Last movie you watched

[erilaz]

Can't Hardly Wait (1998) — Watching this a quarter-century later is such a trip. It's one of those movies where you're surprised at every turn by so many familiar faces. For example, at least seven people in the cast showed up on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (including two regulars), and I was blown away by the fact that ALL FOUR MEMBERS of DuJour are in this movie!

[erilaz]

A Disturbance in the Force: How the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened (2023) — A hilarious but very informative documentary about the artistic, cultural, and economic forces that conspired to create one of the legendary atrocities of 1970s television.

I don't recall whether I saw the special the one and only time that it aired on TV, but I can't imagine that I wouldn't have watched it, unless there had been some unsurmountable obstacle. I have of course seen it since then (thank you, Internet).

I know that I did see the original broadcast of the Star Wars-themed episode of Donny & Marie that is also covered in the documentary, because I distinctly remember my mom being offended by the low-angle crotch-shots of the dancing Imperial Stormtroopers (the other Osmond brothers in costume, it turns out). Watching the clips in the documentary, I noticed that the voice of Darth Vader in that episode wasn't James Earl Jones, but nevertheless very familiar. Then I realized it was Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of Tony the Tiger and singer of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch"!

[erilaz]

Eighteen and Anxious (1957) — A cautionary tale about a girl who gets pregnant, featuring several familiar faces from '60s TV: William Campbell (Trelane and Koloth from Star Trek), Jim Backus (Mr. Howell from Gilligan's Island), Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester from The Addams Family), and Yvonne "Batgirl" Craig in her motion picture debut.

For the past 30 years or so, I've been using the list of 265 "Favorite Films" in Re/Search #10: Incredibly Strange Films as a checklist of must-see movies.

With this one finally checked off, I have only six more to go.

It's taken me another two years, but I've finally managed to find one more of the films on the list: The Cult (1971), a.k.a. The Manson Massacre. It's a schlocky grindhouse exploitation movie, very loosely inspired by the Manson Family and the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders. Once believed to be a lost film, a version dubbed in German was found and released on DVD in 2001 as Die Töchter des Satans. The version I found online has Russian subtitles, which are as good as no subtitles for me, but fortunately I can understand German.

Five more to go. (Actually more like 4½, since I've seen a film that incorporates a substantial amount of footage from one of the missing films.)

[Zunu]

I saw DìDi this past weekend, a new film about a boy trying to fit in with his peers as a teen entering high school, while also dealing with his own adolescent anger management issues—anger against his college-bound sister, angainst his mom, played by the incomparable Joan Chen, against his absentee dad, against his inconstant friends, against his whole eorld. The titular character is exceptionally well-acted with an authentic mixture of detachment and intensity by currently 16-year-old Izaac Wang playing close to his own age, as are the other kids cast as his classmates. I haven't seen anything explicitly calling the film semi-autobiographical, but it comes off that way as written by major film debut director Sean Wang, taking place in the Myspace era that he would've experienced as a child.

I strongly recommend it. After 4 weeks, compared with the $545 million grossed in the same timeframe by the entertaining but imo inferior Deadpool & Wolverine, DìDi has only grossed about $2.6m, so it can use all the help it can get.

[erilaz]

^ I already had it on my list of movies to see, but thanks for convincing me to see it in a theater. I didn't realize that I'd be supporting a Bay Area production! (It was filmed in Fremont, CA, some 28 miles from the theater where I saw it.)

Even though the movie opened there 2½ weeks ago, said theater (one of the smaller, 50ish-seat rooms in the building) was very nearly full this evening. Granted, today was a holiday and it was also $9 discount ticket day for cardholders, but still.

I haven't seen anything explicitly calling the film semi-autobiographical, but it comes off that way as written by major film debut director Sean Wang, taking place in the Myspace era that he would've experienced as a child.

I noticed in the end credits that the painter of the paintings in the movie had the same name as Joan Chen's character. This review explicitly identifies her as the director's mother and describes the film as "absolutely drenched in signifiers of a semi-autobiographical story" and "plainly based on the director’s real life".

[Zunu]

Sharp eyes. Thanks for the confirmation!

A couple of 2023 films I recently got around to watching:

Sometimes I Think About Dying, starring Daisy Ridley, along with a cast of mostly unknowns, currently playing on the Mubi streaming service, as well as Amazon Prime. It's about a withdrawn, harmlessly unpleasant woman working in an office in a drab town in Washington State (can't remember if they named it explicitly but they did say it was just south of Seattle). She too leads a drab empty life, even in comparison with her peers. Seemingly her only source of entertainment is to fantasize about dying under various bizarre circumstances. "It's her scientific speciality," as will become apparent at a pivotal moment in the action. She avoids any kind of emotionally open interactions with her coworkers, and appears to have no friends. Then a new employee is introduced to the office and his slightly quirky affectations manage to pique her interest. She's too reserved to actively engage with him on her own, but he turns out to be an extremely friendly and outgoing guy and she finds herself responding to his attempts to interact in spite of herself. And the story picks up from there. I've never seen Ridley in anything outside of the last Star Wars trilogy and Murder on the Orient Express (2017), so I was surprised that her American accent was impeccable and for me, she was entirely convincing in the role.

Overall, I found the film fairly enjoyable, although imo it falls into that trap typical in motion pictures, of condescendingly painting the lives of people outside of major metropolises as inherently uneventful and uninteresting, poor souls struggling to find meaning in their daily existence, unlike the rest of us (supposedly) exciting big town people.
--
The Teachers' Lounge is a German film starring the award winning actor Leonie Benesch, who also played Abigail Fix Fortescue in the BBC miniseries Around the World in 80 Days, as a youngish middle-school (?) teacher named Ms Nowak. The film starts in media res as some teachers in the lounge are talking about a theft that has taken place, for which they assume that a student must be to blame. The student council members are pressed to rat on their classmates, and eventually point fingers at one boy of Turkish ancestry. He is questioned and vehemently denies the accusation, as do his proud and defiant parents. Ms Nowak is shaken by the school's attempt to railroad the young Turkish boy and starts to wonder if the thief is a child at all. She then surreptitiously starts her own investigation to try to uncover the real culprit. Subsequently things get much more harrowing for her than I expected for a story about 7th grade kids. Benesch plays the role to perfection, and the supporting classroom kids, many of them who are playing characters named after themselves, are convincingly naturalistic in their performances. This was a great movie.