News You Can Bruise for 2023 October

(2) Mon Oct 02 2023 13:18 September Film Roundup: A few years ago I praised a company I have little positive to say about, Amazon, for keeping alive the tradition of video rental in a video-on-demand world. The medium of film has an enormous midlist and backlist that is culturally important but apparently has has no economic value. The video store used to be the cineaste's low-cost ticket to this endless backlog. Now I'm here to praise another company I have little positive to say about, Fox, for upping the ante by acquiring Tubi.

Tubi has monetized thousands of classic films by giving them the cable TV treatment. Occasional commercials for DoorDash will interrupt your viewing of that 1971 sex comedy, but you can watch a ton of obscure and sometimes good! movies whenever you want, without doing something tacky like resorting to piracy or spending money. I think just about everything we saw this month, we saw on Tubi. Big recommendation if it's available in your area.

• Moulin Rouge! (2001): If you were 15 years too young for Phantom, your ride has arrived. After watching it I said "I bet Rachel loved that one." One text later, here's Rachel's review: "I was obsessed with that film when it came out. It's the same old story though (La Boheme, Rent)." Nailed it!

  I liked the fast-paced bits and thought the rest was boring. But apparently moviegoers in 2001 just weren't ready for a feature film cut like a music video, and there was some Rite of Spring-like unrest at the Cannes premiere.

  When Nicole Kidman gave her first tiny cough, Sumana and I just looked at each other. Nothing needed to be said; this chick is doomed! Susanna (who also saw the movie recently) said she had to explain that to her kids.

  While I'm here... the quote from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in this movie reminded me that when I was in college I saw "Here we are now, entertain us," verbatim, in a book from the 1960s about hosting parties, which I bought from Goodwill. (Ie. "Your guests will arrive and immediately expect your attention, with an attitude of 'here we are now, entertain us.'") I've never been able to find that quote or that book again; it's not the kind of book that gets held in university libraries, which is how old books get into Hathi Trust or Google Books. But I remember it jumping out at me, and I've always wondered if it was independent invention, or if Kurt Cobain also saw that book and swiped the line, the way he took the title of the song from the graffiti Kathleen Hanna wrote on his bedroom wall.

• Phfft! (1954): Even Dreamworks Entertainment wouldn't dare name a movie after a fart noise today, but Columbia Pictures boldly went forward into the Flatulent Fifties. (A well-known nickname for the decade, which is now forgotten, but likely to be revived in a mere 27 years!) Jack Lemmon and Judy Holliday were pretty fun as the temporarily divorced couple, but Kim Novak really stole the show with her horny weirdo character. This movie also features a timely warning about dames:

  

• It Should Happen To You (1954): Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon... together at first! In the story of a woman who just wants a totally random thing and won't take no for an answer. This was the highlight of the month, because of its oddball premise and the chemistry between the leads, which is stronger than it would be in Phfft! since they're not playing divorced. Judy Holliday is a powerhouse and it's a huge loss that she died so young.

  In retrospect it is not surprising that the part of Gladys Glover was originally written for Danny Kaye. Gladys is way more stubborn than your average 1950s female lead would be. The traditional "taming of the shrew" section, where the ambitious woman learns to get with the program and settle down, is completely earned for once, because Gladys's ambitions are goofy and she has realized them, far past the point where they brought her any happiness.

  It Should Happen To You includes one of the best negotiation scenes I've seen in a movie:

  "Now, what I had in mind was this: that we share the sign. Then we'd all be happy."
  "I'm happy now!"

  Gotta remember that one.

• Who's Minding The Mint? (1967): Stupid, stupid movie with the '60s look I love. I can't get enough of these beautifully shot, not-that-funny comedies, and they all seem to star Jim Hutton; he was also in The Horizontal Lieutenant (1962). One good thing I'll say about this movie is: it starts off showing Hutton's character committing borderline fraud by exploiting free trials of luxury goods (presumably a new innovation at the time), but this is portrayed as a harmless, lighthearted it-sticking to the man. Rather than the minor character flaw that pulls him, over the course of this movie, deeper and deeper into a very serious federal crime.

  Perfect riff no one will get: "This was the original Dogecoin rugpull." Wait, I can link to the movie on Tubi! Perfect riff is at 1:07:20. You might have to endure a DoorDash ad.

• Man's Favorite Sport? (1964): I've seen sly in-jokes in Rock Hudson movies about the star's homosexuality, but this just seems cruel. In Man's Favorite Sport? Hudson plays a famous fisherman, a respected author of fishing books and model for anglers everywhere, a guy whose claim to fame is his ability to reel 'em in like nobody's business... but he's never been fishing and he hates fish! Of course, the part was originally written for Cary Grant, so I might be reading too much into this.

  Oh, yeah, another problem: the part was originally written for Cary Grant, but it's 1964. Howard Hawks wanted to do a follow-up to Bringing Up Baby, his prior animal-themed screwball comedy. But that was twenty-five years earlier! By 1964 everyone was too old and didn't want to do it and it would have made no sense, so Howard Hawks got Rock Hudson to do a Cary Grant impression (it's terrible) and cast Paula Prentiss in the Katharine Hepburn role (she's all right).

  Although this is funnier and much more sophisticated than Who's Minding The Mint?, it's is ultimately another 1960s sex-comedy train wreck with amazing Midcentury Modern set design. Rated F for some cruelty to stunt fish.

• The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic (2021): In a rare occurrence for me, I watched this movie without knowing the genre, and was pleasantly surprised when what seemed like a slow slice-of-life thing became something very different. (I won't go into specifics; read a review if you want.) Showcases Leonard's golden rule of garnering audience sympathy: you know what your audience is doing right now (watching a movie), so get on their side with a character who also likes doing that. This is why everybody sympathizes with Myrus in Situation Normal, BTW: he loves reading speculative fiction.
• It's Trad, Dad! (1962): a.k.a. Ring-A-Ding Rhythm, but who can resist the idea of reactionaries revolting against something called "trad"? A remarkable document of American soft power immediately before the Beatles counterattacked. These Brit kids are totally obsessed with jazz and American pop culture. Why? Don't make me tap the sign. [Sign says: IT'S TRAD, DAD!]

  The film is a series of skits interrupted by musical numbers, like SNL with more music, but the skits are mostly fun and the music's all right. A lightweight but entertaining debut for... the guy who'd be directing A Hard Day's Night two years later. Sometimes you wonder "whatever happened to them?", and sometimes the answer is obvious.

  I should mention we came to this movie via its star Helen Shapiro; we heard her singing a song on Heardle Decades and really liked her voice. She was so big, the Beatles opened for her! Now that's trad, dad!

• The Lady Is Willing (1942): I have to think this is a misleadingly saucy title for a movie designed to juice ticket sales. The movie poster has a random baby (BABY COREY) on it, and we all know that babies mean sex—if only in a flashback.

  Unfortunately, Marlene Dietrich isn't the right actress for this part—it's more a Judy Holliday sort of ditz part—and the screenplay's not that funny anyway. Its romantic view of how the maternal instinct leads to hilarious kidnapping and tender child endangerment hasn't aged well. Admittedly that makes this movie sound like Raising Arizona, which would have been a pretty cool picture show in 1942, but that wasn't what they were going for.

  Fred MacMurray is all right as the Vulcan-like pediatrician who hates kids... until he comes into close proximity to BABY COREY! Who could have guessed?

Finally, a Television Spotlight from another online streaming service; specifically, Freevee and its Emmy-nominated original series Jury Duty. I started out a reluctant watcher, but was ultimately charmed by the way Ronald, the patsy in this hyper-orchestrated reality show, keeps showing compassion and decency even as he's confronted by one weird reality show twist after another. If not for that anchoring, I would definitely have dropped out. I also appreciated how the last episode is basically a behind-the-scenes documentary.