Thursday Movie Picks - Double Features

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and writing a bit about them!

Last summer, Film Forum in NYC ran a series called "Return of the Double Feature!" (exclamation point included, as in Moulin Rouge!) that I had a LOT of fun attending. What was great was that it wasn't always immediately clear why two movies were paired together until you really thought about it, or even until you sat down and watched them. It made me think about programming a series like that and how much fun it would be.

Well thankfully, our lovely wandering host has given us that opportunity this week, as the theme for Thursday Movie Picks is DOUBLE FEATURES!

Naturally, I came up with far more ideas than I have time to write up, but here are three of my favorites.

GHOSTLY CHILDREN DOUBLE FEATURE!

The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)/The Others (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001) Creepy old English manor houses haunted by ghostly children.... except the children aren't the ghosts! The Others is as close to a spiritual sequel to The Innocents as we're ever likely to get. Both films have a chilly formalism that doesn't make them any less scary or give them any less emotional impact, and their twists and turns will keep you guessing about what's REALLY going on all the way through in the best possible way. Plus, each possesses one of the greatest performances from a great actress: Deborah Kerr is utter perfection in The Innocents, while The Others gives Nicole Kidman a role that encapsulates all the best things about her screen persona. Both are perfection.

SEXUAL MORES DOUBLE FEATURE!

Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel, 1967)/Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johonson, 2015) Basically, watch Bunuel's semi-surrealist masterpiece of sexual desire, and then watch Taylor-Johnson's slightly-better-than-expected erotic romance/coming-of-age drama and marvel at how far we haven't come in depicting sex on screen. In the former, Catherine Deneuve's frigid, bored housewife becomes a prostitute in a high-class brothel during her days, acting out her "depraved" sexual fantasies while leading a supposedly perfect life with her doctor husband. In the latter, Dakota Johnson's mousy college student becomes entranced by the local handsome billionaire, only to be repulsed by/attracted to his kinky sexual proclivities. Both depict women taking ownership of their bodies and sexual desires in ways women are rarely allowed to do in film, but for all the hype, Fifty Shades is barely more explicit and FAR less provocative than a film released fifty years ago with a major star.

TEENAGE 80S BANDS DOUBLE FEATURE!

We Are The Best (Lukas Moodyson, 2014)/Sing Street (John Carney, 2016) Two of the most adorable movies you will ever see, these films really get what it feels like to be a teenager and needing to express yourself in ways that no one else understands - and how music can unlock something special inside of you. Even if it's terrible music. Wonderful performances from debuting leads, great songs, and fantastic costumes/makeup fill both of these films, which couldn't be more different, but are also wonderfully similar. They will both leave you walking on clouds of joy by the end.

BONUS PICK

Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino, 2007) This pre-packaged double feature from two hotshot directors is quite the tribute to the questionable-quality cheapie B-movies from the 70s, and has all the hallmarks of a late night double feature picture show: explosions, hookers, flat acting, fast cars, and FANTASTIC fake trailers in between the two halves. Rodriguez's zombie flick Planet Terror is more fun, but Tarantino's car chase/serial killer shot Death Proof has one of the greatest car chases ever filmed. All the actors are clearly having a blast, and most of them have never, ever been better.

LIST: Directors Who Should Have Directed Fifty Shades of Grey

I read Fifty Shades of Grey. I saw Fifty Shades of Grey. It didn't suck. But I can't seem to stop myself from thinking about all the other, potentially better versions of that film we will never get to see, so I decided to entertain myself. Whose version of Fifty Shades would have been, if not better, then at least more interesting, than Sam Taylor-Johnson's? Here are my Top Ten, in alphabetical order:

Pedro Almodovar - Law of Desire is one of the sexiest films ever, and if it's bondage you want, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is where you should go. Almodovar has also dealt with the book's major themes of identity and coming of age in various films, most notably All About My Mother and Bad Education.

Lee Daniels - At the very least, his version would have been an entertaining mess. Daniels plays around with form a lot, and I can't help but wonder if he would have found a cool way of visualizing the novel's (admittedly, hilariously awful) conceit of the dialogue of Ana's "inner goddess".

David Fincher - Let's be clear: I don't think this would have happened in a million years, but Fincher's cool formalism would have been a good match for this, and as Fight Club and Gone Girl have shown, he knows his way around a strange sex scene. Plus, he got his start making sexy as hell music videos for the likes of Madonna ("Express Yourself") and Paula Abdul ("Cold Hearted").

Adrian Lyne - The master of the erotic drama, Lyne is the man behind Unfaithful (which boasted an Oscar-nominated performance from Diane Lane), Lolita (with Jeremy Irons), Fatal Attraction (another Oscar nominee), Indecent Proposal, Flashdance, and 9 1/2 Weeks (the big screen's big kahuna for kinky sex). Basically, his name on a project is a guarantee of well-made, steamy sex scenes.

Madonna - Hear me out. This is the woman who recorded "Erotica" and made it a hit Billboard single. The woman who made a coffee-table book called Sex. The woman who, in her fifties, posed in leather dominatrix gear on her album cover. Yes, W.E. was terrible. But if there's one thing Madonna knows, it's sex. And if you think a woman who has exerted this much control over her image throughout her career hasn't learned something about capturing hot, rough sex on film, you're crazy.

Nicolas Roeg - Three words: Don't Look Now. The 70s film was banned for the too-sexy sex scene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. Perhaps the guy's still got it?

Steven Shainberg - Don't recognize the name? I don't blame you. Shainberg is the man behind the 2002 film Secretary, in which Maggie Gyllenhaal gets involved in a BDSM relationship with her boss James Spader. It's sexy and darkly comic, which would be a good tone for a film adaptation of Fifty Shades. Of course, he's also the director of the terrible Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, so who knows about his taste level... but the fact remains that Secretary is a near-perfect calling card for this gig.

Lars von Trier - DUH. If you wanted a no-holds-barred, NC-17 version of Fifty Shades, this is the man who was most likely to deliver it. Granted, he probably would have had Charlotte Gainsbourg play Ana, and it's is very likely that his version would have also been the misogynistic, anti-feminist version the haters of Fifty Shades want it to be, but of all the directors on this list, he's probably the one whose version of the film I would want to see most.

The Wachowski Siblings - One word: Bound. They're now known for their action spectacles in the wake of The Matrix, but they got their start with this incredibly sexy neo-noir starring Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon. And as we've seen from the Matrix films, they know how to make leather fetish gear look good on film. If they bring on their Cloud Atlas collaborator Tom Tykwer, then so much the better!

John Waters - If you wanted the camp disasterpiece version of Fifty Shades, this is the only human being alive who could have possibly delivered a good one. His filmography revels in it, while never ever shortchanging his characters. Unless they deserve it. I actually REALLY wish this had happened.

REVIEW: Fifty Shades of Grey

BOTTOM LINE: Not good, exactly, but far better than what I was expecting.

Let's be honest: Fifty Shades of Grey, the film of E.L. James's blockbuster BDSM-flavored romance novel, was never going to be the sex-filled fantasia its most hardcore fans desired. It was also probably never going to be the so-bad-it's-good camp classic nearly everyone else was hoping for. All hope of either of those vanished the second a major studio (Universal) picked up the rights. Granted, it didn't have to be this way - anyone with eyes could see that the book had sold tens of millions of copies and it would still be a huge hit if the MPAA had slapped it with the dreaded NC-17 rating. It possibly would have been an even bigger hit, since it would have become even more of an "event" - the first NC-17 film to receive a wide release since Showgirls. But this is America, and Universal is a major corporation, so again: That was NEVER going to happen (Showgirls, if you'll remember, was a notorious flop). And as for camp, that probably only would have happened if John Waters had been hired to direct, which would have been interesting, but again, NEVER going to happen.

So the best audiences could reasonably hope for was a film that split the difference between a super-faithful adaptation and a knowing, wink-wink campy version. Which, shockingly, is mostly what the film delivers. Mostly, this is due to the performance of Dakota Johnson in the lead role of Anastasia Steele*. Johnson is, frankly, a revelation in the role (and I say this as a huge fan of her previous biggest project, the adorable short-lived Fox sitcom, Ben & Kate), providing the film with huge (completely intentional) laughs in her portrayal of the initially awkward and increasingly more self-possessed Ana. In the book, Ana is a drip, but Johnson makes a full-bodied human being, teasing humor out of every line she can in often unexpected ways, especially in the film's centerpiece scene, the late-night "business meeting" Ana arranges with Christian to review the Dominant/submissive contract he has prepared for her to sign.

Another note about that scene: I hope it will stop the brigade of people calling Fifty Shades "anti-feminist" or "anti-woman" or whatever. Sam Taylor-Johnson's direction and Kelly Marcel's script both bring out what was mostly subtext in the book, and what is the dirty little secret of BDSM relationships: It's really the "submissive" who has all the power. In this case, that's Ana. Not Christian. He may be the one using the riding crops and floggers (and I won't deny that there is history and subtext and all of that in images of women being bound, blindfolded, and hit by men, even for mutual sexual pleasure), but it's Ana who drives everything - it's Ana who tells Christian exactly what she is and is not okay with, Ana is the one who strings him along and makes him wait despite his "not playing fair" in her words (with the hotness and expensive gifts) and ultimately, it's Ana who shuts everything down when she realizes this is not something she's okay with. It's also important to note that the film is mostly focused on HER pleasure, not his.

Of course, that may be because Jamie Dornan is as dull as dishwater as Christian Grey. He brings good intensity and an intriguing peek behind the curtain during the scenes in Christian's playroom, but for the entire rest of the film, he's a blank space. This could be intentional - providing the audience a space to project their fantasy man onto Christian, or a set-up for scenes coming up in the inevitable sequels where Christian really starts opening up - but it does the character a disservice, rendering his chiseled physique and slightly chivalrous manners the only likable things about him.

The other thing to note about Fifty Shades of Grey - the book and the film - is that it was never really erotica. It's a romance with BDSM added for flavor. It follows all the standard romance tropes: a shy, virginal girl, a slightly mysterious bad-boy billionaire who "doesn't do romance" but shows enough romantic tendencies around said virginal girl to make her think she can change him, and a courtship involving mutual chasing, expensive gifts, and of course, lots of steamy sex. Taylor-Johnson perhaps errs to much on the side of romance, though, as the sex scenes are your standard Hollywood slickness - boobs, bush, and butts all make appearances, but God forbid any balls! - all tastefully lit and edited and overly scored. Not that the sex scenes aren't mostly effective, but there's nothing here that you haven't seen before, and when the film goes to such lengths to set up Christian's playroom as a place of forbidden pleasures and pain, it's weird when nothing that happens there feels particularly dangerous or exotic.

But, again, it's quite likely that this was the best we could ever hope for from this film. And while it might have been fun to see what NC-17 heights Lars von Trier, say, or Pedro Almodovar (or hell, maybe even Madonna), would have taken this property, that was never going to happen. This is what we got, and maybe it's enough that we got was groundbreaking: A mainstream BDSM-flavored romance written and directed by women, about a young woman's awakening, both sexual and otherwise. While it may not be great cinema, it certainly entertains, and I'm going to consider that a win.

*According to Taylor-Johnson in this Hollywood Reporter interview, all the actresses auditioning for Anastasia had to read a four-page monologue from, of all things, Ingmar Bergman's Persona. This may be my favorite behind-the-scenes anecdote OF ALL TIME.