What I’ve Caught Up With, July 2024 Part 2:
Film: Streets of Fire (1984)
I don’t know how I discovered Streets of Fire, but once I knew it existed, I knew I had to see it. The cast is loaded with a collection of people who don’t seem to belong together—Michael Paré, Diane Lane, Amy Madigan, Rick Moranis, Bill Paxton, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, and Willem Dafoe as the leader of a motorcycle gang, and so, so many more, plus it has a Ry Cooder soundtrack. This is a pseudo-rock opera about a singer (Lane) who is kidnapped by a motorcycle gang and rescued by her ex-boyfriend (Paré). Everyone dresses like they’re from the ‘50s, and the music comes from the ‘50s and ‘80s. It exists as its own fever dream of early MTV music, rockabilly, neon, sledgehammers, and Brylcream and an appearance in a nightclub by the goddam Blasters. Walter Hill is a mad genius, and this movie stands as testament to that. If I had seen this when I was 16, it would have ranked as one of my favorite movies, my ambivalence toward Diane Lane notwithstanding.
Film: The Little Hours (2017)
For a film that takes place mainly in a convent in the 14th century, The Little Hours has a surprising amount of sex and nudity. Nuns Alessandra (Alison Brie), Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza), and Ginevra (Kate Micucci) aren’t happy being nuns for various reasons. When a new handyman (Dave Franco) shows up, feelings are stirred up in them. Of course, the handyman is on the run from his former master for, naturally, having sex with his wife. Everything winds up out of control, and sex and Satanic rituals abound. The cast is a good one—in addition to those mentioned, John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, Fred Armisen, Paul Reiser, and Nick Offerman make appearances. It’s chaotic, and honestly better in theory than it is in actuality.
Film: They Cloned Tyrone (2023)
When you create a movie that is about a country-wide conspiracy to keep people docile and to conduct experiments on predominantly Black populations in an effort to achieve racial harmony, and then that movie gets released on NetFlix on Barbenheimer weekend, you have to wonder at least a little. They Cloned Tyrone is a conspiracy-based science fiction comedy that blends as many genres as it can. It should be overwhelming, but the whole thing works. The cast is good top to bottom, but Jamie Foxx as a pimp named Slick Charles, John Boyega as a drug dealer, and Teyonah Parris as one of Slick Charles’s girls are the best part of something good. It feels longer than it needs to be, but it’s worth your time.
Film: The Detective (1968)
A rather surprising police movie, The Detective is the story of unassailable police detective Joe Leland (Frank Sinatra)who gets involved in a series of crimes that involve homosexuality, psychiatry, and suicide. He’s also dealing with a wife (Lee Remick) who can’t stop cheating on him and a police department that seems only too ready to look the other way depending on the crimes in question. The scandal goes deep, and the film ends up essentially being a post-1940s noir. The cast is a good one—Jack Klugman, Jacqueline Bisset, and Robert Duvall make appearances. Sinatra is always at his best when he’s not the ultra-cool boss of everything, and here, he’s a conflicted man just trying to do his job. It’s better than I expected it to be.
Film: Knight of Cups (2015)
In any movie where someone lives a life of decadence and then gives up that life, there’s a moment where that person wakes up after another all-night party and sees people sprawled across the house in various states of undress and inebriation. They look at themselves in the mirror and suddenly they’ve gotten old and things don’t satisfy them anymore. Knight of Cups feels like Terrence Malick writing a two-hour poem on that topic, with screenwriter Rick (Christian Bale) as the one waking up, using elements of the Major Arcana in a tarot deck as its muse. The cast is a good and deep one, the narrative is disjointed, and the meaning is what you make it. In other words, it’s a Terrence Malick film.
Film: 12 Angry Men (1997)
A remake of the 1957 classic, this is definitely a lesser version of the film, but it’s still a hell of a story. This version is directed by William Friedkin, and the cast has a number of real stars in it. Jack Lemmon takes the role of Juror 8, (the Henry Fonda role), with the ever-excitable and intense George C. Scott in the opposing role as Juror 3. Others include Courtney B. Vance, Ossie Davis, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Dorian Harewood, James Gandolfini, Tony Danza, Hume Cronyn, Mykelti Williamson, Edward James Olmos, and William Peterson. It’s a damn fine cast, and if the original didn’t exist, this would be likely considered a classic. If you can’t get the original version, this one will tide you over. It feels like a cheat because it’s not the one everyone knows, but seriously, this is a bulletproof screenplay.
Film: Another Country (1984)
Another Country is arguably ahead of its time for 1984 in the sense that it deals openly with the idea of homosexuality, at least in the context of British public schools. Essentially a movie about politics more than anything else, this looks at life in a British military boarding school between the world wars, which honestly seems like a ripe slice of hell. Guy Bennett (Rupert Everett) is gay and doesn’t really hide it despite the significant social penalties that come from it. His friend Judd (Colin Firth) is a communist, and so is an outcast in his own way. The film is a bit of a misdirection; it starts with an older Bennett talking about his defection to the Soviet Union and his time as a spy for them, and then devolves into boarding school politics. It’s good, but not really a necessary watch. Good cast, though—Cary Elwes is particularly believable as Bennett’s latest boyfriend.
