And here we have our third — and final — course of the Soundtrack Saturday Dysfunctional Family Thanksgiving. I decided to end our celebration of family, food, and fighting on a lighter note, so I give you one of my favorite movies of all time, Home for the Holidays (1995). I first saw it during my freshman year of college on the recommendation of a good friend who knew I had a thing for Robert Downey Jr. I absolutely loved it.
After acquiring it on videocassette, I started a tradition of watching it at least three times a week every holiday season starting on November 1, a tradition that has, for the most part, continued to this day (though I now watch it on DVD instead of cassette).
Watching a movie that much may seem excessive, but there was a period in my life when I was so stressed out during this time of the year — I was working in retail — that watching Home for the Holidays was like celluloid comfort food. I would watch it when I came home from work, before I went to bed, before I went to work — basically, whenever I needed calming down. I’d even say that watching this movieas much as I did during the most heinous time of the year for retail managers kept me from becoming an alcoholic.
Hey, everyone! It’s time for the second course of Dysfunctional Family Thanksgiving! I hope you enjoyed the first course, The Myth of Fingerprints, though I’m guessing it might have been a little obscure for some people’s tastes. This week we have another film from 1997, albeit one that’s set in 1973: The Ice Storm. (I promise next week’s course isn’t another depressing movie produced by James Schamus.)
I saw The Ice Storm in the theater and remember being really affected by it. In fact I couldn’t get it out of my mind for days after, so I had to go see it again. Then I had to buy the book by Rick Moody, which I also loved.
Exquisitely directed by Ang Lee, The Ice Storm is about two neighboring, dysfunctional Connecticut families and their attempts to deal with the tumult and changes happening in their lives — and the world in general — through alcohol, drugs, and sex.
I love movies about dysfunctional families, though I’m not entirely sure why — while my family has its moments, we’re really not all that dysfunctional. At least I don’t think we are. But what better time of year than the holidays to indulge in films about families who need magazine racks for their issues? (I totally stole that line from Janeane Garofalo.)
I think every family gets a little crazy during the holiday season. The (mostly) forced family interaction and all the pressure to have fun can make even the most fun-loving, well-adjusted person a sniveling mess of frustration and unmet expectations.
I first saw The Myth of Fingerprints (1997) not long after it was released on video. I sought it out because a) I was a big ER fan and loved Noah Wyle, b) I was a big Julianne Moore fan (still am), and c) a good friend of mine who knew about my penchant for dysfunctional-family films told me I needed to watch it after he saw it in the theater.
I anxiously awaited its video release and rented it the weekend after it came out. I was blown away.
Named after “All Around the World or the Myth of Fingerprints,” a track on Paul Simon’s 1986 album Graceland, writer-directer Bart Freundlich’s feature-film debut tells the tale of an estranged, dysfunctional family reuniting for an uncomfortable and somewhat heartbreaking Thanksgiving.
So, in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been trying to stick to a Halloween-ish theme with this month’s movies: we’ve had teenage serial killers, an evil automobile, vampires, and now witches. I hope you’ve enjoyed the themed posts, because they’re going to continue through the holidays. I promise, though, not to be too obvious in my choices. In fact I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the Thanksgiving-themed films I’ve chosen for November. But enough about the future — let’s talk about this post.
Now, I didn’t originally set out to bookend October’s posts with mid-’90s Neve Campbell/Skeet Ulrich movies, but that’s how it turned out — I watched The Craft (1996) on cable a few weeks ago and just thought it’d be fun to write about.
The first time I saw this movie was with my dad. Yeah, you read that correctly. He really likes The Craft, which kind of surprised me at first, but this is the man who told me, after reading my post on Adventures in Babysitting, that Elisabeth Shue is one of his “ultimate hotties.” So nothing he tells me should surprise me. (Love you, Dad.)
Before Buffy, there was Charley Brewster and Peter Vincent, the vampire-slaying duo in the brilliant 1985 horror-comedy Fright Night. I’ve said before that I’m not keen on the current vampire craze, but I’ll take a well-done, old-school vampire movie, particularly one made in the ’80s, any day.
The first time I saw Fright Night was on cable when I was about eight or nine. I’m pretty sure it was one of the first vampire movies I’d ever seen, and even though I don’t find it terribly frightening nowadays, it did scare the crap out of me back then.
Written and directed by Tom Holland, who also helmed the first Child’s Play (1988), Fright Night does a really great job of combining comedy and horror. It stays true to the conventions of vampire movies while also poking a little bit of fun at the genre, setting the stage for films like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) and From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).
I started reading Stephen King novels when I was about 11 years old. The first one I read was Carrie. I loved it. Soon after I finished it, I started grabbing his other books from the library. But the one that I wanted to read the most, Christine, was always checked out.
My mom told me she’d read it and loved it — which was surprising to me, because my mom was a Danielle Steele kind of reader — so I wanted to read it even more. But the bookmobile and my local library branch always failed me. In fact, I’m pretty sure they only had one copy and some douchebag had lost it long ago.
Eventually, I lost interest in reading Stephen King books and forgot about wanting to read Christine. In fact I’ve still never read it. I should probably rectify that.
But even though I’ve never read the book, I have seen the movie many times. (Both came out in 1983.) I’m sure the book is a hundred times better, but without having much of a comparison to make, I think the movie works pretty well on its own. Directed by horror veteran John Carpenter, the man behind Halloween (1978) and The Thing (1982), it stars Keith Gordon as Arnie Cunningham, a nerdy teenager who falls in love with a bright red 1958 Plymouth Fury known as Christine. Though she’s in bad shape when he first lays eyes on her — and despite the protests of his parents and his best friend, Dennis (John Stockwell) — he buys the car.
“Movies don’t create psychos — movies make psychos more creative!”
I’m a horror movie fan from way back. I couldn’t tell you the first one I ever saw, but I know it was something very ’80s and very gory, and I likely sneaked off to watch it. For the most part I love horror movies of all kinds, but I’m particularly fond of the teen-slasher films that were so prevalent in the ’80s, though they’d all but died out by the early ’90s.
When I first heard about Scream (1996), which came out the winter of my freshman year of college, I was excited. All the buzz and reviews I’d read said this was going to be the movie that would resurrect the teen-slasher horror subgenre. I mean, how could it go wrong? It was directed by horror master Wes Craven, the man responsible for bringing Freddy Krueger into our lives with the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Who better to bring us a kick-ass slasher film than him? OK, maybe John Carpenter. But I digress.
Besides having a heavyweight horror director at the helm, Scream also had a cast full of hot, young, up-and-coming stars of the day, including Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Rose McGowan, Jamie Kennedy, and Matthew Lillard, and Drew Barrymore makes a much-hyped appearance at the beginning of the film, a la Janet Leigh in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho(1960). The film also features a snappy, smart script by Kevin Williamson, who created Dawson’s Creek soon after.
I was saddened when I learned earlier this week that Patrick Swayze had died, after losing a hard-fought battle against pancreatic cancer. I knew there’d been at least one false report of his death since he announced his illness last year, so I was skeptical when I saw the first tweet about his passing from one of the news feeds I follow on Twitter. My heart sank when reputable news outlets started to report that his publicist had indeed announced his death. I knew it was going to happen soon, but it doesn’t make me any less sad to see another icon from my childhood suddenly gone.
The moment I learned of Swayze’s death, I knew this week’s column would have to center on one of his films, and I didn’t even give a second thought to which one — it had to be To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995). I’m sure many of you would prefer that I’d dug up the soundtrack to Road House (1989) or Point Break (1991) — and I still might some day — but as passionate as some of you are about those cult classics, I have equally strong feelings about this little movie and Swayze’s performance in it. Before you laugh, hear me out.
It’s been Beatles week here at Popdose, but I’m not going to write about any of the Beatles’ movies. Nor am I going to write about any of the movies that are soundtracked using all Beatles songs or Beatles covers (I did really want to write about 1976’s cover-filled All This and World War II, but I’ve never actually seen the movie, and it’s not available anywhere). Instead, I’m writing about a movie that contains one Beatles cover by one of my favorite artists, whose untimely death was one of the tragedies of my music-loving life.
American Beauty (1999), Sam Mendes’s directorial debut, turns ten this year. It also happens to be the first film I’ve written about for this column that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I saw it in the theater twice — once with a friend and once with my mom — and I was truly blown away by it at the time. I don’t think the plot was necessarily what did it for me, though Alan Ball did write a fantastic script, for which he won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
The best part about the movie for me was the performances. I think every actor playing a major role in American Beauty was amazing (though I was less impressed with Mena Suvari, I have to admit). And while I was rooting for Richard Farnsworth to win Best Actor in 2000 for his beautiful performance in The Straight Story, I do think Kevin Spacey deserved the award. I’ve seen American Beauty on a lot of “most overrated films” lists, and while it no longer has the same impact as it did ten years ago, I still love it.
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this weekend marks my first anniversary writing for Popdose. I can’t believe it’s been a year already! I also can’t believe I haven’t run out of movies to write about yet. Pretty soon I’m going to have to remake some of my earlier posts with younger, more modern (you know, shittier) words.
I want to thank everyone who reads this column whether you comment on the posts or not. I truly do appreciate the fact that you guys seem to get my sense of humor and enjoy most of the movies I’ve chosen to write about. I also want to thank the rest of the Popdose staff for welcoming me into the fold. You guys are the best.
So, since this is my anniversary, and since this is Labor Day weekend, I’ve decided I want to take it easy. Instead of devoting a post to one movie and spending hours rewatching the film, researching trivia about it, and finding songs from its soundtrack, I decided to do something a little different — I’ve made a mix of songs from a bunch of different movies. How do you like them apples, huh?
Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “That lazy bitch!” But the thing is, I’ve wanted to do this for some time. I don’t know if you realize how tough it is sometimes for me to figure out what each post is going to be about. It’s not as simple as just choosing a movie I like; I also want to make sure I’m not writing about a soundtrack that’s super easy to find. I mean, where’s the fun in that?
, writer-directer Bart Freundlich’s feature-film debut tells the tale of an estranged, dysfunctional family reuniting for an uncomfortable and somewhat heartbreaking Thanksgiving.
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this weekend marks my first anniversary writing for Popdose. I can’t believe it’s been a year already! I also can’t believe I haven’t run out of movies to write about yet. Pretty soon I’m going to have to remake some of my earlier posts with younger, more modern (you know, shittier) words.