Thoughts on Body Double

In July 2021, I watched the 1984 film Body Double on Criterion, a noir thriller by Brian de Palma about a struggling actor whose voyeuristic spying on an attractive female neighbor leads him into a twisted plot involving stalking, deception, murder, and an adult film star. It was highly stylish in a giallo kind of way, very trippy, and I enjoyed it even if I didn’t totally get it, especially in the finale.

This was really of its time that a man could make a film in that a woman getting stalked by a guy all day doesn’t see it as being weird as it should be, especially when he’s not being subtle and clearly following her around. I didn’t know that Deborah Shelton’s lines were all dubbed by Helen Shaver.

Craig Wasson as the lead was pretty bland, I wish someone like Jeff Bridges was in the lead, he’d have given this role some more bite and edge.

Melanie Griffith was great in this, as the adult film star who is initially part of the deception before knowing how much further it got. She felt like the only one who had her head on straight and called people out on their crap, I liked how smart and easily annoyed she was. She had a really wild look in this film, with an 80s punk hairstyle and a aerobicized body shape.

The whole "Relax" sequence was amazing, and given that Frankie Goes to Hollywood were all into wearing bondage gear onstage and in their videos, it fit that they would be in a movie about the porn world. In the attached video, the context is that the protagonist, the one dressed as a nerd, gets himself cast in a porno film to meet Melanie Griffith to confront her about this plot involving her and his neighbor, and the scene turns into a whole music video instead.

I saw in the credits that Barbara Crampton was in this, but I don’t know where. She wasn’t the ex-wife. And according to IMDb, this movie had a lot of adult film actors and Penthouse models throughout the movie, so good on them for getting into this classic.

I didn’t totally get the ending, like if it was really happening or in his head, it sort of gave a “it was all a dream” vibe with him conquering his claustrophobia, but not exactly.

Thoughts on Destination Wedding

In July 2021, I rewatched Destination Wedding, the romantic comedy with Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder, and I really wish it was better. I watched it again just to watch a contemporary Ryder in something not Stranger Things, but I don’t like that the whole movie is just them talking only to each other and ignoring everyone else, so nobody else interacts with them. I get it’s because they are cynical misanthropes who bond over their dislike for a lot of social conventions, but it bugged me.

Aside from that, they work really well together, especially how Reeves now talks in his John Wick gravelly voice and Ryder has this vocal fry sarcastic tone, and they as 90s Gen X icons clearly have a lot of history together. There is a scene where they just both tell each other how hot each one is, by breaking down their features into mathematical computations according to standards of attractive beauty, and it is a little funny watching two gorgeous people acknowledge that in a clinical way onscreen.

So I like watching them onscreen, though I wish the movie was better. I think they worked better as Rotoscoped animated characters in A Scanner Darkly, and did not have real chemistry together in Dracula, although their characters, despite being betrothed to each other, are apart for most of the movie.

Thoughts on Hideaway

On Hulu on July 2021, I watched Hideaway, this 1995 thriller starring Jeff Goldblum as a guy who is brought back to life after having died in a car accident (the car swerves to avoid hitting a truck, rolls backwards down a hill into a river, and his wife manages to free both of them and drag his body across the current to land), and he has a psychic connection with a serial killer (Jeremy Sisto, looking like a 90s Kylo Ren) who is murdering teen girls and going after Goldblum’s daughter Alicia Silverstone. It was decent, definitely more of a mid-level straight to video thriller.

It gets really ridiculous in the near-death scenes, where both the killer and Goldblum nearly die, and the killer’s hell is full of bad 90s CGI that looks like a horrible mix of The Lawnmower Man and Spawn. Goldblum’s heaven is more slow-motion and sentimental, and seeing the creepy photorealistic version of his first daughter, who was accidentally killed when she was hit by a car.

There’s a joke that I thought was a Clueless reference, but I’m not sure. Goldblum and his wife (Christine Lahti) have a game where they name a movie, its actor, the movie they were in, and another actor in it, and so forth. They try this with their daughter to name someone in Bonnie & Clyde, but she doesn’t know the movie. So they name more stuff, and get to Cher, and the dad says to his daughter “You must know something Cher was in.” She doesn’t respond, but I thought “Your Clueless character?” These movies likely got made in 1994, but I don’t know in what order, so it’s either intentional or a coincidence.

Jeremy Sisto was the best part of this movie. Despite seeing his name in the opening credits, I didn’t recognize him, and didn’t realize it was him until way later into the movie. He really got into the intensity and holding long stares, utilizing his deep voice, and felt the most committed to his part. Goldblum was fine, but I can’t really see him as a suburban family man/dad type, he comes off as too eccentric for that, and Silverstone seemed to just have a “whatever” vibe to her part and not really be into it.

Also, there’s a post-credits scene where they do a dream fake-out of the killer supposedly being alive, and then the couple play their movie game again.

Thoughts on Clockwatchers

Criterion in July 2021 brought back the 1997 office comedy Clockwatchers, an indie film that seemed largely forgotten, and I hadn’t seen it since my teens. It’s a comedy about four temps (Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow, Alanna Ubach) who work in a boring corporate office, and it’s mostly about them bonding and feeling like outsiders, being seen as the “help” to the staff and talked to in patronizing or frustrating ways. The droning feeling of the work day is exemplified by a Muzak version of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” or being chided on how to staple documents.

When there’s a series of office robberies, the temps are scapegoated as the thieves, and are treated with suspicion, like grouping their desks together with cameras on them in an open office floor plan, not allowing them to socialize, and talking down to them with accusations like “Have any of you seen my scarf, you know, the one you were admiring earlier?”

Toni Collette, who was still working out her American accent at this time, is good as the mousy lead who is the entry point into this world, but Parker Posey was fantastic as the loudmouth firecracker who openly calls bullshit on being accused of being a thief, and is the spark that the boring office doesn’t know that they need. Lisa Kudrow and Alanna Ubach are also really good as the others who have lives outside of the office and aren’t as frustrated with their temp jobs as the others are. The movie can be light in parts, but it also gets more downbeat as the temps are picked on and they feel stuck with no real upward mobility anywhere else, as I could relate to in my work throughout my 20s.

I’m just happy this got dug up and put on streaming, it’s really a great movie that came out just a couple of years before Office Space, the cult comedy turned mainstream depiction of the dull monotony of corporate office life.

Thoughts on Smooth Talk

 On Criterion in May 2021, I watched the 1985 coming of age drama Smooth Talk, starring a 16-year old Laura Dern as this goofy, lanky teen girl who runs around with her girlfriends at the mall, butts heads with her mom (Mary Kay Place), dances to James Taylor and 80s rock, and has a mix of innocent run-ins with boys until a seductive stranger (a slowly creeping Treat Williams) comes into her life and shatters her innocent summer. The film was directed by Joyce Chopra and based on the Joyce Carol Oates story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” This movie hit Criterion last year and got this renewed attention in 2020 from the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and I really liked it a lot. Laura Dern was fantastic in it, she had this mix of looking loose and sexy while also looking like a gangly teen, and she played the awkward mix perfectly. I liked how her encounter with the guy starts out seeming very attractive and slowly turns into this creeping dread and becomes this horrifying moment in time that would stay in her head for years. I’m glad this got dug up and celebrated, it’s worth seeing, especially with Dern’s deserved critical renaissance in recent years.

Thoughts on 35 Shots of Rum

 After watching No Fear, No Die in April 2021, I wanted to watch another Claire Denis film on Criterion, and saw that 35 Shots of Rum, her 2008 film, had the same lead actor, Alex Descas, and I wanted to see how he had aged nearly twenty years later from playing a young struggling immigrant to playing a middle-aged father of a young college student. I had seen the film before, but only vaguely remembered it. What I got was a really beautiful and slow family drama about a father and adult daughter (Mati Diop) living in a small Paris apartment, with a very average routine life, and her wanting to move on with her independence, while him not wanting to let her go, countering that they have everything they need and shouldn’t change. A cute long-haired boho neighbor (Gregoire Colin) is the catalyst for her wanting to leave, but it’s more about her wanting to break out of their co-dependent relationship and monotonous life.

The father is a train conductor, whose colleague has been pushed into retirement, and it’s clear that his friend doesn’t like the patronizing goodbyes and wanted to stay in his career. But his exit is also symbolic of the father needing to grow more in his life and not depend on his daughter as his only support.

I like how quiet the film is, and that there are no big dramatic shouting moments between father and daughter, that the climatic moment of the film is a dance at a cafe, where the guy cuts in on them dancing together to dance with her, asserting his presence in her life, and prior to that, the father dances with a woman his own age, a possible match after years of being widowed. It’s a stunning turning point in the film, included with this post.

Sometimes I felt like their relationship was too uncomfortably close, seeming like an old married couple, and I appreciated whenever the film backed off of any potentially icky moments between them.

Of Claire Denis’ films, I’ve seen this one, No Fear, No Die, Let the Sunshine In, and High Life. This one is likely my favorite, though I’d have to see her films with Isabelle Huppert to see how I’d feel, since she’s done some of her best work with her, like White Material.

Thoughts on No Fear, No Die

 On Criterion in April 2021, I watched Claire Denis’ 1990 film No Fear, No Die, a neonoir about two immigrant young men living in France and surviving through the underground world of cockfighting. Dah (Issach de Bankolé) is from Benin, and Jocelyn (Alex Descas) is from the West Indies. The fights are run by a French restaurant owner (Jean-Claude Brialy), who wants to make the fights more brutal to compete with other cockfighting rings around the world, like adding knives to the birds’ spurs, and Jocelyn resents the abuse of the birds and the ugliness of the crowd’s greed to see blood.

I really liked how quiet Descas’ performance was, how he just looks in disgust and seethes and feels stuck in this sordid world, run by a racist and condescending owner who taunts him about having “known” his mother, while trying to figure a way out. In contrast, de Bankolé as Dah, while not loving the place they’re in, is more emotionally removed from it, more just accepting it as it is and putting up with it for the money, giving a “what did you expect?” response to Jocelyn’s resistance to the fights. One can get the sense they’re not great friends, but work together more out of convenience and getting by in underworld gigs.

I really liked this one a lot. It was a small movie, and I usually do like noir and crime movies that focus on small underworld operations, that are hidden from the general world but feel huge in their own way. Like watching Rounders and getting into its depiction of password-protected back room poker games with illegal gambling going on. This had a similar personal feel to it that I really got into it, with some tight lead acting performances by de Bankolé and Descas, and a nice supporting role by Solveig Dommartin (Wings of Desire, Until the End of the World).