"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

North

July 22, 1994

There’s an odd subset of summer ’94 movies: well-regarded directors making goofy fables about America, adapted from quirky novels. These include EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES, FORREST GUMP and now Rob Reiner’s NORTH, based on the 1984 book North: The Tale of a 9-Year-Old Boy Who Becomes a Free Agent and Travels the World in Search of the Perfect Parents by Alan Zweibel, who was an original Saturday Night Live writer, co-creator of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, and co-writer of the DRAGNET movie. He adapted his novel with Reiner’s regular producer Andrew Scheinman.

Elijah Wood (between THE GOOD SON and THE WAR) stars as the title character, who’s 11 in the movie (like the kid from THE CLIENT) and kind of like a more humble and all-American Max Fischer. He wins little league games, stars in school plays, gets good grades, and is held up by all parents as an example of what their kids should be like. But his own mom and dad (Julia Louis-Dreyfus [TROLL, SOUL MAN] and Jason Alexander [THE BURNING, CONEHEADS]) don’t seem to care, and ignore him to argue with each other, which stresses him to the point of near cardiac arrest and existential crises on the pitcher’s mound.

(read the rest of this shit…)

July 29th, 2024 | 14 Comments »

Lassie (1994)

July 22, 1994

In this retrospective so far we’ve discussed movies based on a radio show from the ‘30s (THE SHADOW), a cartoon from the ‘60s (THE FLINTSTONES), a western TV show from the ‘60s (MAVERICK) and a real guy who many knew from western TV shows of the ‘60s (WYATT EARP). Here’s another one to add to the list: a movie about Lassie, a character likely unknown to the kids who would be its primary audience, but maybe their parents would be expected to have warm feelings. First introduced in an 1859 short story, then a novel and series of movies in the ‘40s, the heroic collie was known to boomers from a TV series that ran from 1954-1973. People my age knew it mainly from parodies, though I remember seeing parts of the show on Nick at Nite or something.

Despite coming from Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels (between WAYNE’S WORLD 2 and TOMMY BOY), the 1994 LASSIE movie is a very sincere drama for families, with a bit of a meta set up. At the beginning little Jennifer Turner (Brittany Boyd) is watching an old Lassie episode on TV but her older brother Matt (Tom Guiry, THE SANDLOT) says “Thought I told you not to watch this crap” and changes the channel to the video for “Breaking the Girl” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. (read the rest of this shit…)

July 25th, 2024 | 7 Comments »

Huda’s Salon

HUDA’S SALON is from 2021 and it’s the most recent film from Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad – I previously reviewed his films RANA’S WEDDING (2002), THE COURIER (2012), OMAR (2013) and THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US (2017). After that last one, a big English language movie starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, he returned home for another one of his thriller/dramas about life in occupied Palestine.

It opens in the titular Bethlehem hair salon, where new mother Reem (Maisa Abd Elhadi, Baghdad Central) is having her hair done by Huda (Manal Awad). I kinda fell for the implication that it would be a conversational, day-in-the-life kind of movie, because there’s an 8-minute-long oner as Huda washes and brushes Reem’s hair and they talk about people these days styling their own hair based on Youtube videos, then about the invasiveness of Facebook, and then how possessive Reem’s husband is but how maybe she’ll open her own salon some day when her daughter’s older. And the shot is still going as Huda pours her a cup of coffee (that’s nice) and puts some drops of something in it (oh, that’s not nice) and gets ready to cut her hair but she passes out and Huda closes the curtains and opens a door into a back room where a dude named Said (Samer Bisharat, OMAR) has been sitting on a bed looking at his phone while he waits. Now he helps carry Reem in, takes her clothes off and poses naked for Polaroids with her. (read the rest of this shit…)

July 24th, 2024 | 15 Comments »

The Client

July 20, 1994

And now we come to a 1994 artifact that doesn’t seem that dated culturally, except it’s in a genre – the legal thriller – that doesn’t really exist on this level anymore. Not as a slick, shot on location, big time theatrical summer release.

THE CLIENT is the third movie adapted from a novel by John Grisham, after THE FIRM and THE PELICAN BRIEF (both released in 1993). The book was his fourth, also released in 1993. The movie had a $45 million budget (more than THE SHADOW, SPEED or CITY SLICKERS II, almost as much as THE FLINTSTONES!) and was a big hit, making $117 million worldwide. Movies like this were a big deal then! (read the rest of this shit…)

July 23rd, 2024 | 31 Comments »

Longlegs

LONGLEGS is a new horror movie from writer/director Osgood Perkins (THE BLACKCOAT’S DAUGHTER, I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE, GRETEL & HANSEL, also played Young Norman Bates in PSYCHO II because he’s Anthony Perkins’ son). If you saw his other movies, or the bizarre, creepy-as-fuck trailers, you probly got the hint that it’s not a normal commercial horror movie, but more in the slow-horror/arthouse/early-Ti-West/stereotype-of-what-A24-releases tradition. Nevertheless it had the best opening weekend ever for distributor Neon, it’s Cage’s first live action film to open above $20 million since GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE twelve years ago, it’s already made a profit and become the highest grossing original horror movie this year.

Set sometime during the Clinton administration, it stars Maika Monroe (THE BLING RING, THE GUEST, IT FOLLOWS, INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE, WATCHER) as rookie FBI agent Lee Harker (hmm…) who has such uncanny intuition in the field that they test her for psychic powers and assign her to a decades old case. Families with no connection other than their daughters having the same birthday fall victim to murder-suicides, and on the scene are found coded letters signed “LONGLEGS.” Working closely with supportively pushy, hard drinking superior Agent Carter (Blair Underwood, POSSE, SET IT OFF), Harker quickly cracks the cypher, decodes some of the riddles, finds patterns in the dates of the crimes, and comes up with new insights into the case. But somehow Longlegs seems to already know who she is. (read the rest of this shit…)

July 22nd, 2024 | 35 Comments »

True Lies (30th anniversary revisit)

July 15, 1994

I already reviewed TRUE LIES back in 2007, so I considered skipping it in this series. But it was a big hit (knocked FORREST GUMP out of the #1 slot for a week, became third highest grosser of the year), and such a straight up summer blockbuster, that it seems like it needs to be addressed. And I thought some people would be disappointed if I didn’t include it. But if you’re one of the many who consider it an action classic you might wish I abstained.

My arc with TRUE LIES goes like this: at the time I was hugely disappointed. It was an impressive action spectacle but it struck me as painfully racist and misogynistic. That wasn’t unheard of in those days, and I had a kneejerk revulsion to anything that seemed jingoistic or militaristic, so there were many beloved ‘90s hits that I watched feeling like the guy who didn’t belong at the rally. But I took TRUE LIES as a real betrayal from Cameron, who I admired so much for what he did with Ripley in ALIENS and Sarah Connor in T2, and whose TERMINATOR movies warned of out of control worship of military hardware. Now his big achievement was being the first guy allowed to film a particular war plane he thought was awesome. (read the rest of this shit…)

July 18th, 2024 | 74 Comments »

Kill

KILL is a Hindi-language action movie currently playing in U.S. theaters via LionsGate. For some reason I was under the impression it was called KILL!, which is not the case, but the exclamation point is definitely implied.

It’s one of the more internationally accessible Indian films because it’s only 105 minutes, not a musical, and it begins with a very Hollywood sort of premise: DIE HARD on a train except not UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY.

But there’s a cultural aspect to the set up that wouldn’t be in the American version. When special forces commando Amrit (Lakshya, a TV star who gets an “introducing” credit) gets back from a mission, he finds out that his girlfriend Tulika (Tanya Maniktala, MUMBAIKAR) is being forced into an arranged marriage with someone else. So he and his mustachioed soldier buddy Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan, BAHUT HUA SAMMAAN) rush to the engagement party to try to whisk her away before it’s too late. But she fears what her powerful dad, wealthy industrialist Baldeo Singh Thakur (Harsh Chhaya, 24: India), would do, tells Amrit to back off, and later texts that she and her family are taking a train back to New Delhi. (read the rest of this shit…)

July 17th, 2024 | 12 Comments »

Mi Vida Loca

July 15, 1994

MI VIDA LOCA (MY CRAZY LIFE) is the third film from writer/director Allison Anders. Two years ago I reviewed her 1992 release, GAS FOOD LODGING. That one was about a young woman growing up in a fictional desert town, this one is a fictional portrait of young cholas in a real neighborhood of Los Angeles.

I’ve heard of Echo Park, didn’t know its history, but as soon as they showed the picturesque little lake with swans and everything I thought “Oh shit! That’s the place from ALLIGATOR II: THE MUTATION.” The opening narration does not mention that actully-kind-of-good 1991 TV sequel about a giant alligator in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood under threat of gentrification, instead looking back to the silent era of film: “We have a lake that’s been here since the ‘20s, when movie stars had love nests in the hills.” I read that there were studios in the neighborhood then, and the 1914 Charlie Chaplin films TWENTY MINUTES OF LOVE and RECREATION were filmed at the park. That must be crazy to see your neighborhood in a movie from that long ago. Even from 30 years ago is cool, though. (read the rest of this shit…)

July 16th, 2024 | 5 Comments »

She Is Conann

SHE IS CONANN, original title CONANN, is the recently-released-on-disc third film from French director Bertrand Mandico. I previously reviewed and loved his second film AFTER BLUE (DIRTY PARADISE), which I described as being a little bit like if Alejandro Jodorowsky made BARBARELLA. This one is sort of Mandico’s take on Robert E. Howard’s Conan. Very sort of. But the Jodorowsky comparison is even stronger here – it reminded me of the full range from FANDO Y LIS to HOLY MOUNTAIN. This is a crazy one.

Some (including Wikipedia) have described CONANN as “a feminist take on CONAN THE BARBARIAN,” which honestly sounds wonderful, but I don’t think it’s very accurate. Though obviously alluding to the famous barbarian, I don’t see how you can possibly take it as an adaptation of those stories or a genuine attempt at participating in the sword and sorcery genre. It merely brushes against some of that iconography as it leaps out into the cosmos. I laughed when I saw the angry IMDb user reviews – one was titled “Content Fails to Connect to Source material” – because obviously they went in expecting something from the title and couldn’t adjust their take when it turned out it was something else. But I’m not one to talk. I was pretty annoyed at Jean-Luc Godard using Richard Stark’s The Jugger as the supposed basis of MADE IN U.S.A. (read the rest of this shit…)

July 15th, 2024 | 9 Comments »

Forrest Gump

July 6th, 1994

We associate the summer movie season with a certain type of blockbuster. There have been many years where the biggest movie was about a Batman, a Spider-Man, a Terminator, some dinosaurs, some Jedis. 1994 had a different approach – the real behemoth was a cutesy romp through 20th century American history, a bit of a comedy, a bit of a weepy. FORREST GUMP was the year’s highest grossing movie at the domestic box office (#2 to THE LION KING worldwide), its soundtrack album reached #2 on the Billboard album charts (also below THE LION KING) and went twelve times platinum. The movie won Oscars for best picture, director, actor, adapted screenplay, visual effects and editing, and it even inspired a chain of seafood restaurants. So fuck THE LION KING.

It’s funny, I remember going to see this movie right when it came out, not expecting any of that. I was going as a fan of Robert Zemeckis’ obsession with pushing technology forward. I had read about the scenes where Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump is made to appear in footage with John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford and other real people. It was a new technological feat at the time and this was the guy who had combined animation with live action so well in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT and made a digital hole through Goldie Hawn in DEATH BECOMES HER. Remember how that seemed like the coolest thing ever? (read the rest of this shit…)

July 11th, 2024 | 40 Comments »

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