El Mariachi (1992), Robert Rodriguez.

The mariachi's opponent: a sombrero wearing dork with a casio.

Released the same year as Reservoir Dogs and Man Bites Dog, El Mariachi was one of those super-popular, low-budget flicks drenched in violence that appeared to indicate there was a new generation of talented young filmmakers on the loose.  Remy Belvaux (Man Bites Dog) died by his own hand in a suicide in 2006, Quentin Tarantino is now an Oscar winner and Robert Rodriguez is currently working on Spy Kids 4.  Huh.

El Mariachi is not a bad shoestring effort: the location is well used, the unknown cast adds authenticity and local colour.  The story moves along and is punctuated with humour.  It's a generally neat and tidy (81 minute) little tale.  Rodriguez's more recent Machete with its absurd comic book braggadocio and corny action leaves you wishing he still had a hero like the humble El Mariachi up his sleeve.

Rubin and Ed (1991), Trent Harris.

Do you have a Litmus Test movie?  This is a film you show a prospective boyfriend or girlfriend, to test their reaction: if they love it, you know it was meant to be.  If they wrinkle their nose in disgust and don't get it, time to dump 'em and keep looking.  Well, Rubin and Ed was my Litmus Test movie.

In Rubin and Ed, Crispin Glover wanders through the desert toting a dead cat in a beer cooler, trying to find the perfect burial spot (see below for said animal).  He is accompanied by Howard Hesseman, a pyramid scheme rube that needs to find a new guy to bring to his next meeting.  Can I just say that so many things can be explained by knowing this was a major top renter in the little town where I grew up.  What was even more awesome was that a couple years after this movie became part of my own lore, I met Howard Hesseman.  He was purchasing aboriginal artwork in a gallery shop and had a gorgeous red-headed woman with him.  They were both sporting large southwest silver and turquoise pieces and looked pretty mellow.  I blurted out, "You're in Rubin and Ed, that's my mom and my favourite movie ever!" (You know, not: "Hey, you're Johnny Fever!" or even: "Weren't you in Head of the Class?").  He looked shocked, and probably not just because that sentence made no sense grammatically but because who the hell ever saw Rubin and Ed, let alone chose it their favourite film (or dragged their mom into these kinds of things)?  He quickly recovered and described what an odd experience it was to have made that movie, filming in very cold weather in Utah, with a director on his first ever full-length project.  Mr Hesseman, wherever you are, you are a gentleman and your significant other was gorgeous.  As a little shop clerk, I looked in awe at the true winner in the entertainment industry -- the character actor!

Well, my prospective boyfriend didn't find the insole-sucking scene quite as hilarious as I did, and I think if I asked him today he wouldn't be able to identify Mahler's kindertotenlieder as the accompaniment to the chirping of a mournful squeaky-mouse.  But I married him anyway.  Hey!  I am an incredibly powerful salesperson climbing higher and higher up the ladder of success! SUCCESS!  SUCCESSSSSSSS!

My cat can eat a whole watermelon!

The Player (1992), Robert Altman.

Ugh.  Let's forget what we know about Altman and start from scratch here.  This film is banal, wanders endlessly, beats dead horses and has a very amateur visual aesthetic.  I dunno, when all those voices are talking on top of each other but the story is dragging, I found it hard to convince myself that this was the same guy that made McCabe and Mrs Miller.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's an eight minute opening tracking shot where everyone's talking about films that had tracking shots.  It later shoves your nose in obvious film references, as in:

film poster in the background

 cutting soon after to 

Ooooooh, a sitting for "Mr M."

This is about one hour, forty five minutes after we see Tim Robbins drown a guy in a puddle.  We get it!  Altman does make a decent sketch of what jerks resembled circa 1990.  Tim Robbins, despite his gangly skinny bod and boyish face, manages to pull enough asshole vibe out of the air to fit the part.  Greta Scacchi's character loves to take polaroids and manipulates them.  This is hilarious, because it's so nineties and such a lame pseudo craft practiced by bored middle-class, middle-aged women (one notch up from scrapbooking) so not a bad way of indicating that she's a poser, not an artist.   I.E.,

Brion James ("what's a tortoise"!) looks like he's been swabbed in orange paint (he's a sun loving movie mogul, get it?).  Then there's the sex scene, which is a gut-buster.  Scacchi and Robbins are drenched (in what, sweat?  hot tub fumes?), lit in hellish reds and the sounds of jungle drums beat erratically in the background while Robbins sputters some cornball dialogue.  We had read the running time wrong and had a major debate as to whether this would become a "film he made me turn off" but mercifully it ended at the two hour mark and the remaining minutes were just DVD extras.  There is a God!        

Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Brian De Palma.

Total Corky St Clair brainwave today:  Bonfire of the Vanities, a stage production acted with just three people:  an African American, a Jew and a WASP!  OK, that might be a little too Springtime for Hitler for some people.  (Whatever, I'm so sure my community theatre company can pull this off!)

Bonfire of the Vanities was the first "adult" book I bought, at about age 14.  New York was about 3000 miles away, an imaginary place I knew about only through movies like Ghostbusters and Margaret Bourke White photographs.  I didn't get what fuggedaboutit was supposed to mean, and there were only two black families with kids in my high school so to say that I was culturally naive would be a huge understatement.  But Bonfire had a flashy cover, weighed about 2 pounds and looked pretty impressive to carry around, way cooler than It (for spazzes) or Les Miserables (for snotty rich kids who'd get to go out of town to see the musical and wear that obnoxious sweatshirt for months afterwards).  The Brian De Palma film (the production of which was documented in the brilliant book The Devil's Candy, by Julie Salamon) seemed to have been created with the same level of sophistication as the grade nine me.  It's also a complete hoot to watch now, as an adult.  What the HELL were they thinking!

First, let's talk bad casting and terrible performances.  Kim Cattrall's artificial but indeterminate "socialite" accent is nose wrinklingly bad.  But choosing Tom Hanks as the central character was probably one of the decisions that ensured that even if everything else went right about this movie, it would still be doomed to failure.  Hanks is completely unable to conjure arrogance, privilege or anything other than rubber-faced consternation.  The only exception to his one expression is found in one later scene, when his world collapses around him and he chases a crowd of ass-kissing guests from his apartment with a rifle.

 Tom Hanks expresses mild discomfort at being introduced to an HIV-positive poet.

LATER, Tom Hanks expresses complete shock when he realizes his mistress is talking with his wife!

THEN, Tom Hanks is reflective, as he hears the poet recite lines about Don Juan and realizes how he might actually be talking about him.

EVENTUALLY, Oscar moment! (?),  Tom Hanks goes batshit with a rifle.

Like a very low-budget production whose fake props or cheap sets betray the illusion of the medium, this film is anti-film:  I couldn't for one moment stop thinking that I was watching a film.  I couldn't hear the dialogue, I couldn't follow the story.  The music blared unsubtly.  Every camera shot is obtrusively a worm's eye view (WHY)?  Unrealistic details that you might normally not care about stood out like a sore thumb.  (Why is Kim Cattrall preparing appetizers on the tray in the kitchen, wouldn't her staff do that)? The only convincing scene in the entire film, the only time you forget you're watching a film and start listening to what some guy is talking about -- is when the lovely Alan King has his one brief scene talking about animals crapping on an airplane!  Why?  Because he's playing it like a comedy!

I'll be your trophy wife, Alan.  At least you have a damn personality (if, by the end of this scene, no pulse).

The ultimate act of cowardice is the casting of Morgan Freeman as the judge (it was supposed to be Alan Arkin, but De Palma thought that he would be too... Jewish.  You know, exactly like in the book, and that could have have potentially been offensive to African Americans).

Is this offensive to African Americans?  'S OK, we got Morgan Freeman.

Freeman wraps up everything up neatly by dismissing the case and lecturing everyone in the courtroom:  the sunglasses wearing community activist, the black community, the WASPs, the Jewish lawyers, the journalists, about dignity.

"Dignity is what your grandmother taught you!"  (Seriously, that's what he says).

FIN

Whoa!  I've never re-read Bonfire; as I got older I learned in school about Tom Wolfe and his place in contemporary fiction (and first-person journalism).  I heard the satire in I am Charlotte Simmons wasn't on target, and I gave it a pass.  Now that I'm older, I read a lot of great writing on filmmaking and other topics.  But there's one thing missing from my menu and that's some kind of analysis of failure.  Salamon's book never really answered that question for me -- or, she offered too many little reasons that this particular project failed.  Movies are massive undertakings but reflect what many of us are faced with in our adult lives.  Whether we are bosses, parents, teachers or chefs:  we get some cash together, find some people to help us out, and we execute projects.  How is it that movie missteps are catastrophes that manage to waste the equivalent of a small country's GDP and insult our intelligence?  

Rewatching: Reservoir Dogs (1992), Quentin Tarantino.

Is this the longest death scene in film history?

Could be a play!  Has this ever been done?  You just need buckets of blood, a 70s funk tape and a warehouse.  Parts of this are pointedly 90s, like the slightly slow fade on the white font and the two-handed shooting.  But it's a smart package, intelligently written (if completely a dude movie).  There's just one woman character: she gets her car jacked and flashes across the screen in about 3 seconds.  And of course, we have one of my favourite plot mechanisms, the psychopathic wild card character.  (Is Vic Vega not the coolest character name to date?  C'mon).  I felt slightly cheated not seeing a jewelry store interior scene:  what happened exactly?  What kind of loot were they after?  Instead, Tarantino has the characters talk it out, describing how Vic Vega went apeshit.  OK, I admit it:  I did not remember how the torture scene ended and started to get nauseous.  That plus Tim Roth slipping around in his own guck for 99 minutes: is it all too much?  What about the neverending birth in A Cock and Bull Story (2005), is that the female equivalent? 

A far worthier tribute to The Taking of Pelham One Two Three than literal, brain-dead remake done last year.  Wonder where they got the elephant tusks from.  Are those things for real?