Thoughts on Miracle Mile

    On Tubi, I watched the 1988 nuclear war movie Miracle Mile, written and directed by Steve de Jarnatt (Cherry 2000), where Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham play Harry and Julie, who meet at the La Brea Tar Pits in L.A., quickly fall in love, and when they plan to have a second date at midnight, a power outage gets in the way of his alarm clock, and while he’s out during the night leaving a phone message for her, he picks up the ringing phone to hear a desperate anonymous plea that there will be nuclear war in an hour. From there on, Harry is caught up in trying to warn people, save Julie, and get others to believe him while he himself hopes he’s not wrong about his predictions.

    I had heard of this movie, but only vaguely knew what it was about, and I really liked it a lot. It’s very much of the time of being a Cold War-era nuclear holocaust movie, and it felt really tense, as everything takes place within an hour in one night, and when Harry inadvertently causes deaths, it did hit me as very dark and bleak, and the ending doesn’t give much hope either. I really liked it a lot, and the love story felt so sweet and realistic, of caring about these people who just started dating, and knowing that in real life, Edwards and Winningham would start dating during the pandemic and get married, being well into middle age by then.

Thoughts on The Gift

 On Tubi, I watched the 2015 film The Gift (not to be confused with the 2000 film The Gift), written and directed by actor Joel Edgerton, and really liked it a lot. My parents just watched it and recommended it to me. It’s a psychological thriller about an affluent couple named Simon and Robyn (Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall) who move from Chicago to an L.A. suburb for Simon’s corporate job, and live in a fancy swanky house. Robyn is working from home, and is struggling after a pregnancy loss. Robyn is more introverted and quiet and nice, while Simon is more outgoing but has a sarcastic sense of humor that can come off as snobby.

    By chance, they are approached by Gordo (Edgerton), a former high school classmate of Simon’s, and Gordo, an awkward oddball loner, pushes himself into their lives, showing up unannounced at their home and sending them gifts. Simon is often dismissive towards him, treating him as a weirdo, and refusing to acknowledge how his treatment of him in high school led him to his current path in life. While Robyn just sees him as being misunderstood and a little odd, but as the story unfolds, she both is creeped out by Gordo’s quiet stalking of their lives, and realizing that Simon has a much more sinister side to him than she realizes.

    The main trio are all excellent in this film. Bateman’s usual sarcasm is used to make him more of a bully; Edgerton’s quiet reserve makes him more mysterious and intimidating, and Hall’s cerebral intelligence makes her more suspicious as to what these two men in her life are capable of.

    I kept thinking of Michael Haneke’s 2005 film Caché, where Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil play an affluent Parisian couple who receive anonymous messages from a stalker, sending them videos of them in their home, and making them paranoid, and Binoche’s character worrying that Auteuil’s character’s past has come back to haunt them. There felt to be some similarities, and the Wikipedia article for The Gift did acknowledge Caché as one of Edgerton’s influences for the film, along with Hitchcock’s films.

    This was a brilliant film, and I’m glad I checked it out.

Thoughts on I Saw the TV Glow

    I went to see I Saw The TV Glow yesterday and really liked it. It's an A24 artsy indie movie directed by Jane Schoenbrun (We're All Going to the World's Fair), about two teenagers, Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigitte Lundy-Paine) who, in 1996, become obsessed with this supernatural teen TV show called The Pink Opaque, that looks like a Nickelodeon teen drama mixing the monster of the week Buffy the Vampire Slayer drama with some Secret World of Alex Mack 90s effects, and references to Are You Afraid of the Dark? and The Adventures of Pete & Pete. The teens are both very isolated, both on the queer spectrum (Maddy is a lesbian, Owen might be asexual/ace), and get wrapped up in this show to escape their empty, depressing lives. The show effects them both in greatly different ways, using the media consumption of the show as a substitute for actually living their lives, and using the show to identify themselves rather than anything in their real lives, being obsessed with the TV screen and sitting in the dark with the TV glow.

    I was really into the movie, and liked how the director is clearly a millennial, as they depicted the fictional show in a very mid-90s, SNICK kind of way (SNICK was the programming block that Nickelodeon would do on Saturday nights to air more teen-oriented shows, like Are You Afraid of the Dark? or All That), with the TV's show credits done in the same font as Buffy the Vampire Slayer's. The show, which was basically about two teen girls who are psychically connected to fight monsters, definitely had a queer coding vibe between the two girls, hence why a character like Maddy would be so drawn to it.

    I don't think I really understood the second half of the movie, as the first half is told through Owen's point of view, then when Maddy is talking about the show and their teen years, as the second half takes place a decade later, she looks back on events with a very different perspective, and I wasn't really sure if I was to take her perspective literally or not, I think some of it was lost on me.

    But I did like the movie a lot, and it did benefit from having more of a budget and added star power for more distribution. Besides being an A24 film, it is produced by Emma Stone and her husband Dave McCrary through their production company Fruit Tree, it had Danielle Deadwyler as Owen's mom, Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst in a nearly silent role as Owen's dad, and the dance choreographer Emma Portner in multiple roles (Maddy's friend Amanda, as well as the monster characters in the show).

    I also really liked Brigitte Lundy-Paine a lot, they were dynamite in this role. I had heard of them years back from the Netflix show Atypical, playing a teen girl, and they also played Keanu Reeves' daughter in the third Bill and Ted movie, so it's nice to see their star rising more.

    I read the Stereogum music blog, and they've been covering the soundtrack for this movie, and it's really excellent. There is a sequence in this movie where the teens go to a bar where a band fronted by Phoebe Bridgers is performing onstage, and it's like a whole music video just takes over, and it's fantastic.

    Jane was on this past week's Criterion Closet video, and I liked their picks, like Peeping Tom (a British 1960 psychological horror film about a serial killer who films people with a mirror to witness their own deaths), and Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, one of my favorite films by him next to The Royal Tenenbaums. I like Jane's nerdy enthusiasm about films, and am glad their movie is getting way more attention, as We're All Going to the World's Fair got critical acclaim but came out in 2021 during the pandemic and had limited availability to see.

Thoughts on Seconds

    On Criterion, I watched John Frankenheimer’s 1966 sci-fi thriller Seconds, starring Rock Hudson, and liked it a lot. I had heard recommendations of it a few times, and I liked how it felt like a feature length version of a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode, with a lot of artsy tilted camera angles from cinematographer James Wong Howe. A middle aged banker named Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) feels bored and unfulfilled in his life, with his love for his wife dwindling, and missing his adult daughter, who lives far away and started a family of her own.

    He gets a call from a friend who was long presumed dead, and sets him off on a journey that leads him to a secret place that offers him the opportunity to fake his death, get plastic surgery, and become a whole new identity to live his life anew. He takes the offer, and is remade into Antiochus 'Tony' Wilson (Rock Hudson), a successful visual artist. He is moved into a community of other “reborns,” and learns that even with a new face and name, he’s still essentially the same person mentally, with only superficial signs of glamour and success, and feeling like this new identity isn’t him.

    I really liked this movie, and appreciated how Rock Hudson was trying to break out of his romantic comedy roles and being taken more seriously. He’s really good in this as a man who is conflicted over having a handsome face but still having insecurities over his identity and feeling content in life. The film was really interesting to watch, and I’m glad I checked it out.

Thoughts on Le Havre

    On Criterion, I watched Le Havre, Aki Kaurismäki's 2011 comedy-drama set in the French port city of Le Havre, and starring Andre Wilms as Marcel Marx, a humble shoeshiner who lives a frugal life in a small house with his wife Arletty (Kati Outinen) and their dog. He used to want to be a literary author in Paris, but gave that up to live a more simple life on his meager earnings, enjoying the company of his wife and the patrons at his favorite bar. 

    When Arletty falls seriously ill, Marcel's path crosses with an adolescent African boy, Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), who traveled with other refugees in a giant cargo container by sea, and were caught by police, led by the inspector Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin). Idrissa is encouraged by his grandfather to make a run for it, and he evades the police, and ends up meeting Marcel by chance, who has sympathy for his situation and doesn't give him up to the police. He takes him in to hide in his home, and Marcel's friends agree to be a secret network to hide him too, sneaking Idrissa food and keeping him in the back of their shops. 

    Marcel is now juggling responsibilities of visiting his beloved wife in the hospital, whose condition is more serious but she doesn't want her husband to know it; hiding Idrissa from the authorities, and going through the refugee center system to track down Idrissa's grandfather to help him get to London to reunite with his mother.

    It's a really nice movie, that combines present-day politics of boat immigration of undocumented people coming to Europe from African nations, with this 1950s small-town whimsy that feels out of classic French cinema. Kaurismäki chose to name characters as homages to French cultural icons, like Arletty is named for the actress Arletty, who was a film star in the 1930s-1940s, and a doctor named Becker is named for the director Jacques Becker, whose 1940s films inspired the French New Wave directors. Marcel Marx was named for Karl Marx, and the character also appeared in Kaurismäki's 1992 film La vie de Boheme, also played by Wilms.

    The film also has this whole musical cameo and sequence by the French musician Little Bob, portraying himself and performing late in the film, and while it can feel different to have a whole concert going on in this one part, his R&B/blues rock style is really great and cool to listen to.

    There's a nice friendly chemistry between Marcel and Idrissa, who quickly trust each other, and Idrissa isn't a naive youth, but knows that he was supposed to land in London, got in Le Havre by mistake, and just wants to be reunited with his mother, as his father passed away, likely during the journey. He and Marcel develop a good bond and understanding, and while they only know each other a brief time, it's very meaningful and caring as they help each other out.

Thoughts on Eileen

    On Hulu, I watched the 2023 film Eileen, directed by William Oldroyd, based on the 2015 novel by Otessa Moshfegh, who co-wrote the screenplay with her husband, Luke Goebel. The film starred Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, and Shea Wigham. It's a psychological thriller set in 1964 Massachusetts that starts out seemingly as a young woman's need to escape her damaging home life and falling for a stranger, but reveals itself to be much darker and more complex.

    Eileen (McKenzie) is a 24-year old woman taking care of her alcoholic, unemployed police chief father (Wigham), whose drunken antics and paranoid ranting, in part from being a WWII veteran with PTSD, have made him a pariah in their small town, and him being blamed for her mother's slow death from an illness. He exerts control over Eileen by emotionally abusing her, telling her she's plain and ordinary. "Some people, they are the real people. Like in a movie, they're the ones you're watching, they're the ones making moves. And the other people, they're just there filling the space. And you take' em for granted. You think, they're easy. Take a penny, leave a penny. That's you, Eileen." She fantasizes about killing him or herself to escape their dank hellhole of a home. 

    She works in a corrections facility for teenage boys, being shunned and mocked by her colleagues, like the bitter Mrs. Murray (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), and treated like a mousy kid. Eileen, on occasion, will drive out to a lover's lane secluded area, watching other couples in their cars have sex, and she will masturbate, but then scoop out ice from outside and put it down her pants, to repress her own desires and cool herself down.

    A new prison psychologist named Rebecca (Hathaway) comes in, speaking in a clipped Transatlantic sophisticated accent, with platinum blonde hair and fitted dresses. Eileen is immediately transfixed by her mysterious glamour, and Rebecca takes a liking to her, inviting her out to have drinks (where they dance together on the floor and Rebecca swiftly knocks an aggressive man against the wall for trying to cut in), and Eileen, whose sexuality had long been dormant, is falling for her and seeing her as an escape from her dead-end, depressing life.

    Rebecca is like a noir heroine off of the movie screens, with a mysterious past, saying how she never likes to stick around for too long, and uses her psychology skills to figure out Eileen, telling her she's meant for bigger things, and saying while she's not "beautiful," she still has an interesting gaze about her. This only pulls Eileen in more, without realizing how manipulative Rebecca is being for her ulterior motives.

    At the juvenile detention center, one of the inmates is Lee Polk (Sam Nivola), who is serving time for having stabbed his cop father to death. The townspeople think he's a psycho for killing his father, a "good cop," and think he just snapped and is a monster. Rebecca is assigned to work with him in therapy sessions and assess his character and possibility for reoffending. There is more to the story that I won't spoil, but I will highlight that Marin Ireland as his mother gave an incredible performance in this film that steals the film from the two stars, and was stunning to watch, being a standout actor largely known for her theater career.

    Both McKenzie and Hathaway are fantastic in this film. McKenzie, a New Zealand actor, does a great working-class Massachusetts accent, and can play the definition of "still waters run deep," with her looking meek on the outside but wanting to explode. And Hathaway speaks in a Katharine Hepburn-like voice, standing above everyone in her platinum hair and high heels, and has an "above it all" attitude when working in the prison and being amongst the general public of the town, the type that gets quickly gossiped about by small town folks not used to outsiders.

    The film is made to look like 1960s film stock, in an intentionally B-movie thriller way, but was shot on digital cameras. It gave a great look to make the film seem older than it actually is, and to be more immersed in the story.

    This is a really great film,  a movie that seemingly starts like a queer awakening story and then turns into something else. I highly recommend it.

Thoughts on Go

     On Criterion, I watched Doug Liman's 1999 film Go, as part of their 1999 film showcase. I had seen this movie way back in college circa 2002, in a dorm room with other kids, and re-watching it now, it brought me back to when I was a teen in the late 1990s. My teenage life was nothing like this movie, but I remembered aspects like Katie Holmes' teen TV stardom from Dawson's Creek, late 90s rave culture and electronic music, Timothy Olyphant being a scene-stealer and somewhat unknown at the time (aside from playing one of the killers in Scream 2), Sarah Polley's breakout as a mainstream star (only to prefer small indie films and Canadian dramas and ultimately becoming a director), Scott Wolf being a TV star with Party of Five and often compared to Tom Cruise, and songs like No Doubt's "New," Len's "Steal My Sunshine," a remix of "Macarena," Massive Attack's "Angel," Fatboy Slim's "Gangster Tripping," and DJ Rap's "Good to Be Alive" setting a whole late 1990s pop-electronic music dance soundtrack.

    The film's setup of three interconnected segments owes a lot to Pulp Fiction, with an ensemble cast broken up into three story acts where events loosely connect with each other, as well as the popularity post-Quentin Tarantino fame of wise-cracking characters making pop culture references (The Breakfast Club, the Family Circus comic strip, Tantric sex as popularized by Sting and Trudie Styler), and drug culture being very casual with various pills being bought and dealt all over the place. And it's set on Christmas Eve in L.A., so it adds to being an unconventional Christmas movie with no snow but Christmas lights all over the place.

    The basic setup is that Ronna (Polley) is a checkout girl in a supermarket who is going to be evicted fast if she doesn't pay the rent, so she agrees to cover for her co-worker Simon (Desmond Askew) to handle his drug-dealing for the weekend so she can make extra cash and he can go party in Las Vegas with his friends (Taye Diggs, James Duval, Breckin Meyer). She finds the drug dealer (Olyphant) to be sketchy, but has to deal with him, and leaves behind her other co-worker Claire (Holmes) to stay with him in his apartment as collateral while she does the business, dealing out pills to club kids. Simon ends up having a crazy weekend with his friends, involving strippers, a gun, and a pissed-off bouncer. And soap opera actors and couple Adam (Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr) are looking to score some pills while working with a cop (William Fichtner) to avoid some trouble. It's all a messy, weird Christmas Eve for young Angelenos looking to score some drugs and have some fast fun.

    One of my personal favorite moments was with a pre-fame Melissa McCarthy as a roommate of a friend of Adam and Zack's. She had a little scene-stealing moment of seeming like a more normal person amongst all the fast-paced antics, and had this cheeky mischievous look to her face that made her funny and charming. I had heard of her name later from Gilmore Girls, but had remembered this little moment in the film.