Cinema Hype

It’s been awhile since we at CHHQ have made a trip to the ol’ proprietary DVD shelf, but we suppose that every now and again it’s good to honor what we have. The problem with honoring Sixteen Candles is that honestly, there’s not that much to say. What is unique and outstanding about an 80s John Hughes movie starring Molly Ringwald, exactly? What are the themes? Where are the narrative choices? How is this film unique? Not in many places, really.

But wait. There are some outstanding moments here. It turns out that Sixteen Candles is pretty run-of-the-mill in terms of Ringwald and All-American Team Hottie Michael Schoeffling as Jake Ryan (been there, done that, literally have the t-shirt; ask my mother). But they’re not the end of the story. This movie is packed with strange and fascinating side characters, from the nerds upon whom Hughes built his legacy to the female uber-athlete who just wants a date. It’s in this spirit that CH presents the All-Time Top Five Characters List, Sixteen Candles edition.

1. Long Duk Dong: How Hughes got away with such a blatantly racist portrayal of an Asian exchange student is unclear, but the Donger is probably the most memorable character in the whole movie. The urge to shout “Automobiiiiiiiiiile?!” at random moments is nearly irresistible. I’m sorry. But it’s funny.

2. The Nerd/”Farmer Ted”: The brilliance of Farmer Ted is clearly a casting victory–the high-school nerd is nothing new to the 80s teen comedy, but Anthony Michael Hall is so boundlessly energetic and so totally enthusiastic that it’s impossible not to love him. Alas, the role haunted him long into adulthood, and forced him to get really buffed out before anybody could forget him trying to sniff Ringwald’s neck.

3. Bryce and Cliff (John Cusack and Darren Harris): Farmer Ted’s minions are perfect in small doses and always appear together, sealing their identity as a single character. They taught the world that the only thing better than an extraterrestrial is a female extraterrestrial, and that wearing head lamps in public is cool. Also, we hear one of them’s kind of famous now, but whatever.

4. The grandparents: Covering both ends of the senior-citizen spectrum (“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” to Dick Clark), Sam’s grandnparents are simultaneously awful and awesome, unable to deal with anybody, including one another. “Oh, Frank. She’s gotten her boobies! And they are so perky!” Priceless.

5. Back-Brace Girl: For having landed a role with no lines and no importance to the story at all, Joan Cusack seems to have done all right for herself. Back-Brace Girl appears throughout the movie, navigating life in a depressingly solitary but matter-of-fact way, and then wiping her mouth with the lace skirt sewn to her sweatshirt. Again: not super-sensitive, but still funny. And hey, she (ostensibly) lost the brace and grew up to be a major movie star, so she wins in the end, no?

Sixteen Candles, Molly Ringwald, Jake Ryan, John Cusack, 80’s movies

What happened, exactly, to Bill Murray? Did he just get older? Did he experience some mental shift? Did he consciously decide to change his whole brand of comedy? He’s taken on a different persona, traded the slapstick for the understated, become a quiet comedian, and ventured into unexplored territories of facial hair. The shift is mostly a twenty-first-century phenomenon; sometime after Charlie’s Angels and before The Royal Tenenbaums, he made a shift. Groundhog Day, it seems, is something of a “bridge” movie: chronologically, we see an early-90s film. From a thematic perspective, though, we’ve got an early showcase for the Bill Murray of the 00s.

It’s not that nothing in Groundhog Day is silly or physical–the cold-shower scene is pretty over-the-top, and there are certainly funny faces involved here–it’s just that Murray becomes so stoic as he lives the same day over and over again. He deadpans his way through his weatherman scenes, several expository monologues, multiple suicide attempts, and one ridiculous groundhog-napping. It feels like he’s working on his shtick, here, staying totally calm in increasingly frantic circumstances. He’s looking ahead. He’s previewing the new millennium, no?

People who don’t like Groundhog Day usually make the same complaint: they don’t like seeing the same scenes over and over again (thirty-three times, if Wikipedia is to be believed). The repetition doesn’t interrupt the rhythm of the movie, though; instead, it sets the tempo. It’s a movie of short scenes repeated in quick succession, but arranged in such a way that we see the arcs of Phil’s experience: he’s afraid; he’s thrilled; he’s shrewd; he’s increasingly discontented; he’s striving to get it right. Technically, there’s repetition, but it’s not boring: there are changes in mood, small changes in dialogue as Phil refines his personal script, complete changes of intent. The character changes, even if the lines don’t, and that’s what separates “thematic choice” from “broken record.”

The humor in Groundhog Day is sort of like Murray himself: the truth is, both Good Phil and Bad Phil–or Noisy Bill and Quiet Bill–are fun. For having the sappy romantic-comedy ending that it does, the rest of the movie is remarkably and wonderfully snarky. Phil judges the people in Punxsutawney, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t mockable in the first place, and the movie acknowledges that. Bad Phil is fun to watch–he’s mean, but he’s not stupid, and he’s not not funny.

Alternatively, the aforementioned romantic-comedy ending is almost too much, but then there’s the implication that just “getting the girl” hasn’t been enough: when Phil uses his situation to seduce Rita (Andie MacDowell), he fails. When he uses his situation to become a good person in general, he succeeds in winning Rita and he gets to move on with his life. The movie ends up being more about wholeness and un-self-centeredness than anything else; Rita is just a symbol of that (being whole and un-self-centered herself, of course). It’s here that things go into dangerously sugary territory, but, with a little doubt-benefiting, things work out. The ending scene–in the front yard of the B&B–is so over-the-top sweet that we can only assume director Harold Ramis saw the sugar-shock potential and decided to embrace it; it becomes part of the hyperbole of the movie, sort of. It works, in a goofy, “I hope that was on purpose” kind of way. And anyway, Phil’s so happy to see February 3 that it’s hard to hold it against him, isn’t it?

Happy Groundhog Day to all! See you…tomorrow?

I recently bought a new copy of Bridget Jones’s Diary on DVD. It’s the new, pretty one with an external sleeve and the heart-shaped cut-out. I was at Target, and it was $9, right next to the West Wing DVDs I was buying for my dad. The thing is, I already own Bridget. I’ve had it for years. It’s one of my most-watched movies. So why do I need a second copy? Because I know my VCR is going to die some day.

Yes. You heard that correctly. I own a VCR. Most of my favorite movies from adolescence through college are on VHS, because who had a DVD player in 1995? Straddling the technology gap has been tricky, though. I know that my tapes won’t last forever, and it’s the knowledge that my VCR is not immortal that keeps me on the hunt for replacement DVDs. Some day, those spindles will grind to a halt, and I’ll be left with no way to watch my scratchy copy of The Cutting Edge. What a sad day that will be.

I find that the best place to find DVDs to replace my tapes is the end of the cashier line at Target: there’s nothing like going in for some toothpaste and finding that $9 Sandra Bullock movie as well, and knowing you’ll now have clean teeth and a reliable dose of cute. Costco’s not bad either, though the stock is unpredictable. It’s a strike-while-the-iron-is-hot kind of situation. Actually, the DVD-replacement business as a whole is primarily a spur-of-the-moment thing. I have no desire to spend hours searching for a $20 copy of something I already own; instead, I rely on serendipity to bring me what I’m lacking. My mission is to finish replacing my tapes before the VCR dies, so as not to miss a single viewing of Miss Congeniality. It’s a race against time and technology, and victory shall be mine. Just as long as Target keeps up the good work.

SPOILERS AHEAD. CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.

The news that Bend It Like Beckham is a part of my DVD collection should be a surprise to just about nobody. For one thing, I believe we’ve covered my love for sports movies. Anything that makes me want to get up and work out is fine by me, really. But Bend It Like Beckham is more than just a plain sports movie for me (aren’t all the best ones about more than sports?), which is why it deserves a prime spot on The Shelf.

What I like most about Bend It Like Beckham is that it’s more than the common story of a woman breaking tradition to pursue an athletic career. That’s part of the plot–Jess (Parminder Nagra) does want to play football–but it’s not the point. The point is that she wants to play football, but she needs to be a part of her own family, and she’s willing to give up one for the other. I like the way this storyline is emphasized by Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyer)’s estrangement from his father: he has football, sort of, but that’s all he has. In the end, it’s a movie about a woman figuring out what will make her really happy–and football isn’t necessarily it. It’s a nice change.

I remember walking out of the theater after Bend It Like Beckham and thinking that it was a supremely emotional movie. All of the characters here are ruled by their hearts more than their heads–Jess, certainly, but also Jules (Keira Knightley), Joe, and Mr. Bhamra (Anupam Kher)–to the extent that the movie is very much about interaction and reaction rather than football or any other kind of action. It’s about assumptions and misunderstandings, and about the emotional state of the main character. When Jess fails, her failure isn’t about what she lost–usually something minor anyway, really–but about her own disappointment and frustration. Similarly, when she wins, it’s never just a football game. When she fights with Jules, we feel it. When Joe runs through the airport gate (in his black jeans and distracting white tennis shoes) to say goodbye, we feel it. Whatever happens to Jess,
director Gurinder Chadha seems intent on amplifying the effect until we feel it ourselves. Somehow, it works.

The climax scene in Bend It Like Beckham isn’t so much a scene as a long musical montage. This sounds like a terrible idea–musical montages often are–but it works here. It’s both a reference to Bollywood and an actual film technique: as footage of Jess’s football game and Pinky (Archie Panjabi)’s wedding are spliced together, both events come across as beautiful and satisfying in their own ways. The dancing and the jostling of the football game, both set to Indian pop and opera, are colorful and filled with motion, and Chadha does a nice job of setting the two side by side. She finds visually interesting ways to link the two sisters’ very different destinies in the minds of the audience. At the climax, neither of them is doing something better than the other. They’ve both won. It’s a beautiful sequence.

Last but not least, the DVD special features are excellent; my favorite is the cooking show with Chadha making aloo gobi. Nice touch. Because anybody can make aloo gobi (not true, by the way), but who can bend a ball like Beckham?

I was an adolescent in the early 1990s, and I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I devoured the first few of John Grisham’s novels. He was all the rage: all those sexy lawyers doing virtuous things! How could we not love him? Most of those first few novels–A Time to Kill through, say, The Runaway Jury–were eventually made into movies. Ultimately, Grisham sort of faded back into the woodwork, and none of the novels or the movies really stuck with me, except one. That would be The Pelican Brief.

I can’t even really say what attracted me about the book or the movie, but I can take a few guesses: a bookish heroine running from the bad guys, changing haircuts daily and staying just out of the reach of danger, and bonding with a strong-and-silent journalist (Denzel Washington). It was like Alias before there was Alias, and I loved it. My friend Maggie and I watched it all the time–we loved Stanley Tucci, even though he was the bad guy (Khamel the jogger!), and it made me want to check out the French Quarter, because that’s where cool law students go to eat beignets, hang out with Sam Shepard and Cynthia Nixon, and solve environmental crimes. Obviously.

I suspect that I also liked The Pelican Brief because it was one of the first suspense movies I ever saw–to this day, I’m a sucker for innocent but resourceful people running from the bad guys, for a well-timed explosion (”Ms. Shaw, you take my breath away.”), for the relationship between protector and protected. I always loved the scene where Darby is at the riverside plaza, and she’s holding hands with the bad guy (!), and then there are gunshots, and there’s this wide-angle shot of the entire crowd swarming away from Julia Roberts, leaving her alone and spattered with blood. It’s a creepy scene, but it takes place in broad daylight in the middle of a crowd. That scene used to give me goosebumps both because of its violence and because I liked the way it looked. There was a lot to like about The Pelican Brief, even as it was violent and a little scary. It was suspenseful, but not too suspenseful; it was violent, but not too violent; it was complicated, but not too complicated. It was my gateway movie for suspense films.

Shoot. Now I need to go re-watch.

Picture this: You’re twelve years old. You’re in the throes of a reasonably successful career as starting catcher for your junior-high softball team. You think that maybe you could be kind of good at this (You’re wrong, but you don’t know that yet). You play softball morning, noon, and night. Soon, a movie comes out. A movie about women playing professional baseball. It stars Geena Davis as a tough, gifted catcher; the climax of the movie takes place during a crucial play at home plate. A really, really sad Madonna song plays during the credits. Are your eyes closed? Are you with me?

Then you see why A League of Their Own was destined to be in my DVD collection.

I’ve long had a weakness for sports movies–after each of the three Mighty Ducks movies, I vowed I’d learn to play ice hockey–but A League of Their Own was different, at the time: it was about my sport. I wanted to be Dottie Hinson, in much the same way that I wanted to be Mary Lou Retton when I was four (neither worked out, sadly). It seemed within reach, sort of. I saw this movie three times in the theater and countless times afterwards, and it always makes me want to get out and play a little.

Also, inspirational athletes aside, I like it. For one thing, there’s no faulting the cast–Davis, Tom Hanks, Madonna (in a rare non-disastrous film appearance), Jon Lovitz, David Strathairn, a young Rosie O’Donnell, and loads of good but lesser-known actors (Tea Leoni! Joey Slotnick!) in smaller roles. What always resonated with me, though, was the relationship between Dottie (Davis) and Kit (Lori Petty), which I now realize is the product of good writing and strong character development. The conflicts between the sisters are the results of their characters–who they are at their cores–and not so much of how they act towards one another. The script develops the tension nicely and maintains that integrity even as the climax is resolved. As a writer and a viewer, I can appreciate the strong structure going on there.

Other than the strength of the writing, the details and side-plots going on around the two sisters are excellent. It’s the ups and downs of the whole team that make it so infectious: we see the women, get to know them, see them laugh and cry and dance and love and play baseball in the house. We hear the famous “There’s no crying in baseball!” scene. It’s about sisterhood in more than one sense, and the Rockford Peaches aren’t not so different from women we know, which is kind of an exciting thought. That’s why I never get tired of watching this movie.

The upshot: A League of Their Own has aged well. Far better than my softball career, anyway.

I once had a roommate who didn’t own a single DVD. He was the kind of guy who liked to live light on the land, he said. He didn’t want to accumulate too much stuff, and anyway, he couldn’t think of any movies that he’d want to watch more times than he could reasonably rent (when pressed, he thought for awhile and said, “The Princess Bride. If I had to.” At least he had good taste.) On some level, I understood his thinking—fewer material things, less commercial culture, all things living together in media-less harmony—but that didn’t really assuage my disappointment at not having a whole new person’s collection to pillage. Whether because of my roommate’s media asceticism or not, we didn’t live together very long.

Checking out a new person’s DVD collection is a perfectly valid gauge of character and personality, I think. Is this person a romanticist, a pessimist, a thrill-seeker? Does he or she acquire movies at random, or is there a motif going on? Are there complete series sitting side by side, or is this person missing Star Trek II, V, and VI? Are there signs of group movie-watching, or is the collection full of movies only the directors’ mothers have seen? DVDs are the new knickknacks. Pretty soon, coffee table books will be obsolete; we’ll just leave copies of our Netflix queues lying around, and call it good.

It’s in this spirit—that of poking around in someone’s living room while they’re in the bathroom—that I’m introducing a new CH feature, “Off the Shelf,” in which I’ll give a glimpse into my own DVD collection. You’ll see who I like, what I’ve seen so many times that I don’t actually need to watch it anymore, which teen-era embarrassments I’ve held onto, and what I’ve currently acquired.

A note about the organization of The Shelf, and therefore of this feature: rather than sort my DVDs alphabetically, chronologically, or autobiographically a la John Cusack in High Fidelity, I’ve got my own system: chick flicks on the right, non-chick flicks on the left, and musicals somewhat naively in the middle (because Rodgers and Hammerstein are for everyone. Right? Guys?). I’ll be alternating sides, to provide variety and also avoid the sugar shock that would come from writing about the right-hand side all at once. We’ll be pacing ourselves. As for the middle, well, Rodgers and Hammerstein are for everyone. You’ll see.

Keep an eye out for Off the Shelf in the next few days.