NEVERENDING FILM FESTIVAL
#415
Interview with the Vampire (1994)
Interviews with My Lai Veterans (1971)
Intimacy (2001)
Into the Wild (2007)
Dad, Can I Borrow the Car? (1970)
every movie ever made, in alphabetical order
(we’re in the I’s, with some anti-alphabetical cheats)
Interview with the Vampire (1994)
Christian Slater plays a reporter who snags an interview with Brad Pitt, who’s a vampire. Instead of drinking his blood, Pitt tells Slater his life-and-death-and-afterlike story.
He was bitten 200 years ago by Tom Cruise (blonde, unsmiling), and Cruise and Pitt live unhappily ever after. They adopt a daughter (Kirstin Dunst, pre-boobs), who has a troubled childhood. Pitt and Cruise play good vamp, bad vamp, and go around biting people like vampires do, with heavy dramatics spoken in olde English.
Screenplay by Anne Rice, based on her best-seller that I never read. It’s … vampires. They vant to suck your blud. I’ve never read Anne Rice or any other vampire book, but seen and enjoyed plenty of vampire movies. Stylishly sucking blood and maybe saying something arch is a good time for everyone, so I kept waiting for a smidgen of that, but meh.
Reviews are subjective, and this is just one old duff’s opinion. Everyone else agrees that this movie is great, and the book’s even better. I don’t mind being wrong. Been wrong plenty of times, but my rule is, if a movie’s half-way to the end and I simply do not care, I click it off.
Verdict: NO.
♦ ♦ ♦
Interviews with My Lai Veterans (1971)
As the title promises, soldiers present at the My Lai massacre are interviewed, stateside, some time later. There’s no fancification with special effects, and you get the impression the soldiers have been asked and answered these questions before.
Actually, their mostly blasé attitude makes the Q&A even more harrowing. It was an ordinary ‘search & destroy’ effort, ordinary meaning, they did this sort of thing all the time. This one got out of hand, perhaps, but you never know which Vietnamese is an ally and which is a danger, so accidents on purpose do happen.
Much of the discussion of this mass murder sounds like the way you’d describe a botched play in a baseball game you’d seen a week ago. Things happen, you know, and My Lai was just another day on the job.
“Do you think anything can be done to prevent this kind of thing from happening again?”
“We could get out of Vietnam.”
The film is 22 minutes, and won the Best Documentary/short Oscar for producer/director Joseph Strick. He also made fiction, including Never Cry Wolf, Road Movie, The Savage Eye, and Ulysses.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Intimacy (2001)
Jay (Mark Rylance) is the manager of a hip & happening nightclub, a job he takes too seriously, and Claire (Kerry Fox) is a woman who visits him once weekly for sex. They never talk; it’s only about the sex, but one week he follows her as she leaves, and attends a dramatic workshop at a theater where she’s the teacher. He then starts intruding more and more into her life, playing pool with her husband, etc.
The movie’s set-up is a male fantasy, of course. Attractive women pursue anonymous sex without payment in movies far more often than it happens on Earth.
The drama is bolstered by strong writing and acting, and memorable for long sex scenes that aren’t quite porn, but show more dick, boobs, and bush than you usually see in mainstream cinema. The boinking is what makes Intimacy different from a hundred other movies about infidelity, so let’s pause to ponder the boinking.
We watch Mr Rylance sheathe his penis in latex, and then watch as, wearing only that condom, he pretends for several minutes to thrust into Ms Fox, who’s wearing less. We listen to the rhythmic squeaks of the furniture and their moaning fake orgasms, several times across several scenes, but why? If I want to watch people boinking, there’s a veritable library of porn on my hard drive. What’s the appeal of watching fake porn? Do these boinking scenes add to the audience’s understanding of the characters? Do they even sell tickets, when everyone has a library of porn like mine?
Verdict: MAYBE.
♦ ♦ ♦
Into the Wild (2007)
“No longer to be poisoned by civilization, he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.”
Christopher McCandless gave up on society in 1990, when he was 22. He renamed himself Alexander Supertramp, not in tribute to the band, but because his intent was to be be a tramp, and be super at it. He hitchhiked much of America, working short-term jobs but never staying in one place for long, and living a happy indigent’s life.
He was fascinated with Alaska, a difficult place to reach and more difficult to survive. He wasn’t headed for Fairbanks or Juneau, because he never much liked cities. His goal was the wilds, the state’s famous last frontier, which he called “Alaska Alaska.”
“I’m gonna be all the way out there, all the way fucking out there. Just on my own. You know, no fucking watch, no map, no axe, no nothing. No nothing. Just be out there.”
This film lovingly recreates his life and journey, and his interactions with a few fellow bohemians, Danish adventurers, an old survivor who wants Alexander to doublecheck his plans, and other wanderers along the way. Anyone who’s ever thought about dropping out of the normal life will find elements to love about the movie. I sure did.
His idealistic views are not mocked, almost endorsed. It’s beautiful hearing a sentence here and again, questioning the concept of careers and having ‘things’. We don’t get many movies sympathetic to the counterculture, so it’s a gift horse and you shouldn’t look closely at its chompers, but… my, what chompers!
Alexander had the blessings of money and health, whiteness and education, and I don’t begrudge him any of it — anyone who wants to get away from the world and can pull it off deserves nothing but hugs and congrats. It’s just… weird, that the film very quickly glosses over his head start. “You don’t need to worry about me,” he says. “I have a college education, I’m not destitute, I’m living like this by choice.”
He’s portrayed as a veritable saint, handing his last quarter to a stranger who needs it for a phone booth, turning down sex with a willing but underage girl, winning every argument with the skeptics, etc. His exploits are narrated in his sister’s voice, and in her eyes he seems to be a fresh mix of John Muir, Jesus Christ, and The Buddah.
More than all that, though, what kept me from being swept into Into the Wild is its hugeness and slickness, juxtaposed against Alexander’s philosophy of simplicity. It was filmed on location across seven states and Mexico, even stopping for a long sequence at Slab City, California, the desert mecca for folks who can’t handle civilization. The real Slab City has next-to-no electricity, zero plumbing, and some of its denizens are unsavory sorts, but in the movie it’s an idyllic suburb for flower people.
The perfect selection of gentle pop and rock music accompanies segues between scenes. Every moment on screen is an eyeful, with swirling camerawork and gorgeous cinematography. And the roll call of movie stars includes Emile Hirsch as Alexander, William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden as his parents, Jena Malone as his sister, and Zach Galifianakis, Hal Holbrook, Catherine Keener, Kristen Stewart, and Vince Vaughn among the kindhearted folks he meets in his travels.
Directed by Sean Penn, this is an extremely well-made movie, certainly recommended by me. But the story of Alexander Supertramp needs to be rough around the edges, like he was, and this is smoothly polished marble.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Dad, Can I Borrow the Car? (1970)
Teen idol Kurt Russell narrates this short love letter to the automobile. I was expecting a clumsy driver’s ed video, but it’s an honestly funny poke at all things automotive, from playing with toy cars as a toddler to getting a license to buying a first car.
There’s no clue it’s a Walt Disney production until the closing credits, but Ol’ Walt did some good stuff, and this deserves a looksee.
Verdict: YES.
9/24/2025
Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. No talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
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