Cinderella 2021

Once again, I fell prey to the lure of a well-made preview. The new musical version of Cinderella from Amazon Studios looked like it would be great fun from the two-minute trailer I saw online. Billy Porter as the fairy godmother? A village of people singing and dancing to "Rhythm Natio"”? Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver as the King and Queen? (And speaking of Queen, "Somebody to Love" is sung by the Prince and his buddies.) Yes please, I thought. But no, all hopes were dashed upon seeing the other 110 minutes of the movie. Director and writer Kay Cannon had notable ambitions in creating a female empowerment pop-musical fairy tale film, and a couple of sequences shine, but it fails to come together to make a satisfying whole.

In this iteration of the old standard tale, Cinderella (singer Camila Cabello) is an aspiring dress designer whose dreams are stymied by her wicked stepmother (Idina Menzel) who insists she stay in the basement, smeared by cinders. Meanwhile, the Prince (Nicholas Galitzine) is being pressured by his parents to pick a bride--ideally a good political choice to keep the kingdom on its feet--but he is still into partying with his bros and is in no hurry to settle down. His folks decide to host a ball, invite the whole village, and make the Prince pick a wife. A Fairy Godmother (Billy Porter, who is the best thing about the movie but who is only in it for about ten minutes) transforms Cinderella into… and so on. The biggest change in the story, and one I wholeheartedly applaud, is that Cinderella's real desire isn't for a man, but for a dress business, which could be enabled not by the Prince but by a wealthy village woman. 

The problem here isn't the basic story or dialogue, it's pretty much everything else. Mostly, the songs here are pre-existing pop songs, and while I enjoy seeing familiar music pop up in unusual settings, here the songs seem to be shoehorned in, sometimes to make up for lack of plot or character development. It's kind of thrilling to see Janet Jackson’s "Rhythm Nation" as a village-wide dance number, but sadly, the lyrics mean absolutely nothing in context. These townsfolk are not fighting injustice or trying to improve their society, or joining together in any way. They're just doing a nicely choreographed production number--that is, by the way, poorly and unimaginatively shot, as are most of the big numbers in the movie. I could pick apart every other production number, but you get the drift. There are a couple of new songs written for the movie, but they aren't especially memorable.

As for the performances, there’s not a lot to say. Most everyone is OK and not much more. Camila Cabello is a popular singer, but her rough voice didn't fit the songs here. For me, her acting was better than her singing, but she fails to make the character much different from any other Cinderella figure of film or TV. Nicholas Galitzine is pleasant looking at the prince, but not especially hunky, despite the horde of women who sing the Salt-N-Pepa song "Whatta Man" at him. Better are the adults: Idina Menzel gets to sing "Material Girl" and makes the wicked stepmother a bit more than the usual stereotype. Pierce Brosnan and Minnie Driver are quite good as the King and Queen. Most of the singing sounds overly processed, but I guess that’s the trend these days. Overall, a nice idea for an update, but not one I can recommend.

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

This delightful movie was a Covid orphan, eventually seeing the light of day on Hulu. Imagine a long Saturday Night Live sketch that's a cross between Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Austin Powers. Two lifelong friends (Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo) go on a resort vacation in Florida and have wildly improbable comic adventures. A friend noted that, as in the Pee-Wee movie, Barb and Star live in the real world, but it's a world where surreal things happen and no one blinks an eye. For example, when they arrive at the resort at Vista Del Mar, the entire staff (of seemingly hundreds) drops what they're doing and welcomes them with a huge production number--think "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast. Our two average-looking 40-something women end up in a 3-way with hunky Jamie Dornan. And a mythical water goddess named Trish saves the day. The Austin Powers influence has to do with the movie's over-the-top villain, also played by Wiig in Dr. Evil mode.

It's kind of a musical; in addition to the Disney-like welcome song, and a lounge pianist singing "I Love Boobies," Jamie Dornan (pictured above) has a great beachside number. It's colorful, sexy, surreal, and makes very litle sense, so it's quite likable if you're in the mood for total silliness. The one flaw is that the movie's high point of delirious silliness comes right off the bat, with a 12-year-old paperboy riding a bike and singing along with Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb. Nothing else in the movie made me laugh quite as hard as this. Still, highly recommended.

Surreal history

The cinema of Canadian director Guy Maddin is practically a genre unto itself. He uses silent film techniques (including making the image look scratched and splicy like an old movie) in the service of telling offbeat surreal stories of misfits. I appreciate his style more than I actually like it. This movie, The Twentieth Century (2019) is the best movie that Maddin didn't make. It's written and directed by Matthew Rankin, a Canadian acolyte of Maddin's, and though it remains, generally, in the avant-garde realm, it's also quite enjoyable, with a straight-forward narrative, a polished (though still surreal) visual style, and characters who act in relatively rational ways (unlike in most of Maddin's movies).

In theory, this is a film about the early life of 1920's Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, but really it uses his personage as a taking-off point into flights of fancy about unrequited love, ambition, and the Canadian national identity. The plot, though easy to follow, is not one that lends itself to summary. Suffice to say that it's concerned with King's early years as he get involved in politics, suffers through a long unrequited love interest, and deals with his bizarre, bedridden mother. Rankin says in the audio commentary that he consulted the diaries of Rankin to write the movie, but I wouldn't be surprised if that comment is mostly a prank as there is virtually no biographical detail here that I find believable--maybe his shoe fetish and his love/hate relationship with a political rival. 

Visually, however, almost every shot is a joy to behold. Shot in limited space, the sets, with some help from old-fashioned visual effects, manage to feel a bit claustrophobic and still fully formed. The fact that the actors all seem to know what they're doing and what's expected of them helps get us past even the strangest details: a giant puppet bird, a seal-clubbing contest to determine fitness for public office, an anti-masturbation machine. Dan Beirne (as King, pictured sniffing a shoe) remains deadpan and sympathetic through every oddity that Rankin puts him through; Brent Skagford's character (King's rival who occasionally seems attracted to King) is not fleshed out but Skagford (pictured with his tongue out, mocking and flirting with King at the same time) makes him fun to be around. Sarianne Cormier (as a nurse with a crush on King), Catherine St-Laurent (as the woman King desires) and Louis Negin (as the monstrous mother) are also quite good. If you're looking for something different, this is it.

Whatever happened to Encyclopedia Brown?

The Kid Detective (2020): I think Evan Morgan, the director and screenwriter here, had a nice idea--what happens to Encyclopedia Brown when he grows up?--but it seems he wasn't sure how to approach the material. What probably should have been mostly comic (or maybe even incorporated some fantasy elements) becomes a mostly serious mystery, but writing-wise, Morgan doesn't have good mystery chops, so it's mostly the story of the main character (well played by Adam Brody, pictured below), kid genius detective turned adult loser, but sadly we don't get to delve too deeply into his psychological depths (or even shallows).

The films opens in the past with a young girl accepting a ride from someone that it seems she knows, then vanishing. The kid detective (well played in his youth by Jesse Noah Gruman), who had dazzled his small town with his sleuthing abilities, fails to find her. Though he keeps his occupation over the next twenty years or so, his reputation is tarnished--though I love the detail that an ice cream shop owner keeps, somewhat reluctanly, giving him free ice cream even though he is now 32. Things change when a high school student (Sophie Nelisse) stops by to ask him to solve the brutal murder of her boyfriend. As any thoughtful viewer will figure out early on, this case will eventually cross paths with the missing girl case of the past. The details of the mystery story are a bit sloppy and not terribly involving, so the pleasures here are mostly in the acting. Brody is very good, being both sympathetic and being someone you'd like to give a swift kick to. Nelisse is charming, Wendy Crewson as Brody's mom is fine, and the lesser-known Canadian actors fill out their roles well. It does have a satisfying ending, even if some of the details along the way remain murky.

A columnist's revenge

Whoa, I'm back, safe and sound and vaccinated and ready to review some media and post some more historical movie posters, and whatever else crosses my mind. THE COLUMNIST is a satirical horror movie from the Netherlands. Katja Herbers (pictured) plays an online columnist who becomes obsessed with a form of doomscrolling, constantly checking her Twitter and Facebooks feeds for trolls who insult her for expressing her liberal ideas--it's not completely clear what triggers the initial outpouring, but it seems to involved her critiquing, on racial grounds, the continuing existence of the myth of Black Peter, a mythic associate of St. Nicholas, often portrayed as a white man in blackface. The men, mostly arrogant incel-types, call her foul names, call for her vilification and issue violent death threats.

Haven't we all wanted to murder social media trolls? This character does. From online clues, she starts hunting down these guys, explains her mission, and kills them. Afterward, she snips off one of their fingers as a souvenir. Morally, a queasy situation develops in which we are actually on the side of the killer for a while, living out a cathartic revenge that we never actually would. We listen to the voice of morality, her boyfriend, a horror novelist (whose public persona is a hollow-eyed weirdo, but who actually is a sweet snuggler) but I'm not sure how we're ultimately supposed to feel by the bloody but cathartic ending. It's fun, the last couple of minutes in particular, but it doesn't let society or the audience off the hook. Even the asshole trolls are more or less humanized. Herbers plays her descent into enjoyment of her revenge very well. You'll laugh, you'll cringe, and maybe you'll think twice about posting that nasty misanthropic dig.

50 years ago in Columbus, Downtown vs. the suburbs

Two bills playing in Columbus in May 1970, downtown vs. the suburbs, murderers vs. gay men.

By 1970, the RKO Palace, one of the grand old-fashioned movie palaces, had fallen on hard times what with the number of screens opening in the suburbs. It was now basically a grindhouse (albeit a huge and fancy one) showing horror movies, marital arts thrillers, and blaxploitation flicks. The Honeymoon Killers is actually pretty good, though with a low-budget look and feel. I haven't seen What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? but it's pushing the "hagsploitation" buttons by comparing itself to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane and featuring two older actresses (Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon). Page wasn't even 50 yet, but in Hollywood terms, she might as well have been over 70, as Ruth Gordon was.

In the tony suburb of Upper Arlington, The Boys in the Band was playing, I suspect, to fairly specialized groups of gay men. It was one of the first major movies to center on the lives of gay men, albeit sad and stereotyped gay men. Still, it was a breakthrough and if its worldview is no longer relevant, its humor still works and the acting is fine.

Friday the 13th, 60 years ago

In mid-May of 1960, the 13th fell on a Friday, back in the heyday of ballyhoo-type programs at theaters aimed at the younger crowd, from kiddies to mid-20s. I was pleased to run across several ads around the country for some Friday the 13th-themed shows.

The above bill from Sacramento featured two second-run films, The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), which was the second of the Hammer revival Frankensteins (to be followed by at least four more) and the cut-rate monster movie The Giant Claw (1957)

The above 4-movie drive-in bill from Sacramento was not advertised as a Friday the 13th show, but the two films chosen for the ad focus (both 1959 releases which were probably at the end of their first-run engagements) are appropriate: Hammer's The Mummy with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, and the sci-fi thiller The Angry Red Planet. The other two movies (Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much and the Civil War-era melodrama Three Violent People) were four years old at this point

This theater in Butte, Montana was just running one film for their late show, The Werewolf (1956)

Tarantula (1955) was brought back after five years for a spook show in Sandusky, Ohio, but it's a good one. Blood of the Vampire, despite being called "all new" in the ad, had been in release for a year and a half at this point. Still, if I had a choice of any of the above theaters to visit, it would be the one in Sandusky.

In Reno, the first-run Circus of Horrors would provide the "thrills" and "chills" promised in the ad, while the second feature, The Screaming Skull (1958) might have provided some "laffs" from bored kids.  Below is a color ad for The Giant Claw, promising way more that it could deliver on.