Luster: (2002. dir: Everett Lewis) This was a projet du coeur for someone, writer/director Lewis, I guess, a fantasia to his own erotic homosex. It's a z-grade indie film with romantic pretentions to punk-rock DIY, made on a budget of five bucks and a case of beer, with a ton of heart, really bad sound, and exactly two good performances in it (Shane Powers as Sam and Susannah Melvoin as Sandra). That said, I know for a fact that this is somebody's favorite movie ever made; some gay kid in, I don't know, Nebraska, is even as we speak wearing out his old VHS copy with multiple viewings, using it as a doorway into a dreamworld of deliverance. There's an argument to be made that there is no greater achievement, no higher calling for a film-maker than that.
Reedus has one scene; he is the Sextools Delivery Boy. He comes in, gets the guy to sign for the delivery, stretches provocatively, flirts nonchalantly, taking the pen out of the guy's mouth, then doesn't hesitate when he's invited into the bathroom. Once there, he's asked if he wants a blowjob. Following the time-honored tradition of straight guys throughout history in that position, he asks, "How much?" Once a deal is brokered, he advances toward the kid who's going to do the work.
That's it; that's his whole bit. Mostly, he broadcasts that particular admixture of jokey embarrassment, blush of flattery, and edge of belligerence which is also the traditional response from straight men on finding themselves desired by other men. Reedus the Superstar has always had a sizable gay following, though: between this, Floating, Dark Harbor, and the so-homophobic-it's-homoerotically-epic Boondock Saints, he's like a gay icon. Plus, he donned drag for a Bjork video (what could BE more gay?), and now, they hint darkly, it will come out that Daryl Dixon is perhaps the world's first sympathetic, rednecked queer. He's a ground-breaker.
Rating: one and a half stars, but not for lack of trying, and I'm not part of its specific demographic
Reedus Factor: zero stars
A Lot Like Love: (2005. dir: Nigel Cole) Ward Bond used to do this to me all the time. I waste a whole Netflix rental on a movie I know he's going to be in for like a second, and then it turns out that second is right at the beginning, like he plays a cab driver stuck in traffic and the heroine leaps out of the cab and runs down the street and that's the last you see of him. Then I'm stuck with two hours of a movie I never would have chosen to watch of my own free will.
If you're like me and tend to avoid the romcoms, this is neither the best nor the worst you will ever see. It's actually closer to the top of the scale than the bottom. It's derivative, yes, most shamelessly of Four Weddings and a Funeral, but if you're going to derive, might as well pilfer from the best. On the plus side, the Girl is not only played by Amanda Peet, she's also not obsessed with weddings, children, shopping, shoes, accessories, or her career. Also on the plus side, Ashton Kutcher is never as bad as you think he's going to be, and he wields a certain charm.
Reedus is Peet's musician-boyfriend when we first see her, dropping her at the airport and breaking up with her over the credits. He's like a blur of activity. Honestly, you never even get a clear glimpse of him.
Rating: two and a half stars
Reedus Factor: zero stars
Cadillac Records: (2008. dir: Darnell Martin) Sentimental journey backwards through the history of Chess Records and the original black superstars of the blues. The characters are full and complex, the relationships realistically fraught, the music is (as demanded in such a venture) great. The color scheme glows with a sort of warm amber light. The cast is particularly good, led by a downright inspired Jeffrey Wright, who shines as Muddy Waters. It's still nostalgic hogwash, of course, highlighted by sometimes shrieking melodrama, but there's a reason the movies keep returning to this formula. It's got legs: there's enjoyment to be had in travelling ancient, well-scrubbed roads.
Reedus officially has more than one scene, but he's always just hanging around in the background. You never really see him properly.
Rating: two and a half stars
Reedus Factor: zero stars
Pawn Shop Chronicles: (2013. dir: Wayne Kramer) A pawn shop in the deep South plays centerpiece to this comic-book-shaped tryptych of stories. There's a coulrophobic tweaker, an Elvis impersonator, an army of naked zombie women, a pair of white supremacists who are trying to puzzle out why they should hate Jews and black people ("I went to the meetings for those little smoky sausages, next thing I know I'm a card-carrying member, with the tats and everything"), salvation showing up in the form of the Marlboro Man driving a pickup with a gun-rack and the devil in the form of an evangelical handing out leaflets, a lot of very smooth and inventive camerawork, and, even more surprisingly, very fine acting. (So that's Paul Walker. I get it. It's sad in so many respects.)
Reedus, I'm guessing from the musculature and the tattoos, is the meth-cook in the gas-mask. It's hard to judge a performance that's filtered through a gas-mask, but his scene is extreme in a good way, and it's kind of funny when a guy in a gas-mask cracks up laughing at a guy in a clown mask.
And why is it funny when a guy in a grinning clown-mask is screaming in terror? I mean it. It made me laugh. Is there something wrong with me?
Rating: two and a half stars
Reedus Factor: one and a half stars
Mimic: (1997. dir: Guillermo del Toro) Del Toro loves some visual tropes: the aesthetics of plastic sheets draped over things, for one. (Thanks to my friend Sam Gregory for pointing it out.) Underground tunnels, slime on stone. Wetness in general: viscera, effluvium and discharge, and bodies, often of the young, caught and preserved in jars. In Mimic, the young are of a superstud cockroach species, one which has evolved to a stage at which its physique mimics that of its primary predator: namely, us. So, as later in Blade II, we have a humanish face which cracks open and unfolds to reveal the monster beneath. Quite the metaphor.
We also have a vernal Norman Reedus, in one scene, vivacity amid the darkness. He's young, vibrant, doofus, full of life, and we only get him for a minute before we plunge back into the subterranean slime.
Rating: two stars
Reedus Factor: two and a half stars
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