If it weren’t for the fact that PROM NIGHT featured a post-HALLOWEEN Jamie Lee Curtis, I highly doubt it’d be remembered much at all today. While it’s a serviceable slasher and does what it says on the tin — a whole bunch of students are stalked and killed in their high school on prom night — it does get lost a bit in the deluge of 1980s slashers.
Now, HELLO MARY LOU: PROM NIGHT II? There’s a film that stands out!
I’ll grant you: HELLO MARY LOU was never slated to be a PROM NIGHT sequel, but it featured a prom queen and murder so the studio appended PROM NIGHT II to the title and that was that.
Unlike PROM NIGHT, HELLO MARY LOU is far more supernatural, focused on the death of a 50s prom queen who, let loose in suburban 1987, inhabits bodies to reclaim her crown by any means necessary.
The result is smart and silly, and has inventively surreal set-pieces that rack up the bodies. Oh, and Michael Ironside is a priest! That’s worth the price of admission alone.
HELLO MARY LOU was followed by PROM NIGHT III, which veers into full supernatural slapstick, but I’ve already featured it! Find a copy of both any way that you can!
If you’re in Chicago on October 18th, 2024? HELLO MARY LOU is playing at the Music Box Theatre and features writer Ron Oliver! It promises to be a night to remember!
On paper, Anthony Minghella’s TRULY MADLY DEEPLY reads like a perfunctory ‘ghost romance’ not unlike, err, GHOST: Nina (the ever sparkling and industrious Juliet Stevenson) is recently bereaved after her lover and celebrated cellist Jaime (Alan Rickman, as soulful as ever even though he has a rather distracting mustache) dies far too young.
Inconsolable, partially due to perhaps the most ineffectual psychologist to be portrayed on film, Nina spends far too much time reminiscing on the good times, ruminating on how she’ll never be able to create new memories with him, and just wishing he was still a part of her life.
She gets her wish. One night, Jaime appears in her apartment, inexplicably visiting from heaven. The two quickly intertwine in ways that doesn’t quite make ghostly sense, but the film is sincere enough that you won’t overthink it.
Again, on paper? Reads like a maudlin romantic weepy and, while it could have been that, about a second chance at happiness with your dearest, Mingella imparts how we glorify past time with partners and how when you get what you want, it’s not always what you need, but one can always try to course-correct.
It’s worth noting that part of that course-correction may take the shape of a manic pixie dream dude who has had way too many whimsical and emotionally precious jobs in his life.
TRULY MADLY DEEPLY was originally shot as a TV film for the BBC, but it managed to make the leap overseas to American arthouses and garnered enough praise that Mingella was quickly being courted by studios to deliver something just as substantial but with an even more lavish sheen.
An aside! If the name Anthony Minghella doesn’t ring a bell, well, his biggest claim to fame is following TRULY MADLY DEEPLY with his film adaptation of THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Also? COLD MOUNTAIN and the 1999 adaptation of THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (which is finally getting the respect it deserves). So yes, Minghella enjoyed melancholy romances.
While it was shot for TV, it was visually composed for the silver screen. The recurring visual framing, of trees, of parks, of the sky, of camera angles and windowpanes bolster the emotional intensity; it recreates the sense of a heightened emotional state when everything you see and hear and smell is extraordinarily intense, and the repetition used here showcases how the impact of those experiences ebb and flow for Nina as she navigates life without a living Jaime.
None of TRULY MADLY DEEPLY would work if the chemistry and performances between Stevenson & Rickman lacked resonance and depth. Yes, Minghella did write the part with Stevenson in mind, to show off her energetic quirkiness, and Rickman gets to have his cake and eat it too by being charming and winsome and you can easily see why Stevenson misses him so much, at least until you start to see Jaime’s priggish side. As Rickman becomes more comfortable with his non-heavenly grounding, their relationship shifts in an all too relatable manner, all tension and strife over matters large and small.
While yes, this is a romantic ghostly tale, the relationship dynamics are anything but fantastical.
If there’s any fault to the film, it’s that it often feels slightly padded by the side stories of the supporting characters, especially Nina’s Polish landlord, Titus, who is infatuated with her (until he isn’t). Titus’ storyline dovetails with Nina’s pregnant friend through forced and contrived means that feels rather unnecessary, but perhaps I’m feeling rather cynical at the moment.
I won’t spoil what happens with Nina and Jaime, but I believe there’s more than one way to read the end of this film, neither being necessarily right or wrong. It depends on how altruistic you perceive the characters.
No matter how you interpret the end of the film, it’s a very human movie about coping and coming to terms with some of the most difficult facets of living a life, especially when one is so entangled with another.
Postscript
As noted above, Jaime is a cellist and his cello is the weight that Nina clings to after he’s gone. Nina’s insensitive sister asks Nina if her school-age son can have Jaime’s extremely valuable cello.
Naturally, Nina takes umbrage at this request, noting that it’s all she has left of Jaime and her sister drops the request.
I spent the bulk of my youth as a young cellist and, as someone who started playing in 4th grade — around the same age as the sister’s son — her sister’s request is not just thoughtless, but also completely impractical. A full-size cello would be useless for someone so young, as when you’re that young? You start out with a far smaller cello than a full-size cello, anywhere from 1/8th scale cello to 3/4th scale.
It is a small matter, and perhaps it’s included to showcase how little her sister knows about stringed instruments and youth, but it still irked me.
(fubo/hoopla/kanopy/Showtime/VOD) EXTRA ORDINARY is an extremely charming and winsome Irish horror-comedy about a woman named Rose (comedian Maeve Higgins) who has been bestowed with paranormal talents, which include the ability to see ghosts. Unfortunately, those powers backfired on her, resulting in the death of her father, so she swore them off and instead became a driving instructor. Unfortunately, local man Martin Martin (Barry Ward, THE END OF THE F***ING WORD) and washed up musician Christian Winter (Will Forte, MACGRUBER, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, clearly having fun playing a villain) will severely test that resolution.
EXTRA ORDINARY could coast along on the quality of its low-key goofs and gags and be a fun hangout horror rom-com, but the overarching story (penned by the directors Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman, with contributions from Higgins) jauntily moves along and escalates into one very fun but very odd climax. Literally.
It also features several finely produced video segments that recall GARTH MERENGHI’S DARKPLACE and LOOK AROUND YOU, fully rounding out the film into a terrifically satisfying film. Sadly, it was released in the US right before lockdown, but hopefully it’ll find an audience sooner rather than later.
