Thoughts on The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Stargate, Dick Johnson is Dead, and Coming 2 America

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek: a 1944 film by Preston Sturges that had to have been controversial when it came out. Betty Hutton plays a teen girl named Trudy Kockenlocker who goes to a goodbye dance for soldiers off to fight in WWII, and has a crazy drunken night going off to different parties, and the next day, is married and pregnant and can’t remember what happened or who it was with. (This can also have darker implications, but I’m just going to keep it light and assume it was all consensual). She used a fake name on the marriage certificate that she can’t remember, and has this loud oaf of a constable father that she’s afraid to confront, while her 14-year old sister seems a lot wiser beyond her years. Enter Eddie Bracken as Norval Jones, a sort of Mickey Rooney knockoff but dorkier and stuttering a lot, who looks both old and young at the same time, who has wanted Betty Hutton for ages and wants to help her save face by marrying her to avoid scandal. I was surprised at how good he was at physical comedy and pratfalls, and was pretty likable despite his weird impish face, which he outright calls homely. This was a pretty hilarious movie with some more daring post-Hayes Code humor for the time, and what would now seem like hacky comedy came off as funnier and more fresh back then. Betty Hutton was really cute and endearing in playing up her guilt and confusion over the lost night, and I especially liked Diana Lynn as her smartass sister who kept narrowly missing a kick in the rear by their dad, who just slips and falls with each kick attempt.

Stargate: the 1994 sci-fi blockbuster by Roland Emmerich, that I was amazed by when I was 11, but have mixed reactions to now. I love the buildup to it, the slow and nervous walk to the Stargate, the contrast in performances by James Spader as a science nerd and Kurt Russell as a military leader, and the setting of an ancient Egyptian culture on a faraway planet. All of that was creative and interesting. But I lost interest in the villain backstory and his role, where I just didn’t care. The god Ra possesses a young boy and steals the life force of humans to stay alive. But he arrives nearly 90 minutes into the movie, and I just couldn’t care about the villain’s plan, it felt stock and boring. I know the TV show did a much better job elaborating his story and giving him more of a character, the movie just made him more into a dull villain added way too late into the film.

Though when watching it, I kept thinking this movie felt like an out of character choice for Spader, since at that time, most of his films were either psychosexual thrillers or playing twisted villains, and seeing his play a more ordinary nerdy professor felt like less of a challenge. Well, the trivia I learned confirmed that, as he was apparently difficult to work with because he didn’t like science fiction, and kept asking what his character’s motivation and reasoning was. I half-expected Emmerich to just throw up his hands and be like “If we give your character a weird sexual fetish, would that make you happy?!” I think Spader just needs to play someone with quirks to be interesting, but more like unnerving weirdos, not full-on Johnny Depp quirk antics.

Dick Johnson is Dead: a 2020 documentary by Kirsten Johnson, in which she copes with the near-imminent losing of her octogenarian father by staging humorous death scenes with her father’s consent, complete with a whole film crew, fake blood effects, and stuntmen. She’s struggling with her father’s mortality, a funny and gregarious man who lost his wife to Alzheimer’s several years prior, and has been struggling with his own memory loss issues. This film has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards, and I really liked how it mixed the darkly comic sequences of his “deaths” with the more touching scenes of them and her kids, bonding more as a family and sharing old stories. It was a really unique and interesting film that I enjoyed watching a lot. I also lost my grandmother last year, so I likely had some subconscious resonance with it.

Coming 2 America: a 2021 sequel by Craig Brewer to the 1988 film. I thought it was just OK, but felt like a PG-13 sanitized version of the original, it felt too safe. I liked the callbacks to the first movie, but I mostly found Akeem’s son, who Akeem finds out about thirty years after he came to Queens, to be boring and not very interesting, he was just “there.” It tries to do the same story beats as the original, but didn’t have the same cult appeal that made it quotable or funny in the first place, it just felt like a very average but unmemorable sequel.

Thoughts on Minari, Nomadland, and Hello, My Name is Doris

Minari: a really good family drama from 2020 directed by Lee Issac Chung starring Steven Yeun as the patriarch of a Korean family living in 1980s Arkansas and trying to get by in their trailer home and his gardening job in producing heritage vegetables in Korean cuisine. I liked how intimate the film felt, based on the director’s childhood, and how the mom was feeling stifled and frustrated by the family’s limited options in contrast to the dad’s big promises of success. It felt very warm and real and honest, and I loved the grandma in it, how she was bawdy and funny and how the kids would one day appreciate that she wasn’t the usual storybook grandma they thought they wanted.

Nomadland: a really beautiful drama directed by Chloe Zhao from 2020 about people affected by the 2008 recession and living rural, nomadic lives in 2011 in the U.S., working seasonal jobs and escaping stagnant lives at home, without much of a future to see. Frances McDormand and David Straitharn are the big names in it, but the film’s power comes from its unprofessional actors largely playing versions of themselves, with characters ranging from a 75-year old woman with terminal cancer living on the road in her trailer with plans to die by her own hand in Alaska, to a wayward young man with addiction issues missing a distant girlfriend, to a lonely old man whose son died from addiction and not being able to cope with outliving his son. It’s a slow and quiet film that I really enjoyed, and I felt at peace with it.

Hello, My Name is Doris: an indie comedy from 2015, directed by Michael Showalter, starring Sally Field as an eccentric old woman with quirky fashion sense and hoarding issues who falls for a much younger coworker of hers (Max Greenfield), and is obsessed with her crush on him. It’s both a little sad to see his Brooklyn hipster crowd treat her like a pet, while also feeling sympathy for her as a much older woman who still feels vital and youthful in her heart, while also sad to see her in denial about her hoarding mental health issues. Sally Field is really great in this movie, she just embodies this character so well with heart and humor and understanding from age and experience.

Thoughts on Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet

 I was in the mood in February 2021 for a double feature of Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet. They are usually paired together as companion pieces, as it’s when Disney in the early 2000s tried some risks with more CGI animation and genre-bending stories, and both films flopped.

Of the two, I like Atlantis better. Even if it copies some aspects of Stargate (similar plot about discovering a lost ancient world, the lead a nerdy young professor trying to get funding for his proposal, an old mentor taking his theories seriously, taking a motley crew to the faraway world), I still thought it was gorgeous to look at, with a story about an indigenous culture fighting against colonists, and really a lot of fun to watch with a likable oddball crew. Sometimes I thought Michael J. Fox having a too recognizable voice was distracting, but I liked Cree Summer as Kida and hearing Jim Varney in his last role.

Treasure Planet had strengths with it being a weird mix of Treasure Island, steampunk, characters in 1700s-era clothing, and space travel, but I didn’t find the actual story interesting, despite that I know it’s a classic adventure story. I just couldn’t get invested in the characters or story, I just liked the aesthetic and creative blends. Also, the Johnny Rzeznik music took me out of the movie, it was way too 90s alternative rock to fit into this movie’s world.

So this was just interesting to watch these two movies back to back and compare them for my own fun.

Thoughts on Walk on the Wild Side

On Criterion, I watched a movie from 1962 called Walk on the Wild Side, directed by Edward Dymtryk, this melodrama set in the Depression (but a lot of the young women look like 1960s fashion models) in which Laurence Harvey, an English actor doing a decent Texan accent, is trekking from Texas to New Orleans to find his lost love Capucine (who looked glamorous but was a bore to watch), who is working in a brothel under the eye of Barbara Stanwyck, the madam who holds an obsession with her and won’t let her go. It was nice seeing Stanwyck in a much later role, being all buttoned-up and stern, as well as her playing one of film’s early lesbian characters, even if it’s more subtext than text, as she just seems more possessive of Capucine than anything resembling love.

A young Jane Fonda was the real highlight of this movie, a young woman (who is later revealed to be an underage minor, but I didn’t believe it) who is a hustler and a thief and tags along with Harvey, later working at the brothel. She just shined with so much spunkiness and charisma and sexuality, and I wanted to see more of her than Capucine trying to be melodramatic in a Garbo way and just dragging the film down. Even the way she tries to flop onto a couch by tossing her hair as she falls, I thought “That was a choice.” Fonda was just cute and funny and had a lot of screen presence so early in her career in this campy drama.

Having Anne Baxter play a Mexican woman was a questionable choice, but I at least appreciated that she didn’t play her as a racist caricature, she really gave a heartfelt and great performance as an outsider just trying to run her cafe alone and getting pulled into other people’s messy drama.

So this was better than I expected, since I’m not usually into melodramas. I just liked the variety of actress performances, good and bad, and the fun unintentional anachronisms of a Depression-set story still having a 1960s fashion to it.

Thoughts on Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

 A few nights ago I watched on Criterion the 1999 film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, directed by Jim Jarmusch. I hadn’t seen it in years, and it still held up pretty well. It’s an odd film, a slow-paced crime drama that mixes in old Italian mob guys that watch old kids’ cartoons, a laid-back hip-hop score by the RZA, Forest Whitaker as a quiet and remote assassin who follows a samurai code from an old book, Issach de Bankole as a talkative French-speaking ice cream man who is Ghost Dog’s best friend despite that they don’t speak the same language, and Camille Winbush (of The Bernie Mac Show) as an inquisitive little girl who carries her novels around in a lunchbox.

It feels like a fairly unique movie, that combines being a mob movie with a hip-hop vibe. I like the little moments in it. Like when a little red bird just randomly perched on Ghost Dog’s sniper rifle while he’s got a bead on mobsters and he just looks so happy and charmed by it. The instrumental of Raekwon’s “Ice Cream” playing in the park as the ice cream man is introduced and protégés of the Wu-Tang Clan are freestyling. The incredulous reactions of the mobsters hearing about the unconventional methods that Ghost Dog goes by (“He only wants to be paid once a year on the first day of autumn? OK, we’ll get back to that . . . He sends his messages by fucking bird?!”). How Whitaker was perfect for this role because in interviews, he comes off as very soft-spoken and a slow talker, and how it’s a contrast that works well with de Bankole’s energetic fast-talking, and the warmth that the two best friends have, who just get each other as outsiders on an unspoken level.

I know that Jarmusch’s slower pace in his films isn’t for everyone, but between this and Paterson, I generally find these movies to be peaceful and relaxing, it’s comforting and I feel more still and can breathe more easily when watching chilled-out movies like those.

Thoughts on One False Move

On Criterion I watched a 1992 thriller called One False Move, in which Ray (Billy Bob Thornton) and Pluto (Michael Beach) are two drug dealers who murder several people in a house in L.A. and run off with Ray’s accomplice girlfriend Fantasia (Cynda Williams), aka Lila, going to her Arkansas hometown, where two L.A. cops and Hurricane (Bill Paxton), a local sheriff, are waiting to catch them.

It’s a really tense thriller, as Thornton plays this easily paranoid tweaker with a bad ponytail who goes off at any second, while Beach is quiet and bespectacled, but can quickly get stabby without warning. The murder scenes are quick but pretty brutal to watch. Lila goes ahead of them to her hometown, in part to see her five-year old son and confront Hurricane, who is small-time but eagerly sees this case as his big score to bust some real criminals. He’s also casually racist, which gets pretty awful when he has this likable charm then just drops a racial slur that kills it immediately. And as Lila is Black, it does bring up some dynamics between them where she does outright call him out on his racism, as deservedly so.

I re-listened to the podcast Switchblade Sisters, which talked about this movie in 2019, and it brought up more interesting points about the film, namely the character of Fantasia/Lila, and how she starts off the film as seemingly the passive girlfriend (it took me a little time to realize she was Ray’s girlfriend and not a hostage from the mass murder), but gains more agency in her character arc, quietly manipulating her boyfriend to get ahead and complete her own business, and is a much stronger heroine in the end, who morally is a lot more innocent and good than her co-horts are. I’m trying not to give away too much, but her confrontation with Hurricane about past events and his racist attitudes cut deep, and I loved that she is blunt and unafraid of him, and he comes off as more cowardly in her presence.

I thought Cynda Williams did well in this film, especially in that sequence with Paxton, but feel like a stronger actress could have made more of a presence in the film. Not as a typical noir heroine, because she isn’t, she comes off as quiet for most of the film. But just as someone who could have made a bigger impression in an underrated film. I just realized that I was praising the male actors mostly before her, and wanted to give her more acknowledgment.

I was pleasantly surprised that this got on Criterion, because I just heard of it last year from a film podcast, and it seemed like a really hard to find movie that likely didn’t do well at the time of release and didn’t get much play. It’s a really well-acted and uncomfortable film to watch, as you can just feel like any of the characters will snap and panic and get violent at any trigger. Fun trivia fact: Thornton and Williams were married after the film wrapped in 1990, but were divorced by the time it came out in 1992.

Thoughts on Promising Young Woman

I really liked Promising Young Woman, directed by Emerald Fennell (of Killing Eve) and starring Carey Mulligan as Cassie, who plays a game of sorts of pretending to be intoxicated in clubs so that “nice guys” will try to rescue her, take her home, and when they get close to assaulting her, she snaps back into being sober and terrifying them.

She had dropped out of med school following her best friend Nina, who had been raped and later died by suicide. She is living with her parents, working as a barista by day and hunting dweebs at night, and exacts a very meticulous revenge plot against all who were complicit in discrediting her friend and allowing her rapist to go free, including building up to punishing the rapist himself. It’s an interesting journey she goes on, though I felt like the film pulled some punches in order to still make her character sympathetic to the audience, I was a little more interested in her being a lot more heartless and less likable.

I liked the contrast of the bright candy color motif of the film, like her long blonde hair with bangs, gingham dresses, Hard Candy-style pastel nail polish, and her parents’ plastic-covered dinner table, against the dark and seemingly sociopathic vibe of her hit list against those who set her friend’s fate to ruin, turning the tables on them in awful but fitting ways.

I could figure out a reveal in the ending that seemed a little too perfect, as the planets had to align for this to all happen in sync. And I was a little frustrated in how things ended up for her. And I did like that this didn’t feel like a typical rape revenge movie, as I realized that what I was expecting would be a little too predictable. This isn’t Ms. 45, as I had assumed, but more calculating than that. So I’m glad I watched it, after having seen the trailer for it a year ago and it only just hit streaming a few weeks ago.