Mermaids (1990)

  Finally, a coming-of-age story I semi-relate to!  Mostly because I, too, went through a phase in my teens where I wanted to be Catholic (specifically stigmata).  Then I got a little older and realized what I actually wanted was Attention.  And divine favor, which is really just Attention+.  Anyway...  Content warning:  child endangerment (drowning)

Charlotte (Winona Ryder) is a nice Jewish girl desperately wishing she could be a Catholic nun and tired of moving across the country every time her free-spirited mother (Cher) gets dumped.  When they land in a small town near Boston, her problems are intensified by a hard crush on the caretaker (Michael Schoeffling) of the local convent.  Her mom hits it off with a shoe salesman (Bob Hoskins) but her pathological fear of commitment stands to ruin both her's and her daughter's relationship.  

I remember watching this as a (very literal autistic) kid and being bitterly disappointed that there are no actual mermaids.  It is not a fantasy film at all.  So just in case you too were misled by the title.  I still have no idea why it's called this.  It's based on a book so I'm assuming it gets explained there.

The performances are mostly great.  Cher and Hoskins are magnetic together and this is the debut of tiny Christina Ricci, who is also good considering she's like 8-years-old.  I love Winona Ryder but Charlotte's voiceover/internal monologue was irritating as fuck.  I don't think I'd ever watch it again, now that I've completed it (I left it unfinished when I was a kid and it has always bothered me because autism) but it's not terrible if you like period pieces --the 1960s, New England in the fall, Cher, Bob Hoskins, or problematic age gaps.  (The caretaker is 27 or 29 and Charlotte is 15.)  It's currently streaming on (sigh) Max.

Jackie Brown (1997)

  I don't get why this is considered a classic.  It's fine? I guess, but I wouldn't call it something to write home about. 

Stewardess Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is stuck between a rock --her gun runner boyfriend Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson), for whom she ferries money back and forth to his partner in Mexico-- and a hard place --the ATF agent (Michael Keaton) who will bust her for possession if she doesn't cooperate in their sting to take Ordell down.  But Jackie is nobody's fool and with a little help from a lovestruck bail bondsman (Robert Forster), she might just turn the tables.

This feels like a period piece of the mid-90s.  Tarantino is a lot of things but you can't say the man isn't consistent with the things he likes.  Including feet.  It's basically one of his auteur trademarks at this point.  This one just didn't gel for me.   It feels like a debut that's a little unsure, a little off-step, but a solid start for growth.  Finding out this was actually his 3rd feature was a little bit of a shock.  IMDb says that he drastically toned down the violence after receiving criticism and maybe that's what makes this feel like a weaker entry.  

If you want to see it, it's leaving Tubi on April 30 so you might want to hurry.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Happy Earth Day!  Here's a completely unrelated movie!  The Movie Club pick for this week was Eyes Without a Face but I just watched that a couple of years ago and I already re-posted They Live this week, so I thought I'd swap out one highly regarded black-and-white 60s horror for another.  

A handful of survivors hole up in a farmhouse as they are beset from without by the undead, risen as a result of cosmic radiation from Venus, and from within by paranoia and selfishness.  Ben (Duane Jones) is trying to keep them all together and uneaten but is hampered by Barbra (Judith O'Dea) being completely useless as anything but a doorstop and Harry Cooper's (Karl Hardman) sweaty cowardice.

This is the OG of zombie movies, the innovator that spawned an entire sub-genre, the undead Coke Classic, if you will.  It remains a gold standard despite being made for approximately $42, adjusted for inflation, because it doesn't try and get cute or over-explain.  We know precisely as much about the characters as we need to for this moment and any information we get otherwise is the same as what they get.  That keeps us the audience rooted in the moment, which keeps the whole film feeling fresh as a deodorant commercial.  

The 2016 restored version is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.  Plus, you might get lucky and catch it the way God intended, streaming at 2 a.m. on their new Criterion 24/7 feature.  Give it a shot.

The Garden of Words (2014)

  This was so beautifully animated but the story was so gross it completely took me out of the experience.  

An emotionally vulnerable teenaged boy (Miyu Irino) skips class when it rains to sketch in a gazebo in the botanical garden.  An emotionally fragile woman (Kana Hanazawa) shares the gazebo while she works through a major depressive episode.  The boy develops a crush.  The woman encourages it.  

I've never been to Japan and I don't know how their culture works with regard to age gaps in relationships but a 15-year-old is a fucking child and no 29-year-old should be interested in pursuing them.  And before anyone jumps in with "oh, but they're just friends and kindred souls and she didn't do anything," please note that she fucking lies to her boss and says she's been meeting with an old lady.  If she didn't think there was something wrong with the relationship, she wouldn't have lied about it.

That being said, holy Cheezit Christ is there a bullying problem in Japanese schools.  There are waaaaay too many movies and shows about kids being bullied to suicide in East Asian countries.  (In America, you just get shot so it's not like we have room to throw shade.)   

This is the kind of shit that makes me grateful to just have cats.  I mean, they're still bullies but they weigh 8 lbs and don't have opposable thumbs, so they're manageable.  

This is on Criterion Channel but I say skip it and watch something else.

They Live (1988)

Finally, Movie Club picks a good movie!  Just kidding, they're all good movies, Brent.  The dialogue is super dumb and relentlessly quotable while drowning you in a firehose of late-stage capitalist dystopia.  Much like Idiocracy, the only thing separating horror-comedy from documentary is time.  A lot of people do get killed by cops, specifically, so that might need a trigger warning.  Originally posted 23 May 2010.    John Carpenter really is the master of the B-grade horror movie. I feel like I shouldn't love his movies as much as I do, because they really are crap. But they're the best kind of crap! Come on, where else are you going to get Roddy Piper as the headlining star of a movie about alien yuppies destroying the world through consumerism?

Yeah, that guy is the star. Are you intrigued yet? You should be.

Rowdy Roddy is a drifter who stumbles upon the Truth: that aliens are among us...and they want us to buy stuff. He finds a pair of sunglasses that show through the aliens' subliminal messages. Somehow, they also allow him to hear the subtle announcements to "Obey, Consume" and "Don't Question Authority". Don't fight it, they're scientific glasses. Named after a doctor and everything. Sure, it was the doctor that invented LSD but that shouldn't bias you.

John Carpenter wrote (under the pseudonym "Frank Armitage"), directed, and composed the score for this movie. Fun fact: Frank Armitage was chosen as a nom de plume as an homage to H.P. Lovecraft. It's also the character name of Roddy's sidekick.

Because when you have an inside joke, the only thing to do is beat it to death. Otherwise people might mistake it for subtle and not see how clever you are.

This move is certainly not The Thing. Hell, it's not even Big Trouble in Little China but it's not bad. The effects of the aliens are very old-school Twilight Zone. I thought they were pretty groovy. It definitely belongs in "Cult Classic" territory, right next to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

A Night at the Opera (1935)

  One of the Movie Club picks for this week.  I thought I had seen it before but I was just confusing it with the three other Marx Brothers movies I've seen.

Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho Marx) convinces Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont) to invest in the New York Opera Company by bringing over famed tenor Rudolfo Lassparri (Walter Woolf King).  Lassparri is an entitled asshole and insists on bringing his soprano, Rosa (Kitty Carlisle), to New York with him, mostly so he can pressure her into dating him.  Rosa is in love with Riccardo (Allan Jones), another tenor, who is friends with Tomasso (Chico Marx) and Fiorello (Harpo Marx).  The three men stowaway on the ocean liner taking everyone to New York and convince Driftwood to their cause.  Through the sheer power of chaos, all is made right.

If you've seen a Marx Brothers movie, you know whether or not this is your jam.  There's nothing new or revelatory.   I don't think it's as good as Monkey Business but as always, your mileage may vary.  The two original songs aren't great and there is actual opera being done so that might be a factor.  

It is currently streaming on Tubi with ads.

Voyage of the Damned (1976)

  Based on the title, I thought this was a horror movie so I started watching it in October only to discover it was Real Life Horror, not Fun Fictional Horror.  Content warning:  suicide, anti-Semitism, Nazi imagery

In May 1939, a cruise ship is allowed to leave Hamburg, Germany with 937 Jewish passengers bound for Havana, Cuba.  En route, Captain Schroeder (Max von Sydow) is informed that the passengers will not be allowed to disembark once they reach their destination.  Nazi propagandists organized the stunt to demonstrate that Jews were unwanted anywhere and therefore the world could raise no moral objection to Germany's treatment of them, making every nation that refused them as refugees complicit in the Holocaust.  With very few options available and running out of time before they will have to return to Germany, Schroeder and Morris Troper (Ben Gazzara), a Jewish activist, work to keep the increasingly desperate passengers from panicking while exhausting every diplomatic channel to find them a sympathetic port.

This is based on a true story.  The MS St. Louis was turned away from multiple ports, including the United States, because of anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and fears of provoking Hitler.  Sixty years later, people apologized so I guess that's okay.  

Really wish this didn't feel quite so prescient.  

Anyway, the movie stars a whole lot of famous people including Malcom McDowell, Faye Dunaway, Orson Welles, Jose Ferrer, James Mason, Katherine Ross, and was the debut of Jonathan Pryce.  It's relentlessly depressing but serves as a timely reminder that it's always moral to punch Nazis in the face.  It's streaming on Amazon or the Roku Channel with ads.  Don't watch it with ads.  It is extremely jarring to go from passengers grappling with the terror of an uncertain future to an ad about dog chews.