In which Nat talks briefly about the movies she’s been watching this week for no particular reason and that probably don’t warrant proper reviews, but hey? Wouldn’t it be nice if we all chatted about them anyway?
Being TMINE’s Official Movie Reviewer in Residence is obviously new to me, so I’m not yet sure exactly what shape my contributions are going to settle into yet. At the moment, I’m planning for my full reviews to be of new releases and for them to feature on Mondays or Tuesdays, after I’ve watched them at the weekend.
Unfortunately, I don’t have as much access as I did before Covid to press screenings, screeners et al, thanks to changes in both my job and the whole world (😭). That means that although I’ll be able to preview some movies at least, I’ll usually be watching films at the local cinema when they come on general release, just like everyone else. Sorry, guys.
This weekend, however, I was up in London to see Rhod Gilbert at London Wonderground, so didn’t get to watch anything. If I had gone to see anything, it would have been Gunpowder Milkshake, so maybe you could all just imagine the beautiful, artfully constructed, witty review I would have put together.
I think it’s likely then that I’m going to be watching most films at home on streaming services, TV, DVDs or Blu-Rays – and then showing them here at The TMINE Multiplex every Wednesday or Thursday.
One really strange aspect of lockdown for me was I was no longer the Queen of Watching Movies on Entertainment Systems or My iPad While Travelling to Some Glamorous Exotic Locale. Okay, that may not seem strange to you, but that was a big change for me (and my self-image #FirstWorldProblems).
A consequence of this was my film consumption really dropped and, weirder still, I started playing a superhero game on my phone (Marvel Strike Force). The weird thing was that actually I met some really lovely people that way! I even met someone who is now one of my best friends and now, every Wednesday, we have ‘Movie Night’ where we watch a movie one of us has chosen.
Being children of the 90s/00s, we typically end up watching a movie from that era – 90s/00s movies are just better anyway. Naturally, I will report on those in The TMINE Multiplex. But please don’t hold me to a strict 90s/00s policy, as we might occasionally watch a newer or older movie. Those who came to the Multiplex last week will know why I won’t be reviewing many 80s movies, though.
That ‘Movie Night’ pick will be showing at The TMINE Multiplex, together with whatever else I’ve been watching. At the moment, I’m working my through an extensive MUBI watchlist, as well as a few entries on BFI Player, but there undoubtedly will be some really, really bad things showing, too, since I really can’t be worthy all the time. Sometimes, you just want to watch something dreadful.
However, this week, be prepared to learn about (or revisit) no fewer than three 90s movies at the Multiplex: The Unbelievable Truth (1990), Un 32 août sur terre (1998) and 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Screen 1: The Unbelievable Truth (1990)
Director: Hal Hartley
Writer: Hal Hartley
Available on DVD and on MUBI
Beautiful college-bound Audrey, a young woman who is disturbingly preoccupied with the threat of nuclear destruction, falls in love with a handsome and mysterious ex-con who is rumoured to have murdered the father of his high school sweetheart.
Nat says: ‘It’s just so indie’
Hal Hartley is a a US indie director who was much beloved throughout the 90s for creating quirky, character dramas. I think Salon‘s oral history of Hartley movies best describes his work:
For 25 years – whether set in Berlin, Istanbul, Tokyo, Paris, Reykjavik or Lindenhurst, Long Island, the preface “written and directed by Hal Hartley” has always promised the same thing. Whether characters use pay phones or cell phones, whether they carry manuscripts or pistols (or a hand grenade), and whether they chain smoke (the ’90s!) or clean up nice we will get a peek into the world of an existential hero or heroine as they pout and quip their way through a calamity.
Since his 1990 debut, the Nuclear Age romantic comedy “The Unbelievable Truth,” Hartley has established himself as both a poet of the working class suburbs and an aspiring student of the French, British, Japanese and Swedish auteurs of the mid 20th century. Only Woody Allen, an admitted influence, and Wes Anderson (clearly influenced) are as consistent and prolific.
Marc Spitz, Salon
The Henry Fool trilogy is probably his most iconic and best work, but even in this, his debut film, most of Hartley’s film-making characteristics are not just nascent but practically fully formed.
However, those traits are also problematic when watched now. I had such a hard time trying to work out exactly what Hartley was satirising in his work, 30 years on, since so much of it is caught up in the societal concerns of the time.
First-time actress Adrienne Shelly constantly explains that the world is going to end soon in a nuclear explosion. Was that a common fear or a fear of would-be intellectual women of the late 80s/early 90s? What events were taking place in the real world that might make that a commonplace concern? How much were ‘yuppies’ a real part of American culture at the time, and how much were they an object of derision within society at large as well as to intellectuals? Did people really believe that going to college was the key to future prosperity?
I just didn’t know whether I should take everything at face value or as satire, so I had to do both at the same time.
If you can do that, too, then The Unbelievable Truth is a charming little, inoffensive movie. I must admit I also found it a little annoying, with its super-verbal characters delivering self-consciously zinging one-liners that the other characters instantly respond to in kind, without even a pause for thought. It’s the sort of thing you see in old reruns of Friends in Joey’s theatre productions: those terrible plays where no one’s ever looking at the other actors as they deliver their lines and which are very, very important, but obviously ludicrous.
The difference here is that The Unbelievable Truth is well written and visually impressive. Hartley may write and direct actors like a theatre director, at this point in his career at least, but he has a cinematic eye and manages to make suburban small town America look expansive, as well as deeply soul-destroying yet also companionable.
The story is a combination of the big and the small. A pre-Robocop 3 Robert John Burke is here a sympathetic, thoughtful man just released from prison for manslaughter and trying to return to his old life. Shelly, meanwhile, makes a deal with her father to go to college, despite her belief in the impending Apocalypse, but finds she has a growing modelling career, as well as an interest in Burke of which her father disapproves.
The movie glides from moment to moment, month to month, painting a picture of almost universally smart young people trapped by circumstance in the middle of nowhere and wanting more for themselves. But there’s no real animus among them, just long, quasi-intellectual discussions. It’s like they’re all in college before they’re in college.
There are plot developments and there is a future for them all, so don’t imagine this is a film in which nothing happens. Burke’s story has a twist that you feel should lead to him murdering someone else and Shelly moves the action on considerably.
However, the plot mainly exists to provide a backbone to a series of very Hartley-esque conversations, rather than to truly analyse what the situation Hartley lays out would have been like. For example, there’s never a point where Hartley really considers how Burke’s reputation as a murderer affects how he is perceived by the town as a whole, only by the small coterie of people who immediately surround him.
The cast seem nice. Most don’t seem like good actors. But I was also never sure how much they were just too self-aware to act naturally, too hobbled by Hartley’s knowingly arch dialogue to really be able to deliver it well.
There are better Hartley movies to watch if you’ve never seen any of his work before, with Amateur (1994) being my particular favourite. But if you have seen his work and have acquired a taste for it, The Unbelievable Truth is definitely worth your time, as it’s definitely part of the milieu, rather than a simple test run.
BTW, isn’t it funny that in this trailer, a review for Playboy for an indie movie was something that existed, was quoted in the trailer and was literate enough to be quoted? Now that’s a different time I can’t quite fathom
Screen 2: Un 32 août sur terre (1998)
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Writer: Denis Villeneuve
Available on MUBI
In the aftermath of a highway mishap, photo model Simone (Pascale Bussières) decides that conceiving a baby with her best friend Philippe (Alexis Martin) is the only way to give her vacant life some meaning. Philippe reluctantly agrees with the proviso that they conceive in a desert.
Nat says: ‘This won’t take your breath away’
French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s career has taken a turn towards the sci-fi over the past few years, with the likes of Arrival (2016), Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and the forthcoming Dune (2021) establishing him as one of the most cerebral and visually innovative directors working in the genre at the moment. I’m hoping that you’ll forgive me for thinking that when I saw the title of his directorial debut – A 32nd August on Earth – it would be sci-fi, too.
It’s not.
Rather, as I quickly gleaned – and I think subtlety must have alluded him and the set designer when they put a poster of Jean Seberg on one character’s wall – this is Villeneuve’s homage to French New Wave cinema, particularly Godard’s À bout de souffle.
Unfortunately, it’s almost totally insouffable.
The ‘action’ consists of Bussières and Martin wandering around Canada and the US, giving it the bantz with one another, having not really that deep conversations about their relationship, and moving through elegantly composed shots that show some of Villeneuve’s trademark visual prowess. Martin is in a relationship but loves Bussières; Bussières’ recent car crash makes her consider her life choices and lost time, so she decides to cash in on the previous agreement that she and her friend had: to have a baby together.
They’re annoying. Together, anyway. Never, at any point, did I want them to get together as a couple. Bussières was actually fine as a lead but only away from Martin, while Martin was also incredibly annoying by himself – a mass of twitches that Villeneuve’s script only aggravates.
They also don’t really do much except quip and wonder about the relationship or whether they’re just friends. There’s an amusing interlude in a Japanese-style capsule hotel. There’s almost the promise of excitement when they discover (spoiler alert) a burnt body with handcuffs in a desert. But nothing comes of that.
The final 20 minutes do spin things in a very different direction, however, and it’s at this point that the film becomes moving, although the ‘fight’ scene shows none of the flair for adrenaline that Villeneuve later demonstrated in Sicario (2015), for example. The movie also finally comes to the same conclusion that Bussières did at the beginning of the film: carpe diem while you still can. The fact it’s that same conclusion again makes you realise how little of the movie was necessary.
There are at least some arresting, memorable visuals, but unlike The Unbelievable Truth, it’s very hard to equate this with Villeneuve’s later output. And you can see all the best visuals in this trailer, so really, I don’t think you’ll be missing much if you only watch that, instead of the whole movie. Promise!
Screen 3: 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Director: Gil Junger
Writer: Karen McCullah, Kirsten Smith, William Shakespeare (play The Taming of the Shrew)
Available on Amazon and Disney+
A pretty, popular teenager can’t go out on a date until her ill-tempered older sister does.
Nat says: ‘Shakespeare really can be cool’
High School comedies honestly don’t get any smarter than this. On top of that, few of them have Heath Ledger in them (something that really upset tween/teenage me at the time). Or Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gabrielle Union, Allison Janney, David Krumholtz or the amazing Julia Stiles. Or are both funny and moving.
Or are based on The Taming of the Shrew.
Transplanting the plot to Seattle, 10 Things I Hate About You has so much to say about both the original play and male-female relationships. The script by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith is also massively prescient about intersectionality, cultural appropriation and ‘wokeness’, with Stiles’ strident feminist giving as good as she gets in English classes regarding sex discrimination, only for her Black teacher to point out her White Privilege – before rounding on her white classmates trying to talk like Rastafarians. Were it not for the fashions, the slang, the antiquated gadgets and the lack of social media, this would work just as well if it were remade in 2021.
Ledger, a new arrival at school from Australia and the Petruchio of the piece, is paid by the High School dick (Andrew Keegan) to date Stiles so that her father (Larry Miller) will allow her younger sister (Larisa Oleynik) to date boys. Miller thinks Stiles is such a misandrist that the chances of her dating a boy will render Oleynik celibate, his constant single-father fear being that his daughters will get impregnated. However, Ledge soon warms to Stiles and vice versa. So much so predictable.
What makes the film so thoroughly wonderful and keeps me coming back to it time and time again is that there’s so much depth to it. Stiles isn’t a shrew for the sake of it and you care about her quickly, Ledger isn’t the bad boy Alpha everyone expects him to be, Miller’s protectiveness is both understandable and funny, and Janney is more concerned with writing erotic fiction than pretending to care much about her pupils’ problems.
There’s also real chemistry between Ledger and Stiles. Both are great screen presences individually, but together they are one of the top high school movie couples.
The fact that she has agency and chases after him at times, while also neatly avoiding perfection by getting drunk at parties and dancing on tables, makes you love her even more. You can sense the pain she’s felt all the way through High School.
Other notable highlights of the movie are the first instance (except perhaps Buffy the Vampire Slayer) of the ‘clique identification’ scene that is now a mainstay of the genre, the 90s soundtrack, the grunge fashion highlights, the occasional inclusion of Shakespearean dialogue and, of course, Stiles’ poem 10 Things I Hate About You and Ledger’s song and dance scene.
Honestly, if you’ve never seen it, watch it now, no matter how old you are, because it’s almost impossible not to love it.
What’s perhaps saddest, though, is that you can see a clear downward intelligence trajectory for Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith’s writing – and perhaps for women in movies – after this movie.
Legally Blonde (2001) has many great moments but isn’t quite as clever as this, and its protagonist (redeemed in the stage play) is no Stiles. She’s The Man (2006), another modern day take on Shakespeare, is better in some ways, but has less to say about almost everything.
After that, it’s The House Bunny (2008) and The Ugly Truth (2009), which are almost hate crimes.
So treasure this as the highlight of their career – or hope that their forthcoming The Spice Girls is miraculously majestic.
