The Cable Guy (1996) Ben Stiller 1h 36m [Trashy Tuesday]
“Free cable is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” - Chip
Steven’s apartment is a gray box. Alone in a new apartment after his girlfriend Robin dumped him, Steven waits for the cable guy to hook him up. When Chip finally arrives install Steven’s cable, he’s a know it all in coveralls with the energy of a barely contained volcano.
When Steven offers him $50 for extra service, Chip makes him a preferred customer.
Steven gets more than he bargained for.
Thus, starts this platonic-erotic thriller of male friendship gone awry[i].
Chip wants a deeper friendship with Steve and thinks grand gestures are the way to get it. Chip brings Steven to Medieval Times. They take a trip to see a satellite dish where Chip expounded on Waterworld. Steven arrives home one day to find Chip has gifted him with a new TV and stereo equipment.
Chip even wins Robin’s friendship to get Steven and her back together. But it’s all too much.
The truth is, Chip needs connection and control more than he wants friendship, and he’s willing to go to extremes to get it. Like framing Steven for a crime.
What flips the switch to recommend is that the script is fantastic – you can see how it synthesized it’s influences while also being influential. And it was eviscerated by critics when it came out – a huge reason why I avoided it[ii].
I can understand if you were a critic of the time, you may have been expecting something more like Ace Ventura than a Fatal Attraction-esque satire. I don’t think it 100% succeeds in that goal, but it does get close and it is inventively put together.
The production design is well done and communicates the detailed lives of these characters. I think director Ben Stiller does a great job of knitting together the disparate influences of the film to create a thriller with a weird sense of humour. It was like if David Fincher did a comedy.
It’s the peculiar balance between the two leads where success or failure of the film exists.
I think Jim Carrey is very talented, but I don’t watch something just because he’s in it and I don’t avoid it either. He’s not the magic that tips the scales for me.
Same with Matthew Broderick.
Rather than saying I like Jim Carrey’s performance in this movie, I would more say I admire the audacity of it: His Chip is the son of Single White Female if that son were also Elmer Fudd. It’s captivating while deranged. Yet, there’s something about the no nonsense underacting of Matthew Broderick that balances it out.
The cheese has found its cracker.
Recommended.
TRAILER: https://youtu.be/Vm-kQh4zvaA
NOTES:
[i] If I were doing a The Cable Guy Film Festival, I’d show: Fatal Attraction; I Love You, Man; Waterworld; Play Misty For Me
[ii] I think they were just bitter about Jim Carrey’s $20M payday for this movie. I do think some distance from that fact is to the film’s advantage.
Superstar (1999) Bruce McCulloch 1h 21m [Trashy Tuesday]
“Are you aware that I am rubber, and you are glue, and whatever you say to me bounces off, of me, and sticks to you?” - Mary Katherine
Superstar is another one of those movies that I found frustrating, because on paper this has everything it takes to be good.
The story is a familiar one: It’s the coming-of-age story of Catholic schoolgirl Mary Katherine Gallagher (Molly Shannon), a nerd who wants her first kiss – and she hopes to locks lips with Sky Corrigan[i] (Will Farrell) a popular guy and student athlete.
The course of true love never did run and as such, Sky is dating Evian (Elaine Hendrix) a hot mean girl with her clique of even meaner cheerleaders who make Mary Katherine’s life miserable.
The positives in Mary Katherine’s life are the friends she made in special ed. She’s been placed there for practise-kissing a tree and meets bestie Helen and the mysterious new boy at school, Slater. Slater is obviously cool because he rides a motorcycle and communicates via knowing glance.
Grandma Gallagher (Glynis Johns) is also a loving presence in Mary Katherine’s life, even if she harps on her granddaughter becoming a businesswoman, rather than wasting time trying out for the talent show.
But if she wins…she might kiss Sky!
Superstar was directed by Bruce McCulloch[ii] – a Kids In The Hall comedy legend – and has so many elements I like. The story is frothy and there are artful connections made in the plot, however the pacing feels off. There are nice references to other films[iii], but I think they should have leaned into the parody elements harder. There is also a cast filled with talented comedians – that said sometimes it felt like things were left in “for the joke” but they didn’t serve the characters or the plot. The balance between spontaneity and concision was off.
For me that meant a film that was short yet was bogged down by tangents.
TRAILER: https://youtu.be/6-ABqpHZzWo
NOTES:
[i] The most interesting thing about this character is that he’s not your typical jock asshole. He’s actually a levelheaded “kid”.
[ii] I will say, I really like the film he directed before this Dog Park (1998). He hasn’t directed a feature in a while but has been busy with TV including directing several episodes of Schitt’s Creek.
[iii] Particularly Brian DePalma’s Carrie. I feel like there was more comedic meat there.
“This all just feels like... something that happens to other people.” - David
Other People[i] is a comedic drama showing the way that humour bonds us and gets you through the roughest times.
Things aren’t going great for David (Jessie Plemons). He and his boyfriend have just broken up, his career as a comedy writer has stalled and he’s moved from NYC back to suburban Sacramento to help his family care for his ailing mother Joanne (Molly Shannon). This isn’t what he thought his 20s would be.
The story is told over the course of a single year, and we watch David navigate important moments with his family and his mom.
The film is particularly good at detailing moments of gravitas and meaning happening in absurd contexts – like a discussion of cremation or burial at cafeteria style restaurant – or pump up against the weird like trying to have a serious talk with a friend as a stranger attempts to hit on you.
Molly Shannon could not be more perfect in this movie. Her performance is gut wrenching and hilarious. She gets across the depth and breadth of her character’s playful love for her family, while she realises many of the things she’s doing now will be for the last time. You’ve got to love a woman who when assessing the food neighbours have brought over says:
“Only a slut would come to the door with dessert.”
Bradley Whitford is great too as David’s father Norman. Norman never thought he’d lose his wife while in their 50s. Everything about his world is changing too, as must his relationship with his daughters and David.
In truth, the entire cast is fantastic[ii].
Writer Director Chris Kelly skillfully captures the right tone for the material. It’s also a pleasure to look at, the handheld shooting style is meshed nicely with the slice-of-life vignettes on screen. I will say, that this is a well off family, and the cost of Joanne’s care is never raised.
There are many delights in Other People – a film with light moments about a serious topic. Highly recommended.
Currently, Other People is streaming on Netflix Canada.
TRAILER: https://youtu.be/Y8WlTcD5gxE
NOTES:
[i] Not to be confused with “Sleeping with Other People” a Jason Sudeikis vehicle that I have not seen, but kept coming up when I tried to Google this movie.
[ii] I’m telling you, comedy people can do anything. This cast is filled from stem to stern with comedic talent in “non comedy” roles.
“This time travel crap, just fries your brain like a egg...” - Abe
Looper is an engaging and entertaining sci-fi action film that brings a time-travel element to job of assassin.
It’s 2044 and Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a well-paid assassin – a looper – in Kansas who conducts hits on people the Mob sends back in time. The trade-off for those bricks of sliver is rather high; to keep things neat and tidy in the future, if a looper is still alive in 2074, their older self will be sent back to 2044 to be killed by their younger self.
When Old Joe arrives (played by Bruce Willis) he’s ready for a fight. He’s unbound, tough and determined to escape young Joe’s bullet and he does, taking off into the Kansas landscape – leaving young Joe on bad terms with the Mob.
Old Joe’s got a wife worth fighting for in the future and if he can kill the boy who becomes The Rainmaker – the crime boss in 2074 – Old Joe believes he can go back and be with her. Young Joe is determined to stop him.
There’s quite a bit that sets Looper apart from other hitman movies: the time-travel conceit, the rural Kansas setting and the brightness of the film. Quite a bit of the story takes place during the day in wide shots. The special effects are well done and the performances by the entire cast are wonderful[i] which more than make up for pacing that sometimes lags.
I’ll also say, I get a bit frustrated with time-travel sci-fi when it feels like it’s being clever for the sake of it. While Looper didn’t wallow there, it did wade in[ii].
Looper for me was like a really fantastic hot dog. Delicious, but I’m not making it my last meal.
TRAILER: https://youtu.be/2iQuhsmtfHw
NOTES:
[i] Special shout-outs to Emily Blunt as a Sara who’s a landowner with a young son of her own, and to Jeff Daniels as Abe, the underboss in 2044.
[ii] An article on Looper mysteries explained: https://www.slashfilm.com/523142/ten-mysteries-in-looper-explained-by-director-rian-johnson/
Tracey Deer’s Beans is a coming-of-age story of a Mohawk girl set in 1990 during the Oka Crisis.
Tekehentahkhwa (Kiawentiio) is 12 years old and she loves art and her younger Ruby, and really admires her mom. That’s why she’s interviewing to go to a private school, because she knows it will make her mom happy. She also kinda wants to go because of the art supplies she saw there, but it’s mostly because of her mom. Mostly.
After repeatedly saying her name to the white lady across the desk, Tekehentahkhwa reassuringly tells her it’s okay to call her “Beans” because everyone else does.
Bean’s aunt Hawi is part of a group protesting the expansion of a golf course in Oka that would destroy a sacred Mohawk site. Beans and family decide to visit Hawi to lift spirits and bring supplies. While on that visit, the local police force instigates a riot that leads to a months long blockade after the army arrives.
The people who were once protesting are now trapped alongside families without access to outside food or supplies. The community quickly pulls together to wait it out and survive this volatile situation. Beans and Ruby have to find a way to fit in, as they’re city kids. Most of the other kids there with them are teens. The worldly April takes a reluctant shine Beans and vows to toughen Beans up for the real world through physical injury and improved fashion.
We watch Beans as she grows, learning that the world is not as sympathetic as she thought; where people don’t act the way they’re supposed to act. People who never met you will hate you. People who are supposed to protect you will be indifferent or try and hurt you[i].
It’s a struggle to figure out what the right thing is to do; what is the right kind of Mohawk to be?
The film is beautifully shot, with lots of lovely wide angles to bring the audience into this world – a home thrown into crisis. Light streaming through trees and bright green grass as the girls play. Then fires flickering in the silence of the night that conveys the anxiety of the people on the front line as they await the inevitable racist violence from the locals and the police[ii].
Kiawentiio who plays Beans captures both the character’s intelligence and naivety as the later changes from experience. Rainbow Dickerson is wonderful as Bean’s mom Lily, a practical yet loving woman.
An affecting and moving film. Recommended.
TRAILER: https://youtu.be/MIlC3zT1gw4
NOTES:
[i] Content Warning: There is sexual assault and the revelation of assault in the film
[ii] Tracey Deer based much of the film on her own experience as a child during the Oka Crisis : https://variety.com/2020/film/spotlight/tracey-deer-beans-toronto-1234767591/
I also would direct you to Alanis Obomsawin’s documentaries Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993) and Rocks at Whiskey Trench (2000)
Society (1989) Brian Yuzna 1h 39min [It’s a Cult!]
“Paranoid? I'm not paranoid. All my fears are real.” – Bill
I had heard about Society a long time ago, that it was gross, and I avoided it. Then a few days ago a read a synopsis that went something like:
Beverly Hills teen fears that his family is in an orgiastic sex-cult for the upper class.
So, now I had to watch…
Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock) is the odd one out in his wealthy family. Mom and Dad treat his sister Shauna so much better than they treat him. They take her to the country club - where the influential people are - and he never gets to go.
It’s almost like he’s not related to them at all.
Feeling alienated, Bill goes to therapy; he wants to be in his parents’ good graces. The therapist tells Bill that if he works hard and follows the rules, he’ll be accepted by them as a productive member of society.
His hopes are dashed when Shauna’s stalker ex-boyfriend Blanchard plays Bill a recording of Shauna gleefully preparing for a group sex ritual at the club and being given helpful orgy tips from Mom and Dad.
He can’t believe what he’s hearing! What is his family involved in?
Distraught, Bill brings the tape to therapy.
When Bill replays the recording to the therapist, we now hear a completely innocent discussion. Bill questions his sanity. It must have something to do with the bad dreams he’s having.
One night he comes home to find his parents having a party with club Socialites and discovers that the rich are crazed sex monsters who feed off the poor, and it’s very disgusting[i].
The beauty[ii] of Society is that I have no idea if it’s an exploitation film, a sci-fi alien invasion film, an exploitation thriller[iii] or simply a series special effects with a storyline grafted on top[iv].
I do know that Society is schlocky body-horror, yet there’s a cleverness too. It struck the right balance of vulgarity, tone and style, occupying the point in space situated between Monty Python, class analysis and an actual pile of dog shit.
You can tell this film is low budget, but the filmmakers are exceedingly creative with how they used what they had. The shot selection, the colour palette, the sets and the music all worked together to create this strange world. And (I cannot believe I’m saying this) the acting[v] is good too.
Every one of the Socialites is operating in the same soap opera. Bill’s bewildered teen hero is strait out of a 50’s sci-fi, and the other food groups are stock characters taken to the extreme. Garbage bag David Lynch.
If you’re looking for a delightful abomination, Society may be for you.
TRAILER: https://youtu.be/inrBU8juGI8
NOTES:
[i] So, much is made of the “shunting” sequence which is, you know, an affront the senses. That said it is not bloody and they’re doing a lot here with puppets, lighting, and the power of suggestion. It’s still transgressive in terms of story but what may have been over the line visually in 1989, is nothing in this “Whatever, I watch The Walking Dead” world.
[ii] “beauty” is used symbolically
[iii] A paranoid delusion, maybe?
[iv] That last one is the claim per the imdb.com trivia page.
[v] I would legitimately recommend this film over Bertolucci’s Luna. They both have a weird narrative with an alienated teen son and a sexual dynamic with his family, and for me (again, I cannot believe I’m saying this) Society knit its elements together more successfully.
I thoroughly enjoyed Serial Mom, John Waters pastel-crude satire of the American media’s dual obsessions with rules and violence.
It’s a lovely Friday morning in May and the Sutphin family of suburban Baltimore are just sitting down to breakfast when there’s a knock on the door. It’s the police and they’re canvassing the neighbourhood regarding an obscene phone caller tormenting a local divorcee. Matriarch Beverly has no idea who would do such a thing.
But once her loving husband goes to work and the kids go to school, Bev dials up that slattern Dottie Hinkle, revealing herself to be the obscene caller!
GASP!
She unleashes a wave of anonymous filth at Dottie that would make Larry Flint proud, all because days ago Dottie stole her space in the supermarket parking lot.
From there Beverly’s vendettas and her body count grows.
This delightfully merry comedy turns up the canned idealism with 1950’s tropes plonked in the 1990’s. That house could easily belong to the Cleavers or a Nicholas Ray melodrama. It’s the nuclear family ideal skewered. Manicured lawns and PTA meetings masking the horror beneath, but campy!
Waters goes after it all in this movie. Suburban white mom moralising, Celeb bio picks, Show trials, Sick fandoms, serial killer obsessions and tattle-tales.
Eventually the law catches up with Beverly and she’s put on trial for murder. But what jury in the U.S of A would ever put a caring person like Serial Mom away?
Beverly never did any of it to be selfish. It was all to protect her family and the American way of life.
Waterworld (1995) Kevin Reynolds 2h 54m [Trashy Tuesday]
“Nothing's free in Waterworld” - Mariner
Waterworld is a Kevin Coster sci-fi vehicle where he plays a no-named Mariner, living alone on a trimaran. The polar ice caps have melted, cities are submerged, and all people live on a floatation device of some kind. Dennis Hopper is Deacon who, along with his fascist Jet-Ski army (navy?) kidnaps a child who holds the key to fining Dryland. Mariner is a hard-case, but he’s got a soft spot for the kid.
I have chosen to write stream of consciousness style about my experience.
That guy took his limes. Food.
Nothing is free in Waterworld. It’s kill or be killed in Waterworld.
DIRT! The Smokers? Pure hydro.
Enola, tomato plant. Smoke out the spy. GILLS!
The Ancients, recycled and entombed. Smokers, dead out of the Sun.
Fuck off! Dennis Hopper?
They have that much ammo to spare? This is taking atoll on me. Helen and the Jet-skis.
Acqua-man from Atlantis is Errol Flynn. CHARLES!
Crayon boob, Peter Gunn. Your Deaconship, the Dryland is the Motherlode.
Swimming lessons and haircut punishments and Stockholm syndrome at sea. PortuGreek. Jetski ambush.
Diving bell to Dryland. Submerged yet somehow not dystopian it’s an illustration.
Steven Tyler Poseidon. Peter Pan & Cap’n Hook.
Brink of death sexual hang-ups. Magazine.
GREGOR!
Adventure story of the good ship: Leadership!
Gilliamesque gentleman guppy blows that tanker up Real Good! [everyone seems to be enjoying themselves]
Airplane. Exxon VaLDEZ! Why are the spiderwebs on the table and nowhere else in this abandoned area?
Vanity Abs Shot, Cliff Daddy.
EPIC PULL BACK.
I genuinely think they thought this would be a series.
