Embracing the Melodrama Part II #97: Elizabeth (dir by Shekhar Kapur)

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“I am no man’s Elizabeth!”

— Queen Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett) in Elizabeth (1998)

I have to admit that I always feel guilty about the fact that I love movies about British royal history. After all, I have roots in Northern Ireland and I was raised Catholic. If anything, I should refuse to watch films about British royalty on general principle. I should be writing more reviews of films like Bloody Sunday.

But I can’t help myself. Whether it’s because I enjoy looking at all of the costumes or I just have a thing for movies set in drafty old castles, I have a weakness for films about British royalty. (And I will also admit that I sat through the entire royal wedding and I have a bit of a girlcrush on both Pippa and Kate Middleton. As I said, I just can’t help myself.)

Of course, some of it definitely has to do with the fact that I’m an unapologetic history nerd. I am fascinated with how people lived in the past. And, of course, anyone who shares my obsession understands that, when it comes to history, there’s both the official story and the truth. The official story is something that’s passed down over the centuries. It’s what we learn in school. The truth, however, is always far more obscure. The truth is what historians piece together from what little gossipy evidence has managed to survive the passage of time.

We all know that the official story of Queen Elizabeth I is that she was England’s greatest Queen, she defeated the Spanish Armada, and she never married. She was the “Virgin Queen,” forsaking love to serve her nation. That’s the official story but is it the truth?

That’s the question at the heart of the 1998 Best Picture nominee Elizabeth. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that Elizabeth represents the truth. Historically, the film is messy and full of speculation that is less based on evidence and more on the desire to keep things cinematic. But still, Elizabeth is an interesting film specifically because it takes a historical figure and dares to suggest that she may have been human before she became an icon.

Cate Blanchett gives a great performance in the role of Elizabeth. When we first meet her, she’s a somewhat silly girl who is less concerned with politics and religion and more concerned with her boyfriend, Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes). Elizabeth is also the protestant half-sister of Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). Mary is planning on ordering Elizabeth’s execution but dies of stomach cancer before she gets around to singing the order.

Suddenly, Elizabeth is Queen of England. Young and insecure, she is, at first, manipulated by advisors like William Cecil (Richard Attenbrough), who pressures her to marry the cross-dressing Henry III (Vincent Cassel) of France. Meanwhile, the Pope (John Gielgud) signs an order calling for Elizabeth’s death. Catholic nobleman Thomas Howard (Christopher Eccleston) and mysterious priest John Ballard (Daniel Craig) conspire to assassinate Elizabeth. With even Robert Dudley giving her reason to distrust him, Elizabeth discovers that her only ally is the enigmatic and ruthless “spymaster,” Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush). It all ultimately ends in a sequence that basically transports the finale of The Godfather to the Elizabethan era.

I really should not like Elizabeth. It’s undoubtedly an anti-Catholic film, though it’s nothing compared to the histrionic anti-Catholicism of its sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age. But I can’t help myself, I enjoyed Elizabeth. It was impossible for me not to relate to Cate Blanchett’s passionate performance. (And there was just something so incredibly hot about the way Joseph Fiennes, with his intense eyes, would stare at her.) When you ignore the film’s protestant bias and just concentrate on the performances and the gorgeous production design, you can’t help but love Elizabeth.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #96: A Simple Plan (dir by Sam Raimi)

Posted on June 2, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1998 film A Simple Plan reunites Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton. After previously playing adversaries in One False Move, they played brothers here. However, it’s not just the cast that makes A Simple Plan feel like a spiritual descendant of One False Move. Both One False Move and A Simple Plan deal with greed and violence. Both One False Move and A Simple Plan take place in a small town where everyone thinks that they know all there is to know about each other. Both One False Move and A Simple Plan feature Paxton as a man who turns out to be something more than what the viewer originally assumed. Perhaps most importantly, both One False Move and A Simple Plan are meditations on guilt, greed, and community.

A Simple Plan takes place in Minnesota, in a world that seems to exist under a permanent layer of snow and ice. While out hunting, Hank (Bill Paxton), his well-meaning but dim-witted brother Jacob (Billy Bob Thornton), and their redneck friend Lou (Brent Briscoe) stumble across an airplane that has crashed in the woods. Inside the airplane, they find a dead pilot and a bag containing 4 million dollars. At first, Hank says they should call the authorities and let them know what they’ve found but he rather easily allows Jacob and Lou to talk him out of it. Instead, they agree that Hank will hide the money at his house until spring arrives. They also agree to not tell anyone about the money but, as soon as he arrives home, Hank tells his pregnant wife Sarah (Bridget Fonda) everything that has happened.

Needless to say, this simple plan quickly get complicated. Sarah is soon telling Hank that he should not trust Lou and Jacob. The local sheriff (Chelcie Ross) saw Hank and Jacob leaving the woods after discovering the plane and may (or may not) be suspicious of what they found. Alcoholic Lou starts to demand his share of the money early. As things start to spiral, Hank finds himself doing things that he would have never thought he would ever do. Or, as Sarah puts it, “Nobody’d ever believe that you’d be capable of doing what you’ve done.”

And then, one day, a mysterious FBI agent (Gary Cole) shows up and says that he’s looking for the plane. Except that, according to Sarah, he’s not really with the FBI…

It’s appropriate that A Simple Plan takes place in a world that appears to be permanently covered in snow because it is a film that is both chilly and chilling. Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton are both perfectly cast. (Thornton received an Oscar nomination for his performance. Paxton undoubtedly deserved one.) Bridget Fonda turns Sarah into a small town Lady MacBeth and Gary Cole, Brent Briscoe, and Chelcie Ross are all memorable in smaller roles.

(Brent Biscoe, in particular, is a redneck nightmare.)

The next time that you want to contemplate the evil that is done in the name of money, why not start off with a double feature of One False Move and A Simple Plan?

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #95: 54 (dir by Mark Christopher)

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“A guy named Steve Rubell had a dream: To throw the best damned party the world had ever seen and to make it last forever. He built a world where fantasy was put up as reality and where an 80-year-old disco queen could dance till dawn. Where models mingled with mechanics, plumbers danced with princes. It was a place where all labels were left behind. A place where there were no rules.”

— Shane O’Shea (Ryan Phillippe) in 54 (1998)

So, did you actually read that quote at the beginning of the review? I don’t blame if you didn’t because not only is it ludicrous overwritten but it just goes on and on. It’s one of those quotes that you read in a script and you think to yourself, “They better get absolutely the best actor in the world to deliver these lines,” and then you realize Ryan Phillippe has been cast in the role.

Except, of course, I doubt that any of those lines were found in the original script for 54. 54 is one of those films where, as you watch it, you can literally imagine the chaos that must have been going on during the editing process. Subplots are raised and then dropped and the mysteriously pop up again. Characters change both their personalities and their motives in between scenes. Huge dramatic moment happen almost at random but don’t seem to actually have anything to do with anything else happening in the film.

In short, 54 is a mess but it’s a mess that’s held together by incredibly clunky narration. Shane O’Shea, who spent the waning days of the 1970s working at Studio 54, narrates the film. And, despite the fact that Shane is presented as being kinda dumb (think of Saturday Night Fever‘s Tony Manero, without the sexy dance moves), his narration is extremely verbose and reflective. It’s almost as if the narration was written at the last-minute by someone desperately trying to save a collapsing film.

I watched 54 on cable because I saw that it was about the 70s and I figured it would feature a lot of outrageous costumes, danceable music, and cocaine-fueled melodrama. And it turns out that I was right about the cocaine-fueled melodrama but still, 54 is no Boogie Nights. It’s not even Bright Lights, Big City.

54 does have an interesting cast, which makes it all the more unfortunate that nobody really gets to do anything interesting. Poor Ryan Phillippe looks totally lost and, in the film’s worst scene, he actually has to stand in the middle of a dance floor and, after the death of elderly Disco Dottie (that’s the character’s name!), yell at all the decadent club goers. Breckin Meyer is cute as Phillippe’s co-worker and Salma Hayek gets to sing. Neve Campbell plays a soap opera actress who Phillippe has a crush on and…oh, who cares? Seriously, writing about this film is almost as annoying as watching it.

Mike Myers — yes, that Mike Myers — plays the owner of the club, Steve Rubell. The role means that Myers gets to snort cocaine, hit on Breckin Meyer, and vomit on the silk sheets of his bed. I think that Myers gives a good performance but I’m not really sure. It could have just been the shock of seeing Mike Myers snorting cocaine, hitting on Breckin Meyer, and vomiting on the silk sheets of his bed.

If you want to enjoy some 70s decadence, avoid 54 and rewatch either Boogie Nights or American Hustle.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #94: The Wings of the Dove (dir by Ian Softley)

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For nearly two months now, I’ve been in the process of reviewing 126 cinematic melodramas. (I know that I originally said that I would be reviewing 126 films in 3 weeks but, even at the time I said that, I think a part of me knew that it would probably be more like 8 or 9 weeks.) And, while it seems like forever since I started this series by reviewing the 1927 silent classic Sunrise, I’ve still been having fun discovering and rewatching some wonderful films. It’s been a lot of work but if I’ve inspired anyone to see any of the 93 films that I’ve reviewed so far, then it’s all been worth it.

For our 94th entry, let’s take a quick look at the 1997 film The Wings of the Dove.

Based on a novel by Henry James, The Wings of the Dove open in London. The year is 1910 and Kate Croy (Helena Bonham Carter) has problems. Her mother has recently died and her father (Michael Gamon) is a penniless opium addict. Kate is taken in and supported by her wealthy Aunt Maude (Charlotte Rampling). Maude has plans for Kate to marry the vapid Lord Mark (Alex Jennings) and demands that Kate have no contact with either her father or any of her old friends.

Among those that Kate is supposed to abandon is a journalist named Merton Densher (Linus Roache). Kate and Merton are in love but there’s no way that Maude would ever allow them to get married. Merton is not only poor but he’s a bit of a radical as well.

While visiting with Lord Mark, Kate meets an American heiress named Milly (Alison Elliott). As open and kind as Kate is cynical and manipulate, Milly is touring Europe. Milly and Kate quickly become friends and Milly goes as far as to invite Kate to go to Venice with her. It’s also through her friendship with Kate that Milly first meets Merton. Attracted to him and unaware of her relationship with Kate, Milly invites him to come to Venice as well.

Kate, meanwhile, has discovered that Milly is terminally ill. She comes up with a scheme, in which Merton will romance Milly. Kate is convinced that Milly will then change her will to include Merton. Once Milly dies, Merton will be rich and then Maude will have no reason to object to him marrying Kate.

At first, Merton is repulsed by the scheme but he finally agrees, specifically so that he can go to Venice with Kate. However, once they’re all actually in Venice, things start to get complicated. Merton starts to fall in love with Milly and Kate discovers that she loves Merton more than she originally realized…

The Wing of the Dove is an effective literary adaptation, one that brings a contemporary spin to the material while still remaining truthful to the spirit of the source material. The costumes and the sets are beautiful to look at and Venice is as wonderfully romantic and cinematic as always. Linus Roache is a bit of a stiff as Merton (but then again, the same could be said for the character himself) but it doesn’t matter because the film is dominated by Helena Bonham Carter’s ferocious performance in the role of Kate. She plays Kate as a bundle of nervous energy and barely repressed carnality, an Edwardian femme fatale. She was rightfully nominated for best actress for her performance in this film. The award, however, went to Helen Hunt for As Good As It Gets.

(This, along with the complete snubbing of Boogie Nights, would seem to suggest that 1997 was not a banner year as far as the Academy Awards were concerned…)

The Wings of the Dove is currently available to be viewed on Netflix. Don’t miss it.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #93: Boogie Nights (dir by Paul Thomas Anderson)

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1997 film Boogie Nights (which, amazingly enough, was not nominated for best picture) is a bit of an overwhelming film to review. It’s a great film and, if you’re reading this review, you’ve probably seen Boogie Nights and you probably already know that it’s a great film. And if you haven’t seen Boogie Nights, you really should because it’s a great film. So, this review, in short, amounts to: Great film.

Boogie Nights takes place in the late 70s and the early 80s. Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) is a high school dropout who works as a busboy, lives with his parents, and has a really big cock. (Indeed, one of the film’s most famous lines is, “This is a giant cock.”) When we first meet Eddie, he’s likable and cute in a dumb sort of way. Then he meets adult film director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) and becomes a star. At first, everything is great. Eddie changes his name to Dirk Diggler and no longer has to deal with his abusive mother (a chilling Joanna Gleason). Jack and Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) become his new parents. He gets a cool older brother in the form of actor Reed Rothschild (John C. Reilly, totally nailing the “People tell me that I look like Han Solo,” line). He makes friends with other adult film actors, like the desperately unhip Buck (Don Cheadle), the free-spirited (and secretly very angry) Rollergirl (Heather Graham), and the poignantly insecure Jessie St. Vincent (Melora Walters). He gets new admirers, like Scotty J. (Philip Seymour Hoffman). He also gets addicted to cocaine. And while Dirk falls from stardom, the adult film industry is taken over by gangsters like Floyd Gondolli (Philip Baker Hall) and self-styled artists like Jack Horner find themselves pushed to the side.

And you may have noticed that I mentioned a lot of actors in the paragraph above. That’s because Boogie Nights is a true ensemble piece. It’s full of great performances and memorable characters. Along with everyone that I mentioned above, the cast also includes William H. Macy as cinematographer “Little Bill” Daggett. From the minutes we first meet Little Bill, we get the feeling that he might be a little bit too uptight for pornography. Maybe that’s because his wife — played by the inspiring sex positive feminist and veteran adult film star Nina Hartley — is constantly and publicly cheating on him. Macy and Hartley do not have as much screen time as the rest of the cast but, ultimately, their characters are two of the most important in the film.

And then there’s Robert Ridgely, who is marvelously sleazy as the paternal but ultimately icky Col. James. When we first meet the Colonel, he’s almost a humorous character. But then, suddenly, there’s one chilling scene where he opens up to Jack Horner and we are forced to reconsider everything that we had previously assumed about both the Colonel and his business.

And how can we forget Luis Guzman, as a club owner who desperately wants to appear in one of Jack’s films? Or Ricky Jay as a plain-spoken cameraman? Or how about Thomas Jane, playing one of those tightly wound characters who you know is going to be trouble as soon as you see him? And finally, nobody who has seen Boogie Nights will ever forget Alfred Molina, singing along to Sister Christian and running down the street, clad only in black bikini briefs and firing a shotgun.

But it’s not just the actors who make Boogie Nights a great film. This was Paul Thomas Anderson’s second film and, under his direction, we feel as if we’ve been thrown straight into Dirk’s exciting and ultimately dangerous world. When the film begins, the camera almost seems to glide, capturing the excitement of having everything that you could possibly want. But, as things go downhill for Dirk, the camerawork gets more jittery and nervous. A sequence where Anderson cuts back and forth between Jack trying to shoot a movie on video (as opposed to his beloved film) and Dirk nearly being beaten to death in a parking lot remains one of the best sequences that Anderson has ever directed.

And then there’s the music! Oh my God! The music!

And the dancing!

And the singing!

I’ll be the first admit that I have no idea whether or not Boogie Nights is a realistic portrait of the adult film industry in the 70s and 80s. But ultimately, Boogie Nights is not about porn. It’s about a group of outsiders who form their own little family. At the end of the film, you’re happy that they all found each other. You know that Dirk will probably continue to have problems in the future but you’re happy for him because, no matter what happened in the past or what’s going to happen in the future, you know that he’s found a family that will always love him.

As I mentioned at the start of this appreciation, Boogie Nights was not nominated for best picture. Titanic was named the best picture of 1997. As I’ve said before, I loved Titanic when I was 12. But, nearly 18 years later, Boogie Nights is definitely the better picture.

It has stood the test of time.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #92: Stealing Beauty (dir by Bernardo Bertolucci)

Posted on May 30, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I love Italy.

Some of that’s because I happen to be a fourth Italian. And a lot of it is because many of my favorite filmmakers are Italian. However, Italy is also place of which I have a lot of wonderful memories. I spent the summer after my high school graduation in Italy and it was amazing.

Venice was full of sensual mystery (and, to be honest, some pretty obnoxious tourists as well). Naples was dangerous and exciting. Pompeii made me feel like I was living history. Rome was full of handsome men and temptation. When I walked through the Vatican, my inner Catholic girl suddenly woke up and I just had to stop and stare. And Tuscany — oh my God, Tuscany! That summer, as far as I was concerned, Tuscany was the most beautiful and romantic place on Earth. I can still remember standing in the street of Florence and seeing the dome of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore in the distance and, for a minute, I almost felt like I was in a painting. And I actually started to get light-headed and dizzy, I was so overwhelmed by it all.

(That’s right. Stendhal Syndrome isn’t just a Dario Argento film.)

At it’s best, the 1996 film Stealing Beauty made me think about that wonderful summer that I spent in Italy. And, at its worse, Stealing Beauty made me happy that I made that trip with my sisters and not Lucy Harmon.

Lucy Harmon is the main character in Stealing Beauty. Played by a young Liv Tyler, Lucy is the teenage daughter of a poet who has recently committed suicide. Lucy is a poet herself. Among her poems: “The dye is cast/ The dice are rolled/ I feel like shit/ you look like gold” and “I wait/ I wait so patiently/ I’m as quiet as a cup/ I hope you’ll come and rattle me/ Quick!/ Come wake me up.” That’s right — Lucy writes the same type of crap that I used to write when I was 17 and trying to impress everyone with the depth of my mind. The only difference is that Lucy is rich and privileged so her poetry doesn’t actually have to be any good.

Anyway, Lucy comes to Tuscany for three reasons. First off, she wants to be sculpted by one of her mother’s friends, who lives in a villa. Secondly, she wants to lose her virginity to an Italian boy who, years before, kissed her. And, finally, she wants to learn the identity of her father, who she believes to be one of the residents of the villa.

The film’s great when it concentrates on the beauty of Tuscany. It’s a beautiful film to look at and, as its best, it captures the romance of being young and having your entire life ahead of you. In that way, the film brought back a lot of good memories and it made me want to revisit Italy.

But then, whenever I was fully content to just enjoy the sight of Tuscany, the film had to try to focus on Lucy and the other people living in the villa and … bleh. For all of their talk about art and political posturing, they all basically came across as being a bunch of self-righteous fakes, the equivalent of the millionaire with a Che poster in his office. In the end, there are only two adults that you end up liking. You like writer Alex Parris (Jeremy Irons) because he’s dying and, as a result, doesn’t feel the need to try to impress anyone. And, despite the film’s intentions, you end up liking the local fascist, Carlo Lisca (Carlo Checchi), because he doesn’t apologize for or try to rationalize his narcissism. You like Carlo because all of the other characters dislike him.

In the role of Lucy, Liv Tyler is obviously beautiful and gives as good a performance as the script will allow. At the same time, as a character, Lucy got on my last nerve. Judging from what we see of her work, Lucy is not a particularly talented poet. In fact, Lucy appears to often be an amazingly vapid person. (Her much-commented on virginity only serves to confirm that Lucy is largely meant to be a male fantasy.) But, at the same time, she’s rich and she’s got a famous mother and, as a result, the film seems to be telling us that it’s not important that she’s not really that interesting.

So, plotwise, Stealing Beauty did not really work for me. But the scenery was truly beautiful.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #91: A Reason to Believe (dir by Douglas Triola)

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Throughout the late 90s, a rather obscure film from 1995 called A Reason To Believe used to show up on Cinemax fairly frequently. I was 11 when I first saw it. At the time, I was indulging in my rebellious streak by secretly staying up past my bed time and sneaking into the living room, where I would watch whatever forbidden sordidness what being aired. Because I didn’t want to wake anyone up, I would watch with the volume turned almost all the way down. Hence, when I first saw A Reason To Believe, I literally had to sit less than an inch away from the TV just so I could hear the dialogue.

And I remember that, at the age of 11, A Reason To Believe really blew me away. I thought it was one of the greatest films that I had ever seen. The fact that the film involved college students made me feel like I was both watching a movie for adults and getting a preview of what life would be like when I was older. All of the sex and the language made me feel like I was getting away with something while I was watching it. At one point, there was a shot of Sharon (played by Holly Marie Combs) putting a condom on Wesley’s (Danny Quinn) erect penis and I found myself glancing over my shoulder, convinced that at any minute a responsible adult was going to enter the living room and say, “WHAT ARE YOU WATCHING!?”

So, when I recently rewatched A Reason To Believe, I did so wondering how the film would hold up now that I’m an adult. Not surprisingly, a good deal of the film now seemed to be heavy-handed. For every good line in the script, there was a line that was way too obvious. Characters who were funny when I was 11 — like dorky stoner Potto (Keith Coogan) — now seemed to be annoying. And, of course, my more experienced eyes immediately realized that Holly Marie Combs was putting that condom on a prosthetic penis.

And yet, A Reason To Believe is still fairly effective and probably deserves to be better known than it actually is. Usually, I refuse to give extra credit for good intentions but I’m willing to make an exception for A Reason To Believe because the film deals with a subject that, now more than ever, needs to be dealt with.

Charlotte (Allison Smith) is a student at an unnamed generic university. When her boyfriend, Wesley (Danny Quinn), has to go away for the weekend, he asks Allison not to go to Viking, an annual party thrown by his fraternity. Charlotte promises that she won’t but then goes anyway. At Viking, she hangs out with Wesley’s best friend, Jim (Jay Underwood). Jim is also dating Allison’s friend, Judith (Kim Walker). Realizing that she’s had too much to drink, Allison attempts to leave the party but instead, Jim leads her into his bedrom. He kisses her. She says no but Jim forces himself on her. Repeating all the old bullshit excuses (i.e., Charlotte was flirting with him, all girls say no when they mean yes, and all the rest) Jim seems to truly believe that the sex was consensual. Charlotte knows it was rape.

At first, Charlotte doesn’t want to face what happened. When she finally does go to the university administration and reports what happened, the frat — including her boyfriend — comes together to protect Jim. Charlotte’s friends — like Judith — abandon her. Her only supporter is Linda (Georgia Emelin), an anti-fraternity campus activist who is more interested in Charlotte as a means to an end than as a human being.

A Reason To Believe held up fairly well. Yes, it’s heavy-handed and a lot of the dialogue is too spot-on and literal. I could have done without the scenes featuring Obba Babatunde as a bombastic professor. However, Allison Smith and Jay Underwood both gave excellent performances in the two lead roles and the film deserves a lot of credit for not shying away from just how misogynistic the fraternity/sorority culture can truly be. Ultimately, flaws and all, it’s a valuable, realistic, and angry portrayal of rape culture and it deserves to be seen for that reason.

It can currently be viewed on YouTube.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #90: Showgirls (dir by Paul Verhoeven)

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, this is it!

Showgirls in the 1995 film that, 20 years after it was first released, is still held up as the standard by which all subsequent bad films are judged. The story behind the production is legendary. Screenwriter Joe Ezsterhas was paid a then-record sum to write a script that ripped off All About Eve and featured lines like, “Come back when you’ve fucked some of that baby fat off,” and “You’re the only who can get my tits poppin’ right!” (And let’s not forget the heroine’s oft-repeated catch phrase, “It doesn’t suck.”) A major studio specifically hired Paul Verhoeven with the understanding that he was going to give them an NC-17 rated film. And finally, the lead role was given to Elizabeth Berkley, an actress whose previous experience amounted to co-starring on Saved By The Bell.

(And, let’s be honest, the only reason Jessie Spano was a tolerable character was because she wasn’t Screech.)

Berkley plays Nomi Malone, a sociopath who wants to be a star. She hitchhikes her way to Las Vegas where, as is destined to happen to anyone who shows up in Vegas or New York with a clunky suitcase, she is promptly robbed of all of her possessions. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” she yells, showing off the very expensive dialogue that was written for her by Joe Ezsterhas. Eventually, Nomi starts to take her frustration out on a random car. The car, it turns out, belongs to sweet-natured Molly (Gina Revara), who is a seamstress for a tacky Vegas show called Goddess.

(Seriously, Goddess makes Satan’s Alley from Staying Alive look like a work of quiet genius.)

Soon, Nomi is living in Molly’s trailer and working as a stripper at the Cheetah Club. The Cheetah Club is owned by Al, who is amazingly sleazy but who is also played by Robert Davi. Robert Davi is one of those actors who knows how to make terrible dialogue interesting and it’s instructive to watch him perform opposite Elizabeth Berkley and the rest of the cast. Whereas the majority of the cast always seems to be desperately trying to convince themselves that their dialogue is somehow better than it actually is, Davi knows exactly what he’s saying. Watching his performance, it’s obvious that Davi understood that he was appearing in a bad film so he figured that he might as well enjoy himself.

The same can be said of Gina Gershon, who plays Cristal Connors, the star of Goddess. Sexually voracious Cristal is basically a male fantasy of what it means to be bisexual. Cristal hires Nomi to give a lapdance to her sleazy boyfriend, Zack (Kyle MacLachlan, giving a good performance despite having to spend the entire film with hair in his eyes) and then arranges for her to be cast in the chorus of Goddess. There’s absolutely nothing subtle about Gershon’s performance and that’s why it’s perfect for Showgirls. It’s been argued that Showgirls is essentially meant to be a huge in-joke and, out of the huge cast, only Gershon, Davi, and occasionally MacLachlan seem to be in on it.

Certainly, it’s apparent that nobody bothered to tell Elizabeth Berkley. Berkley gives a performance of such nonstop (and misdirected) intensity that you end up feeling sorry for her. She’s just trying so hard and she really does seem to think that she can somehow make Nomi into a believable character. And it’s actually a bit unfair that Elizabeth is always going to be associated with this film because I doubt any actress could have given a good performance in a role as inconsistently written as Nomi. One second, Nomi is a wide-eyed innocent who is excited about living in Las Vegas. The next second, she’s screaming, “FUCK OFF!” and threatening strangers with a switch blade. She may be a survivor (and I imagine that’s why we’re supposed to root for her) but she’s also humorless, angry, and apparently clinically insane.

Hilariously, we’re also continually told, by literally everyone else in the movie, that she’s a great dancer, despite the fact that we see absolutely no evidence of this fact. Check out this scene below, where Nomi dances with a lot of enthusiasm and little else.

Once Nomi is cast in Goddess, she promptly sets out to steal both the starring role and Zack from Cristal. Nomi’s cunning plan, incidentally, amounts to fucking Zack in his pool and shoving Cristal down a flight of stairs. Nomi’s finally a star but when a Satanic rock star named Andrew Carver (William Shockley) comes to town, Nomi is confronted with the sordid truth about Las Vegas and, because this long film has to end at some point, Nomi must decide whether to take a stand or…

Well, you can guess the rest.

(Incidentally, I like to assume that Andrew Carver was meant to be a distant cousin of the great short story writer Raymond Carver.)

There seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to Showgirls.

Some critics claim to Showgirls is just crap. They say that it’s a terrible film with bad dialogue, bad acting, and terrible direction. These critics view Joe Eszterhas as being the villain of this tale, a misogynist who conned the studios into paying two million dollars for a terrible script.

And then other critics claim that Showgirls is crappy on purpose. They claim that Verhoeven meant for the film to be a satire of both American culture and Hollywood showbiz dramas. For these critics, Verhoeven used Eszterhas’s terrible script and Elizabeth Berkley’s inexperience to craft a subversive masterpiece.

Myself, I fall somewhere in between. Based on Verhoeven’s other films — Starship Troopers comes immediately to mind — I think his intent with Showgirls probably was meant to be satirical and subversive. But, at the same time, I would argue that Verhoeven’s intent doesn’t change the fact that Showgirls is a surprisingly boring film. For all the sex and the nudity and the opulent costumes and sets and all of the over-the-top dialogue, Showgirls is never really that interesting of a film. It barely even manages to reach the level of being so-bad-that-it’s-good. Instead, it’s slow, it’s draggy, and — satiric or not — the bad performance, the bad dialogue, and the nonstop misogyny get a bit grating after a few minutes.

Of course, that’s why you should never watch Showgirls alone. Showgirls is a film that you have to watch as a part of a group of friends so that you can all laugh together and shout out snarky comments. The first time I ever saw Showgirls was at a party and it was a lot of fun. But, for this review, I rewatched the film on Netflix and I was surprised by how much of a chore it was to sit through the entire running time. This is one of those films — like Birdemic and The Room — that you have to watch with a group. You watch for the experience, not the film.

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #89: Legends of the Fall (dir by Ed Zwick)

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I first started to watch the 1994 film Legends of the Fall on Encore, I was a little bit concerned when I discovered that it was directed by Ed Zwick. After all, Zwick also directed Love and Other Drugs, which is one of the worst and most insulting films of all time. In fact, I nearly stopped watching when I saw Zwick’s name. But, largely because I want to finish up this series of melodramatic film reviews at some point in the near future, I decided to go ahead and watch the film.

And it turned out that Legends of the Fall is not a bad film. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I had seen it in a movie theater as opposed to on television but, considering that it was directed by Ed Zwick, Legends of the Fall is definitely watchable. If nothing else, it’s better than Love and Other Drugs.

Legends of the Fall tells the story of the Ludlows, a family that lives on a Montana ranch at the start of the 2oth Century. Starting with the final days of the Indian wars and proceeding through World War I and prohibition, Legends of the Fall covers a lot of historical events but does so in a very Hollywood way, which is to say that all of the main characters dress like they’re from the past but they all have very modern social attitudes. In this case, Col. William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) may be a wealthy white military veteran but he’s also totally pro-Native American. And, of course, all the local Native Americans love him, despite the fact that he’s a representative of the institutions that have destroyed their way of life.

Anyway, Col. Ludlow has three sons. The oldest, Alfred (Aidan Quinn), is serious and responsible. The youngest, Samuel (Henry Thomas), is naive and idealistic. And the middle child is Tristan (Brad Pitt), who is wild and rebellious and looks like Brad Pitt. You have to wonder how the same gene pool could produce both Aidan Quinn and Brad Pitt.

As the film begins, Samuel has returned from studying at Harvard. With him is his fiancée, Susannah (Julia Ormond, who has really pretty hair in this movie). Though she loves Samuel, Susannah finds herself attracted to Tristan, largely because Tristan looks like Brad Pitt. Tristan is also attracted to Susannah but he would never betray his younger brother. In fact, when Samuel announces that he’s enlisted in the Canadian army so that he can fight in World War I, Tristan and Alfred soon do the exact same thing.

War is Hell, which is something that Samuel discovers when he’s gunned down by a bunch of German soldiers. Tristan responds by cutting Samuel’s heart out of his body and sending it back to Montana. He then proceeds to go a little crazy and when we next see Tristan, he’s uniform is decorated with the scalps of dead Germans.

Meanwhile, Alfred has been wounded in battle and is sent back to Montana. Eventually, he ends up married to Susannah. And then Tristan comes back home and…

Well, a lot of stuff happens after Tristan returns. In fact, you could even argue that too much happens. Zwick obviously set out to try to make Legends of the Fall into an old school Hollywood epic but far too often, it seems like he’s mostly just copying scenes from other films. There’s a hollowness at the center of Legends of the Fall and the end result is a film that’s visually gorgeous and thematically shallow.

And yet, you should never underestimate the importance of looking good. Legends of the Fall is a beautiful film to look at and so is Brad Pitt. I wouldn’t necessarily say that Brad gives a particularly good performance here because, to be honest, Tristan is such an idealized character that I doubt anyone could really make him believable. But the Brad Pitt of 1994 looked so good and had such a strong screen presence that it didn’t matter that he wasn’t as good an actor as the Brad Pitt of 2015. Legends of The Fall is one of those movies that can get by on pure charisma and fortunately, Brad Pitt is enough of a movie star to make the film work.

Legends of the Fall is not a great film but it’s still not a bad way to waste 120 minutes. (Of course, the film itself lasts 133 minutes but still…)

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #88: Dream Lover (dir by Nicholas Kazan)

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1994 film Dream Lover is almost as strange as Zandalee.

Dream Lover opens with Roy Reardon (James Spader, giving a very James Spaderish performance) in the process of getting divorced. Sitting in court, he announces that he’s fired his attorney and that he’s no longer contesting the divorce. The judge informs him that, if he did contest the divorce, the final judgment would be in his favor. Roy says that doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to contest the divorce.

In the next scene, Roy’s ex-wife tells him that he’s a great guy and that it’s too bad that they couldn’t make the marriage work. They agree that they were just too different. She apologizes for cheating on him. Roy apologizes for hitting her. They agree that Roy has trust issues.

Over the next few minutes of the film, we follow Roy over the course of his new single life. We discover that Roy is a successful architect who is always attracted to brunette artists with troubled backstories. We also discover that Roy’s best friend is an obnoxious yet strangely likable guy named Norman (Larry Miller, who brings some unexpected depth to an obnoxious character). Norman begs Roy for money. Roy refuses to give it to him. Norman invites Roy to an art gallery and offers to set him up with a woman he knows. Roy agrees. And, seriously, the first 20 minutes of the film are so dominated by Norman that you’re kind of surprised when the film moves on and he’s no longer in every scene.

(But then again, that’s the type of film that Dream Lover is. Characters appear and vanish at random. Plot points are raised and then abandoned.)

Anyway, Roy’s date is disastrous. (“You don’t like me,” the woman says as tears stream down her face.) However, during the date, Roy meets Lena (Madchen Amick). When first they meet, they fight. Then they run into each other again at the grocery store and they hit it off. They go to dinner and, despite having a good time, Lena makes a point of not inviting Roy up to her apartment. The next night, Roy shows up unannounced and Lena does invite him up. At first, she’s cold towards him. Then they’re making love. And then they’re getting married. And then the clowns show up…

Oh yes, there are clowns in this movie. Roy is haunted by visions, where he’s at a carnival and random clowns pop up and say cryptic things to him. “How’s the family?” one asks. Another one continually reminds him that he doesn’t know much about Lena.

Years pass by. Lena and Roy have two children but it continues to nag at Roy that he doesn’t know anything about her. He worries that she’s cheating on him. He fears that the children are not his. Roy’s friends tell him that he’s being paranoid. Roy argues that paranoia is just a heightened form of consciousness.

Roy starts to investigate Lena’s past and here’s where I really laughed out loud. Roy finds out that Lena is from North Texas and goes down to her hometown. As Roy arrives in this tiny country town, the camera reveals a huge mountain in the background. Really, Dream Lover? A mountain in North Texas?

Anyway, for me, this film never really recovered from that mountain but, if you can overlook that geographic mistake, Dream Lover is occasionally enjoyable because it is such a weird film. James Spader is hot, Madchen Amick is beautiful, and the entire film features one of those huge and improbable twists that you simply have to see for yourself.

And you can see it because it’s currently available on Netflix!