Thoughts on The Funeral

    On Criterion, I watched The Funeral, a Japanese film from 1984, from the director Juzo Itami (Tampopo), about a family organizing the funeral of the eldest patriarch in the family, Shinkichi Amamiya (Hideji Ataki), who died of a heart attack, and having three days to balance between traditional norms and modern conveniences. It’s a really interesting and good family dramedy, where there’s a long scene of the family debating whether to put his body in a coffin or lay his body in his bed at home for one last night, and explaining the logistics of keeping his body in the coffin and not upsetting his widow Kikue (Kin Sugai) by putting him on his bed and prolonging the mourning period.

    There’s a scene where two cars are driving at high speed side by side in the rain, while the occupants are eating sandwiches, then passing one sandwich to the other through the car windows while driving.

    There’s a scene where his son in-law Wabisuke Inoue (Tsutomu Yamazaki) is on the phone about coffin sales, and is like “What do you have that is just above average?”, not wanting something too fancy or too cheap. There’s another great scene where he and his wife Chizuko (Nobuko Miyamoto) are watching a how-to video on funeral etiquette, learning what to say to those expressing their condolences and giving pat, polite but robotic answers.

    Itami often worked with his wife Nobuko Miyamoto, and he passed in 1997 at age 64, while she’s still living today at age 79.

    This is a really nice sequence of the family preparing the funeral, filmed in black and white home movie style, to focus more on the little moments in between rather than the procedural of the funeral.

Thoughts on God Told Me To

    On Criterion, I watched Larry Cohen's 1976 crime thriller God Told Me To, produced by Roger Corman's New World Pictures. The film depicts the grittiness and lawlessness of 1970s New York City, as random acts of violence terrorize the city: a sniper perches above a water tower and fires at random pedestrians; a man murders his wife and children (thankfully, the scene isn't depicted and only described after the events), and a police officer (played by a then-unknown Andy Kaufman) fires on other cops during the St. Patrick's Day Parade. What all these shootings have in common is that the last words of the killers before their deaths (either by suicide or by police) is the cryptic, "God told me to."

    Detective Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco, who just passed away this past June at age 87) is a devout Catholic and Bronx native, and is investigating the shootings, and is taken aback by all the killers having the same motive and saying the same expression, and as he digs deeper into the pattern and finds the supernatural connection that the killers have, it gets to be more along the lines of science fiction, which is an interesting twist from just seeming like a police procedural about serial mass shootings.

    This was a really interesting movie to watch, and it made me think of later 1990s crime thrillers like Se7en and Fallen, both which would follow serial murders between seemingly unconnected people, the former being a serial killer following the seven deadly sins and the latter being about the devil possessing people to commit murder. Lo Bianco was great at playing the old-school Catholic New Yorker who is wrestling with faith when investigating the murders. The great Sylvia Sidney has a fantastic cameo late in the film, with her big movie star eyes of her 1930s ingenue days and rough smoker's voice of her senior years, she was excellent to watch.

    I saw Larry Cohen in person a couple of years before his death in 2019, it was at a screening in 2017 at the Quad Cinema in New York City of his 1984 film Perfect Strangers, where Cohen sat at the back of the theater, and when the film broke twice while screening, and Cohen would crack jokes, going "Intermission time!" in his rough scratchy New Yorker accent of decades past. He was a lot of fun to listen to when he told stories about the making of the film, with his salt of the earth sense of humor. I am happy I got to see him in person and see him speak about it, he was truly a legend of both cult films and the Hollywood 1970s scene.

Thoughts on Phffft

     On Criterion, I watched the 1954 romantic comedy Phffft, written by George Axelrod (playwright of The Seven Year Itch, screenplays for Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Manchurian Candidate) directed by Mark Robson (Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls) starring Jack Lemmon and Judy Holliday as a divorcing couple, Robert and Nina Tracey, who are splitting after eight years together and frequent bicker with each other. Robert moves out to stay with his Navy buddy Charlie Nelson (Jack Carson), while Nina looks to her interfering mother for guidance, who blames Robert for the breakup.

    The two are trying to move on from each other, with dating others, with Robert dating the Marilyn Monroe-esque Janis (Kim Novak in an early role, and with whom Jack Lemmon would appear in Bell, Book, and Candle in 1958), and Nina seeing other men, including Charlie. But when they find themselves with their dates at the same nightclub, dancing the mambo together in a comical way, after they had both taken dance lessons on their own, and trying to one-up each other on the dance floor, it's obvious that the love and chemistry isn't gone between Robert and Nina.

    I really liked this movie. Judy Holliday had this really sparkling, modern quality to her comedy that made me think of later comic actresses like Madeleine Kahn, being bright and funny and charismatic. Like in a scene where she's trying to learn French and having trouble with pronunciation, and her instructor calls her out on only trying something new after her divorce, like many others who use their divorces as a catalyst for a new hobby.

    And Jack Lemmon had this boyish cuteness early on, looking like an average everyman, and was very expressive in his face, like when he's trying to seduce Janis while she's unaware of his intentions, telling the story on his face like a theater actor. This was the second of Lemmon and Holliday's films together that same year, the first being It Should Happen to You.

    The title, which feels hard to say casually and more of a wordless expression, came from Walter Winchell's column, which would describe a celebrity couple's marriage breakup as "phffft," like a balloon deflating.

    It's a fun and light comedy, carried by Lemmon and Holliday's comic talents, and I recommend it as a sweet romantic comedy of the 1950s.

Thoughts on Times Square

    On Criterion, I watched Times Square, a 1980 film directed by Allan Moyle, and starring Trini Alvarado, Robin Johnson, and Tim Curry. 

    Allan Moyle directed Pump up the Volume (1990) and Empire Records (1995), and those films, about rebellious teenagers using rock music to express their frustrations and challenge authority, falls in line with the themes of this movie, his first major film.

   A very much of its time movie from 1980 starring a very young Alvarado (best known as Meg from the 1994 Little Women adaptation) and Johnson as teen girls in NYC who escape from a mental institution to run around Times Square, back when it was seedy and grimy and full of porno theaters and peep shows and shady street types. Nicky (Johnson) is a brash, outspoken teen who is punk rock to the core, came from a rough family background (dad left, mom OD'd), arrested several times, screaming her pain and frustration and not having a healthy outlet. She and Pamela (Alvarado), a slightly younger, quieter kid, race around the city dropping TVs from building rooftops, evade cops in chases, do petty shoplifting, and Pamela even works as a clothed dancer in a topless bar despite obviously being underage. The girls crash a radio station, with Tim Curry as the star DJ, and blast their punk rock jams, achieving cult hero status as the Sleez Sisters.

    Good use of Patti Smith's "Pissing in a River" during a friendship breakup montage.

    It reminds me of movies around this time like Foxes and Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabolous Stains, about teen girls with no adult guidance growing up fast on the streets, Gen-X teen kids in sleazy underground environments and not knowing how to direct their anger and frustration.

    Robin Johnson has this fire to her that I really like at just 15, with a raspy New Yawk voice that makes her sound older, and her character feels more lived-in. Trini Alvarado at 13 has this innocent sweetness to her that makes her character more naive. Both characters are very vulnerable, though Nicky tries to hide her fears with a lot of big tough talk.

    It's interesting to watch as a look at a Times Square that no longer exists, as it's much more commercialized and gentrified now and not as dangerous as it was decades ago.

Thoughts on Eyimofe (This Is My Desire)

    On Criterion, I watched the 2020 film Eyimofe (This Is My Desire), based off of Ayo Edebiri's recommendation on a Criterion Closet video. It was directed by Nigerian twin brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri, and focuses on two working-class people in Lagos trying to eke out a living while wanting to travel abroad to Europe for work and more opportunities. Mofe (Jude Akuwudike) is an electrician who lost his family to a tragedy, and is dealing with owing money to various people, going through the bureaucratic stress of handling his family's funeral and estate costs, not being able to leave the country due to visa issues, and feeling trapped. Similarly, Rosa (Temi Ami-Williams), is a hairdresser who is struggling to pay the rent, taking care of her younger teen sister, taking advantage of her landlord's leniency until he feels used, and she dates a white American in Nigeria on business, hoping he can help her find a way out.

    It's a really fascinating movie about regular people going through economic struggles, where everything is about money or a deal going through, and I could really feel the frustration of the characters feeling trapped in their status, and when Mofe screams and wrecks shit up at his job, I could relate to his pain.

Thoughts on My Own Private Idaho

   On Criterion, I rewatched Gus van Sant’s 1991 film My Own Private Idaho, a film that is both a classic of 1990s independent film and queer cinema. It’s really well-known, so I don’t have to go too much into a plot summary, but River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves play Mike and Scott, hustlers and sex workers who live on the streets, both queer but only Mike being able to admit it, while Scott sees himself as “gay for pay” (a term for seemingly straight men who do gay sex work), and living in Seattle and Portland and traveling around, getting by on sex work, drug use, and hanging around other street characters.

    The movie is based on both John Rechy’s 1963 novel City of Night, featured street hustlers who did not admit to being gay, and a modern interpretation of William Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Henry V, which is clearer in the scenes between Keanu Reeves as Scott and the late William Richert as Bob the Pigeon, a middle-aged mentor to a gang of street kids and hustlers who live in an abandoned apartment building. They exchange theatrical monologues that feel very Shakespearean, and it’s a fun and unique touch to the movie to blend it with the modern day issues of homelessness and drug addiction and poverty.

    I hadn’t seen this movie in many years, and had only vaguely remembered it, so it was really nice to rewatch it. Phoenix and Reeves were excellent in this film, with a natural chemistry and ease, and I liked the layers of their relationship, how Sean came from a rich family with his father being the mayor, waiting for a big inheritance so he could leave the streets, while Mike came from a unstable poor background without knowing who his father was or where his mother’s whereabouts are. Mike also has narcolepsy, randomly passing out and having romanticized visions of his long-lost mother.

    This scene is of Mike waking up in a rich neighborhood from his narcolepsy, after Scott and another hustler removed him from a client’s (Grace Zabriskie) home, and he is approached by Hans (Udo Kier), a German man looking to give him a ride to town, with Mike being skeptical of his ulterior motives.

    It’s a really stunning, sad, and beautiful film, and I’m glad I revisited it.

Thoughts on Theodora Goes Wild

   On Criterion, I watched the 1936 screwball comedy Theodora Goes Wild, directed by Richard Boleslawski, written by Sidney Buchman, with story by Mary McCarthy, starring Irene Dunne and Melvyn Douglas. Dunne, who was just starting her winning streak as a screwball comedy heroine, plays Theodora Lynne, a Sunday school teacher and organist in a small conservative Connecticut town, who has a double life as a romance novelist, under the pen name Caroline Adams, and when excerpts of her salacious, sexual-tinged stories are published in the local newspaper, the local women are all aghast at it, declaring it immoral, while Theodora keeps her anonymity as the writer.

    She goes to New York City to meet with her publisher, worried about her real identity being leaked, and is soon introduced to her illustrator, Michael (Douglas), developing a playful relationship with him when out to dinner with her publisher and his wife. But when Theodora returns to her hometown, Michael follows her, and as she says that nobody thinks she knows anyone from out of town, he makes up a cover story of being her new gardener, scandalizing the locals and inciting gossip (the movie has several montages of the old women on the phone with each other gossiping, and even some close-ups of cats to show how "catty" they are being), and pushes her to have fun and get out of her straight-laced life, being afraid to break tradition publicly even while writing romance novels on the sly. And Theodora, when discovering more about Michael and his personal life in New York City, also wants to help him have more freedom and independence. Both of them essentially encourage the other to stand up to others to have more agency in their lives.

    It's a fun movie, and Irene Dunne is really charming and cute in this, as a woman who lets out her secret desires for love and adventure under a pseudonym to write stories, while still wanting to appear as a "good" woman for her Christian conservative town. And Melvyn Douglas has this sly wit to him that makes him interesting to watch as Michael, as he doesn't come across as old-fashioned as other romance heroes of the time may have. 

    It's a fairly light movie, likely not as memorable as Dunne's 1937 film The Awful Truth, but it was still enjoyable to watch as a 1930s screwball comedy hidden gem. And there's also a cute scruffy dog that gets into the mix, so that's a bonus.

Thoughts on Thoroughbreds

    On Hulu, I watched Thoroughbreds, a 2017 film directed by Cory Finley, a dark comedy about two teen girls, Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Amanda (Olivia Cooke) as two rich girls in suburban Connecticut who reconnect, after Lily gets kicked out of her prep school and Amanda killed her horse as a botched mercy killing and is up on charges of animal abuse, and they find a renewed weird kinship with each other, and hatch a murder plot, with using an older drug dealer and convicted sex offender (Anton Yelchin) as the chosen assassin. This was his final movie before dying in a freak accident in 2016, and the film was dedicated to him.

    I had heard of this movie years ago, and only just watched it recently, and really liked it a lot, especially liking Olivia Cooke in this role. She has this pretty dollface, but brings out this dark twisted deadpan humor that works really well. I had heard of her casually before, from her roles in Ready Player One and The Sound of Metal, and she’s more known now for House of the Dragon. And Anya Taylor-Joy has become a prestige actress in a lot of offbeat artsy films, as well as an action heroine in Furiosa.

    This scene is after they have an argument, where Amanda pushes Lily to be more honest with her and get her frustrations out as a weight off of her chest.

Thoughts on Used People

    On Tubi over the weekend, I watched Used People, a 1992 movie directed by the British politician and director Beeban Tania Kidron (To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar) starring Shirley MacLaine as a Queens Jewish widow named Pearl Berman in 1969 whose husband had just died after 37 years of marriage, and an old Italian man (Marcelo Mastroianni) named Joe, who had briefly met her husband in 1946 when he was at a crossroads in his life, shows up to ask her to coffee and to court her.

    Pearl’s daughters Bibby and Norma (Kathy Bates and Marcia Gay Harden) are each divorced, and Bibby struggles with being treated as a homely smelly weirdo by her mother and the community, being undermined by her mother constantly, while Norma, whose baby died three years prior and is struggling with grief from the loss of her child and marriage, dresses up as famous movie stars, like Marilyn Monroe and Faye Dunaway, to feel glamorous to get out of bed.

    I liked this movie, it was often centered on the women in the family, and focused on how judgmental and gossipy a lot of the local community could be, including two nosy old women in their family, played by Jessica Tandy and Sylvia Sidney, who were some of my favorites in the movie. And the title is a commentary on how women back then who were widowed or divorced and older than being youthful types were seen as “used goods,” in a sexist, old hag kind of way.

    I liked how it was about finding love late in life, fearing getting re-married to possibly being hurt by being widowed again, and how both daughters were hurt by the trauma their mother inflicted on them, while Pearl refused to take any real accountability for her actions, and how the trauma and grief affects her grandson, who thinks his grandpa’s ghost will keep him from any bodily harm, testing his luck with dangerous stunts.

    I’m glad I came across this, it was definitely the kind of movie about old people that I like.