52 Pick-Up # 18 – Desperate Living (1977)

 This MIGHT have the most quoted line in all of John Waters' filmography, even if not everyone knows they're quoting it.

With that as the opener, welcome to 52 Pick-Up, my ongoing year-long experiment in cutting down my cinematic to do list and keeping myself consistent with writing.

The last couple of weeks were a little erratic – that was on me due to a mix of life in general and a busy rehearsal schedule, but things will be getting back on track for the foreseeable future.

Now that the housekeeping notice is out of the way, let's get into this week's movie. As April turns to May, the chance shuffling of titles means I'll be staying in Uncharted Waters for just a little bit longer. Going from last week's correspondence from the front lines of the Cinema Wars, I'm taking things a bit further back into John Waters's filmography, this time closing out his Trash Trilogy with 1977's Desperate Living.

I'm trying not to make this a theme, but this is the third time in a row I've had a John Waters movie that I find myself looking at particularly in light of when it came out. In this case, like Multiple Maniacs, this is going into where this falls specifically in Waters's own body of work. Alongside being the final chapter in the Trash Trilogy (the previous two parts being Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble), this also feels like a turning point in Waters's movies in general. While his subsequent movies maintain a lot of his gleefully subversive elements, such as following this up with his gleefully warped take on melodramas in Polyester, this marks him taking a step back from the more overtly shocking. As though to signal this, we start seeing the cast of some of his movies shifting as well: David Lochary is not present due to issues he had been having with drugs (and his subsequent death meant Female Trouble would be his final Waters appearance), while Divine would return, a prior commitment meant she had to reluctantly bow out from this, and this would be the second to last appearance by Edith Massey. I can't quite call it a full 'end of an era' picture, as many of Waters's regulars did continue with him from here, but looking at where his work went after the 70s, this movie definitely feels like something of a turning point.

So how did Waters close out that wilder era of the 70s? Starting in a vision of archetypal American suburbia, we're introduced to Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole, opening this movie in top form) a, to put it mildly, high strung housewife coming off of a nervous breakdown. After a crash out involving yelling at the neighborhood children, she gets into an altercation that leaves her with a dead husband. Wasting no time, she finds herself on the lam with her maid, Grizelda (Jean Hill.) Eventually, the two make their way to the shantytown of Mortville, an ostensibly lawless burg ruled over by the iron-fisted Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey.) From there, they become caught up in the lives of many of Mortville's regulars, such as wrestler Mole McHenry (Susan Lowe), her lover Muffy (Liz Renay) and Carlotta's daughter, Princess Coo-Coo (Mary Vivian Pearce.)

Told ya. Easily one of his most quoted lines.

There's something fitting about the fact Divine had to back out of her commitment to this due to being involved in the play Women Behind Bars. While it's not expressly giving off the same vibe, the very woman-focused (and yes, very gay) nature of the characters in Desperate Living evokes feelings of the exploitative prison genre that the play is similarly poking fun at. In particular, some of the character dynamics and the power structure, right down to Queen Carlotta serving as the archetypal corrupt warden figure all feel a hop, skip, and a popper-fueled jump from the more traditional tropes of the genre.

Having said that, I do feel a little bit torn on this movie. It has its charms, and when it's funny, it can be very funny. In fact, like I said above, the opening to this may be one of the most quoted moments in Waters's cinematic body of work, and it is a genuinely hilarious sequence in its own right as well as one of the career highs for Mink Stole. Unfortunately, it also sets a high note that the rest of the movie never quite manages to match. There are still elements of what follows that are fun (Massey is clearly having fun with the over the top villainy of Carlotta, and Lowe is a scene stealer as Mole for two big examples) but the movie feels like once it gets to Mortville it goes from the bonkers charge it starts with to a more meandering pace that causes the movie to feel like it loses some steam. I'm also not sure how to feel about the fact the movie seems to pivot its focus with the arrival of Mole and Muffy. Like I said before, Susan Lowe is a lot of fun in the role, and she is an enjoyable character to follow, but it also makes it feel like the movie lays on a heavy dash of Peggy and then she gets sidelined out of what is initially framed as her story.

This MIGHT be my favorite Edith Massey performance.

All in all, I still enjoyed this even with those flaws factored in. Yes, it makes it feel uneven, but the highs are still enjoyable and more than balance out the lows (which aren't even as much lows as just not quite landing as strong as they could.) As to its role in the concluding the Trash Trilogy? Maybe my opinion will change with time, but as it is now, it feels like it's probably the one I'd put at the bottom in ranking the three, though that is also just a matter of the fact the other two movies are Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. What can I say? They set a high bar. Beyond the quality, like I said above, it also feels fitting as the final offering from the younger, more overtly shocking era of Waters as he transitioned into a different brand of subversive.

Two titles left to go before the final rankings. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty intrigued to see where the last of his filmography goes.

But, that is for another month. In the meantime, the rest of May has been rolled and next week marks a shift to another notable filmmaker (or filmmakers) whose body of work I have gaps to fill. So, next week I mark the first of a few gaps in the work of the Coen Brothers that have been on the to do list with Hail, Caesar!

Till then.

52 Pick-Up #17 - Cecil B. Demented (2000)

Welcome back to another installment of 52 Pick-Up, my year long attempt to keep consistently writing and work through my cinematic to do list.

Hey, by the end of this year, I may have worked out a better way to word that.

But, that's a talk for another time. For now, this entry is coming to you live from the trenches of the Cinema Wars, where art house is a battle cry and bad movies a cause for vengeance.

This isn't that hyperbolic, actually. The side series of Uncharted Waters continues this week with Waters's 2000 black comedy, Cecil B. Demented. This is one which, like I said last time, I had been looking forward to. Of the unseen Waters movies for me, this has been riding high and just didn’t quite get the chance before.

Having now seen it? Well, I’ll tip a slight hand here for something coming up - first, after this side series completes, I’m going to close it out with a John Waters ranking list for people to enjoy and/or nitpick. Second, I can safely say that this movie will be placing somewhere high. It hasn’t quite dethroned my number one, but I definitely had a lot of fun with it.

As a pitch goes, this is on the more plotted end for Waters - starting with A list star Honey Whitlock as played by Melanie Griffith, cycling through a few modes in this role that get increasingly more unhinged. On the evening of a big premiere (which she has no shortage of behind the scenes cursing about) she is kidnapped by self-proclaimed cinematic terrorist Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff, equal parts manic and engaging in his full ‘cult leader’ vibe) and his dedicated team of cinematic warriors known as the Sprocket Holes. The team has kidnapped Honey for a specific purpose - they have a movie to make and they need a leading lady. Sure, she hasn’t exactly agreed to it, but all’s fair in cinema and war, so she is soon forced into their guerilla production, quickly becoming caught up in their renegade style and embracing the ethos summed up in their rallying cry: Demented Forever.

26 years later, Waters finding a new way to ask
"Who wants to die for art?"
It's like poetry, they...you get the idea.

As timing the selection of the movies for this goes, I do love the fact this happened to be the next Waters offering after Multiple Maniacs. Much as I appreciated Multiple Maniacs watching it later into Waters’ filmography, going from that to Demented resulted in a further appreciation of Waters’s evolution as a filmmaker. Where Maniacs has a bit more of a free-flowing narrative going for it, Demented is a straight shot of a movie - a psychotic joyride from end to end that starts building from the jump, and quickly hits the ground running once Cecil and his team make their official debut. Even with some of Waters’ comedic tangents, this feels like some of the tightest filmmaking I’ve seen from him, and given the story being told here, that benefits it.

Speaking of that story - damn, Waters called the shot. Obviously, this isn’t a 1:1, but watching this movie in 2026, it’s hard not to feel like Waters’ critiques of Hollywood became prescient. Even sadder, many of these were exaggerated at the time for comedic effect. The opening titles, for example, contain lists of what were fake sequels that the time, a reference to the industry’s penchant for repetition and familiarity. Watching it now, I was struck by the realization that at least two of the sequels they put out as jokes DO exist now. From there, we get jokes about the mining of non-cinematic IP for movies and a running theme about how one of Demented’s biggest nemeses is the push for more family friendly-fare in films. This last one is interesting to look at nowadays, as in some ways it’s an old refrain, but at the same time, run through a new filter. Waters has thumbed his nose at the idea of making all cinema clean and tasteful before (the protesters in Polyester presenting film as a stark binary between Disney movies and pornography, for example) but in the time since he made these jokes, even as far as Demented goes, it’s gone from church groups to board meetings. Now we’re living in an age where the push for clean wholesomeness in films is born out of a desire for the widest market share possible.

Not only do they exist, each has gone on to multiple sequels
past these. I literally just found out there are now five
Lake Placid movies.

Much like the discourse around The Simpsons, I wouldn’t look at this and say Waters is a prescient prophet. The man is an incredibly talented individual with a way with the words and a wonderfully filthy mind, but not a Nostradamus. So when I see something like this, the feeling is less ‘this blew my mind’ and more ‘Oh God, we actually got worse.’ Waters went loud for comedy and the world decided to go louder.

Not saying all modern film is bad, of course, but again, a lot of what Waters was making fun of here just feels like Hollywood looked at it and upped the ante.

The feeling is a curious one. I mean, the movie is, in some ways, depressing for how much the world seemed to get the wrong idea from it. But on its own, it’s still a very funny movie and wildly entertaining, some of the laughs coming harder for the same reason they have that feeling of ‘we learned nothing.’ Rather than hurting the film, they just further bumped it up for me and made Demented and his devoted army of Sprocket Holes even more likable in their passionate-to-some-insane-to-others devotion to cinema.

Speaking of said army, I did want to give a shout-out there before we wrap this up. While Griffith and Dorff were the big star power at the time this was made (and, again, both great in this one) Cecil’s crew has a fair amount of star power going for it as well. In particular, was surprised to see Alicia Witt as well as a still up and coming Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Shannon among the ranks fighting for cinema.

And in a call back to last week, Adrian Grenier,
known to a lot of the internet for playing Anne Hathaway's
jerk boyfriend, seen here huffing from a bag.
This crew is a whole lot of 'Oh, hey!'

Two people would not have expected to see in a Waters movie. Not only are they there, they are both making an effort and it’s working.

Back to my initial point though.

Comedy is one of the genres in film that seems to be the most at risk of dating itself quickly. The good ones can still play, seemingly untouched by the years, while the less lucky creak louder with the years. Cecil B Demented is, arguably, part of that rare breed that have actually gotten better with age. Granted, there are parts that are definitely couched in the 2000s (Cecil’s group crashing a screening of a director’s cut of Patch Adams comes to mind) but a lot of the general swipes at Hollywood, in the light of the past 26 years since this came out land even more accurately.

With that, we bid adieu for another month. I know the back half of this month got a little erratic in terms of which day of the week. That’s on me from jockeying a rehearsal schedule. May will be getting a little more back on track, and per the shuffle, we’re staying in Uncharted Waters for just a little bit longer. Next time we leave behind the glitz and glamor of Hollywood for the dingy depths of Mortville as we conclude Waters’s Trash Trilogy with Desperate Living.

Till then.

52 Pick Up #16 – The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Oh, hey – two fairly recent films in under a month.

Wait, what?

Twenty?

Oh.

Oh God.

Okay. Just gonna table that existential crisis about the passage of time for later. In the meantime, welcome back to another week of 52 Pick-Up, my year long project to keep myself consistently writing and go through some never before seen titles on my cinematic to do list.

For this week, we're marking the second round of my wife invoking the veto power I gave her for a once a month pick (previously used for the rather charming Valley Girl.) Like I said last time, I'm keeping an eye on these – I know there's one other she is sizing up for down the line, so if we wind up with enough 'veto-proof' titles, that may be the last month of the year.

But, it's only April, so no sense getting ahead of things. For the moment, let's get into her pick for this month – between its sequel coming up and some generally not great news on this end (not likely to get into that on here) this seemed a good time to tag in for something lighter. As I'd never seen it before, this led to be watching The Devil Wears Prada for the first time.

This is one where it feels a bit odd doing the summary. I mean, this movie wasn't exactly obscure and it's still pretty well regarded (I say while acknowledging it took me twenty years to watch it.) But, in the interests of trying to keep to the format – here we go. 

For anyone who isn't especially familiar with this one, the movie follows Andrea (Anne Hathaway, and subsequently referred to as Andy) an up and coming journalist fresh out of school and ready to make her name in the industry. Her first opportunity comes in the form of the prestigious Runway fashion magazine. What she initially takes to be an easy assistant's job soon turns into a challenge of professional and stylistic means as she learns the ropes under her employer, the respected (and feared) Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep, and damn, it's been too long since she brought this kind of A game.)

This proved an interesting direction for me in this project, in that this is a movie I went into recognizing, by and large, this isn't really my lane. Not like a 'I know I'm going to hate this' experience, but simply recognizing that, as fashion goes, my knowledge qualifies for...I think the appropriate term here is 'heathen'?

Well, close enough.

Point is, I knew going in this wasn't going to land with me quite the same way it does with other people.

Having said that, I still found enough in here to enjoy. Which sounds like I'm copping out, but I swear, that is not my intent. While I recognize this movie definitely doesn't land for me the way it lands for a lot of other people, that didn't make this a bad time.

It's not quite "No, Ms. Sachs, I expect you to die."
energy, but damn if she couldn't make that pivot here and
still make it play.

If I'm shouting out any one point in particular here, and I suppose I already started to above anyway, it's the cast, and how the core group really help keep this moving and engaging. I know it's become a familiar line from me, but this is definitely another case where I can see a version of this where these characters would fall flat – where Andy's determination becomes grating, where Miranda's 'boss from Hell' energy would be overplayed and genuinely miserable to watch, where Nigel would either be ineffectively nice or pointlessly bitchy, and Emily would be a train wreck in a decidedly far less fun way. 

Thankfully, that isn't the case with what we do get in this, either at the script or performance level. Hathaway strikes a good balance between Andy's stress and also her enthusiasm in a way that keeps it from feeling like the movie is just kicking someone when they're down. Stanley Tucci takes his covert friend and semi-mentor position with that balance of dry humor and heart that, by the time this movie was around, he had made a brand and uses it very effectively here. For Emily Blunt, this was the role that really got her breaking out, and one can see why – like Hathaway, it's a balancing act that could have tipped into just being misery with a less experienced actress (though which levels she is balancing are, of course, different.)

Then there's Meryl Streep. I repeat what I said before – I get why people have talked up this role from her, it's an A game in a way it feels like she doesn't get as many chances to really play into these days. When people tend to picture the feared boss type, the first instinct is the loud, broad archetype, and while I feel like Streep COULD have done that in the right hands, her instinct to go quieter with this makes it much more effective as we watch her calmly, quietly dismantle a person or their arguments without breaking a sweat. It's an entertaining mode to watch her in, and even if it were just that, that would be enough, it's Streep mingling that with those flashes of the human being she is off the clock that really helps make this especially memorable. It's the sort of role that could have been a one note, even an entertaining one note, and Streep keeps it from going that way.

And really, in general, who WOULDN'T want Stanley
Tucci to be a mentor figure?
Like, in prettymuch any field it seems like he could make that work.

So, I have to admit, hearing they got everyone back for this new movie? Potentially good sign. Personally, I'm not sure I'll be seeing it in theaters, because again, I know this isn't really my lane. But, if the word of mouth is good, I may give it a go down the line to see if they can get this balance right again twenty years later.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go curl up under a desk in existential dread at that realization of the passage of time.

If it makes you all feel any better, we're keeping in a lighter mode next time. Sort of.

We're getting ready to launch guerrilla warfare, for cinema. This month's Uncharted Waters takes us into his 2000 comedy, Cecil B Demented.

To be honest, of the unwatched John Waters movies, I think this is the one I've been most excited for. Let's see if it matches my expectation.

Till then.

52 Pick-Up # 15 – Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up, my year long, once-a-week dig into my cinematic to-do list, the titles largely left to random draw.

Initially I decided to choose these via shuffling to keep myself from getting into a rut – favoring certain eras or genres over others felt restrictive (give or take for certain cases where I will put a thumb on the scale, but still leave an element of chance.)

As a result, sometimes this leads to some strange shifts in tone (going from Costa-Gavras to John Waters comes to mind), but it's also made for an interesting challenge of trying to find the unexpected ties from week to week that occur. Sometimes they're obvious, sometimes they take a little digging.

This week in particular is one I wanted to point out because it was the main focal point I had for this movie and it only just now hit me how it dovetails off of Ponyo last week as two directors taking two very different dives into stories that have their origins in the world of fairy tales.

Where they each take those, of course, go in very different directions. So, now that we've seen what Japan did with jumping off of The Little Mermaid last week, time to see the direction Czechoslovakia went for Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.

Okay, let me be fair. Strictly speaking, this isn't quite where Czechoslovakia wanted to go for this one. Rather, this is where novelist Vítězslav Nezval and subsequently director Jaromil Jireš decided to go the latter adapting the work of the former) with the Czech government at the time feeling this was a little too arthouse for their liking.

So what is this about? Without getting too bogged down in the play by play, this concerns the titular Valerie (Jaroslava Schallerová), a young girl living with her grandmother (Helena Anýžová.) Her life is complicated with the arrival of two people – the young Orlik (subtitles referring by the name Eaglet) and the Constable, a mysterious man who may also be a vampiric being known as the Polecat. Soon, the Polecat's influence spreads throughout the town and it comes to Valerie to keep herself alive and find a way to stop him.

I actually feel a little bad for that synopsis, because it really makes this sound so minimal compared to what's in the actual movie. If I tried to go through the larger breakdown, however, this would probably be half a page just on summary.

Which is probably the point where I should take the moment to warn – this is not going to be a movie for everyone. Normally, when I say that, it's in reference to a movie's containing objectionable content. To be fair, there is certainly some of that here, most notably a very distinct 'coming of age' theme in the narrative with some sexual undertones that feels kind of off-putting given the age of the protagonist and the actress playing her. To give the movie some credit, it never crosses a line into feeling as gross as it could, but it is also something I wouldn't fault a viewer for deciding they'd rather sit this out for.

And then there's this.
As coming of age touchstones go, you're not likely to encounter
this in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

Back to my initial point, the other aspect of this movie that might make this a 'this isn't for everyone' experience would be the narrative structure, which is definitely more free form care of the filmmaker's roots in the Czech new wave. There's familiar elements in the plotting and structure, but also several creative choices that feel almost designed to throw the audience off (interestingly, from what I can tell, this is actually accurate to the novel it's adapted from.) If you're big on having a tight, coherent storyline, this is one week you may want to sit out. If you're open to a more fantastical and dreamlike approach, I'd say keep this one on your radar.

It's still strange to think the movie I found myself comparing this to the most after finishing it wound up being Dario Argento's Suspiria. It's not necessarily that the two are especially similar in tone or structure, but there is a distinct thread in both of a very stylized director telling what are, functionally, horror stories with heavy fairy tale trappings laced throughout them. Valerie isn't as explicitly horror as Suspiria, but there are definitely aspects of it in the Polecat's role as a trickster vampire, even taking over the town in a way that evokes shades of Nosferatu (with less plagues and more hooking up.) The fairy tale element giving each a sort of heightened reality with regards to some of the plot mechanics – in the case of Valerie, best exemplified in the magic earrings she has that are said to shield her from harm. There isn't too much of an explanation as to how or why, you just roll with it as part of the kind of story we're telling.

I turned over a few ways to put my thoughts on this one. I'm glad I watched it, and there's elements in it to recommend if you can get on its wavelength (and aren't thrown off by some other aspects of it.) As much as I hate to use this because it feels like a classic hand-wave of a line, this really is a movie I would say can be best descibed as a vibes experience. One of those where you'll get a sense pretty early on if this is a movie you're going to want to keep watching or if this isn't your thing. It's not really one I can put too much into words. Just, if this got you curious enough, see if your library might have a copy. If not, no harm, no foul. There's still 51 other movies in this line up that may catch your attention.

Now that I'm thinking about it, there's enough points
that could be worth exploring a compare and contrast
between this and Nosferatu. Not a 1:1 by any stretch,
but certainly some interesting intersecting points.

For what it's worth, next week's entry will be a little less out there, though still one I wouldn't have considered without the outside nudge.

That's right – next week marks the second round for my wife invoking her tag-in privilege (and I'll just say this now – if this is used enough before December, I MIGHT dedicate the last month to tag out movies) to put in for something a bit lighter than I initially had pulled for next time.

So, with that said, we're going back to the states next week with a bit of a timely movie in a different sense as I sit down and watch The Devil Wears Prada for the first time.

Till then.

52 Pick-Up # 14 – Ponyo (2008)

Oh, hey there.

Sorry, I'll be right there. Just need to take a moment to finish eating this crow after the comments I made about the change in the weather in that last entry.

In hindsight, I should have known that would lead to snow. Not that it stuck around, but still a 'What are the odds?' moment to be sure.

Anyway, welcome back to 52 Pick-Up, the year long dig into my movie-going to do list. As the old saying goes 'You'll never watch/read them all', but damned if I'm not gonna try.

Going from last week to this week is making for an interesting contrast for me. Last week marked by second look into the works of director Jafar Panahi – and I'm fast becoming a fan – and conversely, this week I'm going into a director whose filmography I have already seen most of.

In hindsight, it's actually surprising I still had any gaps for Hayao Miyazaki, but here we are. On the plus side, that can also be read as saying 'Hey, I have a chance to see a Miyazaki movie for the first time' and those opportunities are rare for me now.

Which was the upside to the fact I'm only now getting to watching Ponyo (or Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea for the purists.)

Going into this, I only knew in the very general sense that this was Miyazaki doing his own variation on the story of The Little Mermaid. There is an element of that at play here – the underwater dwelling young girl meets a boy on the surface and decides she wants to see more of life above the water line. Past that, however, Miyazaki puts his own spins on it – rather than being a traditional mermaid, Ponyo starts as a fish-like being that ultimately turns herself more human as her desire to see this new world, and her human friend Sosuke, grow stronger. Her father, meanwhile, is against the idea both for the general reasons of not wanting to lose his child to the surface and also for the fact his daughter's newfound use of magic may be throwing the world into chaos. As Ponyo spends more time on the surface and the seas go more unchecked, the situation becomes clear that a choice will have to be made, in order to decide both the fate of the world and our titular heroine.

In terms of comparisons to last week, this is another movie where there's a strength in how it balances its elements, perhaps best exemplified in the depiction of Ponyo's father, Fujimoto. Presented as distrustful of humans and the surface world, there are moments where it would be very easy for a less deft hand to try and cast him as an out and out villainous figure, particularly as this take on the story does not present any sort of witch figure as the cause of Ponyo's change. What stakes there are come more in the form of the tsunami that dominates the second half of the movie, explained as a result of Ponyo's use of magic. Part of what makes that balance interesting is, while the storm is present and not simply brushed aside, the emotional heft remains more on Fujimoto's fear of letting go. When he tells Ponyo's mother that the universe is out of balance, it can just as easily be in reference to how he's feeling in the moment as it is to the genuine consequences of what is happening. In keeping with that personal focus, the resolution is not a grand, sweeping gesture, but more an emotional moment of choice and acceptance that, true to Miyazaki's form, feels very adult even as he keeps much of the rest of this movie in a lighter, more child-friendly tone.

And hey, this kind of times up with Easter nicely
Less so the religious part, more Ponyo's enthusiasm for ham.

That tone, to be clear, isn't a criticism. In fact, it's another of the movie's real charms in this case. Visually, this has a bit of a different style to it compared to some other Ghibli movies – besides a bright color palette, there's some clearer, crisper line work (this being inspired by the animation director's earlier short film) that, rather than looking cheaper, actually pops more for certain scenes, such as Ponyo's first times coming to the surface. That look also feels fitting given how many scenes are buoyed by her childlike sense of wonder at this new world she is discovering and all the people within it. Going back to that earlier point, it speaks to how well the movie can balance this with the emotional heft of Fujimoto's scenes, both for tone and art style without the movie feeling like it's suffering any sort of whiplash for it.

I have to admit, going into this, I was initially having that thought of 'what to say here?'. Not because there aren't good things to say, I've already said some, after all, but also just because with the combined pedigrees of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki, singing the praises of their work almost feels like a, if you'll pardon the term here, 'water is wet' moment. At the same time, that was part of what led to those topics above. Miyazaki does consistently good work, but that where he excels can vary from movie to movie,. There is something to the balancing act at work in Ponyo that feels rather unique to it, even if it's with elements that Miyazaki has touched on in his other movies.

No real joke here, but I do also really enjoy the fact
the opening sequence of this movie is entirely dialogue free.

Even as any sort of criticism goes, it feels strange that the most I can think to say here is 'it's good, but he's done better.' That's not even anything to the fault of Ponyo, but simply to the strength of other Miyazaki movies. Just taken on its own, this has a lot to recommend in it – it's a very funny, charming, brisk movie that brings a lot of the Ghibli spirit to a classic story and turning it into their own spin.

If, like me, you have somehow gone through a good number of Ghibli's movies and missed this, I would recommend giving this one your time. That said, I am also going to break from my usual format here to also say I would recommend watching this paired with another acclaimed Japanese director's take on the Little Mermaid story – Masaki Yuasa's Lu Over the Wall. While there are elements of similarity, it is also genuinely fun to watch how these two filmmakers each take this same core idea and both take it in very different (but both enjoyable) directions.

Okay, points to the randomizer. After how this month has been so far, I think I needed this refreshing watch.

But, April keeps rolling and it's time to wrap up here and start gearing up for next time.

The fantastical will be continuing, though in a bit of a different tone next week. Next week marks the first foray into Czech film with the dark fantasy, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.

Until then.

52 Pick-Up # 13 – No Bears (2022)

Huh. It took me this long to realize this entry is going up on April Fool's Day.

I'm trying to decide if that's a good or a bad sign. More so given this will be the thirteenth movie in the run on top of that.

Ah well, no sense dwelling on it too long. Best to just move on in and worry about the consequences later.

That's the lesson of this movie, right?

Right?

Oh. Oh dear.

ANYWAY.

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up, my year long trip through my cinematic to do list.

March has come to a close in a suitably raucous fashion and as the weather starts to warm up, I'm changing gears again and kicking the month off with another movie from the 2020s.

Two in four months. Not too shabby.

Following up on my comment on this from last month, this title made it onto my list care of last year's It Was Just an Accident. That movie made it up to my #1 spot, in large part thanks to the impressive balancing act in tone that director Jafar Panahi accomplished, and it immediately raised my interest in checking out his previous feature, No Bears.

I went in knowing as little as possible, save for Panahi's involvement. What I got was an experience that reminded me of the strengths of his later movie, but also showed me more of his general style in a way that has me intrigued to see more.

The first thing that struck me was the very meta framing of this story. Panahi appears in this movie as a fictionalized version of himself, an embattled film director who has been barred from making movies in his home country of Iran. We see this Panahi is working around this by operating in a small town near the border with Turkey where he connects with his crew by remote. The story follows two threads in particular. The first with the subjects of Panahi's film, a couple trying to get papers to leave Iran. The other involving Panahi himself as his stay in the village where he has situated himself becomes increasingly more fraught as seemingly minor actions prove to have unanticipated ripples.

In both this movie as well as the subsequent IWJAA, Panahi demonstrates a keen sense for narrative escalation. In both cases, he starts the movies with what could easily be a minor incident – something that can happen to anyone on any day and be forgotten just as quickly. Except in Panahi's hands, these incidents become part of a larger context that causes these innocuous acts to trigger subsequent actions to greater and greater consequences.

In comparison to the later use of this in IWJAA, No Bears takes a different approach. IWJAA balances its entire escalating chain of events on an uncertainty – every action the lead makes after his first decision is spurred on by the lingering question of 'what if I've been wrong about all of this?' and his reluctance to make that final decision that can't be taken back unless he has certainty. In the case of No Bears, there isn't an ambiguity behind the way things spiral out of control. As this movie presents it, there is no 'what if', but simply that the die is cast and we, along with the fictional Panahi have to watch as the figurative dominoes all fall down, not sure where the chain of events will go until the actual damage is done. If there is any uncertainty, it is in Panahi being completely unaware of the full consequences of his actions until they are taken past that point of no return.

The decision by Panahi to make himself the protagonist – as a fictionalized version of himself – adds another interesting element to all of this. Particularly as the film presents his role in the events that unfold – while Panahi is the unwitting instigator, the audience can sympathize with things like his frustration over the traditions of the village he is staying in, in that he is not made aware his actions are seen as taboo until the lines have been crossed. Conversely, the movie he is filming secretly within Iran feels like it's taking him to task for his detachment from the story unfolding – particularly as it spirals to its ultimately tragic conclusion, which Panahi can only observe from the perspective of a director.

The more I think back on this movie, the more I'm struck by the way it's constructed. Panahi presenting two stories that are both seemingly disparate but also quite similar, each effected in one way or another by his presence (or distance) from the action involved. It's an exercise in perspective that shifts from story to story and even from particular character as the scene shifts, even as it holds with our metafictional protagonist the whole time.

 

Looking back, this so far makes Panahi two for two on movies that I liked when I first watched them, but the more I think back and prod and pry at them, I become even more interested in what they're doing. Part of me wants to rewatch this soon, part of me wants to give it more time first and let myself come at it a bit fresher. Maybe something for after the project.

In the meantime, I'm going to be keeping an eye out for more of his movies, because this has further cemented my interest in what else this man has done.

With that as a welcome start to a new month, it's time for 52 Pick Up to move on as I hope from one prestigious director to another. Next week, I'm addressing one of the rare holes I still had yet to address in the filmography of Hayao Miyazaki (yes, I was surprised to remember there were gaps here too.)

52 Pick-Up will be back next week as I hope for warmer weather to properly go with writing about Ponyo.

Until then.

52 Pick-Up #12 – Streets of Fire (1984)

Man, where is the time going?

Welcome back for another round of 52 Pick-Up as I come to the close of the third month in this year long bid in the films that have been kicking around my 'I'll Get To It At Some Point' list. As March winds down, I come to a title that's been on the list for a while now.

And damn, do I regret sleeping on this one.

So, let's close out with Streets of Fire.

I'll start by saying it – this movie broke me in a way. As I've gotten older, there are certain phrases in describing films I have tried to strike from my vocabulary. This can be for any number of reasons from being overused or misused or just presented in bad faith.

One I have actively avoided for years is 'they don't make them like this anymore.' In this case, I will break and admit it – movies like Streets of Fire don't get made anymore. Or if they do, they certainly aren't at the level of weirdo ambition that Hill gets away with here on the back of his success from 48 Hours.

It's a mash-up of neon, biker gangs, a larger than life hero figure, a city that seems to be its own separate reality, all wrapped up in a rock and roll musical, populated with a murderer's row of a cast. It's the kind of style and genre mash-up that can be best represented by the famous multi-car pileup at the end of The Blues Brothers.

Let me be clear – this is a plus for me. For as strange as this combination is on paper, and I know it won't work for everyone, this one hit a spot for me I didn't know needed scratching.

For a description that gives this a little more of a 'what even is this' – the movie takes place in a city that seems equal parts throwback and slight future (the movie coins it 'another time, another place' not dissimilar from the semi-futuristic New York of Hill's earlier The Warriors.) The movie doesn't take too much time setting up the background before it plunges us into the action in the form of a concert for singer Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) who has her act interrupted care of a biker gang known as The Bombers. Their leader, Raven (Willem Dafoe with probably his most memorable villain look this side of Wild at Heart) takes an interest in Ellen and promptly kidnaps her. Immediately on the heels of this, witness Reva (Deborah van Valkenburgh) sends word to her brother, Tom Cody (Michael Pare.) Cody, a former soldier and Ellen's ex, rolls into town. After some initial reluctance, our hero has assembled a ragtag team involving himself, Ellen's manager (Rick Moranis), and a scrappy former army mechanic (Amy Madigan...excuse me, Oscar winner, Amy Madigan) to wander into the bad part of town and get Ellen back.

All this and Bill Paxton. Again, murderer's row of a cast.

I should pump the brakes for myself here before we go any further. There's a lot of things in this movie that work, and I will likely be hyping those up again before much longer, but I do want to be fair in some regards to this. 

So, let's start with that cast. In a way, the cast is kind of a good macrocosm for this movie's pros and cons – its leads aren't bad, but I can't really say they're the reason to see this. Pare can hold his own in a scene, and I'm glad he's stayed working consistently, but you can see why he wasn't carrying a lot of the bigger movies of the decade. Likewise, Diane Lane is in a thankless spot for this movie as its designated damsel in distress. Like Pare, she's doing what she can with what she's given, but it's not really the big draw for this one. 

 Having said that, for as much as the leads are kind of underwhelming, the supporting cast makes up for them in spades. As the movie's de facto sidekick, Madigan takes a role that was written with someone completely different in mind (for starters, the character was originally written to be a man) and makes it fit so well you'd think she was always who they had in mind for it. Likewise, Dafoe, who doesn't get to say a whole lot in this, makes a mark on viewers just from a combination of his aesthetic and the weird menace he brings to Raven. Paxton, meanwhile, with only a few scenes, brings a presence to a character who could have been completely forgettable that makes it so I kind of wish we could have gotten more of Clyde the bartender. Granted, that was a charm that just came naturally to Paxton, but it still carries into this role.

Though if I'm giving anyone the big shout out here, it probably goes to Moranis, who takes a character that, on first glance, reads like it will be the sort of role he's played throughout his career, then turns it on its ear. Billy could have easily been another in the stable of endearing hapless characters Moranis got typecast into over his career, but instead, he is almost an antithesis of them – a man who knows he's not the hero of this story, but he also recognizes what value he does bring to this team, and he's not afraid to use it or stand up for his part of things. Watched in the shadow of a lot of his later work, this was a refreshing look and it's kind of a shame he didn't get more chances to play against type like this.

If there's one component that could be said to be the biggest MVP of this movie, it's the soundtrack. This isn't by accident – the movie literally introduces itself as a rock and roll fable, after all. Still, it is an area where, if the music had fumbled, it would have seriously hurt the film. Thankfully, it all works with its 'almost a musical' mix of several songs created for the movie's in-universe groups to perform. Two in particular are worth pointing out here. The first of these being easily the most famous song of the movie, Dan Hartman's I Can Dream About You, an earworm of the highest order that still makes regular play even if a lot of people may not realize it came from a movie. The other I have to give to the movie's closing number, Tonight Is What it Means To Be Young, one of two songs by Fire Inc, written by longtime Meatloaf collaborator Jim Steinman. As someone who grew up with Bat Out of Hell as an album in rotation, this end theme scratched a sweet spot for Steinman's signature bombastic power ballad style of songwriting, to the point I had a feeling it was him behind it before I looked up the music credits.

More than the kind of weak leads, if the movie can be said to have any particularly big weakness, it's the fact the script feels like an afterthought. As a complete product, the movie is INCREDIBLY heavy on vibes and atmosphere, and in that regard, it knows what it's doing. As such, the story mainly exists to move things from point A to point B and you don't really want to dwell on it too long, you just take its conceits as they are with the 'it's not quite our world' setting. The individual components are carried either on the cast, the music, the aesthetics, or the sheer audacity of some of the sequences (I'm still processing the fact this movie's climax involves a sledgehammer fight.)

Yes. I repeat - a sledgehammer fight.

In a weird way, the movie can almost read as the rambunctious, 1980s younger sibling to The Warriors. The set-up changes, but both are very stylized films to their decades about a ragtag team of heroes who wind up deep in the heart of an unforgiving city and have to fight their way out while being pursued by a leather gang led by a cold-blooded psychopath, all to the strains of a great soundtrack. Besides the era, the biggest difference between the two is that The Warriors finds a good balance of all of its different elements. Streets of Fire, in some ways, feels a bit more ambitious than The Warriors, but by comparison, it's also more of an uneven movie. The parts that work work VERY well, to the point where one can't really say they cover for the parts that don't work, but they also keep those parts from hurting the overall experience.

With that, we bid March adieu as 52 Pick-Up keeps rolling.

Kicking off April, we get a more recent title as I get an opportunity to follow up on the work of the man who directed my favorite movie of last year – which is my round about way of saying I'll be back next with Jafar Panahi's No Bears.

Till then.