surfers, cops, and vampires
[i]
A few months back, I watched three of Katheryn Bigelow's movies, Near Dark (new to me), Point Break (seen before, oh, so many times), and Strange Days (new to me), pretty much back to back to back, but never got around to writing them up. Ralph Fiennes was enough to sell naeelah on watching Strange Days, and all signs seem to be pointing in the direction of her finally giving in to Point Break, an incredibly preposterous and ridonkulous movie I'm disproportionately fond of. In eager anticipation of this coming joy, I thought I'd go ahead and try to drag some thoughts together, fuzzy as they are.
Bigelow's famously known as a female director of action-oriented/heavy movies. I haven't seen K-19: The Widowmaker (I admit I have zero interest, despite it having Liam Neeson, Harrison Ford, and being about Soviet Russian history, but my brother's got it, and what little I've seen/heard (more than once) has also failed to provoke any interest), Blue Steel, with Jamie Lee Curtis as a rookie cop after a serial killer who also targets her, or her new one from last year, The Hurt Locker, about an Army bomb squad unit in Iraq. She usually does interesting genderbending and/or trope-inverting stuff that by itself makes her work worth chewing over.
[ii]
The three,
or,
Applying Srs Bzns Thinking
to Variably Preposterous B-Movies:
[1] Cult favorite vampire/Western/quasi-film noir hybrid Near Dark (1986), with a super young (and super easy on the eyes) Adrian Pasdar as Caleb, the aw-shucks, dewy-eyed, innocent farmboy who picks up Mae, a girl who really isn't like anyone else, and gets sucked into her vampire "family" (James Cameron regulars Lance Henrikson, Jeanette Goldstein, and Bill Paxton). Notable action scene: the vampire family's visit to the bar.
[2] Point Break (1991). Probably the most well-known of her work, about a group of bank-robbing surfers (see? ridonkulous; there's no way it can't not be (fabulously) ridonkulous) lead by Patrick Swayze, and Keanu Reeves's FBI agent who infiltrates the group and is seduced by the life (::points to recurring theme::). Plot issues aside, from a technical standpoint it's pretty great. There's a foot chase through Santa Monica that's kind of a predecessor to the opening scene in SD, and several surfing and sky-diving sequences where you pay attention to the blocks and cuts to see who's really doing what. Pretty much the only thing about the movie that irritates the snot out of me is how Swayze's character's self-serving narcissistic rationalization bullshit about how he and his buddies' efforts is about "freeing people's minds" is never explicitly shot down as the sociopathic self-indulgence it really is. Although that has less to do with the movie than how much that real-life position just rankles me.
[3] Strange Days (1995), which is so specifically mid-90s sci-fi/spec-fic-ish it's almost totemic. I'll go ahead and point you to glvalentine's smart and fun Questionable Taste Theatre review of it, since she makes a lot of points that I want to, but in a more coherent way. Ralph Fiennes is Lenny Nero, a washed-up loser of an ex-cop who peddles addictive black-market technology that allows people to swap and experience other people's memories. Angela Bassett kicks asses and takes names simply by breathing, as Mace, a limo driver/bodyguard with whom Lenny has a (hooray!) non-romantic past.
[3a] Note/warning: there's a graphic rape scene about half/three-quarters of the way through that is, purposefully and rightly, extremely difficult and disturbing to watch. Because of that, this isn't a movie I would ever spring on anyone without letting them know first so they could decide whether or not they'd want to see it.
[3b] Notable action scenes: the opening scene is a first person p.o.v. of a robbery and escape from police that plays as an uninterrupted take (I think there are three or four cuts? that they try to hide with whip-pans). Bigelow did a (somewhat meandering) film school lecture about how they shot this, but unfortunately you can only get it as a commentary track, instead of a featurette breaking it down, which is what it ought to have been. Also, the huge New Year's Eve party sequence at the end. Last note: I want to say that the pink waitress uniform Flashback Mace is wearing is, if not the same pink waitress uniform T1/T2 Sarah Connor wears, pretty damn close.
[iii]
To get pseudo-jargony about it: being attracted to, getting in deep with, and being changed by The Other, is pretty much a recurring theme of what I've seen of her work, as is de-Othering the Other (as it were). None of this is new stuff, either what I'm saying or in the field of movies. Caleb joining Mae and being wary of the rest of the group, but wanting to and actively seeking their approval; Agent Utah (oh, good lord, but yes, Reeves's character is named Johnny Utah, and no, I'm not making that up) being assigned to take down Bodie's group from within, but ending up a walking example of a cop for whom parts of the cover have become real. I'd say that SD even does this on two levels (at least). Lenny's already further down the path than either Caleb or Utah ever got; when we meet him, he's the cop turned shady and questionable semi-criminal who's been that way for a while. Second, the entire point of SD's memory swap MacGuffin is removing any distance between the user, and by extention the audience, and whatever they're experiencing. I'll direct you to Ebert's review, where he goes into more detail analyzing the meta-voyeur questions the movie raises.
I really ought to see Blue Steel, which actually has a female protagonist, but it's interesting to note that the three guys of ND, PB (much less than the others, though), and SD all end up doing things/being treated in ways that are usually coded in movie language as "female." I will make this supposition, and then punk out about providing actual examples for the first two. No, wait! See ND's first make-out scene with Caleb and Mae, when she starts biting his neck, for some gender trope/interaction reversal. In SD, Lenny tends to get beaten up a lot, and instead of having a moment where he returns the ass-kicking and triumphs, he (1) is saved by Mace, (2) barely manages to talk his way out of it, (3) gets beaten up some more, and/or (4) just barely manages to break even, mostly because of (1). Also, I appreciate the movie's treatment of the Lenny-Mace relationship (if I'd seen this back when, I would totally have been a L/M 'shipper). Mace may admit she cares for him by the end, but the script doesn't make her forget he's a fuck-up or, thank Maude, make her think that she can save/change him with the power of her love -- Lenny's the one who has to actively prove himself worthy of her, by choosing to do the right thing at the end. Another nifty trope-inversion: in SD, we learn the Commissioner specifically sacked vice cop Lenny. Instead of this being a case of Lenny as some wronged innocent and the Commissioner some corrupt conspirator out to get him, it turns out that, nope, Lenny deserved it and the Commissioner really was an upstanding guy who was justified in doing so.
Wow, that's a lot more than I planned. My kingdom for a blue pencil? And if I hadn't lost the flash drive with all of my ND notes on it, you would have even more of this splendor.
A few months back, I watched three of Katheryn Bigelow's movies, Near Dark (new to me), Point Break (seen before, oh, so many times), and Strange Days (new to me), pretty much back to back to back, but never got around to writing them up. Ralph Fiennes was enough to sell naeelah on watching Strange Days, and all signs seem to be pointing in the direction of her finally giving in to Point Break, an incredibly preposterous and ridonkulous movie I'm disproportionately fond of. In eager anticipation of this coming joy, I thought I'd go ahead and try to drag some thoughts together, fuzzy as they are.
Bigelow's famously known as a female director of action-oriented/heavy movies. I haven't seen K-19: The Widowmaker (I admit I have zero interest, despite it having Liam Neeson, Harrison Ford, and being about Soviet Russian history, but my brother's got it, and what little I've seen/heard (more than once) has also failed to provoke any interest), Blue Steel, with Jamie Lee Curtis as a rookie cop after a serial killer who also targets her, or her new one from last year, The Hurt Locker, about an Army bomb squad unit in Iraq. She usually does interesting genderbending and/or trope-inverting stuff that by itself makes her work worth chewing over.
[ii]
The three,
or,
Applying Srs Bzns Thinking
to Variably Preposterous B-Movies:
[1] Cult favorite vampire/Western/quasi-film noir hybrid Near Dark (1986), with a super young (and super easy on the eyes) Adrian Pasdar as Caleb, the aw-shucks, dewy-eyed, innocent farmboy who picks up Mae, a girl who really isn't like anyone else, and gets sucked into her vampire "family" (James Cameron regulars Lance Henrikson, Jeanette Goldstein, and Bill Paxton). Notable action scene: the vampire family's visit to the bar.
[2] Point Break (1991). Probably the most well-known of her work, about a group of bank-robbing surfers (see? ridonkulous; there's no way it can't not be (fabulously) ridonkulous) lead by Patrick Swayze, and Keanu Reeves's FBI agent who infiltrates the group and is seduced by the life (::points to recurring theme::). Plot issues aside, from a technical standpoint it's pretty great. There's a foot chase through Santa Monica that's kind of a predecessor to the opening scene in SD, and several surfing and sky-diving sequences where you pay attention to the blocks and cuts to see who's really doing what. Pretty much the only thing about the movie that irritates the snot out of me is how Swayze's character's self-serving narcissistic rationalization bullshit about how he and his buddies' efforts is about "freeing people's minds" is never explicitly shot down as the sociopathic self-indulgence it really is. Although that has less to do with the movie than how much that real-life position just rankles me.
[3] Strange Days (1995), which is so specifically mid-90s sci-fi/spec-fic-ish it's almost totemic. I'll go ahead and point you to glvalentine's smart and fun Questionable Taste Theatre review of it, since she makes a lot of points that I want to, but in a more coherent way. Ralph Fiennes is Lenny Nero, a washed-up loser of an ex-cop who peddles addictive black-market technology that allows people to swap and experience other people's memories. Angela Bassett kicks asses and takes names simply by breathing, as Mace, a limo driver/bodyguard with whom Lenny has a (hooray!) non-romantic past.
[3a] Note/warning: there's a graphic rape scene about half/three-quarters of the way through that is, purposefully and rightly, extremely difficult and disturbing to watch. Because of that, this isn't a movie I would ever spring on anyone without letting them know first so they could decide whether or not they'd want to see it.
[3b] Notable action scenes: the opening scene is a first person p.o.v. of a robbery and escape from police that plays as an uninterrupted take (I think there are three or four cuts? that they try to hide with whip-pans). Bigelow did a (somewhat meandering) film school lecture about how they shot this, but unfortunately you can only get it as a commentary track, instead of a featurette breaking it down, which is what it ought to have been. Also, the huge New Year's Eve party sequence at the end. Last note: I want to say that the pink waitress uniform Flashback Mace is wearing is, if not the same pink waitress uniform T1/T2 Sarah Connor wears, pretty damn close.
[iii]
To get pseudo-jargony about it: being attracted to, getting in deep with, and being changed by The Other, is pretty much a recurring theme of what I've seen of her work, as is de-Othering the Other (as it were). None of this is new stuff, either what I'm saying or in the field of movies. Caleb joining Mae and being wary of the rest of the group, but wanting to and actively seeking their approval; Agent Utah (oh, good lord, but yes, Reeves's character is named Johnny Utah, and no, I'm not making that up) being assigned to take down Bodie's group from within, but ending up a walking example of a cop for whom parts of the cover have become real. I'd say that SD even does this on two levels (at least). Lenny's already further down the path than either Caleb or Utah ever got; when we meet him, he's the cop turned shady and questionable semi-criminal who's been that way for a while. Second, the entire point of SD's memory swap MacGuffin is removing any distance between the user, and by extention the audience, and whatever they're experiencing. I'll direct you to Ebert's review, where he goes into more detail analyzing the meta-voyeur questions the movie raises.
I really ought to see Blue Steel, which actually has a female protagonist, but it's interesting to note that the three guys of ND, PB (much less than the others, though), and SD all end up doing things/being treated in ways that are usually coded in movie language as "female." I will make this supposition, and then punk out about providing actual examples for the first two. No, wait! See ND's first make-out scene with Caleb and Mae, when she starts biting his neck, for some gender trope/interaction reversal. In SD, Lenny tends to get beaten up a lot, and instead of having a moment where he returns the ass-kicking and triumphs, he (1) is saved by Mace, (2) barely manages to talk his way out of it, (3) gets beaten up some more, and/or (4) just barely manages to break even, mostly because of (1). Also, I appreciate the movie's treatment of the Lenny-Mace relationship (if I'd seen this back when, I would totally have been a L/M 'shipper). Mace may admit she cares for him by the end, but the script doesn't make her forget he's a fuck-up or, thank Maude, make her think that she can save/change him with the power of her love -- Lenny's the one who has to actively prove himself worthy of her, by choosing to do the right thing at the end. Another nifty trope-inversion: in SD, we learn the Commissioner specifically sacked vice cop Lenny. Instead of this being a case of Lenny as some wronged innocent and the Commissioner some corrupt conspirator out to get him, it turns out that, nope, Lenny deserved it and the Commissioner really was an upstanding guy who was justified in doing so.
Wow, that's a lot more than I planned. My kingdom for a blue pencil? And if I hadn't lost the flash drive with all of my ND notes on it, you would have even more of this splendor.