We've reached the end of May, and I can't believe we're already into the summer months (although it certainly doesn't feel like it based on the temperature in the Chicago area this past week). May was a fun film-watching month for me highlighted by the Chicago Critics Film Festival, which I covered in detail here. And while that led to fewer older film discoveries for me, I still saw several this month that are well worth a watch. I also caught up with the Final Destination film series to prep for Final Destination Bloodlines, and while I didn't include any of those films here, I do think it's a fun series and I now find myself looking around and thinking of various ways I could die due to some freak accident. Let's hope I survive at least to the end of this blog post, and I won't delay things any further - here's five titles worth exploring that I caught up with this past month.
A Fish in the Bathtub (1998)
directed by Joan Micklin Silver
After I first learned of Joan Micklin Silver a couple years ago, I became eager to check out her work and she quickly became a new favorite filmmaker of mine. Her 1977 film Between the Lines about a Boston newspaper office may still be my favorite of hers, but her next film, Chilly Scenes of Winter is right up there with it. I also greatly enjoy Crossing Delancey. With A Fish in the Bathtub, she takes much of her signature comedic writing style about complex relationships and transports it to older characters in what to me is a pretty strong later-career entry in her filmography.
The film focuses on Jerry Stiller's Sam and Anne Meara's Molly as an elderly couple who have seemingly been bickering with each other throughout their 40-year marriage. In particular, Sam often belittles Molly and it's implied this has been a particularly rough element of her marriage in its entirety. The straw that breaks the camel's back here is exactly what the title says - Sam's insistence on keeping a fish in their bathtub prompts Molly to leave the house and move in with their real estate agent son Joel (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Sharon and daughter Melissa.
While the inciting event is pretty silly, there's definitely serious commentary being made here on patriarchal relationships and I think Silver really excels at showing this in all sorts of angles. Molly's so used to her housewife routine that she starts cleaning and reorganizing Joel and Sharon's house, much to their dismay. Sam is clearly distraught and has no idea how to process his wife moving out, but he refuses to go to therapy or consult a trusted advisor, despite the pleading of his best friend Milo. This break in pattern also seems to impact the next generation, as Joel starts considering an affair after a new client hits on him and his bond with his sister Ruthie (Jane Adams) is also tested. Much of the film is played very light on its feet, but there's some weight to everything that's happening and it's cause for self-reflection by everyone involved.
Each group of characters seems important here, including both Sam and Molly's friend groups who respond to the situation accordingly, and Melissa - the granddaughter of Sam and Molly - is maybe the key to bringing them back together, as both of them do truly love her. And Silver isn't afraid to take a shot at therapy either, showing it may not always be the answer, in a particularly hilarious awkward scene with a relationship counselor who used to date Ruthie.
Jerry Stiller's performance is particularly great here, he's sometimes a scary and uncomfortable figure but he's also got a funny and goofy enough premise that it makes his character more sympathetic than he probably should be. Certainly his history with Anne Meara makes their comedic chemistry seem effortless and Meara is quite good here too. I always love Jane Adams and think she brings a lot to a more secondary role. Ruffalo is interesting - he's a little raw as an actor here and it took a little time to get used to it but he grew on me as the film went on. Even if this is maybe not top-tier Joan Micklin Silver - and I'm not sure how most people will respond to the ending - it's definitely worth watching for fans of her other films, and a perfectly fine place to start if you've never heard her name before.
Lost in London (2017)
directed by Woody Harrelson
Earlier this month I watched the new film Brother Verses Brother at the Chicago Critics Film Festival, which was mentioned to be inspired by Francis Ford Coppola's idea of "live cinema." Hearing that reminded me that I had been meaning to check out Woody Harrelson's actual attempt at live cinema back in 2017 - his tale of a fictional version of himself getting into misadventures in London was not just told in a single unbroken take like Brother Verses Brother and Sebastian Schipper's Victoria, but was actually filmed and broadcast to cinemas live - meaning cinema viewers were literally seeing the events on screen as they were happening.
I'll start by saying that I genuinely love single unbroken take films. Victoria is one of my favorite films ever, I loved Brother Verses Brother, and even often enjoy when films pretend to be done in a single take, like Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rope or the zombie film MadS from last year. Hence, I have a bias towards a title like Lost in London that most people won't have, so take some of this with a grain of salt. Still, even though it may not have the emotional stakes of a film like Victoria, Lost in London is a damn impressive feat as Harrelson's seemingly impossible gambit comes off effortlessly, and I really wish I would have seen this in the theater back in 2017.
The film is based on a real incident that happened to Woody Harrelson back in 2002, when he was in London with his family and ended up breaking an ashtray in a cab and getting arrested as a result - the night before his family was set to visit the set of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Harrelson takes this real-life experience and builds a fictional version of himself that is actually not all that sympathetic (but that of course makes his suffering all the more funnier), and it's cool to see Harrelson really poking fun at himself for this incident. He meets several other real-life friends, including Owen Wilson, with whom he gets into some spats over the value of Wes Anderson as a filmmaker that are particularly funny.
The best way for me to describe the comedy here is it's like what Larry David does on Curb Your Enthusiasm: play a fictional version of yourself, argue with celebrity friends playing fictional versions of themselves (and also regular actors playing regular people) over petty things, and let the situation spiral completely out of control. It's a style of comedy that I usually find funny, and it definitely worked for me here a lot. Even if this isn't entirely your thing, this is well worth watching at least once solely for the impressive technical feat of pulling off this film live, and I'd love to see more "live cinema" like this in the future.
The Music of Chance (1993)
directed by Philip Haas
I watched three different films centered around gambling this month, all of which are flying a little too under-the-radar and are well worth checking out, so much so that I was initially planning on making a post dedicated just to those three films. Perhaps I'll still do that in the future to elaborate further on Jacques Demy's Bay of Angels and Jerrold Freedman's The Seduction of Gina, but for now we'll focus on the fascinating The Music of Chance, which is one of the more unique gambling films out there.
In films, gambling is usually presented as a thrill ride, with the possibilities of very high highs and very low lows. Often the action centers around some sort of high stakes competition, which occurs at the end of the film with characters risking it all, and the suspense is built for the competitive finale at the end. The Music of Chance has a fascinating structure to it - the "characters risk it all in a high stakes gambling event" is there, but it takes place in the middle of the film rather than the end. The rest of the film is focused on a question too often left up to the viewer's imagination - specifically, what happens after the event if you can't pay your gambling debt?
The Music of Chance is centered around the partnership that forms between James Spader's Jack and Mandy Patinkin's Jim. Jack is a strong poker player and convinces Jim to front him the money to take down a pair of eccentric wealthy gentlemen (Charles Durning and Joel Grey) in a high-stakes poker match. Spoiler alert - it does not go well, and our boys have lost not just all their money, but the car they drove in on too. The gentlemen have come up with a bizarre debt repayment plan - Jack and Jim are to stay on their property as "hired contractors", building a stone wall until their debt is repayed, while being supervised by caretaker Calvin (M. Emmet Walsh). Thus the film then shifts to a completely different tone in the second half, as it chronicles Jack and Jim trying to save their sanity and becomes a completely different type of thriller than the first half was. I fear I've revealed too much already, as going into this film blind may yield the best possible reaction.
The world of the Coen Brothers was on my mind here, and not just because of the presence of M. Emmet Walsh and Charles Durning. James Spader has a really strange look to him that to me really resembles a Steve Buscemi character, and his mannerisms reflect that as well. It's really a one-of-a-kind unexpected performance from Spader that alone makes the film an interesting curio to check out. Some of the dialogue too has a Coen feel to it. Mandy Patinkin, meanwhile, feels like he stumbled out of a David Mamet movie, and there's elements of the story that have a Mamet feel to them as well. The film is based on a Paul Auster novel, and I'd say it also feels like a play at times.
If you're tired of your standard poker movies, I'd recommend taking a chance on The Music of Chance - it's certainly an interesting little film well worthy of rediscovery.
Shampoo (1975)
directed by Hal Ashby
Shampoo is one of those titles I'd heard about several times but was never sure if I'd really enjoy, and I'll acknowledge it took some time to grow on me. The premise revolves around Warren Beatty as a womanizing hairstylist in Beverly Hills on the day/night of the 1968 Presidential Election and his relationship with (at least) three different women over the course of that day. So while it's clearly rooted in satire, it means you're having to put up with a pretty annoying character for the entire runtime. But at a certain point, I really started finding this funny and sharp, and it felt to me like a really interesting fusion of the political turmoil films of the late 1960s with the shaggy dog LA stories of the 1970s - two specific film eras / subject matters I greatly enjoy.
It helps that there's a really strong cast here to carry everything through to fruition. In addition to Beatty, you've got Goldie Hawn (whose work in this and The Sugarland Express really makes me want to explore more from this era of her career), Julie Christie (a favorite of mine primarily due to Don't Look Now and also because we're birthday twins) and Lee Grant (who shows up in a ton of stuff and is always good). And then there's scene-stealer Jack Warden, who I had no clue was in this but made me laugh a lot. There's several other notable names that appear, including one scene with Carrie Fisher and a cameo by none other than William Castle.
For me the film really takes off once the characters arrive at a party in the second half of the film. The second half is primarily set at two different parties - the first is a much more formal political event deeply focused on the outcome of the election, while the second is a rather debaucherous party full of hippie types that is brilliantly scored by Sgt. Pepper and Jimi Hendrix tunes. It's a perfect contrast of styles for hangout misadventures with these characters that couldn't care less about politics on the most important American political night of the year. I had a blast watching these two extended sequences, which then morph into a pretty good ending where Beatty does indeed get what he deserves.
This also has probably the best use of a refrigerator I've ever seen. You'll know it when you see it - it should be a more iconic moment than it currently is.
What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974)
directed by Massimo Dallamano
There were several gialli expiring from the Criterion Channel this month that I caught up with, and while I was initially planning on writing about either Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling or Aldo Lado's Who Saw Her Die? in this spot, at the last minute I saw Massimo Dallamano's grim tale What Have They Done to Your Daughters? and was pretty blown away by it. It's described as a "quasi-sequel" (whatever that means) by the Criterion Channel to the film What Have You Done to Solange?, which I haven't seen, so I'm guessing there's a loose connection to that film but nothing too major that would impede one's ability to watch this with no context (as was the case for me).
My big takeaway with What Have They Done to Your Daughters? is that I may have just found the best giallo to show someone who values plot above all else in their storytelling. Gialli are typically exercises in style, and while there's usually some sort of murder mystery plot, it's often convoluted and not always interesting. It seems like its main purpose is to provide a connection between the stylish kills, lavish settings, and fashionable characters that make up the film, which is not usually something I take issue with, but there's definitely many out there who need a strong plot rather than "vibes" alone. Here, we have that strong plot front and center, and while the film is well directed and looks good, it's not overly stylized to the point of taking away from the central investigation.
I won't get too into detail regarding what happens here other than to say it starts with the discovery of a teenage girl dead by hanging, and further investigation reveals this is not an isolated incident and someone is trying to cover up something very, very bad. The investigating team is an interesting crew, and includes a female assistant district attorney, who is often the highest authority there at the scene of the crime, which adds a very interesting gender dynamic to the story as well. There's some tense moments and a thrilling motorcycle / car chase midway through the film that lasts several minutes and goes to all sorts of different places. It may be the highlight in what is already a compelling film.
There's also a score by Stelvio Cipriani that gets used a lot - there's several themes that pop up over and over again and while the music itself is good, I really enjoyed how frequently it was used. During some of the more procedural investigation scenes, the music propels the action forward in a way that felt modern and specifically brought to mind Oppenheimer. I should probably mention that this also has poliziotteschi elements to it, an Italian crime film genre rooted in sociopolitical events that I'm not super familiar with, but have been meaning to learn more about.
Definitely need to catch up with What Have You Done to Solange? soon, and if it's anything like this I'll probably be in for another depressing but thrilling time.
That'll do it for May, stay tuned for another one of these in June, plus perhaps some more surprises in store!
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