Thoughts on Wanda

In October 2021, I watched Barbara Loden’s 1970 film Wanda on Criterion, a long lost movie that got restored in 2010, and I thought it was going to be this introspective indie gem about a lone woman figuring her way through life in tough blue collar worlds, but I found it meandering and boring. I appreciated the cinema verite look of it trying to look like a documentary, or following this woman who is pretty much a passive loser who abandons her family only to take up with lowlife men on the road, but I found it boring, and tuned in and out. I couldn’t really get a grasp on her character. She didn’t have to be some feminist hero, but at least I wanted to know what was going on more with her than just watching her as an observer. It just followed her going from leaving her husband and giving up custody of her kids, getting fired, falling asleep in a movie theater and getting robbed, then just happening to walk in on a bar robbery and taking up with the guy, and end up being an accomplice in a bank robbery, hooking up with other loser men, then at the end just seen in a crowded bar smoking, with not really a definitive end to her story, but the movie just ends there.

I think from the arthouse hype I thought this would be more deeper or groundbreaking, but it felt like it was trying to be this experimental art film, like indie when it was underground, that was written/directed and starred Loden, who was an actress who played Warren Beatty’s sister in Splendor in the Grass, was married to Elia Kazan, and only directed this film and later died of cancer at just 48 in 1980. I liked the intention of it, and that it was trying to look scrappy and rough, but I mostly found tedious.

Thoughts on Clifford

I watched Clifford in October 2021 on Hulu, the 90s movie where a middle-aged Martin Short plays a ten-year-old boy who causes a lot of life wrecking damage for his uncle Charles Grodin, who I felt could have a case of justifiable homicide since Clifford came off like he was guided by the Devil, especially when he frames his uncle for a false bomb plot and nearly ruins his relationships at work and with his fiancée’s family. However, I like the movie a lot more than when I first saw it at 11 and thought it was weird and off-putting. Now I found it really darkly funny, especially Short’s demented expressions to the audience and Grodin’s classic “losing my mind” rants and seething one-liners. I cracked up laughing at Grodin’s deadpan delivery on the doctored voicemail Clifford edits: “Hi, this is Martin Daniels, I'm not home right now but I got a bomb under city hall. Talk to you later.” I played that back a few times.

I could also see how, despite Short being a small man, that the movie did tricks to make him look even shorter around the others, like the other actors were standing on boxes or platforms to look like the “adults,” or Clifford wears a boy’s school uniform to look more childish. I’m also comparing this to seeing present-day Short in Only Murders in the Building, and how he’s not that much shorter than the other cast members to any significant degree.

I had heard that this movie was made earlier than its release, it was filmed around 1990-1991, but Orion Pictures was having issues and eventually declared bankruptcy and shut down, and the movie came out in 1994, with the bookended parts with old Clifford and a young Ben Savage filmed in 1993.

I can see why this bombed, it’s way too dark and weird, and kid me was also confused by it when I watched it as a rental that one of my parents picked. But I also think it works well as both having come out post-Home Alone and Problem Child as a more bizarre version of it, as well as a more stranger comedy that is more accepted in alternative comedies on streaming and Adult Swim.

Thoughts on Racing with the Moon

On Hulu in October 2021, I watched Racing with the Moon, a 1983 coming of age drama in which Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage play teens in 1942 California who are six weeks away from being shipped off as Marines to fight in WWII. A lot of it is about their loss of innocence, not just with figuring out their relationships with their girlfriends, but also being 17 and fearing the unknown in fighting in the war and not knowing if they will come back alive.

I thought it was decent, I liked that it was very character-driven. Sean Penn is the son of a gravedigger who dates Elizabeth McGovern, who he thinks is rich because she lives in a giant gated mansion but her mother is really the maid, and most of the movie focuses on their relationship, a lot with class struggles and her feeling hesitant to tell the truth. I thought they worked well together onscreen in a cute young love kind of way, and the actors did date for real during this time.

The other part focuses on Nicolas Cage as his drunken goofball friend who gets his girlfriend pregnant and is trying to come up with abortion money. I liked how loopy and offbeat Cage was in this early in his career, where he’s supposed to play the dumb friend but I found him more interesting to watch than Penn, who is fine but I just never liked him much as an actor, his real strengths is as a director showcasing character actors.

There are other early roles for big actors in this, like Crispin Glover as a jerk rich boy antagonizing Penn at his bowling alley job where he and Cage set up the pins in the years before they became mechanized, and Michael Madsen as a war amputee who Penn briefly meets while he accompanies McGovern to her volunteer hospital job. I also read that Dana Carvey was in this, but I wouldn’t know where. Carol Kane has a brief cameo where I think it’s hinted she’s a sex worker, and according to IMDB, Michael Schoeffling had an uncredited role as another amputee solider.

A running thing in this movie is that Penn and Cage like to race along trains and jump onto handles alongside them, and it’s their childhood game that they hold onto even as they know they are leaving their innocent lives for the uncertainty of war. Those parts were sweet, and come full circle at the end.

My favorite sequence was likely the pool hustle scene, where they are trying to get money for the abortion and are conning soldiers in a game of pool. Even if I could figure out where this was going, I still thought it was engaging and liked the tension as a couple of soldiers are catching on to their hustle and Cage is desperately trying to cover for himself and Penn as just regular guys playing a game.

So I thought it was decent overall, it was nice to watch.

Thoughts on Unfaithful and Devil in a Blue Dress

In October 2021 I watched Unfaithful on Hulu and Devil in a Blue Dress on Criterion.

I’ve seen Unfaithful a couple of times, and always liked it, but got more into the second half of the movie. I never had liked that part before, because I didn’t like that it turned into a murder cover-up story instead of more confrontation about the affair that led up to it, but now I liked it. The first half of the movie is Diane Lane having her sexytimes affair and jeopardizing her comfortable marriage and feeling conflicted and guilty over it, but still going back to it, and the second half is Richard Gere killing her lover in an act of passion and feeling horrible about it afterwards. This feels more evident when he’s struggling to get rid of the body and he’s trying to lift and carry a limp dead body wrapped in carpet and is clearly in over his head with this.

I didn’t know that the film is a remake of a Claude Chabrol film from the 60s, but it makes sense. Adrian Lyne directed this more like a French domestic drama than an American film, and despite that it’s from 2002, it feels more 1990s for some reason. I like the slow and measured pace of it, how it has sexy scenes that are layered with a lot of mixed emotions of lust, anger, and guilt, and how well and mature that Diane Lane played these scenes, that made her more complex than just wanting to cheat on her husband for cheap thrills. And I like that Richard Gere isn’t made to be an abusive or neglectful jerk to excuse her cheating, he’s a decent ordinary guy who quickly picks up on his wife’s different vibes and has suspicions about it, he’s not a complete fool. And I like how in the end, it is still not really complete, like the audience can fill in what happens next with this story they would feel like a big local true crime story.

Devil in a Blue Dress was an incredible noir film, I had missed it when it was on Hulu, and caught it on Criterion. I had seen Carl Franklin’s One False Move, and liked how even with a bigger budget and Denzel Washington as the star, it still carried over those themes from the previous film of overt racism, uncomfortable violent scenes, handheld camera for action scenes, and having this genuine rawness to it. It’s a story in which Washington plays a guy in 1948 Los Angeles who is struggling for work and is tapped by gangster Tom Sizemore to find a woman (Jennifer Beals) who is dating a mayoral candidate, and it sends Washington on a journey that involves murder, corrupt cops, racism, and a lot of crooked business going on.

Washington was fantastic, and he just easily fit into Franklin’s work, more of a period noir film that felt more like an indie movie than Hollywood, that went a lot darker and further with some really messed-up scenes. I already knew the general story on Beals’ character, so I wasn’t surprised, but I was amazed by how great Don Cheadle was as a relative unknown at the time. He’s a friend of Washington’s who is a trigger-happy, cold-blooded killer, who just kills people on impulse, and he stole the movie and was amazing to watch as a really cold and unsettling character who could seem charming then flip in a second. He was definitely the big highlight of the movie to me.

Thoughts on Coffee and Cigarettes

In October 2021, I watched Coffee and Cigarettes on Criterion, Jim Jarmusch’s 2003 compilation movie of short films from the 1980s to the early 2000s set around pairs or trios having coffee and cigarettes in restaurants. It was pretty good, though I did skip a couple that I got bored by. I didn’t like the first one with Roberto Begnini and Steven Wright, and the White Stripes one just felt too dated in a weird way to me. My favorites were the Tom Waits/Iggy Pop one of them ”quitting” smoking but having a smoke; Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan as heightened versions of themselves talking about fame and industry crap, and the RZA, GZA, and Bill Murray one about the RZA and GZA being off of caffeine and only drinking tea as being health conscious. The ending one with the two quiet old men was a nice closer, and the others were fine but didn’t stand out to me as much.

Thoughts on Bad Influence

In October 2021 I watched on Criterion the 1990 thriller Bad Influence, directed by Curtis Hanson and looking all slick and cold and remote. James Spader is a spineless yuppie working an analyst job in L.A., and Rob Lowe is this charming stranger whose initial goal is to bring out the dark side in Spader, then wreck his life.

It was funny watching it and seeing Spader play the wimpy victim, likely trying to break out of some typecasting because he would most likely would have been cast as the villain. Rob Lowe worked well in this, I usually found him more creepy than charming, so it worked to that effect.

I liked how the film frequently made use of 80s noir shadow effects, particularly having shadows cast from blinds across Lowe’s face to make him look more evil. And I liked the setting of the late 80s S&M industrial clubs as a backdrop into Lowe’s world.

I could see where Ben Stiller got some ideas for The Cable Guy, a sequence involving a sex tape seems directly lifted from this.

In the included scene, there’s a blink and you miss it appearance by David Duchovny at :46, I hadn’t noticed him in the movie and only saw his name in the ending credits.

Thoughts on The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

On Criterion in September 2021, I watched the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. I had seen some of it before, but not in its entirety. It’s a really great thriller, and it’s amazing to see how influential it was later to other movies, I could see Speed, Reservoir Dogs, and Die Hard sharing its DNA. I like how rough the movie looks, having that 70s New York City grime, and how everyone looked like a regular person, not a movie star, everyone was very average-looking that felt accurate to New York.

I think the remake is ok, but couldn’t stand John Travolta as the villain. Whereas Robert Shaw had more of a quiet psychopath vibe who could pass as a regular person, Travolta just struts into the movie with exaggerated villain facial hair and overacts in his scenes and was awful. Though Walter Matthau and Denzel Washington were both good in playing run-down looking everymen just doing their transit jobs. And in the original film, I thought Martin Balsalm’s character was being played by Burt Young, and didn’t recognize Hector Elizondo or Earl Hindman (Wilson from Home Improvement) at all.

I did like Jerry Stiller a lot, as well as the transit cop hiding in the subway, and how the film gave individual characters to the train hostages, whereas the remake seemed to just treat them as a blob of nobodies. I liked the reveal of which one of the hostages was an undercover cop, the transit team references it but the camera doesn’t linger on anyone enough to give it away.

So I just really enjoyed this tight thriller a lot.