Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Take part in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them - couldn't be easier!
What an interesting, tantalizingly vague topic for this week's Thursday Movie Picks! Immortals, huh? Like, gods? Or vampires? Or legends, who may die but will live forever in other ways?
Somehow, I managed to not quite go down any of those routes. Although I had initially wanted to be very cheeky and pick three movies with legendary actors playing legendary people (like, say, Lincoln, Amadeus, and Ali... not that it necessarily would have been those three exactly, but you get the idea), I decided against it because somehow, it just didn't feel quite right somehow. But still, I think these three fit the bill for this week quite nicely.
Death Becomes Her (Robert Zemeckis, 1992) What would you do if you had the opportunity to remain young forever, WITHOUT becoming a vampire? I don't know about you, but of the many, MANY things I would do, fight with my best frenemy about a wimpy, mustachioed Bruce Willis is not one of them. Oh, I kid, I kid. Willis is actually damn funny in this, as the man torn between Meryl Streep's actress Madeline Ashton and Goldie Hawn's author, both of whom have taken a potion provided by Isabella Rossellini (who else?) that provides eternal youth. This zany camp classic has aged remarkably well, and I'm not just talking about the groundbreaking visual effects. This gets to the heart of the love-hate relationships between women better than perhaps any other movie released in the modern era. It's also perfectly cast from top to bottom.
Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988) What? I had to throw in something remotely off-center! You can't deny that the "ghost with the most" isn't immortal - he's been around for over 600 years, and given the number on his ticket in the waiting room final scene, he's going to be around for a whole lot longer than that! So what if he's technically part of the after-life? He is living there, after all! Michael Keaton's performance as the titular "bio-exorcist" (a ghost who gets rid of the living) is one of the greatest comedic performances of all time, a hyper-committed work of near-insanity that creates a wholly original character out of nothing. There's nothing else like it. And come to think of it, there's nothing really like this movie, either. It's the ultimate horror-comedy, deliciously designed, perfectly cast (really, AMPAS, you couldn't find room at the Oscars for ONE of the film's magnificent Supporting Actresses?!?), and undoubtedly the work of an utterly singular director. It's a pity what Tim Burton has become over the past decade. The likelihood of getting something as fun as this from him again is LOW.
Written as part of the series hosted by Nathaniel R. at The Film Experience.
This is going to be quick and dirty, because my sister's wedding has had me BUSY over the past five days. But it has also had me full of love, and I simply couldn't let this particular episode of Hit Me... to go by without showing love, because Death Becomes Her is a film I LOVE in all its brilliant, campy glory. Is it a perfect film? No. But it is a pretty great genre hybrid film, and one of the few outright great intentionally campy films, because going for camp is pretty much the only way to make a satirical horror/comedy not feel like an unfocused mess. Which the film actually might very well be. But I haven't seen it in a while, so I can't say for sure.
What I can say for sure is that there is a whole hell of a lot of joy in this film, from Meryl Streep's flawless diva-tude to Isabella Rossellini's flawless... well... flawlessness. When I think of Death Becomes Her (which is often), there are pretty much two things I think of: Isabella's slinky-sexy death-defying goddess (seriously, she just DEMANDS worship simply by just being on screen) and this little old shot right here:
NOTHING in the film makes me laugh harder, which is quite a feat considering how fucking funny the whole thing is. And actually, the VFX in this particular shot perhaps haven't held up quite as well as I remember. But Goldie Hawn plays it so perfectly. And Dean Cudney's camera knows that the best thing to do is just sit back and observe. Timing is everything in comedy, and Goldie's timing, along with the timing of the camera movement, are simply perfection.
