Fad King Reviews

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

Robert Altman Buries the Myths of the American West

[7/10 · 24 November 2006]

Spoiler Alert: Review contains some plot elements.

I had seen this movie described as an "anti-western," a term I didn't really understand until I actually watched the movie. Director Robert Altman completely guts this movie of any traces of the iconography of the movie western that had developed up to this time. There are no white hats vs. black hats, cowboys and indians, haunting sunsets, heroes standing up for justice, or virginal and/or madonna-like women helping civilize the frontier. All of this pleasant mythology is replaced by whores, liars,sociopathic murderers, opium fiends, a bleak winter landscape, and a "hero" driven by greed and hubris rather than honor and humility.

Altman's American frontier is a land of selfish opportunists rather than noble nation-builders. Women are dependent, one way or another, on their bodies for survival. There are elements of decency and sentiment that filter through the cracks of this grey facade: whores with dreams of legitimacy, a cowboy defending the honor of his wife, and more. Still, in this world, the reward for decency more often than not is death.

Although slow moving, the movie is quite watchable. Given the absence of conventions to guide the viewer, there is actual suspense as to where the story is going. The unvarnished and frank presentations of sex, vulgarity, and violence produce genuine emotional responses. They are integral to the themes of the film and thus have no air of gratuity or sensationalism.

Showgirls (1995)

Among the greatest "so-bad-it's-good" movies of all time.

[10 April 2005]

Three years removed from the success of "Basic Instinct," writer Joe Esterhaz and director Paul Verhoven apparently figured that they could make lightning strike a second time by spending a lot less money on talent, a lot less time on plot subtlety, and amping up the sex content exponentially. That shadowy shot of Sharon Stone's nether-regions seems positively demure in comparison to the all-out T&A parade that unfolds in this film and netted it the first NC-17 rating applied to a mass-market movie.

In a performance with all the nuance of rotting garbage, Elizabeth Berkeley snarls, grunts, glares, and all but presents her hind-quarters for mounting like the wild animal she appears to be portraying. How appropriate that her character Nomi strips at a club called Cheetah's and appears in the climactic scene in matching leopard-print bustier and skirt! Berkeley's primary wild kingdom antagonist is the sultry Gina Gershon, whose pouty lips and well-manicured nails get literal and figurative workouts throughout the film, as lesbian lip-locks vie with clawing verbal catfights for on screen time while these two appear together.

As much as I loved the badness of this movie the very first time I saw it, it really gets better (or is it worse?) every time I see it. Sometimes I'm tickled by bigger questions like "Why does Gina Gershon's character take so much time and effort to torture this nobody Nomi chick?" to smaller questions like, "Why does Nomi appear in the poster for her big Vegas show wearing what looks like an Eva Gabor wig?" In so many ways, this is a movie experience that just keeps on giving.

Something's Gotta Give (2003)

A very funny comedy and a great showcase for Diane Keaton.

[7/10 · 29 May 2004]

The set-up (romantic foibles among rich, sophisticated, well-educated New Yorkers) is reminiscent of a typical Woody Allen film, but this treatment lacks the quirkiness of Woody's best. Woody also never made "issue" or zeitgeist comedies and this film is all about the big issue of older men who date younger women, leaving exciting and vital older women to wither and dry up.

The characters and dialogue here are much more straightforward and mainstream, which certainly was a factor in this movie's box-office success. There are several sequences of full-out raucous fun, balanced by the expected verbal sparring between Nicholson and Keaton.

Jack and Diane (maybe someone should write a little ditty about this pair!) are well-matched. It's so easy to take Jack for granted these days: long ago so many of his performances lapsed into self-parody. Yet all of that baggage is exactly why he simply HAD to play this character. But even if he's doing his standard schtick, he's still "Jack," and he more than holds his own, as usual.

With all of the florid acclaim for Diane's performance, you expect to be disappointed in some way. I was not. This really is a career high point for someone with some great comic credentials. It starts with being is one of those rare actors who simply cannot deliver a line without complete honesty. It continues with the realization that the whole time, she's adding so much that just couldn't have been on the written page of the script.

Head of State (2003)

Big Laughs, Little Else

[16 August 2003]

This is a very funny movie. It is laugh out loud funny more often than any other alleged movie comedy I have seen in quite awhile. It's funny because it's essentially a narrative version of Chris Rock's equally funny stand-up comedy. Rock's post-"Saturday Night Live" comedy has consisted mainly of sharp satire of national politics and of black culture, and these are exactly what this movie delivers. As a performer, Rock's confidence with his own material shows. Bernie Mac provides some variety, lending a taste of his very different, but equally funny, comic persona to the proceedings.

All of that being said, however, "Head of State" is still not a terribly good movie. It has a predictable, even cornball plot, and the comedy eventually suffers from both endless repetition and from a progression of sight gags that fall painfully flat. As a result, what begins as a focused satire with a sharp, assured point of view, degenerates into an all out assault of rehashed jokes and attempts at comic surrealism that feels more like an attempt to fill time than anything else. I think this material would have worked a lot better edited down to 60 minutes and presented as a comedy special on HBO. But I know HBO doesn't pay what movie studios do, and good for Chris Rock for seeing to it he gets paid.

Do the Right Thing (1989)

Spike Lee's best to date

[25 May 2002]

I just watched this movie again for the first time since I originally saw it in 1989, the year it came out. It holds up very well, although I now consider it a very good rather than a great movie, as I did the first time.

Spike Lee's movies are always political/issue-oriented in their tone, but in most of his films after this one, the characters tend to speechify and debate as if they were panelists on "Nightline." This remains the film in which Lee most artfully blends issues into the narrative mix. And boy do we get a cornucopia of inner-city issues: racism (of course),police brutality, absentee fathers, gentrification, and even a taste of that "jungle fever" to which Lee would eventually devote an entire film.

All of this comes to light on a summer day of blazing temperatures and tempers on a racially diverse street in Brooklyn. The film climaxes in a series of questionable split-second actions and reactions to the mounting tensions of the day. The ultimate point of the movie is to challenge the viewer to evaluate these actions not only from the viewer's own perspective, but from the perspective of the characters involved. Mission accomplished. Lee succeeds in portraying the values, priorities, and prejudices of a whole community through glimpses at their lives in a single day.

The controversy that met the film upon its release focused on what happens in the movie, as if by portraying certain actions, Lee was advocating the same. This is a very short-sighted view that ignores the first 9/10 of the movie in which we see the flaws of everyone concerned, and thus should realize that anything they ultimately do must be weighed in light of what we know about them.

What was really revolutionary about this film is that for the first time, racism and other serious issues that blacks face were not addressed in the past with blacks mostly quiet and obedient in the background with whites as their champions/saviors like "Glory," or "Mississippi Burning" or in the present with white protagonists like "Colors." This time, the time and setting was here and now and black people were upfront and spoke for themselves. It's no wonder some feathers were ruffled. But many years later, most viewers should be able to see through the fog of these concerns and appreciate a very well-constructed, tense, and entertaining drama.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

A Tedious Swan-Song from a Legendary Director

[6/10 · 13 May 2002]

This is in many ways an interesting look at jealousy and infidelity that is seriously marred by two elements: (1) excruciatingly slow pacing, and (2) building the movie around the famed centerpiece orgy scene, which may have seemed daring when Kubrick first started working on this screenplay in 1975, but today looks like a pretentious and very expensive scene from a soft-core cable flick. On the plus side, Kidman shines in what are essentially 3 dramatic monologues that occupy most of her time on screen. There's much to enjoy visually in terms of the use of color and light, and the haunting piano theme used during the orgy is an instant classic. Kubrick also manages to build some suspense, but by the time the mysteries were explained, my reaction was, "That's it? That's what I waited 2 and a half hours to hear?"

Mommie Dearest (1981)

Attack of the Killer Mommie

[6/10 · 13 May 2002]

Time has helped this movie has moved beyond the status of mere guilty pleasure to that rare stature as a camp classic. All the necessary elements of unintentional hilarity are on display. You've got cheesy, low-budget visuals/effects (check out the teen/adult Christina's progression of bad wigs and the obvious dummy used to double her in the famed choking scene). Wretched dialogue: ("I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at the dirt.") And of course, the way over the top acting. Dunaway takes elements of Crawford's own over-acting and adds her own bizarre horror movie twist. I mean, what is Dunaway's raging and bellowing Crawford but the Thing That Ate Hollywood (but not before scouring it clean)? If they ever decide to resurrect the character, they could start a new franchise of "Mommie Dearest Meets Godzilla," "Mommie vs. The Smog Monster," and the like.

Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986)

Raging hormones, nutty family, circa 1937

[7/10 · 10 May 2002]

This is a gently amusing coming-of-age comedy that comes from the later, more mature period of Neil Simon's writing. Although there are plenty of wisecracks to go around, this is not one of those Neil Simon pieces where every character spouts out one-liner jokes for 2 hours like they're guest stars on a Bob Hope special. There are also dramatic elements (some work, some are overkill) that lend some weight to the story.

The performances are good across the board, especially Blythe Danner as the mother (although she and Judith Ivey were oddly WASP-ish choices to play Jewish women). I've never been a fan of Jonathan Silverman, but I will say that he hits the right notes as the obnoxious, gawky, and totally horned-up teen-age narrator/protagonist of the story.

The movie is very similar in tone to Woody Allen's "Radio Days," but the latter is far more imaginative and funny than this one.

It's My Turn (1980)

SWF, professional,liberated, 30s, seeks "the real thing"

[6/10 · 10 May 2002]

The final chapter in Jill Clayburgh's unplanned "independent woman" trilogy (the first two were "An Unmarried Woman" and "Starting Over"). This one is from the same writer as "Dirty Dancing," which probably explains why the main character in each is a Jewish woman who is very much "daddy's little girl."

Here, the protagonist is perhaps the most glamorous mathematics professor ever (she wears stilettos to class, but earthy gal that she is, removes them while solving equations at the blackboard). She's got relationship issues with her widowed dad who's remarrying, and with her divorced live-in boyfriend, plus she's conflicted about whether to take a new job in a new city that pays much more, but won't allow her to continue her research. She breezily describes her various complications as "modern problems," which tells you that the creators here felt they were at the very cutting edge of portraying the quintessential "liberated" woman. Laura Linney's character in "You Can Count On Me" had a similarly complicated life, but that film didn't feel the need for its characters to be so self-aware.

Michael Douglas enters the picture to help her figure out where/how to get the healthy, giving relationship that everyone around her seems to have, and that therefore is "her turn" to get (get it?)

This is a decent movie that actually doesn't feel particularly dated, (save for Clayburgh's Oscar-bait "big scene" towards the end) despite its obvious 70's era feminist overtones. But perhaps because of its agenda, the romance doesn't exactly sweep you off your feet.

As with most movies from the 80s, part of the fun is seeing what stars/faces of the future show up. Here, we get a young Daniel Stern, almost unrecognizable as Clayburgh's star pupil, and future "Law and Order" District Attorneys Steven Hill and Dianne Wiest.

The Facts of Life (1960)

Bob and Lucy get the seven year itch

[7/10 · 10 May 2002]

Bob Hope and Lucille Ball team up very nicely here as each steps away from their well-known screen personas to play a suburban everyman and everywoman who unexpectedly fall for each other, despite the complication of being married to other people. The comedy includes some surprisingly tart satire on the claustrophobic lifestyles of the 50's suburban/country club/den mother families that we all know so well from "Leave it to Beaver," etc. But the big laughs come as the two sneak around town to try to be alone together.