Destination Anywhere, dir. Mark Pellington (1997)

NIKKI says:

This was a great revisit for the night. It's still got the same kick it had when it came out. I was a bit infatuated with it when it was released. I'd never seen anything like it before -- a short film based on an album, starring the artist, and all that. It's a gorgeous piece of work, artistically stunning and really kinda powerful in its way.

It looks so good because of Mark Pellington who shoots dirty backstreets like they're the entrance to a child's birthday party. The grit and grime of Chelsea nights is in full view, but it's colourful and vibrant. Pellington did the same thing in Bruce's "Lonesome Day" video, making the ripped up, black heart of Asbury Park a rainbow again. I don't know how he does it, but especially here it adds a strange contrast to the work; these awful things going on with this backdrop of colour.

The gist is this: Jon and Janey are falling apart following the hit and run death of their little daughter. He runs off on benders leaving her alone to work long hours and drink herself insane. The movie begins with Jon returning home after one of those benders. We come to know straight away why he runs away -- Janey is draining, killing her pain and taking it all out on everyone else. Jon runs again. He gets advice from his friends, and winds up on yet another night away involving drink and strippers. He's killing the pain in his way, and we know it's not working. So, the movie is about how these two reconnect. 

Meanwhile, a baby is dumped in the trash. Janey works at the hospital where the baby is being kept. And she makes a decision to finally be free of her pain that is tragic and horrifying, but strangely perfect for this couple.

It's a heavy film, full of lost-soul imagery and death, and it offers redemption to its characters in difficult ways. I think it's really brave. Jon and Demi are just so great, too.

4/5

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, dir. Jake Kasdan (2007)

STEVE says:
There's a scene in Walk Hard where a young Dewey Cox is waiting in the wings with Buddy Holly as The Big Bopper performs Chantilly Lace. He's understandably nervous about following the Bopper, so Holly (a pointlessly cameoed Frankie Muniz) offers to go on next and take the heat, allowing Dewey to then follow. Moments later, the stage manager alerts everyone that Elvis (Jack White, for some reason) wants to get out early, so he'll be on after Holly, and Dewey will follow them all. I guess it's meant to be funny, and it was in a cute, obvious sort of way, but that's not the reason I bring it up.

See, before we watched Walk Hard, Nikki and I had just finished a 30 Rock marathon - eight or nine episodes back to back because we just couldn't turn it off - and I can't help thinking that maybe Walk Hard would have been funnier if it hadn't had to follow such a brilliantly put-together show.

Not likely, though, considering Walk Hard was co-written by "the guy who brought you Knocked Up and Superbad", Judd Apatow. The more movies I see advertised with "From the Guy Who Brought You" in relation to this guy, it seems less a selling point and more a condemnation.

I was very surprised to find that, for an Apatow movie, Walk Hard followed the proper screenplay structure, but I credit that to the other half of the writing team, director Jake Kasdan. Jake's dad, Lawrence Kasdan, is the guy responsible for writing The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Body Heat and Silverado, to name a few, and it seems some of that genius has rubbed off. Still and all, Apatow was involved here, and his vision extends about as far as Vern Troyer's dick, so instead of a hilarious take on the rock star biopic, Walk Hard ends up being a tepid spoof of only two such movies, Ray and Walk the Line - which, structurally speaking, were pretty much the same movie, anyway.

Was it funny? I gotta be honest, here... I don't remember laughing more than once, when Dewey and his band went to India and inadvertently met the Beatles. In yet another spot-the-celebrity scene, Jack Black did the worst Paul McCartney ever - with what sounded like an Irish accent - but Justin Long, Jason Schwartzman and the ever-trustworthy Paul Rudd played George, Ringo and John, respectively - and rather convincingly - as the tensions within the group began to flare.

With Apatow involved, I was expecting a poorly structured rock star cliche that drags on for longer than it has any right to - basically a rock-themed Talladega Nights - but Walk Hard, while by no means great, was nowhere near that bad. It couldn't be.

2/5

NIKKI says:
Yet another Apatow-penned film people kept telling me was just HIL-arious that turned out to be funny in spots but mostly just annoying. I wasn't annoyed at the concept or the star, what bothered me was the lazy, hack-ish presentation. It's a rip-off of Ray and Walk the Line, two similar, equally boring and unfocused TV movies that somehow made the big screen. When you're going to parody such films and you have loads of better, more influential, more powerful films at your fingertips, why go for just these two? Is it because the audience you're aiming your movie at will only know these two movies?

What about The Buddy Holly Story? La Bamba, The Doors, Coal Miner's Daughter, Sid and Nancy? On NPR, the introduction to an interview with Reilly and Kasdan says the movie takes on "old music films", but but Kasdan and Reilly admit it's not movies they ripped off but famous stories about musicians. And that might be true, but where do Dewey's 22 children fit in? Which famous rock star killed his own brother? And then his father? What are we parodying exactly? A parody of rock-star biopics and no-one dies in a plane crash?

The movie is not really a parody of biopics, but a parody of rock styles in general. Dewey emulates everyone from Bob Dylan to Mac Davis. The Dewey Cox character develops as the times developed, and his style of music shifts and changes in a way mirrored by no actual musicians. It's a series of "hey wouldn't it be funny if" moments that don't pull together.

The film bothered me because it didn't know if it wanted to be a parody or an outright send-up. The broad, often stupid humour didn't fit, and worked only to bring the film down to a slapstick-y, funless level. It's a case, I reckon, where the joke is king. Dewey doesn't really have a story of his own. He has the obvious turn out of the spotlight and eventual comeback, and he learns that family is all that matters. But so what? If you're gonna put the effort in, you should have something to say. This movie just points out that a lot of music careers were fuelled by the same things, and that deaths of family members are just so funny. And?

2/5

Céline, dir. Jeff Woolnough (2008)

NIKKI says:
Another one of those Canadian TV movies about prominent women that is smarter than your average TV biopic but still very much a glossing over of events. This one spans Celine's life from the time her family discovered her talent as a pre-teen, right on through to her performance of the Titanic song at the Oscars. That's about 25 years crunched into 90 minutes. With the kind of life Celine has had, including the controversial relationship with her much older manager, Rene Angelil, it's difficult to really get to know the woman in this short time, to understand her decisions, motives, and reactions to everything from the tabloids to her success.

The movie tries its best, though. It is written reasonably well, and the actors are well-meaning and easy to like. I really enjoyed hearing all the old songs again, too. Some of them I haven't heard in ages. I did miss, though, the reaction after "The Power of Love" hit -- I was waiting for that to be the moment Celine finally cracked the business worldwide, but they went straight from "If You Asked Me To" to "Because You Loved Me". So, yeah, a lot was skipped. I did, though, get a real sense of a connection between Rene and Celine, and it was tragic to see just how the two struggled with things.

Not a bad movie, by any means, but really just the quality TV-movie equivalent of a greatest hits package.

2.5/5

Steve did not view.

Shania: A Life in Eight Albums, dir. Jerry Ciccoritti (2005)

NIKKI says:
This kept me interested pretty much because I knew absolutely nothing about Shania Twain's life before watching. I've never thought she had the greatest singing voice, and I haven't connected with her the same way I have with Reba and Trisha Yearwood and Martina McBride, and others. I think I turned away from Shania, too, because I'd been listening to country music forever and then suddenly Shania hit and everyone was into her, and I just resented the fact that this flash in the pan had come along and erupted while the GOOD singers, Trisha and Reba et al were overlooked (in Australia, at least.)

So, I cared not for this woman. I could dance to her songs at parties and clubs, but to this day I do not own any of her records. I may reconsider now, thanks to Canadian TV and their insistence on bringing to the world stories of their successes. Shania, I have to admit, deserves her fame and fortune. If this movie is anything to go by, she certainly put in the hard yards as far as her development and persistence. I had no idea she was in a rock band, I had no idea of her Native American heritage, I had no idea she lost both her parents in a car accident, and I especially did not know songwriting was her major focus. I really shouldn't rush to judge pretty faces in tiger-print pantsuits.

I do think the movie glossed slightly over the fact that any man who showed interest in her and looked able to help her with her career ended up in bed with her. What was that about? And then when she'd had enough, off she went. Hasn't she now split with her starmaker, Mutt Lange? See?! No, wait -- I'm judging again.

This was a thorough look at Shania's life up until that first phone call from Lange, and it was certainly interesting.

2.5/5

Steve did not view.

August Rush, dir. Kirsten Sheridan (2007)

NIKKI says:
Perhaps I built it up too much? I was expecting to be blown away by this movie. I'd been listening to the music for a little while, and enjoyed all the songs, so I expected, even more, to love the movie. And it's written by Nick Castle, who wrote one of my all-time favourites, The Boy Who Could Fly. Sadly, August Rush was a bit of a let down, only because I think it tried to do too much. A rewrite or two and maybe it would have worked.

As it is, I enjoyed it, I got wrapped up in bits and pieces of it, but, ultimately, it lost me a bit because everything just seemed so perfectly timed. Everyone was where they needed to be at exactly the right time, and this really removed the magic. How does a kid navigate New York City so skilfully? That's just one of the questions you'll find yourself asking. And how coincidental was it that August meets Mr. Jeffries and leaves the boys' home at the exact same time Lyla's father decides to reveal his ghastly secret that sets her on her mission to find her son? All this at the same time Louis meets up with an old bandmate and decides to go to Chicago to finally track Lyla.

I don't know. It was too much after a while. Yes, the music was great, and the fairytale aspect of the thing worked on some level. But when you examine it closely, the plotholes mount. Steve was right -- if Lyla's baby died at birth, who buried it? Why did Louis only now decide to seek out Lyla? Where was August living during his stint at Julliard? Why did no one try to stop the Wizard from taking him away from the school when he'd been there so long father-free? That's a child services issue right there.

Loose ends everywhere. I said, too, that the Wizard character would have worked a bit better had he been a good guy. An evil Machiavelli trying to make money off August did not work as the man who also stood up for the street way of learning music, caning Julliard for its text books and teachings. The music is out there! And August should be teaching you! ... it all falls on deaf ears when that same character turns his back on August to exploit his natural gifts.

So close, yet so far. I wanted to love it. At most, I just liked it.

2.5/5

Michael Jackson's Thriller, dir. John Landis (1983)

NIKKI says: We got to this because I got the idea to watch concert videos on the big screen and pretend I was actually there. How awesome it was. First I watched my new James Reyne DVD, which is very cool -- just James and his band playing the Espy with no crowd. Then I watched Kenny Loggins belt out "Peace of Mind", which is just shiveringly brilliant. And then... Michael Jackson. Steve wanted "Thriller", so "Thriller" it was. Music, turns out, is just as great to watch on the screen as movies and Moonlighting.

How great is "Thriller"? You really can't fault it. It's funny, spooky, and really well put together. It's hard to believe it came out 25 years ago. Wow, that's shocking. I just love young Michael, with his crazy sense of humour, and his love of horror and sci-fi stuff. He just smiles all the way through this (except when he's a zombie), and he looks to be having so much fun. I miss the fun-having MJ.

Anyway... so this was cool to revisit. The zombies look great, the dancing is the best, and I love how it's all about blending artforms and using them to their fullest effects.

5/5

STEVE says: When MTV started running Thriller in December of 1983, my brother Mike was only a little over two years old. He would watch it religiously, every hour-on the hour, kneeling in front of the TV, fascinated by the dancing undead.

Nearly a year later, when all the Thriller hype had died down, MTV ran the video (a short film, really, hence its inclusion here) on Halloween. Twenty-five years later, I can't remember if it was Michael Jackson turning into the Wolf Man, or whether it was the Zombies pulling themselves out of the damp earth, but my brother promptly forget that he'd already seen this clip about 72 times with no adverse reaction, because he started crying, bolted up the stairs and hid under my desk.

He'll kill me for telling you that.

Later, of course, when he was closer to five, he'd be watching Re-animator with me and asking how the effects worked, so this Thriller thing appeared to be a one-time-only episode. It's a great little, flick, though - due largely in part to John Landis.

It was Landis' American Werewolf in London that started this whole thing. Jackson, being a huge American Werewolf fan, asked Landis on board for this clip, and he brought his own style and sense of humour along. Once the Wolf Man part of the story is revealed to be a movie, we can hear one of the actors on-screen reciting Landis' famous in-joke, "See You Next Wednesday", and there's even a poster for Landis' first film, Schlock, hanging outside the theatre. And the disclaimer "Any similarity to actual events or persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental" is a nod to American Werewolf itself.

Credit must be given, too, to Rick Baker and his crew for their Zombie make-up. Only four years earlier, George Romero's Dawn of the Dead opened unrated in theatres because he wouldn't cut it for an R rating. Baker and his crew pulled off some pretty nasty looking Zombies here, some certainly scarier than the legion of undead in Romero's film - and Thriller ran on television... where it could scare the pants off of unsuspecting two-year olds.

4/5

Flashdance, dir. Adrian Lyne (1983)

STEVE says:
Once again Pop Culture has led me down a dark alley, tempting me with promises of pretty things, only to beat the shit out of me and take my wallet.

2/5

NIKKI says:
I still have my wallet, but I'm starting to doubt my memory.

Flashdance has never been one of those dance films I revisit constantly. It's not a Footloose or a Dirty Dancing, or even a Fame. This, I thought, wasn't because I didn't like it, but because I didn't have it. It was never on TV late at night for me to tape and watch until the tape could take it no more. (I was so afraid my Dirty Dancing tape was broken that I recorded the movie onto cassette tape and transcribed the screenplay -- the hard copy of which I recently stumbled across in a box of LPs).

Still, I've always held the movie in relatively high regard. I bought it the first chance I got, and was more than thrilled to do so. And then we watched it...

My god, has it been that long? If I really think about it, I probably haven't seen the movie in 16 years. I remember watching it with two friends I only hung out with until Year 8. I have no real memory of it after that. My Year 8 self thought it was great. Now, though, the Adrian Lyne veil of smut and misogyny drips all over every frame and I just want to kick everyone in the Special Features who refer to the movie as a girl's empowerment piece.

It's not a girl power movie if a girl has a man's job and wants to dance. It's not a girl power movie if she sleeps with her boss (she's 18 and he's pushing 40) and acts like a child every time the relationship becomes too adult for her. It's not a girl power movie when the boss has to save her all the time. It's certainly no girl power message when she only decides to go back to the ballet school not out of a desire to take her passion and make it happen, but because her old friend who was in the Follies and told her to follow her dream finally kicks the bucket.

Alex doesn't dance her way to success here, she stumbles and falls and is guided towards her goals by everyone around her. And don't even get me started on the outrageous stereotyping going on with the friends and bit-players here. Check this out: Alex and her friends are working out in a gym that's got all white walls and looks like Olivia's Physical video (lots of crotch close-ups). They're all bitching and moaning about guys who won't call (because that's what girls do). The black girl, with a name I don't think we ever heard, says in response to all the bitching: "Man, am I glad I'm not a honkey".

Right.

So, you see where we are. The film's other major issue is its structure, which is terribly off. The first half is just a bunch of stuff that happens intercut with dancing scenes. I'm really shocked, too, that the famous running-in-place work-out scene to "Maniac" came so early (and, weirdly, abruptly stops, so much so that Michael Sembello is mid-lyric and Alex mid-hop when the film jumps to Alex on her bike). In dance movies, the big dance scene is supposed to break tension, reveal to us the main character's true self through dance (a la Ren's punch-dancing moment of zen when he decides to take on the Bomont anti-pop establishment). Come on, do these people know nothing?

And then there's the sex. Oh my god. Now, I love Adrian Lyne for one reason: Foxes. One of my all-time favourite films, and one of the most inspirational as far my formative years go. (I tried so hard to be Annie, felt more like Madge, ended up just like Jeanie -- but, strangely, didn't end up kissing Scott Baio at the disco as obviously planned.) But, oh the sleaze. "Ain't you two a couple of cunts," one character says. And there's just so many crutch-shots that I'm starting to get the significance of the word "flash" in the title.

When did this movie become so adult?

Anyway... the music is still great, and the dancing is awesome. But though it claims to the movie that inspired a generation, it really isn't inspirational at all. Make things happen? Alex only really does that when her boyfriend tells her to and everyone else around her dies or fails miserably at their own dream. You go, girl!

2/5

Fame, dir. Alan Parker (1980)

NIKKI says:
My first choice in "Awesome Movies on the Big Screen Week". I haven't watched Fame in a while, so it was good to have a revisit. I still love it. I still think it's first-class filmmaking. I still think Alan Parker is a God. And, you know what? For something so totally steeped in '80s-ness, its '80s-ness is really not that distracting. We found ourselves picking on the fashions and phrases more when we watched the pilot episode of the TV show (which we did directly after this, because -- why not?).

Fame is about kids starting their lives, deciding what they want to do, and finding out who they are. The movie follows them through their four years at the performing arts high school and along the way they learn about themselves and each other through good times and bad hair days. Every single one of these kids is likable, and easy to relate to. Everyone is just trying to figure their shit out, and they make mistakes and they fix those mistakes, and eventually they graduate, prepared (mostly).

One thing I noticed, though, when watching this was that every time a new character was introduced, I felt my heart break a bit. As soon as you see Doris on the stage trying to sing "The Way We Were", oh God, all the memories just come flooding back. I feel so strongly for everyone in this movie. It's like they're real people you've known and hung out with. It's weird. I was so glad that even Steve appreciated just how good the kids were, as actors and characters.

And the music is awesome. It was so easy to tell which Mega-God songwriter (*cough* Dean Pitchford) was not involved in the TV show as soon as New Coco opened her mouth to sing the tragic "Take Me" song, or whatever it was. Ugh. The songs in Fame -- "Red Light", "I Sing the Body Electric", "Fame" -- are just so great. And Irene Cara on the piano doing "Out Here on My Own" (which I believe was written by Lesley Gore) is just soul-melting. I'm shocked Irene Cara isn't up on a Whitney-height cloud of reverence in the Pop World. She's just got the most pure, beautiful voice.

Anyway... so Fame. It loses a half-point for its structure, which I find leaves some unanswered questions. But it's still a classic, still a great dance movie, even better when largified on the screen.

4.5/5

STEVE says:
They should have called it Lame.

No, I'm kidding, but that pun was just too deliciously bad to pass up.

Actually, no, really, Fame wasn't that great a movie. The songs were great, the acting was phenomenal (for people, 90% of whom weren't actors), and the dancing was... interesting, but as a movie it was sorely lacking something.

Plot, maybe?

I'm sitting there watching people come in and out of auditions, waiting for an inciting incident, when suddenly it's 20 minutes in, auditions are over, and we've hit the turning point. The hell? So maybe the audition sequence was the inciting incident, kids getting accepted, that sort of thing. But 20 minutes of it?

The rest of the script is no better, giving all the other plot points - pinches and the ever-important midpoint - completely a miss and just plowing through the four years of high school. We're given snapshots instead of development, and it's annoying. Leroy and Coco are apparently an item, but when Leroy is stolen away by rich-bitch Hilary, Coco hardly seems to notice. Suddenly we're in Junior Year, Leroy and Hilary are headed up to her place to do "homework", and that's the last we see of them until Senior Year when Hilary is getting an abortion. Does Leroy know? Does Leroy care? Moreover, why should I?

3/5

Footloose, dir. Herbert Ross (1984)

Once, dir. John Carney (2006)

NIKKI says:
They kept telling me this was the movie to see. I'd heard from all over the place -- reviews, ads, friends, best-of lists -- that I would regret passing this by. I wasn't racing out to find it, only because the words "greatest musical film of this generation", or whatever the poster says, immediately made me think PRETENTIOUS, but when I got a preview tape, I couldn't wait to have a look.

And I wasn't disappointed. By no means the best movie ever made, it was still a beautiful thing. Just two people finding each other and bonding over music. Both are living stagnant lives, and through a series of events over a short period, they end up freeing each other. It's just gorgeous to watch how it all comes together -- quietly, poetically, and utterly without pretension.

It's greatest features are its music and its stars. Outspan from The Commitments is in it, and sings all the songs! Price of admission right there!

I loved this one. I got wrapped fully up in it.

4/5

The Thing Called Love, dir. Peter Bogdanovich (1993)

STEVE says:
Part 2 in our Struck Down In Their Prime double-header.

I gotta say, I never thought much of River Phoenix. I didn't dislike him so much as he just kinda bugged me. Every time I saw him, it was like he was the same character over and over again. Or worse, no character, just River. Little Corey Carrier did a better job of channeling Harrison Ford in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles than River did in Last Crusade. He wasn't convincing as a young Indy - he was just River playing Indy.

But I watch The Thing Called Love and I can see what everyone was talking about. Not in retrospect: I'm not watching Stand by Me or Jimmy Reardon now and going, "Oh, yeah, I get it, he was brilliant!" No, he still annoys me in pretty much everything else.

But this movie, I don't know. I wish he could have done more.

Not that the movie itself is even brilliant - there are plot holes, dropped story lines, and that inconclusive ending to consider - but for some reason, because it's Peter Bogdanovich, maybe, you just kind of let all that go and focus on the rest.

And the rest is well worth it.

3.5/5

NIKKI says:
It's hard to revisit films like this one. This is a film -- like Dogfight, like Stand By Me -- that has been so significant in my life, for so long, that going back to it is sort of like jumping in a time machine to head back to 1993, when you were 14, and every little thing seemed just so big. So bizarre, too, that I should re-watch this the day before I receive an email from my old best friend, Shelley, who adored River Phoenix right along with me. Back then, we actually named each other after River, using his nickname and middle name as our names. His death left a mark on our lives, and it's something I still struggle with. I'm not even going to try to explain what the whole thing meant to us and for us. I don't know if I've ever really even sat down to organise those thoughts. I just stopped watching River's movies. I've seen Stand By Me once or twice since, and have yet to watch Dogfight. This was my second viewing of The Thing Called Love since 1993.

I love it as much as I ever did. It's just beautiful. It speaks to the little lost girl in me then as much as it does now. The impact it had on me growing up remains, in terms of my interests and the sort of person I want to be. Admittedly, I've spent more time in as Linda-Lou, when I know I should be strong like Miranda. Still, between the two hasn't served me too badly in my life. I enjoy the film's wandering spirit. I love its focus on loyalty. I love its poetry. It remains one of my favourite films.

Watching River was difficult. I was happy to hear Steve found his performance so good. I'm not sure his performance here is my favourite. I get a weird sense he's just not into it. I prefer to watch him in other films, though I love hearing him sing here. It is still a sad fucking tragedy that he died.

4/5