Prime

ORLANDO (1992)

December 7, 2020

(Prime/VOD) Somehow, I knew next-to-nothing about ORLANDO when I cracked open Virginia Woolf’s book roughly two years ago. Since then, it’s become a book I’ve extolled as brilliance I wish I’d encountered far earlier in my life.

Similarly, I came to Sally Potter’s adaptation only recently and, it too, is fantastic. However, it’s very difficult to discuss the particulars of its plot without divulging certain facets that make the book truly special, but here’s my attempt:

First and foremost: Swinton is absolutely perfect in this, and I love the audacity of how sparsely she’s adorned (except, of course, when she’s not). Obviously, it’s a role that rightly put Swinton in the limelight.

Second: Potter’s adaptation is more succinct, almost obscenely so as she could have given the scenes a bit more room to breathe, but instead she often races through the plot to the point where it feels more like a fever dream, as opposed to the lackadaisical pacing of the novel. The impact of which is felt nowhere harder than in Potter’s final act, which also bestows its own ending which, fair, it’s her film and all, but it’s -a lot-, and left a unique taste in my mouth.

Third: The gazes! They’re all amazing and all so wound with meaning, especially those that break the fourth wall.

Lastly: The cinematography and score. It has the formalistic trappings, portraiture stylings and sturdy tracking shots of a Greenaway film, but still engages with the action, as opposed to mannerly setting a tableau. Potter herself composed the music, which has a Nyman-esque minimalist flair that, yet again, engages more with the material than you’d expect.

In case you needed more coaxing: it’s Toby Jones’ first role and, despite that, if you’ve seen Toby Jones in anything, you know immediately that yes: that’s Toby Jones.

Trailer (a perfect three-act teaser):

PATRIOT (2015-2018)

November 26, 2020

(Prime) I think it’s fair to say that J.J. Abrams has probably had the biggest impact on serialized dramatic TV within the past 20 years. From ALIAS to LOST to FRINGE, everything boils down to conflict via -family dysfunction-, a conceit usually trotted out in films and not in TV because it’s traditionally been considered too soapy.

While PATRIOT isn’t one of the first spy shows to riff off of the spy family template of what Abrams wrought via ALIAS (if you haven’t seen ALIAS, you can start and end with its second season), it’s by far one of the most inventive. It’s a crackerjack of a thriller that, while its machinations are intentionally convoluted, the character work is the core of the show, and is a simply soulful as can be.

PATRIOT features John Tavner (Michael Dormer) as an unofficial CIA operative who operates under Tom Tavner, John father’s (the incomparable Terry O’Quinn), supervision. Occasionally John’s brother and Texas Congressman (Michael Chernus) gets roped in to John’s missions, simply to balance him out. While Tom realizes the stress he’s putting his son under, he feels it’s for the best of the nation (and also you sense that he revels in the control he has over his children) but he doesn’t quite realize just how frayed and worn down John is. To cope with matters, John sings about his missions Dylan-style on the street and in open-mic nights.

Yes, it’s a spy show and yes there are a lot of broken bones and MacGuffins changing hands, but those details matter as much to the audience as they do to John , which is to say: they don’t except for a means to an end-scene. It’s really about John’s dissonance and his breaking from reality, how the responsibilities his father piles onto him are breaking his humanity.

There’s an early scene in S01E08 (-L’Affaire Contre John Lakeman-, ~7:45-11:40) that I find an emblematic example of the show: John sits in the middle of a construction site as everyone involved in his life walk through, peppering him with expectations and disappointed laments while he sits there, framed by a concrete pipe, numb to their words. It’s one shot, camera static, as they slowly push in, the frame tightening on John’s back, slightly coiling the tension which builds, then whimpers away.

The first season of PATRIOT toys a lot with dialogue and very dry editing, but the second season features an explosion of virtuoso camera techniques and visuals. Sadly, a third season wasn’t meant to be, but I can only imagine the new ground it would have broken.

ROUTE 66 (1960-1964)

November 19, 2020

(hoopla/Prime/tubi/VOD/Vudu) While this show was always on this month’s slate, I wanted to recommend it on the day of SUPERNATURAL’s (WB/CW, 2005-2020) series finale. SUPERNATURAL is a show that’s been a bit of a lingering constant in my life since I glommed onto it around the third season. I haven’t watched every season, but I drop in from time to time — usually for any episode that Ben Edlund has penned, or any of the obviously meta eps — and I’m looking forward to seeing how everything ends.*

But I’m supposed to discuss ROUTE 66! Here’s what you need to know about ROUTE 66:

1) It’s one of the first road trip shows, and the creator of the show (Stirling Silliphant, who previously pioneered shot-on-location TV with THE NAKED CITY) insisted on shooting in every location detailed on the page. He wanted the show to explore America, hence the title.

2) ROUTE 66 is fundamentally about two drifters, one sensitive (Tod, played by Martin Milner), one more callous and randy (Buz, played by George Maharis), and they drive from town-to-town solving mysteries and soothing community wounds in a Chevrolet Corvette. Sound familiar? They often come to blows with how to deal with a situation, with one wanting to drive off while the other wanting to stay and help those in need. Each week ended up with everything neatly tied up, and they’d drive off to another town, slightly satisfied. Also, just take a look at ‘em! 60s versions of Sam and Dean if you ever saw ‘em.

It’s a fine case-of-the week strategy, which is exactly why SUPERNATURAL stole it. SUPERNATURAL creator Eric Kripke’s elevator pitch for the show was ‘X-FILES meets ROUTE 66’.** SUPERNATURAL became something completely different — and rarely ever shot on location — but you could still see the ROUTE 66 roots showing even in the final season.

By today’s eyes, ROUTE 66 is a fun, but mostly insubstantial show. It often feels like smaller scale version of the teen drifter/loner film dramas that were released around the late 50s/early 60s but, unlike those films, it showcased parts of the US that hadn’t previously been aired on TV. It boiled down to an entertainingly slightly dramatic tourist show, of which I think the only comparable show on the air right now is THE AMAZING RACE (also CBS, but a reality show).

Later on in the series, when the show started flagging a bit, they started having fun some fun with it, most notably with -Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing- which features Tod and Buz working at Chicago’s O’Hare Inn, where Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Lon Chaney Jr. just happen to be staying, and TV-safe horror antics ensue. (If you’d like to read more about the ep, see here: https://www.classicfilmtvcafe.com/2010/10/route-66-lizards-leg-and-owlets-wing.html ) You don’t have to watch every episode of ROUTE 66, but that ep is a fine spooky treasure.

(Not a trailer, but the full first episode.)
  • For what it’s worth, my favorite SUPERNATURAL episode is probably the 200th ep. While it’s complete fan-service, it also cuts to the quick about all that works about the show, including the hows and whys it’s lasted fifteen years.
  • (Spoilers for the …prior 199 episodes? Really, apart from one specific reference that’s a running joke throughout the series, it’s mostly benign.)

** https://twitter.com/therealKripke/status/674659951747334144 I honestly can’t believe that worked as an elevator pitch in the late 90s. I’d expect to hear back: “Route what-the-who? Like the dad song?”

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986)

October 30, 2020

(AMC+/hoopla/Prime/VOD) TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 has a similar reputation to its original as HALLOWEEN 3 has to the first two HALLOWEENs: fans felt betrayed. Both films toy with their hallmark villains (in the case of HALLOWEEN 3, Michael is nowhere to be found), neither film tries to repeat their prior efforts, and both look and feel drastically different from what fans expected. While HALLOWEEN 3 has finally been embraced by horror fans, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (TCM2) is still mostly ignored, which I believe is rather unfair.

TCM2 is unmistakably glossier and poppier — just take a listen to the soundtrack. And yes, it’s far broader than the original. In other words, far closer to the tone of similar 80s horror films, but there’s a reason for that.

Hooper and co-writer L.M. Kit Carson (co-writer of PARIS, TEXAS) are using TCM2 to actively undermine what Hooper created with TCM1, by putting a slapstick, circus-like veneer on the entire film. Texas, as a state, is reduced to a brightly colored carnival (Texas Battle Land, chock full of crass Alamo murals and poorly rendered re-enactments), the Sawyer family become a twisted Three Stooges, and Dennis Hopper is reduced to an short-sighted, idiotic buffoon, often over-compensating for his own weaknesses by taking up not one, but two chainsaws.

Is it puerile? Oh, most definitely — there’s even a scene where Leatherface (who quickly falls for our radio DJ heroine) ejaculates in his pants, then quickly becomes frustrated and tears up the radio station upon discovering this new sensation. New Sawyer family member Chop Top has a disgusting habit of picking the skin from around his skull wound with the hook of a clothes hanger and eating it.

Is it satire? I’m hard-pressed to say, but Hooper’s definitely undermining his original creation and having a lot of fun doing so. If they had replaced Leatherface and recast the Sawyer family and hadn’t sold it as a TCM sequel, I’m sure this film would be better regarded today. However, it’s questionable whether the film would have the same bite that Hooper intended if it weren’t billed as a Texas Chainsaw Massacre film, if it hadn’t pulled the rug out from fans’ feet.

PARENTS (1989)

October 20, 2020

(Prime/tubi/VOD) Directed by beloved character actor Bob Balaban! Scored with mambo-verve by Angelo Badalamenti! Mary Beth Hurt channelling Mary Astor! Sandy Dennis! Dennis Quaid back when he used to give a shit!

Delightfully weird, but very relatable, suburban horror coming-of-age film where the pre-teen kids’ strange imaginations run wild as they suss out that adults are really just large, hungry, hedonistic animals. We need more Sheilas in stories.

If anyone knows anything about the featured home, I’d love to hear about it because I swear I recognize it. It feels like it was ripped straight from Tati’s MON UNCLE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHybb1zSH-g

As a treat, here’s Ebert panning the film:

NIGHTBREED: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT (2014)

October 17, 2020

(peacock/Prime/tubi/VOD/Vudu) Apart from CANDYMAN and the short story it’s based on, and HELLRAISER, I’m not much of a Clive Barker fan, so NIGHTBREED is new to me. That said, if someone had told me that David Cronenberg was the goddamn villain of the film, I would have rectified that mistake years ago. (Instead I had to find that out from a recent DOUBLE THREAT podcast episode.)

While Cronenberg is marvelously sinister (and his mask is something special), what really strikes me about the film is that it has a distinct queer/club kid/Tod Browning FREAKS vibe to it, which I should have expected but did not. On top of that, the Nightbreed designs are strikingly unique, the script contains a surprising amount of humor, and Elfman’s score is absurdly lush. Much more delightful than I imagined. Perhaps I’m a Barker fan after all!

EXCISION (2012)

October 5, 2020

(Plex/Prime/tubi/VOD/Vudu) A thrilling, often very funny, horror tale about a teen girl discovering herself, despite her parents (including Traci Lords). Delightfully horrific and fucked up, features a small part with John Waters, and not nearly as campy as the casting may sound.

I’m pretty sure they had the rights to NINE INCH NAILS’ CLOSER for a split second and this is a fan-captured trailer but, even if it’s a fan-made trailer, it’s goddamn perfect — far better than any of the other trailers (NSFW):

THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947)

September 27, 2020

(fubo/Plex/Prime/VOD) Arguably Orson Welles’ most influential noir — although not the best, as that honor belongs to TOUCH OF EVIL — in that you’ve almost certainly seen a film or TV show that has lifted from its carnival scene.*

(If you’ve watched Lindelof’s WATCHMEN mini-series, you know what I’m talking about.)

The film itself is a bit of a mess, and Welles’ absolutely ridiculous accent doesn’t help matters, but Rita Hayworth is a fantastic femme fatale — it’s worth noting that she was married to Welles at the time — as is significant character actor (and a member of Welles’ Mercury Theatre stable) Everett Sloane, and the piece is elevated by audacious visuals.

  • Fun fact: The carnival scene was originally meant to last twenty minutes. It ultimately was cut down to under four.

IN A LONELY PLACE (1950)

September 25, 2020

(Plex/Prime/VOD) Adapted from the groundbreaking Dorothy B. Hughes novel, Nicolas Ray’s film is less of an examination of PTSD and toxic masculinity than that of a melodramatic noir of a distrustful couple. It’s a completely different beast, but no less powerful, mostly because Ray was contractually obligated to make the film with his recent ex-wife Gloria Grahame, who he divorced because he caught her in bed with his 13-year-old son, whom she later married. (Yes, really. https://medium.com/@stowens/the-not-so-wonderful-life-of-gloria-grahame-2d996a843c83 )

It’s a gorgeous, sad, film that utilizes Bogart’s charisma and volatility, while also leveraging some pitch-perfect production design, and puts post-WWII emotions on display.

ELVIRA, MISTRESS OF THE DARK (1989)

August 29, 2020

(AMC+/hoopla/Hulu/Prime/Shudder/tubi) Combining Elvira’s vaudeville MC schtick with a John Waters-type of cultural/sexual norms disruption was goddamn inspired. Yes, the male gaze interrupts the film’s flow every two minutes, but the self-aware winks and Elvira’s personal agency (mostly) subverts it. (I wish there was a better trailer for the film than this one.)

Also highly recommended: THE ELVIRA SHOW, which never made it further than the pilot.

Feels like THE GARRY SHANDLING SHOW but with Elvira. What more could you want?