I'm running a little late this month and I think that speaks to the fact that it's October and we're fully into spooky season festivities. It's a time of year I absolutely love where the weather becomes bearable again, my schedule becomes increasingly crowded with fun activities, and everyday tasks like walking around my neighborhood or going to the store are enlivened by Halloween-y stuff. Still, I'm here to talk about September which (besides being unseasonably warm) still involved a lot of bike rides, local festivals, and some damn fine movies. I've had a bit of a 90s fixation this year and definitely indulged that in some of my picks for the month. I also wrote some fairly extensive reviews for Neige and La Garce which I encourage you to check out if you haven't already. I also noticed a significant uptick in traffic on the blog - some of which can be attributed to referral bots of some sort but some of which seems legitimate. I probably don't say it enough, but thanks so much for taking the time to read this.
Q & A (1990) - This is definitely one of those films that I'm surprised I didn't catch as a younger person. I have to imagine if Christopher Walken or Harvey Keitel had managed their way into the already excellent ensemble cast, Q & A would have joined the ranks of the myriad crime dramas that tended to come home with me from the local video store every week. At the same time, I've been known to trawl the new releases for anything resembling hard boiled genre cinema so what a gift to discover something this good in 2023. Nick Nolte delivers a positively electric performance as a swaggering, snarling, intensely physical corrupt cop who will seemingly stop at nothing to cover his tracks and maintain his grift. This bears all the hallmarks you might expect from a Lumet crime epic - racism, homophobia, corruption, brutality, and a universal pessimism about "the system" Timothy Hutton's white hat D.A. might be oversimplified but I appreciated the more diverse characterizations of both police and criminals reflected admirably by Luis Guzman, Armand Assante, and maybe especially Charles S. Dutton. I think the length possibly deterred me from checking this out earlier but I was glad to get the nudge from the Pure Cinema Podcast.
Trust (1990) - I wound up watching seven Hal Hartley movies during September. Some re-watches but mostly new-to-me. I knew Hartley was a big deal in American Indie Film by the time I was 18-19 but his films never showed in my smaller hometown. I was working in an art house theater when Henry Fool was released but I had largely missed Hartley's ascendency and never really pursued his back catalogue too assiduously. I've actually been meaning to go through his filmography for some time now, but a lot of his earlier films seemed to have scant availability online and (while I'm sure they're worthwhile) he sells physical releases of them on his own website for steep prices. All this is to say I jumped immediately back on Criterion when I saw that they would be streaming most of his films. I'm happy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed most of what I watched and couldn't help but admire the rest of it. I picked Trust out of everything to highlight here because I thought it was both an insanely good distillation of Hartley's style and I think it captures the spirit of the 90s indie wave in ways that the movies people often associate with that period do not. Hartley's casts from this period are fantastic and both Adrienne Shelly and Martin Donovan are incredible as moody, complicated outcasts who find some solace in each other. This kind of oddball romance was probably only second to the oddball crime story for narrative frameworks of the time, but it never feels cliche to me in Hartley's hands. The dialogue is arch but marvelous, the melancholy score harmonizes the mood beautifully, and while the majority of the film comprises of scenes of people talking - there are moments of pronounced surrealism that are genuinely striking. I love that Hartley threw this together as quickly and cheaply as possible following his early breakout success mostly because he wanted to work with Shelley again. That's the kind of gritty, passionate, collaborative work that I like to remember about film during that decade.
Henry Fool (1997) - So this is a cheat, but I hope you'll bear with me. As I mentioned earlier, I did see Henry Fool upon its release. I recall liking it if not being totally taken with it and my friends/co-workers with more Hartley exposure didn't think it was his strongest work. Now, having gone and watched/re-watched his films leading up to Henry Fool, it resonated much more strongly with me. It was easily his most ambitious work at that point and it builds on so many of the themes and moods from his shorter films - working class outsiders, generational violence, crime, and (naturally) punishment. It's also an incredibly evocative statement on the transformational nature of art and everyone who suffers for it. The prescience around politics and technology seems shocking now but it felt timely then - I think Hartley did have incredible cultural insight but I think it also illustrates how our problems can be cyclical. I definitely will make an effort to watch the films of Hartley's I've missed that follow Henry Fool but this truly did feel like the end of a chapter and capped off my viewing rather nicely.
Chan is Missing (1982) - For some reason I've been dragging my feet getting around to this and now having seen it I can't understand why. It's a wonderful take on the very American detective pulp story but bursting with both a tangible sense of place and one of community. I confess a certain weakness for this brand of no-budget 80s indie film as well. I am rarely put off by non-actors or amateur actors and pretty much everyone in this is a charmer, Wood Moy who plays the main taxi driver turned gumshoe was a legit actor and even a playwright and his performance is just the right level of polished to help anchor the piece.
TOTALLY F***ED UP (1993) - I very much recall watching Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation when it came out on video and much like his preferred brand of industrial rock music - it was art I could appreciate without being terribly moved by it. I have to say that I found F***ED UP (I think I prefer the title with asterixis) to be more my speed. I was happy to trade in some campiness and gore for some genuinely heartfelt representation of queer kids in California. The John Waters influence is never hard to see in Araki's movies but I also wonder if he was ever exposed to James Robert Baker's positively ferocious Blonde Death.
Hot Pepper (1973) - I love Les Blanks' wider examinations of disappearing Creole and Cajun culture in the rural south but I found it especially easy to enjoy this more focused look at Zydeco musician Clifton Chenier and the music scene he sprung out of. As much as I'm a fan of roots music and Americana, there's an awful lot of wholesale animal slaughter in other films like Spend it All. Some of that remains in Hot Pepper, but it's a lot more juke joints, jam sessions, and some absolutely smoking concert footage.
Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) - Diving into Juliet Berto's Neige earlier in the month inspired me to finally tackle this conspicuous absence in my personal filmography. Again, this is one that I've largely avoided due to length and ultimately hoped I could catch it theatrically at some point. In fairness, it didn't pull me in the way it does so many others. At least not right away. I could immediately engage with the charm and presence of Berto and Dominique Labourier, I was particularly taken with their respective "stage" scenes, but my attention did wander a bit. Like with many things, I got more out of it once I put more into it. There is a wealth of great writing about Céline and Julie and it's place in Rivette's work. I really would like to watch it again some day but I think a cinema setting is the way to do it.
Night Games (1966) - This seems to be a fairly polarizing one and I suppose I can see why, but I found myself entranced by Night Games. Perhaps I'm misreading the text, but the dour performances combined with the surreal situations gave off an element of camp to me instead of humorlessness. Zetterling is tackling childhood trauma and being intentionally provocative about it and maybe she's not saying anything profound enough to justify that, but I didn't have an issue with it. Aesthetically, it's impeccable and I am sometimes overly enamored with stylists who appeal to my sensibilities. Perhaps my recent dalliances with Blier have blunted my sensitivity!
American Dream (1990) - An absolutely heartbreaking portrait of how labor is exploited in this country and how any societal gains made in the mid-Century were so thoroughly dismantled by the 1980s. I drove past Austin, MN (the location of this Hormel strike in 85-86) not long ago and was sorely tempted to stop through and take a look around. This was another Brian Sauer recommendation from the Pure Cinema Podcast and I did not expect it to feel so appropriate in the current news cycle.
Theatrical Screenings!
The Plumber (1979) - Such a delightfully weird and smart take on what could have been delivered more obviously and far less interestingly (I'm looking at you, Pacific Heights). Manages to combine class conflict and gender dynamics with a distinct 60s hangover - Max's inscrutable plumber bears the the trappings of a real progressive but hasn't internalized any of it. Jill's own liberal leanings compel her to seek solidarity with a tradesman, but ultimately she leans into her privilege and class allegiance as the situation becomes more fraught. There's real tension and mystery throughout The Plumber, but it's also genuinely funny in surprising ways. The whole dinner/bathroom scene with the doctors was so great. Glad to have finally caught up to this and it screened really well at the theater for a made-for-tv film.
Phenomena (1985) - Back when I worked at a local pizzeria, I would frequently play Phenomena's blistering soundtrack of Claudio Simonetti, Iron Maiden, and Motorhead jams. My co-workers would naturally ask me about the film and when I attempted to explain the plot details I got a lot of blank stares. For such a positively bonkers combination of sleepwalking, insect mind-control, suicidal winds, murderous tykes, and razorblade wielding chimpanzees, Phenomena felt like a surprisingly slow burn with an audience. The last 15 minutes opens the throttle all the fucking way up though. so glad to have finally caught this on a big screen.
Deathdream (1974) - Also know as Dead of Night, this was shown as part of a 16mm Horror Showcase from local heroes, the Cult Film Collective. I haven't seen it since a Netflix dvd pick up I made after reading about it in Rue Morgue magazine. Bob Clark was on a tear in the 70s and Deathdream holds up beautifully. Poignant, funny in parts, and just horrifically bleak in others. An easy recommendation for anyone looking for October viewing suggestions.
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