Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. You can play, too - just pick three movies that fit the week's theme and write a bit about them!
This week on Thursday Movie Picks, we're going back to our childhood days. I had a LOT of favorite movies as a kid - my sister and I wore out so many VHS tapes (yes, I'm that old) that I STILL have some movies memorized (most of them Disney animated classics). And while a lot of them were kids movies (anything and everything involving the Muppets), some of them were... well... a bit odd. And those are the ones I'm sharing with you today.
The Addams Family (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1991) One of the best films to be based on a comic strip, partly because its punctuated with little scenes that play out just like reading a Sunday morning comic, and partly because it so deftly brings Charles Addams's signature morbid sensibility to the modern world. Yes, the Addamses become even more anachronistic, but the actors involved have such a perfect understanding of the proper tone that it works like gangbusters. Anjelica Huston and Raùl Julia are utter perfection as Morticia and Gomez, and Christopher Lloyd is a delightful Uncle Fester, but it's young Christina Ricci who steals the show and beyond-morbid daughter Wednesday. When I was a kid, I was most fond of the various Rube Goldbergian contraptions in the Addams mansion as well as Wednesday and Pugsley's bloody performance at the school play.
Father of the Bride (Charles Shyer, 1991) I was only seven years old at the time, so I had no clue that this was a remake of the wonderful Spencer Tracy film, but even so, I still enjoy this one. Steve Martin is a wonderfully affable lead, easily sympathetic even when he's being idiotic or mean, and his chemistry with Diane Keaton is just wonderful. And the story is timeless and pretty much foolproof. Even despite Martin Short's best attempts (I loved him when I was a kid, but good GOD he is OVER THE TOP here), this is an easy, breezy delight.
The Birdcage (Mike Nichols, 1996) Okay, so I was twelve when this came out, so maybe this is stretching the "childhood" definition a bit, but... my sister and I loved this movie so much that despite both of us owning it on DVD, we met up at Metrograph in NYC to see it on the big screen last year. And the fact that we were twelve and ten when we saw it probably tells you all you need to know about how we were raised. It's still amazing to me that this movie was as huge a hit as it was, since despite coming from a major director and starring major stars it was a remake of a French farce about a gay couple, one of whom is a drag queen. Would this even get made today? I almost doubt it would be as big of a hit if it was, and that's saying something about film distribution and marketing today. I'm not even entirely sure how much I really understood everything going on in this the first time I saw it, but credit to Elaine May's screenplay: Funny is funny, and The Birdcage is FUNNY. And also heartfelt where it needs to be.
Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Come and join the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and saying a bit about them!
It's summertime, y'all! And you know what that means....
SUMMER CAMP!
For two summers when I was a teenager (plus a third which was spent abroad with the same kids), I went to sleepaway camp, and I can honestly say they were formative summers for me. That was when I finally started to "come into my own", and it might have taken a stronger hold if the friends I made at camp hadn't lived so far away. I still remember practically every bit of those summers even now so many years later, mostly with fondness.
Which is more than the kids in these movies can probably say...
Addams Family Values (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1993) I really can't with how brilliantly funny this film is. I love the first Addams Family movie a lot, but this is the rare great sequel that works precisely because it dials everything great about the first one up to eleven. Paul Rudnick's script is chock full of gags and laugh lines, and the entire cast is gold. None more so than Joan Cusack as the demonically nice "Black Widow" who sets her sights on Uncle Fester, and of course Christina Ricci, who is so brilliant as Wednesday that I knew even as a nine year-old when this came out that she was a great actress. The scenes at the moronically chipper summer camp are for the ages.
Camp (Todd Graff, 2003) I will say this about Camp: This is a movie that, on paper, I should love. I mean, the whole thing is about a musical theater camp and it deals with issues of sexuality that would naturally arise in such a setting, and deals with them in very adult ways. But I don't. Something about it never quite comes together for me... maybe too much of it is too obvious? Maybe too many of the actors are too green? I don't know. But the musical numbers are pretty damn good, and Anna Kendrick is KILLER as the (probably criminally) insane Fritzi, delivering a ridiculously age-inappropriate, unbelievably good "The Ladies Who Lunch". Basically, when Camp is good, it's VERY good, but when it's not, it's terrible.
Stage Fright (Jerome Sable, 2014) I know what you're thinking: A musical comedy slasher flick? That sounds AWFUL! And make no mistake: Stage Fright is so bad it's AWESOME. The musical numbers are (mostly) a blast, the acting is 80s-slasher-flick level bad, and the whole thing approaches a level of camp not usually seen in a horror film (let alone most modern movie musicals). Above all, this is a movie that knows it's pretty bad, and has a LOT of fun with that. It should be a guilty pleasure, but I don't feel guilty about liking this one at all.
Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Play along by picking three films that fit the week's theme and telling us about them!
The alien invasion subgenre of sci-fi got some seriously good play when I was growing up in the 90s. Even though I don't generally LOVE this kind of story, these three films are some of my all-time favorites.
Mars Attacks! (Tim Burton, 1996) But of the three, this one is probably my favorite. Tim Burton's masterfully silly send-up of old-school B-movies has an incredible All-Star Cast (Annette Bening, Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan, Sylvia Sidney, Pam Grier) and plenty of delightfully absurd moments (what ends up defeating the aliens? Tom Jones's "It's Not Unusual", which makes their heads explode). The martians themselves are perfectly designed, and memorably voiced ("ACK ACK ACK!"). Plus, Burton cast perhaps the greatest First Family of all time: President Jack Nicholson, First Lady Glenn Close (in PERFECT Nancy Regan drag), and sarcastic First Daughter Natalie Portman.
Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996) The prototypical Dean Devlin/Roland Emmerich blockbuster is still their best, largely thanks to an incredibly charismatic lead performance by Will Smith in the first of his string of July 4th hits. Bill Pullman's classic climactic monologue has been spoofed a lot recently, but it's still pretty damn inspiring in the context of the film, which has held up surprisingly well despite its 90s-ness - Jeff Goldblum as a master computer hacker, anyone?
Men In Black (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1997) The glory of this comic adaptation is two-fold: The crackling, surprisingly perfect chemistry between Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, and the fantastic alien designs by master makeup artist Rick Baker. It's also REALLY funny - again, mostly thanks to the dynamic duo that leads the film. Jones's deadpan is a perfect foil for Smith's looseness as the veteran, seen-it-all agent showing the newbie the ropes as they police Earth's hidden alien population and protect "the galaxy" from an alien bug.
