Heavenly Creatures (1994; New Zealand)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
At its heart, though, this isn't a horror or true crime movie. It's a coming-of-age story, and rather charming, most of it, with fantasy segments that take place in the girls' minds. They're both drawn to sword-and-sorcery tales, and create an imaginary world together. They both love the operatic singing of Mario Lanzo, and they're both a bit odd.
 |
| #327 [archive] AUG. 27, 2024 |
Speaking from my vast expertise of never having had children, there's nothing ominous or dangerous in Pauline and Juliet's odd behaviors, at least as presented by writer-director Peter Jackson. They write fantasies. They spend lots of time together. Is that so wrong?
It certainly is, to both girls' parents. They decide that their daughters need to be normal rather than exceptional, dull rather than brilliant. And are they lesbians? OMG!
Their parents try to keep them apart, discourage the kids' flights of imagination, but without this interference, I'm not sure there would've been any problem at all. Pauline's mother, especially, is so cruel and dismissive of her daughter's talent and interests, killing her seems almost an act of self-defense.
At the movie's end, we're told that after their sentences in separate prisons, both women were paroled, with the stipulation that they never see each other again.
This of course got me curious, so I Googled a bit to see what became of them. Pauline has lived a reclusive life and taught horsemanship, and would be in her 80s now; no word of her death has been published. Juliet wrote more than a hundred mystery novels, under the pen name Anne Perry; I've read a few, and linked to her obituary in 2023.
In film debuts for both of them, the girls are played by Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Heavenly Daze (1947)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
In this 17-minute short, Moe is 'Uncle Mortimer', has wings, and is working the check-in desk in Heaven. Shemp is recently deceased, but already has training wings, which spring erect when a pretty angel passes by. Moe decides that Shemp is inadmissible to Heaven, unless he first returns to Earth and redeems the sinner Larry.
Earthly Moe and Larry can't see or hear Shemp, but even in his semi-angelic state, he can still tweak their noses and whomp their heads.
I only laughed once, but it's amusing all the way.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Heavenly Puss (1948)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
Verdict: YES or MAYBE; it's delicately balanced right on the edge.
♦ ♦ ♦
Heaven's Gate (1980)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
Running way over budget and then selling hardly any tickets, this is the picture that bankrupted United Artists, and pretty much ended writer-director Michael Cimino's career. But budgets and profits and careers are of minimal interest to me. All that matters is, is it any good?
And the answer is, this ain't the worst picture I've seen this week.
It's the 1870s, and a bunch of bastard capitalists have decided there are too many immigrants in Wyoming, so they've hired mercenaries to kill 125 of them. There's a list of the doomed. Sheriff Averill (Kris Kristofferson) thinks this ain't right, but the state and federal government is aligned with Big Money, so odds are against the sheriff and the immigrants.
That's the fairly straightforward premise, but the movie is not straightforward at all. It takes the long way — 3½ hours, and everything about it is huge like Cecil B DeMille. It spends half an hour setting the stage, before there's even the beginnings of the plot.
When there's a train, it'll roll by slowly and be photographed gorgeously. When there's a dance, about a hundred couples in elaborate 1869 outfits go twirling.
When there's roller skating, a guy plays fiddle while skating around a crowd of hundreds, followed by five minutes of everybody in town skating, followed by a long dance with Sheriff Averill and his ladyfriend, while the fiddler fiddles. Neither the fiddling nor the skating matters to the story, but we linger there for ten minutes.
Many scenes are preceded by an actor, usually Kristofferson, walking toward the scene. The recurring motif is, we spend a minute and a half watching Kristofferson walk toward wherever he's walking, passing by lovely scenery or through a huge crowd, and then there's the actual scene, and then we watch as he walks toward the next scene.
There must be a dozen times when the camera wanders inside huge crowds of people, sometimes including horses, all of them milling about, hollering, whinnying, screaming, whatever. When the inevitable big gunfight comes, it has more people firing from both sides, all sides, than I could count, all amidst chaos, blood, and dust.
In every moment of this movie, Cimino went big, and long, and long, and big. It's a gamble that didn't pay off at the box office, but it pays off in the film. It's like listening to a good story told by your long-winded, meandering uncle who'll get to the point when he's dang well ready and not before, but first he wants a cigarette and a shot of whiskey.
After the first hour or so, I came to respect the film's lumbering pace and sprawling hugeness, and I like the movie's politics, too. The immigrants are only trying to survive, and the Republicans are trying to kill 'em — seems pertinent to the here and now.
John Hurt plays an old buddy of the Sheriff, who usually hangs out with the main bad guy (Sam Waterston), but Hurt's character has a conscience. He keeps saying things critical of the murderous mission, even gets whomped in the face by Waterston for his impertinence. And yet, Hurt's always hanging out with the bad guy. Life is complicated.
There's a weird epilogue aboard a boat off the shores of Rhode Island, but if any flick needs no epilogue it's this one. Perhaps surprisingly, though, I don't regret having given this movie two movies' time.
Verdict: YES.
Note: Heaven's Gate runs three hours and thirty six minutes, so beware of far shorter versions, which are easier to find than the full film.
♦ ♦ ♦
Heavy Traffic (1973)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
Some of this is honestly brilliant; I can see that. It's crude, but that's what I like best about it. It's intentionally offensive, but again, that's a plus.
So I should love this, but as the movie went on, watching it felt like a chore. Like I gotta sit through it to the end, not because it's interesting (some of it is, some of it isn't), but because it's about scummy street people saying and doing scummy things, and I owe it to all the scummy street characters I've known and been.
Thing is, much as I sympathize with lowlifes and losers, but I don't want to spend an hour and a half surrounded by them.
My reaction to Fritz the Cat and Bakshi's Lord of the Rings was much the same, so perhaps feature films are too much Bakshi for me, too long, too much of his famous scumminess. I'll watch a few of his shorts instead, and report back.
As for Heavy Traffic, feel free to disregard me. The consensus is that it's one of Bakshi's masterpieces.
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
Hedgehog in the Fog (1975; Soviet Union)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
It's profound, if you're high.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
Clicking 'play', I was expecting a queer musical farce, but nothing prepared me for this — wow.
"Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?"
"No, but I … I love his work."
Writer-director-star John Cameron Mitchell plays 20-something gender queer drag singer Hedwig, on an "internationally ignored" tour with her band The Angry Inch. They perform in bars and malls and buffets, where Hedwig complains about the injustices of life, sometimes in funny, whiny, heartfelt monologues, other times in terrific rock songs (music and lyrics by Stephen Trask).
Either spoken or sung, this is funny when it tries, and deeply affecting when it wants. You could get whiplash, but every which way it succeeds.
Andrea Martin shines in a smallish supporting role as the band's manager, songwriter Trask is lovable in the band, and Michael Pitt is sympathetic as the bad guy, but mostly it's Hedwig. She's anyone who's been confused, victimized, battered by bullshit, but still belts out a song.
"Wig in a Box," "The Origin of Love," "Midnight Radio," "Angry Inch," and "Wicked Little Town" are among the best numbers. Some say it's glam or punk or whatever, but it's all rock'n'roll to me.
Only thing is, it's one of those movies where the more I tell you about it, the less you'll enjoy it. So let's tie it up by saying, the songs and the story are loopy, bouncy, over the top and under the bottom. Hedwig and the Angry Inch can claim most of the letters of LGBTQ+, and arranges them to spell something beautiful.
Verdict: BIG YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Heidi (1937)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
Future US Ambassador Shirley Temple, Oscar's favorite humanitarian Jean Hersholt, and Arthur Treacher before his fish'n'chip greatness star in this old black-and-white schmaltz, based on Johanna Spyri's classic kid's adventure. Hersholt wears a very fake headpiece and beard, Ms Temple sings a few songs and dances in clogs and flies over a windmill, and together they go sledding in the snow, in a very badly-green-screened scene.
I had Heidi comin' out the ass when I was a kid — read the book of my own volition, and the next year a teacher read it to us, chapter by chapter over several weeks of class, and the year after that, at a different school, it was assigned reading. So I went from liking the book very much to being quite weary of it.
This film adaptation has more Christianity than anyone needs, and there's the dreadful false trope of a kid in a wheelchair who could walk if she'd only try.
But there's no arguing against Heidi, and it's still a sweet story.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
• Dennis Hopper: From The Glory Stompers to The Hot Spot
• Rip Torn: "This doesn't mean anything to you now, but someday you're going to use this."
8/27/2024
• • • Coming attractions • • •
Heist (2001)
Hell Bent (1918)
Hell or High Water (2016)
Hell Up in Harlem (1973)
The Hellbenders (1967)
... plus schlock, shorts, and surprises
especially starting with the letter 'I'.
Just add a comment, below.
— — —
No comments:
Post a Comment
🚨🚨 If you have problems posting a comment, please click here for help. 🚨🚨