks) who strikes it big with a hit play (a serious play about the “common working man”) and gets tapped by Hollywood to be put up in an L.A. hotel to write the script for a B-level wrestling picture.

He’s this guy who seems completely up his own ass, talking about the “common man” in a really patronizing way, as he is far removed from them as an isolated nerdy writer, and is unable to just write a basic script for a B-movie, overthinking it to the point where he has writer’s block. His world gets blown up by his neighbor, played by John Goodman, who completely steals the movie and should have gotten an Oscar nomination for this film instead of Michael Lerner (though Goodman did get recognized by other award ceremonies at the time). Goodman is a talkative and charismatic insurance salesman who finds Barton Fink fascinating as a writer, and they quickly bond, though it’s not without its complications.

I really adored this movie, it’s dark and weird and just the hotel itself is like a character in the film, it has this rundown, creepy vibe to it that made it feel more like a dream world removed from reality.

I read that Jon Polito wanted to play the movie studio boss, as it was more natural fit for his style of being loud and blustery and crass, but Frances McDormand encouraged him to take the role of a meeker, quieter studio assistant, more in deference to his boss while trying to guide Fink on how to address him. He did well, but one could definitely feel that it took more work for him to restrain himself like that in the role.

I had forgotten who played the female lead, and mistakenly thought it was Jennifer Jason Leigh as the secretary to a perpetually drunk Faulkner-like writer (John Mahoney), but it was Judy Davis, who was great in this and nailed the 1940s look and Southern accent. But I was very close, as in the IMDB trivia, it said that Leigh did audition for that role, and I assume the Coens kept that audition in their pocket for when they cast her in The Hudsucker Proxy (which is set in 1957 but seemed like it should have been set in the 1940s) as a Rosalind Russell/Katharine Hepburn journalist type.

Thoughts of 12 Days of Actress

This video by Be Kind Rewind collects film recommendations from 11 YouTubers (a few who I watch) who are mostly film essayists and nerds, a mix of women, queer people, and BIPOC, with really great selections for movies featuring stellar actresses to celebrate. I already watched La Ceremonie based on BKR’s recommendation, and I’ll share my thoughts on their other choices.

Movies I’ve Seen: Batman Returns, West Side Story, Strike!/All I Wanna Do/The Hairy Bird (known by all three titles), Jackie Brown, Eve’s Bayou, Scream, La Ceremonie.

Movies I Haven’t Seen: What’s Up, Doc?, Suspiria (either version), Summer Interlude, The Lion in Winter, Deathtrap.

As a little kid, I had randomly seen Batman Returns on TV and was struck by Michelle Pfeiffer’s beauty and performance, she was the first female celebrity I could think of as “sexy” (Elias Koteas was the first male one I felt that way about). I just found her so fascinating, and on a couple rewatches as an adult, I found I really didn’t like the movie except when she was onscreen, and kept skipping around to just watch her scenes. It’s not even finding her attractive as Catwoman, I liked her much more as Selina Kyle. I liked that even as a “mousy” secretary prior to her rebirth, she didn’t play her as a pathetic sad sack loser. She was still funny and self-deprecating and charming, and I absolutely love the sequence of her post-rebirth, just wrecking her apartment, looking rough, and getting into a feverish state of creating her costume. Pfeiffer was amazing in that film, full stop.

Strike!/All I Wanna Do/The Hairy Bird is a mid-90s direct to video teen film that I knew of because one of my cousins had a very brief part as a prep school girl, she’s onscreen for a second in a close-up. It’s known by three titles, but it’s an underrated teen girl movie starring a who’s who of 90s teen girl actresses, headlined by Kirsten Dunst, about a 1960s all-girl prep school going co-ed, and Dunst and some of the other girls fighting back with a strike. I don’t recall a lot about it, but I liked it, and felt it should be better known. Besides Dunst, it costarred Gaby Hoffmann, Heather Matatazzo, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Monica Keena.

I heard of Pam Grier through Jackie Brown, reading a long profile on her in SPIN magazine at the time it came out, and thought she was incredible. Not just being cool and stunningly beautiful, but had been through the wringer with rough relationships (Richard Pryor being one of them), and being underrated for years (by mainstream Hollywood, not by Black audiences) before Jackie Brown gave her career a resurgence. I’ve seen the movie twice, and I love how composed and tough and methodical she is throughout the film, yet still showing vulnerability and being frustrated. She plans out complicated cons and heists, while building a quiet slow burn romance with Robert Forster’s character. She just rides through the film with a sense of inner elegance, and it’s a masterpiece for her.

I only just saw Eve’s Bayou last year, having known of it since the 90s but never being able to see it. I loved it. It’s a Southern Gothic tale with incredible actresses ranging from then-child Jurnee Smollett to veteran Diahann Carroll, and the film felt so haunting and eerie, with this undercurrent of tragedy. It really felt unlike a lot of other films I’ve seen, and I’m happy that at that time, Kasi Lemmons got the chance to direct it after playing less memorable friend parts in Hollywood movies, and still has a thriving career directing in films and television. And that while I knew of Jurnee Smollet as a child actress way back from her recurring role on Full House, today she’s way more acclaimed and recognized for her roles in Lovecraft Country and Birds of Prey.