It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

Well, it is for me, anyway.

The Criterion Challenge may be a new idea for this year, but I still wanted to continue my custom of the past few years, dedicating October to a seasonally appropriate franchise.

Within the confines of the Criterion Collection, that limits the options.

Limits, but does not exclude.

In truth, this was something I had started this project fully intending to build to - the Godzilla Showa collection. Fifteen entries for Toho's king of the kaiju.

To anyone who's reading this and thinking "Two to three entries a month and now fifteen? You're insane!"

Well, you're right.

I'm not going to run these all this month. This is the rest of the year.

That's right, folks. I hope you weren't pinning hopes on a holiday theme, cause it's kaiju all the way down from here through December!

(Maybe next year. I've had fun with this.)

So, the big press begins, starting with Ishiro Honda's 1954 classic here real soon.

Till then.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Welcome back. Class is still in session here at the Criterion Challenge, albeit not for much longer.

Now that we got class elections out of the way (give or take a disgraced educator), it seemed fitting to find a movie that would cover the rest of the school year.

Okay, not my sharpest transition, but deal with it, we're here to talk about Amy Heckerling's seminal high school comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

This was a first for me - I knew the angle I wanted to dig into as soon as the movie was done, but it took a while to figure out how to put it.

Which is even more fitting because I wanted to focus on the movie's surprisingly sharp sense of awkwardness.

Yes, this is a good thing.

It's something I'd been kind of aware of before, but this is the first time that I really appreciated how much this movie is willing to let its teenage characters be, well, teenagers.

I'm impressed with how it's willing to have that awkwardness while also never quite feeling like a cringe comedy (and I'm a sucker for a good cringe comedy, so don't take that as a dig.) The movie is able to have an arc like Sean Penn's surfer burnout Jeff Spicoli and at the same time Jennifer Jason Leigh's Stacy Hamilton navigating dating and the significance of losing one's virginity, and the shifts never feel jarring.

Part of what helps is that it never leans too heavily to either side of that line. To use them as examples again: as goofy as Spicoli is, the wildest his stunts get is having a pizza ordered into school or having to bluff out of getting a car wrecked. Stacy, meanwhile, has moments like her less than romantic first time - in a baseball dugout (a great detail being her being distracted by the obscene graffiti on the ceiling above her) and for as weird as it gets, it never feels like the movie is trying to heap abuse on her for it.

The movie is more than Stacy and Jeff, of course. We also have the similarly young and inexperienced Mark (Brian Backer), the increasingly unlucky Brad (Judge Reinhold) and the older, presumably wiser Linda and Mike (Phoebe Cates and Robert Romanus respectively.)

If there's a word that sums up the larger arc of all of these characters, it's 'unromantic.' Not in the sense of relationships, though there is some of that as shown by scenes like the above-mentioned dugout. In this case, unromantic being with regards to the idea of a rose-tinted high school experience. It's surprising to remember two years after this would see the rise of John Hughes's teen comedies ,given how differently Heckerling tackles things by comparison.

There's something that feels more, for lack of a better term, human in the way Heckerling presents her teens. They can be messy. They can make mistakes with consequences that aren't simply written off the very next day. As cool and experienced as an older kid may be, they may not have all the answers they want you to believe they do (as the movie shows from both Linda and Mike.) They are flawed, but ultimately likable individuals in a way that it feels like many later mainstream high school comedies are reluctant to show.

To bring this full circle, the culmination of Stacy's story is one that feels strange to see in a modern mainstream high school film - after an awkward hook-up with Mike, she finds herself pregnant and in need of an abortion (that alone being a risky prospect.) The resolution of the arc isn't a big dramatic beat, but a few smaller ones - an attempt to get a ride from her older brother (Brad) which he figures out, but ultimately still supports without asking too many questions, and an act of revenge by Linda in the form of graffiti. Despite being smaller beats, they still feel like a satisfying resolution narratively and thematically.

Also, it's not part of my main point, but I do feel like
I need to give a shout out to the late, great Ray Walston
as the put-upon Mr. Hand. Another great showcasing
of that crotchety snark that he could play so very, very well.

I don't want to say 'they couldn't make this movie anymore', because that is a phrase that feels like it's been misused too often for misguided commentary on culture. At the same time, this is a movie it's hard to picture being made now because of how frank, if funny, it is about the messier sides of teenage life. I wouldn't say it can't be made, but it would definitely not be on the level of a studio release quite like this one.

Which makes me appreciate that this happened at the level it did even more.

I could take this as a moment to add my vote to the larger sentiment that we as a society never really gave Heckerling her due as a director, but that would be a whole other topic, and the fact is, I'm running out of September.

October is right around the corner, and, as I promised, I'll be doing another franchise this time out.

And at the risk of laying it on too thick, this one's gonna be a real monster.

Till then

Election (1999)

Ahhh, fall. Possibly my favorite time of year.

The days are getting cooler, the leaves are turning, and Halloween is right around the corner.

But first, it's September, and for many, including the Criterion Challenge, that means back to school.

To kick things off, we're going back to the far off (oh God, I'm old) year of 1999 with Alexander Payne's black comedy Election. A movie that touches on all the high school experiences - finding yourself, running for student government and...let me check this note again...torpedoing your career when you take out your newfound midlife crisis on the overachieving student in your class.

I'm sure that was a high school experience for some. Thankfully I dodged that bullet.

As a rule, I try not to go into these with a direct focus picked out. A broad direction sometimes, but I feel if I zero in too much, I could miss something, so I'm reluctant to pre-plan too much.

I did break that rule a bit this time. It was hard not to with the debate this movie has sparked with regards to how we're meant to see the above-mentioned overachieving Tracy Flick.

If it helps, that became a jumping off point rather than the sole topic (hence 'a bit'.) As that question kicked around, I found myself instead focusing on a throughline of the movie that I hadn't put too much thought into before - misplaced blame.

Election is a movie that is spurred forward often by grievance. It's the entire reason Jim McAllister feels the need to try and put a stop to Tracy's presidential ambitions. It's what pushes Tracy to nurse a venomous degree of hate for opponents who don't share her enmity. Finally, it's what leads to Tammy Metzler's 'burn it all down' bid for class presidency that throws even McAllister's plans into disarray.

In the interests of some semblance of order, let's start from the bottom of that list and work our way to the top.

Of the three lashing out in this movie, I feel like Tammy is the one who comes out the best, both in terms of recognizing her misplaced anger and how to address that. Yes, her grudge with Paul and Tracy is largely a consequence of her much more justified anger with her former friend/spurned romantic interest Lisa, but that also allows her to step back from it, rather than let it consume her. By the end, even though she's expelled, she is ultimately happy at her new school with the bad blood left in the past.

Tracy's issues with blame are what really got me on this path in the first place. First and foremost in this movie, Tracy Flick is a victim. This is presented to us on multiple levels - first and most abhorrent being her sexual relationship with disgraced teacher Dave Novotny. Behind him, we have her mother, Judith, who is presented as channeling her own frustrations with unfulfilled ambitions into her daughter (I let out an audible 'oof' this time around when her mother's reaction to Tracy's losing is simply "maybe you needed more posters.") Bringing up the rear, of course, is Jim McAllister, Novotny's friend who ultimately makes Tracy the target of his own anger born out of his blossoming midlife crisis (we'll get back to that.)

I mulled over numerous ways to compare the dynamic
between Tracy and Paul to Frank Grimes and Homer Simpson.
I couldn't quite make it stick, but I maintain there is
a case to be made.

Despite how clearly toxic these adults are, Tracy bears them no ill will in her narrations. She commends her mother's drive, she speaks of Novotny sympathetically and recalls their relationship fondly, and even after McAllister's efforts to sabotage her election, she looks on him with pity more than anything else. By comparison, her attitude towards Paul and Tammy is one of complete and utter scorn. She views them as unworthy of the presidency and beneath her, even though neither has done anything to slight her personally.

This watch was the first time I ever really processed how much those toxic adults have affected Tracy. Her narrations give the impression of someone still unwilling to admit they were a victim, and rather than fire back at those who did mistreat her, she takes out her anger on those she sees as beneath her instead. It's part of why, while working on this writeup, I was pleasantly surprised by the reports of Tom Perotta looking to write a follow up to the original novel where Tracy coming to terms with what happened to her is a factor.

I can't really say I see her as a hero or villain as some would contest, but I have to admit, she is a fascinating, complicated character the more I look at her.

If there's anyone I WOULD say is a hero in this movie,
it's the janitor who undoes McAllister's plan because he's
had enough of his shit.

Finally, we have Jim McAllister. Like Tracy, I was struck by how differently he read to me on this viewing. If anyone in this film could be read as a villain (besides Novotny), it's McAllister. A big part of that is just how far he slides over the course of the film. At the start, the depiction of McAllister is, decidedly, positive (taken with a grain of salt, of course - the movie is rife with unreliable narrators). He is a respected teacher, well liked by his students, and when Novotny confides in his affair, his response is one of shock and disapproval. When Novotny's subsequent disgrace is recounted, McAllister isn't immediately hostile to Tracy. It starts to creep its way in as the first signs of what the movie ultimately plays out as a mid-life crisis, not unlike the one that destroyed his former colleague. Perhaps because of that point of reference, rather than recognize what he's going through and trying to sort himself out, he instead focuses himself on Tracy and destroying her ambitions.

Unlike Tammy or Tracy, McAllister's behavior is much harder to forgive, especially because of how he's introduced. He is presented to us as a man who, for all intents and purposes, should know better - he has a good life, is well respected, and at first has a recognition of how reckless and stupid his friend is being. When it happens to him, however, he ignores that, and ultimately abuses the trusts of his students, his friends, and his wife.

The movie's epilogue further adds to why it's harder to forgive him. As everything settles, we see each of the students finding their way in life - Paul and Tammy each happy with the paths they choose, Tracy continuing to aspire higher and still begrudging those around her. McAllister, we find out, lands himself a museum job and seemingly gets his life back on track. He does see Tracy one more time, this time in the cadre of a noted politician. At first, the movie gives you the impression he's let go and moved on, until he dwells on it more, and we find out he still has some unresolved blame for her and her ambitions proceeding while his are stymied. It's a feeling that then carries into the last scene, as he once again finds himself haunted by an overeager student, reluctant to acknowledge her.

Adding a bit of a darker note -
Remembering that this was a movie made in 99, following
the Clinton scandals, this scene very clearly implies
Tracy is again being taken advantage of by someone
abusing their authority.
Which, sadly, ties well with her never quite reckoning
with what happened to her.

Whew. This was a lot.

What can I say? After taking the summer easy, this one gave me a lot to turn over, and I'm glad to be back in the swing of things.

We have one more entry left before October (where, as I promised, we're still doing a franchise dive, and oh what a dive it will be!)

Stick around for one more class next week and then we'll be on our way!

Till then

Local Hero (1983)

Ahh, the dog days of summer.

Enjoying the last of the wind down before September, then it's back to the grind.

I suppose The Criterion Challenge counts as part of that, huh?

Well, I've still got one more day of vacation left. So after Hausu, I decided the best way to end this month was Bill Forsyth's funny, charming 1983 comedy, Local Hero.

 

 
This time last month, I wouldn't have thought I'd spend this much time comparing this movie and Hausu. As I tried to explore this as a vacation movie, however, it was hard not to.

It's not as though these are especially similar in terms of set-up or style. In fact, even as experiences, they're vastly different - where Hausu is like a funhouse ride, Local Hero is more like a warm bath or a comfortable sweater. Despite that, much of what I find appealing in this is similar to what appealed to me last time.

Like Hausu, I'm hard pressed to think of many other movies I'd say quite hit me the way Local Hero does. There's movies that get parts of it right, but something about the way it all comes together makes this one unique for me.

I know I've said it before, but over the past year, my view of movies has shifted from 'this could have been better with' and more to 'this could have gone *, and I'm glad it didn't.'

I can see a lot of the ways a more generic take on this could have played out - how Peter Riegert's Mac could have been the cocky big city fast talker (with shades of his earlier role in Animal House). How Burt Lancaster's Happer could have been the cold-blooded dollars and cents boss. How Denis Lawson's Gordon could have been the more 'pure' country figure to counter Mac and refuse to sell out his home town.

All familiar tropes. None of which Forsyth settles for.

Instead, Riegert is a man out of his element, able to local down a deal easily by telex, but much less certain having to close the deal in person. Happer is working to advance his company, but his heart is more in his dreams of the stars. Gordon is very willing to cash out, as are most of the other locals, and they are happy to welcome Mac to help close the deal. That Mac is then charmed by their small town happens inadvertently as a result of their efforts to help sweeten the deal.

I also can't not give a shout out to a young Peter Capaldi
as well. For someone who first encountered the man as
the surly, foul-mouthed Malcolm Tucker on The Thick of It,
his turn in this was an awkwardly pleasant surprise.

On paper, Local Hero has a lot of familiar elements of the 'city v country' fish out of water comedy. It plays a few straight, but for every one of those, there are one or more it subverts or takes for a fresh spin. There is no heavy dramatic baggage, no overtly villainous presence, or moments of severe stakes. It's a very relaxed, funny movie where the big mystery is how everything will play out while still seeing everyone's desires fulfilled. We come to like these people and, despite their clashing goals, want to see everything work out for all involved.

This really is the perfect movie to close out the summer with. It's light, but involving, warm, funny, visually striking for the local scenery. Even the final scene, with Mac back in the states feeling a sort of melancholy for the Scottish village that became home for him is a feeling that seems appropriate as one unwinds from their vacation and prepares to return to daily life.

Even if you're reading this in early September, I'd recommend giving this one a watch as the temperatures start to cool and the leaves change. After how hectic this month has been, it's a downright therapeutic 110 minutes.

Of course, with September around the corner, the challenge rolls on and it's time for this writer to get ready for something he hasn't had to do in quite some time - go back to school.

Come back next month for a few trips into cinematic academia as we ramp up for October.

And oooh, that's gonna be a doozy.

Till then.

Hausu (1977)

 Hello and welcome back to another round of the Criterion Challenge.

And let me start by saying - oof.

It's been a rough summer here. Technical issues. The heat. The weirdly dark turn last month's entries took.

Oh, and just about the entirety of the world at large right now. But, that's a talk for another time.

As we come into the dog days of summer, I decided there was only one way to end this summer - vacations! So, for the next couple of entries, we'll be looking at films about packing up and getting away from it all.

So what better place to start this trip than one of the most batshit haunted houses in cinema?

This isn't my first time seeing, or writing about, Nobuhiko Obayashi's cult classic Hausu (officially House, but the other pronunciation has been adopted to help avoid confusion with the 1986 haunted house movie with the same name.) At first, I wasn't sure what would be a good new perspective here.

Then it hit me - lean in to the vacation. Yes, this is a movie about a group of schoolgirls who take a fateful trip to a friend's aunt's haunted house. But it's also a movie that is its own miniature ninety-minute vacation.

This is a refreshing movie to watch for how weird it is, and how unapologetic it is about that, from start to finish.  This is a movie where, among other things - someone is eaten by a piano, people are turned into produce on multiple occasions, and someone is killed by being attacked by futons.

No, I don't feel bad about telling you this up front, because reading it is one thing, seeing it is something else.

For Hausu, it's all in seeing the weirdness unfold. It sounds pretentious to say, but this really is an experience. There's a lot of great haunted house movies out there (I can't recommend the likes of The Innocents and The Changeling enough come October) but I'd be hard pressed to think of another quite like Hausu.

A large part of this is thanks to Obayashi's direction. From the start, this was going to be a wild, imaginative movie, thanks to his decision to make his creative partner his young daughter Chigumi. That helped give the movie a lot of its more imaginative touches (Obayashi has been quoted as saying he felt like adult thoughts would cause the film to stay "on a boring, human level.")

From there, Obayashi's direction adds to the stylish strangeness. Between the animated tangents, the stop-motion style of some scenes, and the musical numbers (did I forget to mention this movie is also kind of a musical?) Obayashi keeps the movie lively. Even at the one serious beat, exploring protagonist Gorgeous's aunt's tragic backstory, is presented in a visually striking way that keeps it from snapping the tone in a way it can't recover from.

Seriously. Did I forget to mention the musical thing?

Cause it sort of goes there. This little dance number also
involves a cat.

I admit I haven't seen much of Obayashi's other work (though having seen his earlier short, Emotion, I can definitely see that his bold directorial streak wasn't an isolated aspect) but this has me wanting to see more. There's a lot of great haunted house movies out there, but not many (if any) others like this - it's a movie that captures the feel of being a kid on a well made haunted house ride. Once you're on, it's a blast from start to finish.

To pivot on this theme - it's a movie about a vacation that also doubles as a short trip all on its own.

Ahhh. I needed this.

One more trip to come this month before it's time to be moving on with fall, and coming into the big project for year one.

But that can come later. For now, still on vacation and enjoying it.

Till next time.

Blue Velvet (1986)

 Hello and welcome back for another round of the Criterion Challenge to close out July.

First, my apologies again for the shorter entry last time. Been working with some tech difficulties (non-film related piece of advice - Dell laptops are not your friend!) Also, the more I looked at the film through this particular lens, the more I realized my takeaway was 'This movie is great, but damn if time hasn't left it a grim aftertaste.'

I would still recommend giving it a watch, just - bear in mind, with the angle I was trying to write that from, it got kind of darker than I intended. It's still a great time in its own right.

In hindsight, this is probably NOT the best way to set up an entry on Blue Velvet, but we're rolling, so too bad!

 

 
Like last time, I knew this movie was a definite pick for this theme. Which, given it's David Lynch, is amusing to me - for as much as his work has been studied, scrutinized, debated, and picked apart in film circles - Blue Velvet is arguably one of his most straightforward feature. So much so that, in discussing it with a friend recently for this, she put it best saying it's a movie that lets you know what it's about within the first few minutes.

Granted, it doesn't just say it, but the visual language is clear enough: opening with a scene of sunny, everytown Lumberton, USA, subsequently disrupted as a man has a stroke, collapsing in his yard. From his fall, Lynch keeps cutting closer, moving past him to the insects scrabbling in the dirt under the pristine green grass.

That single beat encapsulates the journey protagonist Jeffrey Beaumont (Lynch alum Kyle MacLachlan) will find himself on. Digging past the charming hometown he grew up in and remembered to discover the dark, rotting underbelly hiding under the smalltown charm, best embodied in the psychopathic Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper in one of the definitive roles of his career.)

It's certainly not a particularly new idea to fiction - Stephen King alone could put together a mini-library about the number of works he's done that dissect the assumed morality of small town America - but it's clearly an idea that resonated for Lynch. So much so that it became one of the major threads he dug into with the series Twin Peaks years later.

All the same, there's something striking about how it's addressed in Blue Velvet - particularly because it feels almost uncharacteristically straightforward for Lynch. The movie has several of his stylistic tells to it, and some of the direction and editing gives certain scenes a dreamlike feel even if the story itself is meant to be seen as more 'real' than the subsequent TV series that shares its themes and some cast members.

That 'real' aspect is, I think, part of what I've found myself dwelling on the most this time around. Particular with regards to the dynamic between Jeffrey and Frank.

One of the things that really strikes me about Frank as a villain in this is that, thematically, he's not presented as an outsider. He's not some 'other' who's come in to corrupt the pure people of Lumberton. The implication is that Frank, and just about everyone around him could easily be just that person down the street. In fact, the one figure in the movie that could almost be seen as an 'other', Isabella Rosselini's Dorothy Vallens, is herself a victim of Frank and his group.

It's honestly the scariest part about Frank - he's not framed as some strange outside monster. Just based on what we see, he could be a home-grown, all-American maniac that Jeffrey simply never noticed growing up. In fact, there's a scene between Jeffrey and Dorothy that even seems to suggest that there is the potential for someone like Jeffrey to become like Frank if he lets himself.

Which is where I come to the weirdest realization I took away from this rewatch - despite this being easily the darker the two movies watched, thematically, I came away from this with a slightly more optimistic sense than I did with watching Lost in America through this lens.

A big part of this is due to the fact that, ultimately, though this movie is about that darker heart under 'wholesome' America, it's also a movie that advocates the idea of not ignoring it, trying to confront it for what it is. The movie makes it clear that Jeffrey's own attempts to investigate it nearly get him killed at multiple points, but it also puts him in a position where he can't simply ignore everything he has seen and learned over the course of the film.

Yeah, in the end, it almost feels a bit too clean (as partly shown by the discourse over the fake robin in the final scene - a prop that Lynch has admitted was born of function rather than theme) but there is still something oddly encouraging about that stance in this day and age. Framing it not as an act of machismo or anything like that, but simply recognizing it's the right thing to do.

No. Really.
For all the discourse over whether the clearly
fake robin symbolized a false happiness,
Lynch admitted they just weren't able to get a
live robin the day of the shoot. This was the solution
from props.

And again, coming into this after reflecting on Lost in America and realizing "Wow, we learned nothing from this," there is a certain strange sense of therapy that comes with a movie that flat-out says 'It's out there, and pretending it isn't won't make it go away.'

Okay, so that brings an end to a thematically darker month than I intended.

Tell you what? Pack your bags everyone. We're going on a vacation next month.

Better yet, we're going on a couple of vacations!

So see you guys again in August, where we're taking some trips.

Till then!

Lost in America (1985)

 Hello and welcome back for the back end of another month for the Criterion Challenge.

As I'd said last time, this month kind of went with a bit of a broader theme. I'd toyed with a few ideas before I decided to try and do a spin on the 4th of July (my first planned theme was moved to next month.)

I toyed with a few angles before settling on two movies that play to the idea of the American Dream, with an emphasis on the 'dream' part.

Albert Brooks's Lost in America was an immediate lock from there. The wonderfully sarcastic comedy, with its story of Brooks and Julie Hagerty as David and Linda Howard, a well off couple who decide to pitch their life of comfort to get away from it all has been hailed by many as one of the ultimate cinematic critiques of the Baby Boomer generation.

 

 
Watching it in 2021, I find myself both agreeing and feeling like that doesn't quite go far enough. In the context of the movie, the comedy of errors is definitely a riff on David and Linda's boomer sensibilities - they base their entire new life plan around the movie Easy Rider, then invest in a fancy RV, for example. 

That Easy Rider point especially sticks out to me now - the idea that these two uproot themselves and ultimately financially hobble themselves in the pursuit of a lifestyle they saw in a movie feels like an idea that has aged perhaps too well. 

This isn't to say that the movie isn't funny anymore. In fact, there are still several parts of this that get a solid laugh from me. Rather, the idea of seeing people commit themselves, often to their detriment, to actions born of an idea that never actually existed has become a much darker joke in the cold light of 2021.

I do have to say as far as the humor goes.
As famous as the Gary Marshall scene is,
the roulette table might be one of the funniest
scenes Julie Hagerty has done to date.
And yes, I say this as a fan of Airplane!

I do feel a bit like I'm underselling it here, because again, this is a very funny, biting satire. Rather, like Do the Right Thing earlier this year, it's a movie that has, through no fault of its own, gained a darker shadow from the fact that we learned nothing from it.

If anything, more people could probably stand to learn from David and Linda and recognize when it's time to hang the fantasy up, even if it means you have to eat some shit.

(Not literally - I already reviewed Salo once. Once was enough.)

Okay, tasteless joke aside, that about wraps it up for this entry.

Sorry this one was a bit shorter. Mix of technical issues this month and several attempts to flesh this angle out getting exceedingly pessimistic.

We have one more for this month coming up.

I'd say we're going to be less dark next time, but, well, I'd be lying.

Till then.

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