Music Box

CATS (2019)

August 30, 2023

Let me get this out of the way first: Yes, Tom Hooper’s CATS is not considered a ‘good’ film or even an adequate adaptation, and that reputation is well-earned. It’s an absolute mess; there’s a lot of miscasting, the visual effects are wall-to-wall uncanny valley, and, well, let’s just say it feels like a cocaine-fueled revisiting of an already cocaine-fueled theatrical work. (Also: I am pretty sure T.S. Eliot would not approve of his cat poems being reworked in this way.) For a work that is so absolutely bonkers — we’re living in a musical feline-based underworld where everyone is vying for a spot to ascend to a higher plane that can only be deigned by what is essentially a Queen cat — it is surprisingly boring!

(That’s basically the entire story as I understand it, apart from some weird offshoots about ancillary cats and Idris Elba lapping it up as a villain who has some weird superpower that apparently puts folks in what I believe is his version of purgatory. Or he just transports them to a boat/harbor? Frankly, it doesn’t really matter.)

Now that I’ve addressed that: I still love Tom Hooper’s adaptation.

Again: this is not what one would consider a ‘good’ film. It’s a lot of noise and bluster and every facet of the film distracts from anything that would normally be considered merit-worthy.

However, it has a lot of charm, and most of that is due to the fact that this feels so earnest only in the way that a theatrical musical can get away with. Apart from the woeful casting of James Corden and Rebel Wilson — both very game and talented performers but they chew the scenery so much that Corden actually vomits later in the film — everyone is emoting like mad. Hell, even fucking Dame Judi Dench almost pulls off what can only be called uh, fully presenting her crouch in an absolutely ridiculous CGI leg pull.

(Yes, I will circle back to the utter horniness of the film. Please be patient.)

Putting aside the very creepy visuals and absolutely warped sense of physical scale of these cats living in what is supposed to be a real world, and Corden & Wilson, CATS feels like a very odd, very surreal, very singular labor of love. The production design is astounding, presenting like an under-populated Gotham City with its neons and rain and wrought iron as opposed to the London it’s supposed to be. Francesca Hayward — a Principal ballerina for The Royal Ballet — is astounding in the lead role of Victoria; she’s all wide eyes and hurt and wonder and dexterity. She whips and twirls and effortlessly hurls herself around and it’s visually majestic. Ian McKellen practically steals the show with his number and the melancholy and sadness he conveys. Oh, and Robbie Fairchild with his longing looks? Yes.

The choreography is exceptional and the soundtrack hits all of the right notes, if you’re into Webber. (I am not the biggest fan, as I still have nightmares about playing the endlessly dull cello part of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA in high school, but there are a lot of great songs here as well as some smashing callbacks and refrains!)

I’ve seen this film more times than you would think and yes, I have seen a stage production. (I did not care for the stage production, but that’s not the focus here.) The most recent time I viewed it was at Chicago’s Music Box as a ‘Rated Q’ event.

I wrote about ‘Rated Q’ in my post about BOUND but to summarize: ‘Rated Q’ is a monthly film event curated by Ramona Slick that extolls queer and underground works, while also adding a theatrical drag performance prelude that always entertains and titillates.

When I heard that ‘Rated Q’ would be screening CATS, I knew I had to attend. I thought I’d either love the experience or hate it, as I wasn’t sure if the audience would treat it like THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW which, for some, is thrilling but feels overly self-indulgent to me.

I loved it.

I cannot overstate how much fun this screening was. This may sound like hyperbole but typing this post is painful as my left hand provokes pangs because of how over-enthusiastic my clapping was and how much my wedding ring is inappropriate for long-lived clapping. (Yes, my wedding ring is on my right hand. Orthodoxy and all that foisted–upon jazz.) I had a beaming grin on my face for the entirety of the film. I’m sure my voice is a tad worn out by how much I laughed and how vocal I was, and everyone else there was just as enthusiastic. Hell, I even sang along with some of the songs and I am not that kind of person!

I have never seen people dance in their seats at the Music Box. I have never seen folks pull out lighters and phones to sway to a scene at the Music Box. I have never seen folks wildly throw their arms up in the air at the Music Box, pumping along to the beat of a song. Now I have. (I realize that if I would attend one of Music Box’s ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW sing-a-longs I’d probably see all of the above, but realistically that simply isn’t going to happen.)

This was all elicited by a film that has been considered a laughing stock, a joke, an absolute failure, but for most of those that filled the seats — and it was a very well-attended screening for a Thursday night — for two hours everyone shared a love for this very weird film that by all rights shouldn’t even exist.

I endlessly harp about the experience of communal cinematic viewing, of watching a film with like-minded individuals who revel in a film they know inside-out and I hate to do so again but I have to: there is absolutely nothing like it. Part of that’s because it is very singular — every ‘Rated Q’ screening I’ve attended has been solo — but even if you’re attending with friends, your eyes are focused on the screen and for two hours you are part of this strange world and surrounded by the glow of collective enthusiasm and appreciation and, if you’re lucky, it means everything to you. This one screening meant everything to everyone and it was glorious.

ADDENDUM

You thought I forgot about the horniness? I did not! Every five minutes an audience member would shout out ‘Kiss!’ because this film feels like it’s on an Olympics-scale version of sweatiness and lust. While the cats never kiss, they are endlessly rubbing up against each other or throwing each other all sorts of wanting glances. I never thought I’d expect to feel such heat between a modern-day Judi Dench and a woman young enough to be her granddaughter, but yes, that definitely happens.

Also: most of these cats are essentially nude the entire time. However, Idris Elba wears a trenchcoat for most of the film but in the final act he throws it off and is finally naked and goddamn, the audience went wild, all sorts of gasps, and hooting and laughter and applause and it was all in the ‘Rated Q’ spirit.

Normally this is where I embed a trailer, but this is far more emblematic of the experience — for better or for worse — and is absolutely about trying recapture magic, so here you go:

If you’re in or around Chicago on September 14th 2023, the next ‘Rated Q’ screening is LEGALLY BLONDE. Join me, won’t you?

PERPETRATOR (2023)

August 26, 2023

CAVEAT

This was a while ago, but I did take video art classes from PERPETRATOR director/writer Jennifer Reeder back in my college days. She wouldn’t know me from Adam now — I’m simply noting it out of a sense of responsibility. She’s a great teacher who now teaches at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and I will never forget screening my first extremely personal and intensely overworked short video piece in her class, which one fellow student exclaimed after viewing it: “That gave me a migraine.”

I also saw PERPETRATOR at the Chicago premiere, with a ton of the crew in the audience, as well as with a post-film Q&A between the always awesome Katie Rife and Reeder, so I can’t deny that the entire audience was completely on-board for what they were about to see.

I will try to keep this short and succinct for once, because this is one of those rare films that I feel requires a second viewing, but it’s rolling out on screens this week and I want to boost it!

Director/writer/auteur Jennifer Reeder loves genre conventions, but is also firmly ensconced in experimental works. Her prior feature — KNIVES AND SKIN — is very much about teen girls and high school and cliques and being pursued, but also embraces how these girls get to know their bodies and everything that entails, including how others view and abuse them, and she films all of this through a teen haze; events happen around and to you and they don’t often make sense, but you just roll with it because you don’t know any better. While it shares a lot of DNA from TWIN PEAKS, it is still its own thing.

PERPETRATOR follows in the same vein, but it’s far, far bloodier, far more disturbing, and features far more orifices than her prior film. It’s disturbing, certainly, but it does what I think horror does best: detailing the confusion of body and personality transformation but also how folks simply adjust and accept or reject it. While it is fundamentally a narrative genre feature, it is not afraid of diverging into more surreal and nebulous areas.

I know I’m not doing the film justice with this post. (I will circle back with a later post detailing the rest of the cast and crew!) Hell, I may even be misrepresenting it; it’s that kind of film. I’m a huge fan of her and still I went into this film knowing nothing about it and I’d suggest doing the same. It’s a shocking, provocative, singular film that feels like nothing else out there.

Nonetheless, here’s the trailer, and if you have a SHUDDER subscription, you can watch it there soon, or if you live in NYC or LA or Chicago, you can catch it on the big screen, which is really how you should see some of the puckering.

WILD THINGS (1998)

June 17, 2023

In the late 90s, there were two contemporary films I absolutely would not shut up about: Joe Dante’s SMALL SOLDIERS (1998, and there is video footage out there somewhere of me drunkenly ranting about how it should have had at least one Oscar nomination) and John McNaughton’s WILD THINGS (also released in 1998, and I would repeatedly tell people: it’s not the soft-core porn you think it is).

WILD THINGS means different things to different people. Most folks only remember it for the threesome scenes between a never-better Denise Richards, Neve Campbell (always giving it her all), and an amazingly duplicitous Matt Dillon, or they remember Bill Murray’s very sleazy turn as an amoral, neck-braced lawyer, or they remember it because out-of-nowhere, there’s Kevin Bacon’s cock and there’s definitely a romantic subtext to his character and Dillon’s (which, honestly, is basically text — initially that was written in the script).

However, I remember it because it’s a goddamn sun-soaked gonzo neo-noir that is so bat-shit-crazy that the film felt the need to explain itself in the end credits. That’s the memory I took with me when I went to rewatch it at the Music Box Theatre (absolutely killing it this month), with McNaughton in-attendance for a post-film interview with Dmitry Samarov (whose brilliant self-reflective work HACK you should definitely seek out).

Also, both McNaughton and Samarov just happened to be sitting behind me and watched the entire film — not a brag, just a dumb coincidence, as that sort of positioning makes me super-anxious, like when I ended up seated next to Karina Longsworth for her YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS Chicago wintertime screening of OUTRAGE.

I’ll note that: if you’ve been to enough of these sort of ‘director interview’ screenings, it’s rare that the folks involved sit through the entire film. They usually dart off for dinner or drinks and arrive just as the credits roll. I don’t blame them! I’m just shocked when they opt to endure it!

WILD THINGS holds up with aplomb, and also takes on a severely different context today than it did before, while also being a timeless tale. At first it feels very #MeToo, and then it takes a turn, then another turn, then another turn, then it twists, and then again and it will leave you breathless. It is not the film you expect it to be; it’s quintessential noir to its goddamn bones.

In other words: it’s all about sex, power play, and beguilement. Nothing more noir than that, and it all takes place in the humid air of Miami, one of the least noir locations you can think of.

Seeing it in 35mm — McNaughton’s personal print, I’ll add — only made it better. Like most, I first saw it on a well-worn VHS tape from a local rental store as opposed to projected in a theater. It’s that sort of trash — which McNaughton extolls and he specifically told us that that was the intent of the film — but it’s a beautiful alchemy of trash.

While everyone on board knew how brazenly ridiculous the script was, they treated it dead-seriously, and it’s all there on the screen, from the script punch-ups that really give life to the characters, the lush settings, the convoluted narrative, as well as the breezy score, it is trashy perfection.

Stay for the credits, as it’s hand-down, one of the most memorable end-credits sequence ever shot. Marvel could learn a lot from WILD THINGS.

While there are a number of straight-to-video sequels, I have not seen any of them and cannot vouch for them (at this time).

ADDENDUM

I was lucky enough to pick McNaughton’s brain a bit after the screening, particularly about one scene on a boat that I felt riffed on Patricia Highsmith’s THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (as well as the two best-known film adaptations: THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (1999) — of course — but also the French adaptation of that Ripley novel: PLEIN SOLEIL).

McNaughton told me: “I love Highsmith, but no, that was never part of it.” So now you know!

THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959)

June 16, 2023

I’m not sure how many folks remember William Castle nowadays, given that he did most of his most intriguing work in the 50s and early 60s but, if you are a horror fan, you are probably aware of him (and you’ve probably watched Joe Dante’s love letter to his sort of theatrical gimmicks via his brilliant film MATINEE).

That said, myself and a friend went to my favorite movie theater — Chicago’s Music Box Theatre — to see a 35mm print of Castle’s THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL that also promised to involve Castle-esque gimmicks, such as actors roaming through the audience and skeletons.

Reader: they did two screenings and the one I attended — at 9:30 on a Thursday night, nonetheless — was sold out.

I’ve seen THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL more than a few times. Vincent Price is exceptional in it, as always, and it’s chock full of schlock, including all of the standard ‘haunted house’ tropes, such as falling chandeliers, senseless locked doors, and plenty of fake-outs. (It definitely owes a debt to James Whale’s THE OLD HOUSE (1932), which Castle remade later in his career.) Is it a great film? No. Does it make much sense? No. Is it populated by B-grade actors not quite giving it their all? Yes.

Is it a memorable film? Fuck yeah. It has a fantastic set, serviceable lighting, and striking set-pieces.

I realize I’m extremely lucky to live in a city where my favorite film palace loves to show horror, and even luckier that they go to the trouble of recreating gimmicks. They even talked to Castle’s daughter to get points of reference and her blessing. These folks are doing the work.

While THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL is a blast under any circumstances, seeing it in a fully sold out thousand-plus seat theater with a group of very-game audience members who were all very well-mannered while still being appropriately rambunctious was one of the best post-pandemic screenings I’ve attended. It reminded me of the controlled chaos of The Vic’s Brew ’n View (R.I.P.) where everyone’s there to have a good time and respond to the screen appropriately, be it laughing, clapping, or blurting out something legitimately funny (instead of play-acting MST3k).

I know I often say this, but nothing can recreate the feeling of seeing a movie in a theater, and when you encounter these very sort of specific circumstances, it’s extremely special. The Music Box created an experience that those who were there will be dining out on for years, and they deserve every accolade. I only hope that you can find a similar theater that you can call a home-away-from-home.