Desperately Seeking Susan: (1985. dir: Susan Seidelman) One of the few undisputably totemic movies of the 80s, Desperately Seeking Susan is a major player in that "girls-just-wanna-have-fun", cautiously pre-Lipstick-Feminist movement, and it's the one that redirected Madonna from superstar into movie star. (It's the best role she ever had, because she's playing herself, and using her own wardrobe.) Boasting cameos from '80s cult luminaries Richard Hell, Ann Magnuson, Rockets Redglare, Annie Golden, John Lurie and Stephen Wright, it is the place to go if you're looking to learn anything about the pop culture or aesthetics of that decade. It also, though, has a charming story to tell and an anemic, nascent-but-fetching, pre-Thelma-and-Louise girl-power dynamic. In its original ending, in fact, the Roseanne Arquette and Madonna characters disappear to travel the world together, leaving their respective girl-toys (Aidan Quinn and Robert Joy) pining at the lunch counter, waiting for them to call. It's hard to believe now, but in that pre-Courtney Love era, Madonna was busy redefining sexuality for a generation of girls just coming of age, with her mix of lingerie and men's boxer shorts, her controversial hybrid of Boy-Toy and power-bitch. The scene in which she blow-dries her armpits in the subway station restroom reminds me of a moment in Jane Campion's strange and unforgettable Portrait of a Lady in which the delicate heroine sniffs her own shoe before putting it on, a wonderfully jarring reminder of the earthy pungency of female flesh which so often gets fastidiously obscured onscreen.
Everyone is young and gorgeous, with Quinn never sexier, Arquette never more adorable (did I say this was a feminist venture?), and young versions of John Turturro and Giancarlo Esposito in minor roles, both already fully in charge of presence and charisma. Will Patton is there as a truly slimy villain, but my favorite moment belongs to Laurie Metcalf as a rich woman who catches her brother and her lover comfort-eating in a time of stress and rails at them, "Why don't you take a valium like a normal person?"
Black Angel: (1946. dir: Roy William Neill) It's noir time in Los Angeles, and Dan Duryea is just perfect as a heartbroken drunk of a piano-player scorned into despair by his fatale, estranged wife. Peter Lorre is, likewise, about perfect as the droll, unflappable club-owner who may or may not have murdered aforesaid wife. Alas, that's about it for the perfect. It's based on a Cornell Woolrich book, and so needs to be much darker from the outset. Any Woolrich book is a long descent down a mirthless stairway into hell, as is this one, and the tone Neill sets is much too light to communicate properly the thick, tenebrous heart of the thing. June Vincent fails to fascinate in the female lead, a chanteuse-housewife trying to clear her falsely-accused, two-timing husband's good (well, mediocre) name by teaming up with Duryea to collar the real bad man.
This was director Neill's last venture, having made his name early in cinematic history and found later, steady work helming the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series. As far as the noir goes, he gets the lighting right, and a certain aloofness of delivery, a certain cold, jadedness of character, but ultimately misses the target by allowing too much metaphorical daylight in through those slanty, noir blinds.
Alien Resurrection: (1997. dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet) The first Alien movie was one of the best films ever made. The second was a whole different beast, a blockbuster epic adventure, but masterfully done, managing while staying true to the original to expand it into something which, if not as great, is still a rollicking and lasting success. The third, cobbled together like a Frankenstein's monster from various scripts and fallen-away directors, fell into David Fincher's then-cinematically-virgin hands and was an undeniable failure, but an interesting one, with a lousy script, a phenomenal cast, and some interesting choices.
The fourth is another bold failure. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (City of Lost Children previously, Amelie afterwards), it imposes his quirk-and-style-over-substance sensibility over a script by a pre-Buffy Joss Whedon. You wouldn't guess it was Joss' without knowing, but once you do know, you can see the Betty as an early sketch of the beloved Firefly-class boat Serenity, as well as the beginnings of Jayne Cobb in Ron Perlman's Johner. (After Ripley tearfully destroys a lab filled with tragic proto-Ripley cloning experiments, Johner is genuinely puzzled over the waste of ammunition: "Huh. Must be a chick thing.")
The point is, when it was over, I thought, "Why is this a bad movie?", since it has much of interest in it. The actors are intriguing (Sigourney Weaver, Michael Wincott, Perlman, Winona Ryder, Brad Dourif, Jeunet staple Dominique Pignon), the story is told in potentially interesting turns. What it lacks, in the end, is any sense that the universe of the film stretches beyond the edges of the screen, beyond the parameters of each scene. It is a conglomeration of set-pieces, with no jarring visual or aural dissonance to pull us out of the production design, and yet the ensemble, for all its talent, never sparks into life. In the first movie, on the Nostromo, there is no question from the first waking moments that the crew-members have previously interacted, with recognized friendships and interpersonal frictions and all the bedevilments which arise from the forced intimacy of long-term space travel. Despite an effort to create it, that's what's missing here. The amities and enmities seem contrived, the interactions lacking that elusive spark of divine fire which would lift an otherwise fair-to-middlin' venture into the realm of the lasting. Because Whedon is involved, it brings to mind the crushing discrepancy between the candescent life of Firefly and the awkward misfire that was its cinematic sequel, Serenity. It's possible that Joss needs the continuity of a series, that he doesn't have the necessary expositionary talents for a two-hour movie. (Alright, Avengers was OK, but we all know much of that stuff already. Nobody needs to have Bruce Banner explained to them; he walks onscreen and even little kids and grandmas know what's up.)
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