2020 Blindspot Pick #7: Heathers (1989)

Tags

Comedy, Drama, Thriller

The more I see in movies
Of a high school student’s woes,
The tricks and cliques and politics,
The mockery of clothes,
The favoritism, criticism,
Narcissism, hedonism,
Overwhelming pessimism
All the films have shown…
I feel more blessed for all the pros
Of being schooled at home.
_____________________

MPA rating:  R (for frequent profanity and occasional violence)

Well, it looks like my Blindspot list for 2020 didn’t go as expected, along with almost everything else about 2020. I may have only gotten to #7 out of the initial 12 Blindspots, but I’ll do my best to knock out the last few ASAP before getting to a new list for 2021. Still, I wanted to get one more Blindspot pick out of the way this year, which has also been the most accessible one all year. (It’s on YouTube in its entirety.) I’ve been hesitant to watch Heathers, though; I’ve listened to and greatly enjoyed the soundtrack to Heathers: The Musical, and I just wasn’t sure if the original film would measure up to my expectations, minus the show tunes. I’d say it did meet them, but I can’t help but have mixed feelings.

Heathers follows Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder), a half-willing member of the feared/admired high school clique known as the Heathers: Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk), Heather Duke (Shannon Doherty), and the queen of mean-girl stereotypes Heather Chandler (Kim Walker). Bristling under the thumb of Heather Chandler, Veronica grows close to classmate J.D. (Christian Slater), whose ideas of retaliating against the popular kids become more and more psychotic. Repressed teens may often wish their bullies were dead, as Veronica does, but J.D. is willing to grant such wishes.

Being familiar with the musical meant that very little about the plot of Heathers surprised me, though certain characters were combined and events shuffled around as needed for the stage adaptation. I was mainly surprised that the film already began with Veronica as a member of the Heathers, whereas the musical takes a little more time portraying her initiation. However, where both versions excel is black comedy, which is a very touchy genre for me. I can appreciate something like Beetlejuice, which also starred Winona Ryder and Glenn Shadix the previous year, but such films can also just come off as mean-spirited or in bad taste, which I don’t find entertaining. While I knew going in that it’s not exactly High School Musical, Heathers threatens to be in the latter category with its frequent profanity and making light of teenage suicide and homosexuality. Yet the film has some surprising depth to its satire and manages to weave some insightful themes into its droll plot: the stress of not liking your own friends, the eagerness with which the powerless can exploit newfound influence, the sensationalism that dark subjects impart in those with good intentions and no solution, and the difference that empathy or its absence can have on someone. Oh, and of course the signs that your boyfriend might be a psychopath.

One ingredient I can say I liked was Winona Ryder, on whom I have something of a celebrity crush. She perfectly originates the sarcastic frustration of Veronica and evokes a sense of growth as she seeks to atone for the evil influence of Heather Chandler and J.D. Slater is also an effective bad boy doing his best Jack Nicholson impression, and the rest of the cast excel at their high school clichés, though it’s disturbing that two cast members later died in ways that the film foreshadowed. Another aspect worth commendation is that unique confidence of style that certain ‘80s films had, regardless of director, as if they knew they would become iconic eventually. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Say Anything come to mind, and Heathers likewise feels like the kind of film that knew exactly what it wanted to be, which is rare for high school movies these days that often just try to imitate what came before. Maybe my exposure to the musical accentuated that, as I recognized the origins of songs like “Big Fun” and “Our Love Is God.” So, although my feelings remain mixed on content, I largely enjoyed Heathers as a paragon of dark high school humor, mainly because its ultimate goal is empathy, something that we could use a lot more of nowadays.

Best line: (Veronica) “All we want is to be treated like human beings, not to be experimented on like guinea pigs or patronized like bunny rabbits.”
(Veronica’s dad) “I don’t patronize bunny rabbits.”
(Veronica’s mom) “Treated like human beings? Is that what you said, little Miss Voice-of-a-Generation? Just how do you think adults act with other adults? You think it’s all just a game of doubles tennis? When teenagers complain that they want to be treated like human beings, it’s usually because they are being treated like human beings.”

Rank:  List Runner-Up

© 2020 S.G. Liput
708 Followers and Counting

Happy New Year, everybody!

2020 Blindspot Pick #6: Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Tags

Comedy, Drama, Musical, Romance

They say not to judge a book by its cover:
A frontispiece hater could turn to a lover,
If only you got to the end.

You may still despise it a few chapters in,
But stopping too early is almost a sin,
For still you do not know the end.

You may get halfway and still loathe it intensely,
And yet sticking with it could pay off immensely,
If only you got to the end.

Not much more to go, but you’re tempted to quit?
That’s something that nobody wants to admit,
For still you do not know the end.

You finished! I see, and your hatred’s the same?
I thought you would like it, so that is a shame,
At least, though, you now know the end.
________________________

MPA rating:  PG-13 (for much sexual innuendo)

Oh, Baz Luhrmann, I don’t know what to make of you. I take pride in enjoying musicals, and I fully expected to like Moulin Rouge! if only for its status as a jukebox musical. I knew it incorporated more modern songs into its 1900 Parisian setting, so I was prepared for the requisite anachronisms. But my gosh, I haven’t watched a film that was this bipolar in tone since, well, Strictly Ballroom, also by Luhrmann.

I remember Strictly Ballroom as a wholly unique experience. It started out as an obnoxious mockumentary that I was certain I disliked after the first few minutes, but then it just kept getting better, from the romance to the dancing, until it actually won me over by the end. Moulin Rouge! attempts to do the same thing but not nearly as well. The story follows the tragic love story of young poet Christian (Ewan McGregor), who is hastily initiated into a troupe of Bohemian artists and introduced to the lovely Satine (Nicole Kidman), starlet of the Moulin Rouge cabaret and desire of a jealous duke (Richard Roxburgh). That short plot description sounds normal enough, but the in-your-face style is utterly insufferable for the first thirty minutes, with rushed character introductions, sudden tone shifts, cartoonish sound effects, lowbrow humor, choppy editing, and hard-to-decipher dialogue during the musical numbers. My VC decided to stop watching entirely, and I considered it too, though my Blindspot obligation made me stick with it. I read that Luhrmann was trying to channel the tonal rollercoaster of a Bollywood film he had seen, but all his extravagance does is make it difficult to take anything seriously.

And then, slowly but surely, the romance element grows more intense and more serious, managing to achieve the intended epic tragedy of the star-crossed lovers. Despite partaking in a few of the puerile scenes that made me wonder how this movie snagged eight Oscar nominations, McGregor and Kidman are the film’s greatest strength, sporting palpable chemistry and decent musical chops. Their bravura medley of love-themed songs was the first clue that Moulin Rouge! might have more to offer than the beginning indicated.

Yet even if the core romance works well, so much else does not. The musical numbers and the choice of who sings them are a mixed bag and brought to mind the why-not(?) silliness of Mamma Mia! Just as I didn’t really need to hear Julie Walters sing “Take a Chance on Me,” I could have happily gone through life without hearing Jim Broadbent croon “Like a Virgin.” I admired the sheer number of recognizable songs used, but how they were deployed was often cringe-inducing. And even if the tone gets more serious over time, the film still indulges in occasional sound effects that undermine the pathos.

Moulin Rouge! is a case where its substance is upstaged by its distracting style. Strictly Ballroom managed to even out its tone and become a serious feel-good romance, and I suppose that’s easier than transitioning from surreal comedy to heartbreaking tragedy. I am aware that some people are able to look past Moulin Rouge’s faults and enjoy its over-the-top stylings, such as the Oscar-winning art direction and costumes, and I’m glad they can. I’ll acknowledge it’s original and took a risk, but this is one style I can affirm is not for me.

Best line: (several characters, quoting the song “Nature Boy”) “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

Rank:  Semi-Dishonorable Mention (a rarely used ranking to reflect my mixed feelings)

© 2020 S.G. Liput
708 Followers and Counting

The Christmas Chronicles 2 (2020)

Tags

Christmas, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Netflix

To all who would rather be elsewhere,
To all who are feeling alone,
To those who wish Christmases long past
Could somehow return when we’re grown,

To all who are missing a loved one,
To all who wish wishes were real,
To all who are hoping that Christmas
Can brighten a year so surreal,

I know well this plaintive nostalgia,
Yet bypassing cynics’ deaf ears,
I still wish you all Merry Christmas.
May smiles replace all your tears.
________________________

MPA rating:  PG

Two years ago, Netflix delivered The Christmas Chronicles, with one of the more fun incarnations of Santa Claus delivered by the incomparable Kurt Russell. In true commercial Christmas fashion, we now have a sequel to the family-friendly romp, but whereas the first film borrowed heavily from Adventures in Babysitting for its plot, the second film leans a bit more on Gremlins and The Santa Clause 3, with mixed but still enjoyable results.

Teenagers Teddy (Judah Lewis) and Kate Pierce (Darby Camp) are still True Believers two years after their previous adventures with Santa Claus (see first movie), but Kate is now depressed having to spend Christmas in Cancun with her mother’s new boyfriend (Tyrese Gibson) and his young son Jack (Jahzir Bruno). While Teddy was the one with the character arc in the last movie, he’s quickly sidelined in favor of Kate and Jack, who are suddenly whisked away to the North Pole by a mysterious ne’er-do-well (Julian Dennison of Hunt for the Wilderpeople) with designs on Santa’s Village.

The first film was a hodgepodge of admittedly likable ingredients from other movies, and its sequel is much the same, though there are still spurts of inspiration. We get to see more of the North Pole this time, a sprawling collection of specialized toy and candy shops populated by impish elves, which should capture any child’s imagination without the creepy qualities of, say, The Polar Express. And following the first film’s example, this one again includes an exuberant musical number of pure Christmas spirit (featuring Darlene Love) that is worth the price of admission.

It’s rather predictable and not quite as good as the first movie, feeling even more like a farrago of Christmas-themed elements that don’t always fit naturally. The antagonist Belsnickel is particularly meh for the most part, though Dennison does his best to channel cartoonish malice. I did enjoy the new cast members, such as wide-eyed Jahzir Bruno and the larger role for Goldie Hawn as Mrs. Clause, though it was weird seeing Tyrese Gibson as a family man compared with his swaggering ladies’ man role in the Fast and Furious films. I also liked how the story expanded on the series’ Santa mythos as well, even if it also tosses in time travel for a sweet yet contrived reason. The Christmas Chronicles 2 probably won’t become a holiday staple, though there are rumors of a third film in the works, but it’s a diverting watch to remind the world of what a great Santa Claus Kurt Russell is.

Rank:  Honorable Mention

© 2020 S.G. Liput
708 Followers and Counting

A very Merry Christmas to everyone!

Fast and Furious 6 (2013)

Tags

Action, Drama, Thriller

We all need a code,
For our lives, for the road,
When the plans we prepare
Hit a wall and explode.

However we fare,
And whatever we bear,
Our constant is known,
And it always is there.

It may be your own
Or it may be borrowed,
But when we’re alone,
Every man needs a code.
______________________

MPA rating:  PG-13

Finally, a holiday break! And that means I finally have some extra time to allow for blogging outside of work and school. So we once again return to the Fast and Furious franchise, with the sixth entry that, for lack of a snappier alphanumeric title, is simply Fast and Furious 6. Despite everything I’ve heard about Fast Five being the turning point of the franchise from small-timer to blockbuster, this sixth film feels even more like a watershed entry, transitioning from a series I’ve largely tolerated thus far to a movie I thoroughly enjoyed.

Fast Five ended with the “shocking” reveal that Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Dom’s girlfriend killed offscreen in the fourth film, was still alive, which wasn’t so shocking for me, since I had seen her in the trailers for the last three movies. (One of the perks of waiting to get into a series until late in its popularity.) Now the promise of his lost love, as well as clemency for past crimes, convinces Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew to join Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in stopping a criminal mastermind named Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), who has recruited the amnesiac Letty into his own team of mercenaries.

Beyond the destructive action, Fast Five’s greatest pleasure was how it brought together so many characters from past films, with Fast and Furious 6 doing the same. The whole team is back, from Paul Walker to Tyrese Gibson to Gal Gadot. Well, those two Spanish guys are absent, but who remembers their names anyway? The main difference, and the one that made me enjoy 6 more than 5, is that Dom and his roadworthy companions finally get to be the good guys. They’re not plotting to steal millions or drag racing illegally; they are pitted against a less moral version of themselves, trying to save the world with redemption and a chance at normalcy on the line. While Walker’s Brian O’Conner was a good cop undercover at the beginning, the truth is that Dom and his buddies were little more than small-time crooks with insane automotive skills, who eventually ended up turning Brian into a wanted man as well. They’ve been the protagonists of this series thus far but rarely unqualified heroes, and that’s what this sixth film finally makes them.

The amnesia subplot with Letty may seem like a soap opera cliché to retcon the fourth film, but it’s not unwelcome. In fact, Dom’s attempts at convincing Letty of their former life together add much-needed heart to a story where there’s little interest in developing any of the other already established characters. Luke Evans makes a decent baddie, if only because he and his cronies actually prove to be more than a match for Dom’s team, and the action manages to one-up even the safe scene from Fast Five, particularly an outrageous chase involving a tank. By the time of the final set piece, which includes what has to be the world’s longest runway, I could tell this was my favorite film yet in this crazy car-themed series. It’s also the only action franchise I can imagine featuring the main characters saying a genuine prayer together, which again rings truer now that they’re not closet criminals. It even ends with a cliffhanger that both builds hype for the next installment and clears up a bit of confusion surrounding the series timeline, messily but well enough. For the first time, I’m actually looking forward to the next Fast and Furious film.

Best line: (Owen Shaw) “You know, when I was young, my brother always used to say, “Every man has to have a code.” Mine: Precision. A team is nothing but pieces you switch out until you get the job done. It’s efficient. It works. But you? You’re loyal to a fault. Your code is about family. And that’s great in the holidays, but it makes you predictable. And in our line of work, predictable means vulnerable. And that means I can reach out and break you whenever I want.”   (Dom) “At least when I go, I’ll know what it’s for.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

© 2020 S.G. Liput
706 Followers and Counting

Tenet (2020)

Tags

Action, Drama, Sci-fi

If I were to live my life backwards in time,
Would it be hellish or sublime?
I’d walk and babble in reverse
And watch my history recurse.
To see the end before the start
To know both part and counterpart,
Is it a blessing or a curse,
Upstream against the universe?
Is it a blessing or a curse,
To know both part and counterpart,
To see the end before the start
And watch my history recurse.
I’d walk and babble in reverse.
Would it be hellish or sublime
If I were to live my life backwards in time?
_______________________

MPA rating:  PG-13

Tenet was an interesting theater-going experience, mainly because it looks like it will be the only 2020 film I actually get to see in a theater. (I did see Weathering with You and Ride Your Wave pre-pandemic, but those were both from 2019.) I didn’t realize it at the time, but I learned that the local theater where I watched Tenet planned to shut down the very next day. The theater was completely empty, so it was like a private screening. There were hopes that Tenet might kick off a resurgence of theater-going, which sadly didn’t happen, but it’s the kind of film that could have under different circumstances. Action films get labelled “dumb” more often than not, but Christopher Nolan once more proves that the genre can reward and require intelligence, sometimes more than the audience wants to spare.

Nolan specializes in bending time, expanding it across nested dreamscapes, jumping around between different perspectives of Dunkirk, and now reversing it entirely. John David Washington plays a man with no name, labeled the Protagonist but never actually referenced in the film, a CIA agent who sees a bullet seem to move in reverse during a thrilling extraction at an opera house. After proving his loyalty, he is initiated into the organization called Tenet, which seeks to prevent a coming catastrophe evidenced by the existence of objects moving backwards in time, such as the reversing bullet. From there, it’s a globe-hopping spy caper as the Protagonist makes allies to take down a Russian oligarch named Sator (Kenneth Branagh), who has knowledge of the future.

I loved Inception and still think that it is Nolan’s best film; with his latest film’s incoming hype as a mind-bender, I was hoping for lightning to strike again. While I still enjoyed Tenet, it’s more like thunder. Tenet is a puzzle for puzzle-lovers, thriving on unique backwards action and a purposefully constant pace that encourages viewers to accept what’s going on whether they understand it or not. And that’s where Tenet struggles. No matter how much Nolan or the film’s characters believe that the reversed time concept makes sense, I remain unconvinced. It makes for some utterly cool and compelling visuals, but there’s always a nagging feeling of doubt about how items/characters moving backwards in time actually interact with forward-moving items/characters. In that opening opera house scene, an “inverted” bullet goes from a bullet hole in the wall backwards into someone’s gun, but I’m left with the question of how it got into the wall in the first place. The idea is fascinating in short bursts, but over longer stretches of interaction, a disconnect grows between how inverted characters experience time forward (from their perspective) while the non-inverted characters observe them as “reactions.” If that doesn’t make sense, I don’t blame you. I’m sure someone could try to explain these apparent inconsistencies, and it would make some semblance of sense, but the effort to understand dwarfs what Inception required.

Washington’s Protagonist doesn’t have an abundance of personality, but he has just enough swagger and uber-competence to be an engaging audience surrogate thrust into an even stranger spy life than he led before. The rest of the cast always live up to their talent, from Robert Pattinson’s secretive ally to Branagh’s brutal Russian villain, who might as well be his character from Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. However, Nolan’s best films also have an underlying heart to complement the mind-twisting, typically in the form of parental love for children, like in The Prestige and Inception. Tenet tries similarly with the excellent Elizabeth Debicki as Branagh’s long-suffering hostage/wife, but, with the plot being the real focus, the attempted emotional beats were overshadowed by the cold big-concept narrative.

Ultimately, Tenet revels in its high-minded theories and spy antics punctuated by sci-fi coolness, but casual viewers shouldn’t expect a straightforward James Bond-style story. I appreciate Inception the more I think about it; with Tenet, I get more confused, though I’m sure it will reward repeat viewings. I admire Tenet in many ways, from the audacity of its concept to the Easter eggs sprinkled throughout (look up the Sator square), but maybe turning your brain off for an action movie isn’t such a bad thing.

Best line: (Andrei Sator) “How would you like to die?”   (The Protagonist) “Old.”   (Sator) “You chose the wrong profession.”

Rank:  List Runner-Up

© 2020 S.G. Liput
705 Followers and Counting

2020 Blindspot Pick #5: Fargo (1996)

Tags

Drama, Thriller

Now sit right on down on a carpet or quilt
And lend me an ear for a minute.
I’ve got here a story of greed and of guilt,
And there’s death and dishonesty in it.

You may have heard tell of some murders up north
Around Brainerd not far from the border.
It started with three deaths (or was there a fourth?);
Regardless, it shocked the reporter.

It didn’t take long for the local police
To kick off the investigation,
And boy, what a puzzle! They gathered each piece
With no lack of luck and frustration.

Turns out the two culprits behind it were wicked,
But there was a right normal guy
Who stuck his nose right where you don’t want to stick it
And hired those two on the sly.

It came down to money to finance the lie
That set off the kidnapping fraud,
Which led to the murder when things went awry,
For even the best plans are flawed.

It’s hard to imagine some schmo you might know
Doing something to cause homicide.
It just goes to show how lies snowball and grow,
And you don’t know what folks have to hide.
________________________

MPA rating:  R

Back now to the ol’ Blindspot list, which I’ll unfortunately be hard-pressed to finish before the end of the year. Perhaps this opinion is just based on ignorance, but 1996 has always struck me as a weak year for cinema with few must-see award-worthy films. Yet Fargo has some ardent fans, even spawning a spin-off TV series nearly twenty years later, so I felt impelled to see what the fuss was about. The Coen brothers are an acquired taste, but their uniquely dark humor distinguishes this tale of fraud and murder from what could have been pedestrian.

All I knew about Fargo going in was the famous Midwestern accents (“Don’tcha know”) and that scene of Frances McDormand standing next to a car wreck in the snow. I was sort of expecting a mystery and was surprised then to see the crime start from the very beginning, with Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) meeting two mercenaries (Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare) in a dive bar in Fargo, North Dakota, to arrange for the fake kidnapping of his wife, with the expected ransom set to pay off all involved. It took longer than expected for McDormand’s Marge Gunderson to arrive on the scene, following the clues that the naïve Jerry and ruthless hitmen leave in their wake. Watching everything unfold was like observing one of those true crime stories in action, knowing whodunnit but awaiting the culprits to meet their comeuppance as they dig their graves deeper.

In a way, my opinion of Fargo is an odd mix of appreciation and overhype. It’s not a film that I automatically love or would want to immediately include in the National Film Registry (which it was only ten years after its release), yet I’ll admit there’s something intriguing about the way the story plays out. For example, I hate profanity as a rule and rarely think it adds anything to a movie, but in Fargo’s case, there’s a clear contrast in how only the hitmen and their ilk cuss while Marge and the other law-abiding Minnesotans are content with “for Pete’s sake” and “aw, jeez” and a surfeit of “yah”s. Jerry’s thin veneer of good-natured smarminess is gradually peeled back as he realizes how deep in over his head he is, even as the folksy mannerisms of him and Marge give the proceedings a wry sense of humor.

Despite her late introduction, McDormand is certainly the star and deserved her Best Actress Oscar, imbuing her pregnant policewoman with all the levelheaded practicality needed to ground the film and provide the audience someone to root for. The Coens’ Oscar-winning screenplay also stands out, though there were several unresolved tangents that could have been better explained, such as the lack of explanation for Jerry’s need for money or the inclusion of an old classmate of Marge’s who adds nothing to the main story. Plus, isn’t it odd that the film is called Fargo when only the very first scene actually happens in North Dakota? My VC and I were dreading the “wood chipper scene” we’d heard about, thinking it would be overly gruesome, but it honestly could have been worse. (Maybe I’ve just been desensitized by Criminal Minds.) I’m slowly working my way through the Coens’ eccentric filmography, so I’m glad to add Fargo to my watched list. It uses small-town quirk to its advantage to make a shocking murder story into something more distinctive, an exemplar of the saying “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

Best line: (Marge, kneeling at the crime scene) “Oh, I just think I’m gonna barf…” [standing up again after a moment] “Well, that passed. Now I’m hungry again.”

Rank:  List Runner-Up

© 2020 S.G. Liput
703 Followers and Counting!