CON AIR (Simon West, 1997)
(*** / *****; ***** / ***** for the bunny scenes) :: First time seeing it since it came out and, between Cage sounding like the lovechild of Foghorn Leghorn and Kilmer's Doc Holiday and slowrunning/jumping from any number of explosions or infernos, Steve Buscemi having a tea party in an empty swimming pool, Malkovich holding a gun to a stuffed bunny, and the titular AIRplane crash-landing into the Las Vegas strip before culminating in a chase involving a fire truck, a skywalk, and heavy machinery, CON AIR remains one of the most gloriously insane blockbusters ever. Also: Colm Meaney and John Cusack should do / should've done more projects together.
As brilliant as the show is, FX’s SHOGUN will, after last night's episode, forever hold a special place in my heart for gifting my vocabulary the line "milk-dribbling fucksmear."
CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (David Cronenberg, 2023)
First Cronenberg I've watched since A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (or EASTERN PROMISES, whichever one came last) and I'm both underwhelmed and bowled over: CRIMES is a film that's as much of a work of conceptual performance art as Saul's and Caprice's in the (generally lacking) narrative. Pieces - no pun intended - work, sometimes as moments of deep, dark beauty (note: Howard Shore's score is incredible), sometimes as apex bits of Cronenbergian body horror, but it never quite felt like it became, as each new organ in the film, a system of its own. Nonetheless, one that's going to stick with me – for reasons that I've yet to fully comprehend.
filed under: postscripts + film
Recent posts tagged Postscript + film, for your weekend viewing:
ERASERHEAD (Lynch, 1977), streaming via Criterion Channel
PREY (Trachtenberg, 2022), streaming via Hulu
IN A LONELY PLACE (Ray, 1950), streaming via Criterion Channel
THAT THING YOU DO! (Hanks, 1996), streaming via Hulu
BAY OF ANGELS (Demy, 1963), streaming via Criterion Channel
PREY (Trachtenberg, 2022)
(Directed by Dan Trachtenberg from a script by Patrick Aison; starring Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro, Michelle Thrush, Stormee Kipp, Julian Black Antelope, and Bennet Taylor. Released 05 August 2022; watched: 2023w19 via Hulu )
Betraying my status as PREDATOR-mythos ignoramus, here's my logline for PREY: It's THE INVISIBLE MAN meets MOST DANGEROUS GAME if the hunter in DANGEROUS GAME wasn't some bored rich guy but was an invisible / cloaking enabled Wolverine in full-feral (yet coldly calculating) berserker mode against one of the best protagonists in the period survival movie / thriller / horror genre (Amber Midthunder's Naru rocks) that is absolutely holy-fucking-shit-brilliant.
Now that I've finally seen this gem (tight, taut 100-minute films FTW – though PREY did take a bit too long to get rolling – not much, just a little bit to find its rhythm), I want to rewatch the original films – think I've only seen the first two, haven't seen any of the newer ones – to see the connections that I've read were there but that I clearly missed (see PREDATOR-mythos ignoramus of paragraph one) even though I didn't need to know any of it to enjoy a damn fine movie.
Listening to fellow Berklee alum Sarah Schachner's soundtrack as I write this: it's that rare soundtrack that can both propel the story along AND stand on its own.
Such a great time: just what I needed.