Youth belongs to youth. Beauty to beauty

Things have gotten pretty dark. Some of these postwar films are vicious. I’m mostly thinking Monsieur Verdoux and A Foreign Affair. They weigh on you. They’re heavy with death. What better to follow them up with than a movie that attempts to return to the silly, exasperated, manic tantrum explosive type of farce where it all began?

     Unfaithfully Yours (1948, Preston Sturges) is a fundamental screwball nightmare warning condemning age-gap romantic entanglements, by showing the requisite jealousy, insecurity, and paranoia they bring; though it also both brings the era of the Golden Age to a close and cathartically resets it.
     As an allegory for jealousy, it’s fitting that the report SIR ALFRED CARTER (Rex Harrison) receives that his wife DAPHNE (Linda Darnell) is unfaithful gradually begins with its unsolicited, unwelcome, unavoidable boring into his conscience. He rips it up, throws it away, kicks the dustbin out of the room; burns it; destroys all copies of it. But it’s spectral-elusive. You can’t destroy something that’s not of this world. It’s sad, the wisdom SWEENEY the detective leaves the great conductor with, that men should just be happy if they get an hour or a week with a beautiful woman, because it can’t last. It isn’t viable. Nature commands that they leave you for someone younger, better looking.
     The cucked conductor imagines three different scenarios to deal with his wife’s cheating—a passage that makes up the middle of the movie. They each comprise parts something like: revenge, moral high ground, and game of fate. The first sequence is the most elaborate. When the conductor takes a straight razor and murders his wife, frames her lover, and gets away with it, after being cleared in court there’s this shot of him laughing belligerently, and I’m laughing right there with him. 
     But in the third fantasy, when the conductor confronts his wife, with deranged delight he tells her about knifing her and that “my dear, your head nearly came off,” murder stops being funny. It’s like Unfaithfully Yours has some psychic connection to Nicole Brown. This movie reminds us that once dark impulses reach a certain point, they’re not even funny in movies. Even worse, the scene after this the conductor keeps trying on leather gloves that are too small for him to fit his hands into.
     So how does Unfaithfully Yours reset the comedy mechanism? The second act at the concert performance was all in his head. Now as the third act begins, he attempts to carry out his plans in real life. But he can’t. To turn real life into the illusion is impossible. What ensues is an inescapable slapstick routine that forces upon him the futility of attempting to leave the illusion. He’s in a comedy. Its tone is incontrovertible. 
     And as we sensed all along, his wife never was cheating. I was kidding earlier. The movie has nothing against age-gap relationships. Nor does it dissuade anyone from finding the woman of your dreams and living happily ever after with her. The joke was on him. And the joke was on us. For the rule of screwball is be careful when jumping to conclusions based on misleading appearances. 

Some like it cold

So what have we learned from The Golden Age about love? That those who are best suited for it are thieves, spoiled shallow wealthy brats, narcissists, tyrants, emotional masochists, greedy capitalists, those suffering from mental illness, con-artists, social climbers, career opportunists, blackmailers, murderers, but most of all those driven by the sex impulse? And how it helps to pass yourself off as someone you're not? 

     Why does the screwball show us all this? What’s the point? Because cinema’s greatest power is to communicate emotion. Love is irrational. Emotions ignore reason, that’s what makes them emotions. What seem like the worst character traits to the intellect ring true as the course of nature in pursuit of sex and love because they’re emotionally authentic. Relatable. Emotions, like cinema, are illusions; some for love, some for tears.

 

Here's a great character in a comedy we haven’t seen yet, a Nazi slut. A Foreign Affair (1948, Billy Wilder) throws us in the middle of the crossfire, looked at from any angle as survival instinct or self-interests ensnared by motivations and circumstances beyond their grasp; their hearts, their bodies, goods to be bought, sold, or traded on the blackmarket of human whimsy. It’s about a frigid woman and a whore. One incapable of love and one who offers it freely. But in the end who’s to say which is which?
     Jean Arthur is FROST. Dietrich is VON SCHLUETOW. Wilder inherited subtlety, innuendo, double entendre, sneaking in jokes and the like from Lubitsch. Dietrich’s name is supposed to suggest slut. When Jean Arthur’s character is asking how to spell “sloot-oh,” the officer throws in “with the umlaut.” If anything, I will say A Foreign Affair is fair to both women; fair to both sides. What I take from it is that Americans and Germans are pretty much the same. Germans aren’t all Nazis. Well, some are. Some will always be. Some were caught up in it and then tried to move on. And for many, it wasn’t easy. When Erika Von Schluetow says a woman goes with whatever’s in fashion, she’s saying transactional sex, hairstyles, outfits, make-up looks, shoes, joining the Nazis, (can) all (be) frivolous, impulsive, meaningless temporary fixations. And I believe her. For who’s to judge a woman’s character? Who knows what it’s like for her? What she was up against?
     The first tenderness for me is in Act II when Frost recounts her woeful account of what would lead her to nearly cry her eyes out of her head. But the first pain is approaching the second act break when PRINGLE confronts Erika with that line “How much of a Nazi were you?” (We know what he really means by that.) Afterwards when Pringle takes Frost on a date to the Lorelei and Erika is singing and spots them, that’s the low point for me. Erika is made to feel used up. Love can make you feel like that.
     It’s even worse when Erika tells Frost about what happened to her after the war. “What do you think it was like being a woman when the Russians first stepped in?” My imagination conjures up the worst. However. At the end the when the COL arrests Erika and she solicits him, out of indignant resignation he orders a bunch of MPs to see to her—yet we are given to surmise instead she’s in for a gangbang. And she’s coy about it. At this juncture I rethink everything from earlier. Maybe she made up stuff about the Russians to manipulate Frost? Maybe she doesn’t love Pringle. When he’s in her room at the beginning and with her neck in his hands he says “Why don’t I choke you a little? Break you in two. Build a fire under you, you blonde witch,” this could likely be more of an affair of passion.
     Pringle is a man. A man who uses Erika for sex like she uses him for military protection. When Frost brings Pringle that chocolate cake with I love you written again and again in frosting, he sells it—poignant image. So the fitful ending is Pringle is stuck with Frost. Erika, those GIs are finished running a train on her, walks away free and clear. But what about Frost?
     Frost is the only one who doesn’t realize she’s being used. And therefore it’s her I feel sad for. Erika tells her: “Some people are lucky at love. Some people are jinxed. You shouldn’t even sit down at the table.” But Frost is also a congresswoman from Iowa who’s getting married to the war hero Army Captain from her home state. So I think I’m safe in concluding that A Foreign Affair is about people not necessarily being what they appear; that there’s more to it. Don’t judge people based on moral prejudices. Sex, love, what’s the difference? When it comes to matters of the heart it’s every man for himself blackmarket. Or, some people are lucky and some people are just jinxed. But who’s to say which is which?

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world. Not even our troubles

Monsieur Verdoux (1947, Charles Chaplin) is a poisonous disillusionment melodrama black screwball serial killer satire existential tragedy morality tale that posits the thesis that good and bad are arbitrary. It’s about accepting your destiny. Or the motto I live by: don’t let no one get you down.

     M. Verdoux has this dichotomy depicted in an early scene where he’s murdered one of his wives and burns her remains out behind their house in an incinerator, but he won’t step on a caterpillar. He and the household where he resides with his real wife and son are vegetarian. There’s a bit of moralizing where he tells his son not to pull the cat’s tail. The warning that follows is violence begets violence. We think this foreshadows M. Verdoux's guillotine fate to atone for his murders; but really the subtext is the irony that confronts the matter of justifying survival amidst economic depression and world wars.
     M. Verdoux kills old women and ugly women. Even the families of the women he murders and their social circles are depicted as obnoxious, argumentative, and deplorable. The funniest of these wives is the character Martha Raye plays, ANNABELLA BONHEUR, an embodiment of economic resentment. Annabella is sour, loud, ill-mannered, and frivolous with her new money winnings from the lottery. 
     The midpoint is when M. Verdoux meets THE GIRL, a Belgian refugee he unwittingly lures into a scheme wherein he intends to experiment with a new poison formula, who rekindles his faith in humanity. She’s sweet. Pretty. Young. He identifies with her because she just got out of jail for theft (to survive). And he shares something else in common with her. They both loved and took care of an invalid. It’s sappy shorthand for good natured sacrifice but I’ll let it slide. Because in the end the difference between them is she marries into the industrial military complex, so killing millions will afford her wealth and luxury, but he only murdered 14 women so he’s merely an expendable derelict sentenced to death.
     The film gives the impression that M. Verdoux’s ultimate destiny is the guillotine. But that’s oversimplifying. There’s also earlier that line from Schopenhauer, it’s the approach of death that’s terrifying though. Notice how after the stock market crashes in 1932 and there’s the guy with the gun to his head, and the guy plummeting out the window, then we hear what happened to M. Verdoux’s family. We hear that his home was foreclosed on. (But he gave his wife the deed on their 10th wedding anniversary.) So that means we weren’t shown or told, but must assume that he mortgaged that home at some point. He loses his family. But again we don’t get to know how or why. These crucial plot points withheld from us prefigure his destiny.
     Monsieur Verdoux is telling us never to give up the fight. And if its sentiment is that the world was falling apart during the great depression because of the collapse of financial institutions, and global military conflicts, that’s pretty much as true today as it was then. So it’s okay to keep your zest for bitterness intact. And love. Just don’t fall into despair. It lulls the mind into indifference. 
     At first it’s weird how often Chaplin looks at the camera. And how blatant he is when it comes to grandstanding. But it all becomes part of this character he’s created. He took Landru as jumpoff then made M. Verdoux completely his own. I can’t get enough of his romantic pickup lines and false flattery cooing he uses on all the dowagers, spinsters, and uggos. Monsieur Verdoux might be the first screwball legitimately to get away without a hint of sex. It might also be the first black comedy? And yeah for all its misanthropic farce, I do think it balances out with Chaplin’s tender metaphysical allegory. Also why don’t I ever get tired of watching this movie?

Lubitsch's final film is my favorite

Cluny Brown (1946, Ernst Lubitsch) is a profoundly bleak screwball where the oppressive force of the upper class is no better than the hopelessly stifling plight of the lower class. Concurrent alongside this there’s its basic premise, which introduces a cockney twentysomething orphan whose naivete precludes any instinct she might have to restrain her wanton sexual desperation and her chance encounter with a middle-aged fuckboy whom the narrative deliberately positions on an unavoidable course as a reoccurring mentor to her by way of random events.

     Plumbing is code for sex. In the first act CLUNY BROWN (Jennifer Jones) is introduced knocking on the door of these two men to unclog a drain, her first words, “Should we have a go at it?” They get her drunk. After she’s unclogged it she’s sprawled on her back cooing how she feels chirrupy and like a Persian cat. And when she’s at Friar’s Carmel Manor, the master of the house has that line: “You mean to tell me young girls go in for plumbing nowadays?” to which Cluny replies, “It’s such fun.” And her first night staying there, when the heads of the domestic staff catch her leaving the room of the playboy BELINSKI (Charles Boyer), she exclaims: “I wish I could roll up my sleeves and roll down my stockings and unloosen the joint bang bang bang bang.” The Act II break is Cluny shames the mother of her fiancé at a dinner party at his home because she springs into action with her plumbing skills in the middle of a speech he’s giving. And later, with disdain he reprimands her as being a disgrace because she’s “subject to pipe impulses.”
     How should we take their respective promiscuous tendencies? Is she a slut? Is he a player? Or are they just the way they are by nature and should be free from moral judgment? In Cluny Brown it appears to be all for laughs anyway. Or does it? The theme of Cluny Brown as told to us is: knowing one’s place. With the philosophical implication who’s to say what one’s place is? Who knows what one’s place is? Act II begins with Cluny being courted by the local chaste pharmacist WILSON, played with the same nasal British lilt he voiced the caterpillar with in Alice in Wonderland (1951), Richard Haydn. There’s a scene in his residence where he shows Cluny this picture painted by hand he’s quite taken with hanging on his wall, which she bemoans: “Poor little sheep. He hasn’t much future. Just mutton.” You think the subtext is it’s she who by marrying Wilson will settle for the rest of her life in the same dead end he has.
     Except I don’t buy the ending one bit. It’s atrocious. Are we seriously to believe that after everything we’ve seen, how dutiful the Cluny we’ve come to know is, that she’s to abruptly leave her obligations to both her employer and fiancé? And all because the old lech bought her a pair of black silk stockings? And even if she were to run away with him, what would they live off of? The reality setting in could maybe be a life in poverty grifting a living as Bohemian scenesters. But no. Cut to: he’s overnight a bestselling mystery writer?
     And who could expect him to remain faithful to her? We saw how he nearly sexually assaulted MISS CREAM (great name) in her bedroom. Bolenski’s a chronic philanderer and habitual liar. Methinks the movie really ends in the diegesis point where Cluny is sick to her stomach because Wilson told her she ruined the festivities. And that because high and low class British society are both so cold and ineffectual to treating Cluny as a human, we have to realize how sad reality is. And wonder were she to run off with the only other person who she could have thrillingly satisfying sex is would be using her and throw her away when he’s finished with her, that would be the no future existence, just mutton. Just another piece of meat to him.
     Jennifer Jones as a hot master plumber indefatigably headstrong brimming wide-eyed with joy trying to find her place in life is escapist magic. Cluny Brown is escapist magic. Bolenski gets into the old screwball mistaken identity mixup as a Czech professor war refugee seeking asylum from Nazi occupation. But he’s really just an opportunist out for a good time who’s trying to get laid. This movie is a diversion that isn’t interested in real life conflicts. But Bolenski takes the free ride. And Bolenski forcing himself on Miss Cream is the only way her ANDREW finally proposes. Andrew only recognized his need for Miss Cream out of sexual jealousy and possessiveness. 
     Lubitsch is devious subversive. In Cluny Brown sex shows everything that’s wrong in the world. But just like real life, on the surface it works as an immensely enjoyable farce. And it’s up to us if we want to disregard the ending as a put on or not. I don’t think Cluny ever leaves Carmel Manor. And perhaps more than any other scene I’ve ever seen, when she’s happy having tea with four lumps and crumpets, it’s so perfectly beautiful. Then when they realize she doesn’t belong, that she’s the new maid, it crushes her (and me). “You thought I was somebody else didn’t you? Have I done something wrong?” is when she came to know her place in life. And the movie conveys that feeling. What it’s like to stumble into a point in life where you could be anything you wanted, and then it becomes clear that access to certain areas are off limits. The emotions of processing that. 

Swindler's list

Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942, Leo McCarey) is an insufferable Nazi screwball romance patriotic propaganda piece that asks what if screwball antics were in the service of dealing with WWII? The funniest thing it’s got going for it is the names of the principal characters sounding like the kind of dirty jokes Terry Southern might’ve snuck in: BUTT, TOOL, and LUBE.

     Ginger Rogers is KATHERINE BUTT-SMITH. And her character can be called upon when her country needs her. She sacrifices her diamond bracelet, the man of her dreams, and her own life for the greater good. She even forges her own passport and gives it to a Jewish maid so that the woman and her two children can escape. In this world we’re to accept that sticking the Jewish woman’s photo over her own using chewing gum as adhesive won’t be caught by the Nazis or border checkpoints. 
     Cary Grant is PATRICK O’TOOLE. He seduces Butt-Smith. And there’s a scene early on where he impersonates her tailor and his tape measure springs to attention becoming an unwieldy force of its own. It’s funny to think about whose idea it was to blend harrowing Nazi occupied Europe espionage thriller with lewd screwball farce. Maybe funnier than the finished product. There’s even a scene where the couple are mistaken for Jews (because Katherine still has the maid’s passport) and they end up in a concentration camp. 
     Okay there is a kinda funny bit where O’Toole has to do a radio broadcast out of France telling the USA that Hitler isn’t so bad, where they workshop his script by committee and strongly reject phrases about Hitler using words like “boundaries,” and “will stop at nothing.” Among the plot holes, or at the very least slightly implausible elements, there’s the fact that at no point are the couple cautious about the possibility Von Luber will just kill them until the very last scene where he’s on the same ship attempting to flee as a war criminal to relocate in America. Psyche. Katherine overpowered him and threw him overboard instead.
     And the happy ending is that Von Luber can’t swim. Because we’re all happy he’s dead, as long as there’s a built in disavowal of guilt mechanism. And the message spelled out for us is that the Nazis forbade expressing individual thought, which is unacceptable. And good thing they were defeated. 

The serious side of screwball

There’s something wholesome about Woman of the Year (1942, George Stevens). There’s a scene early on at a baseball stadium that sets the tone for the whole thing. It’s something like a romantic domestic hangout movie. Neither of the two leads are ugly to each other for a change. Nor is there any cynicism, nihilism, or cruel defamation of either of the sexes. Woman of the Year is however a clash of culture, class, and gender screwball romantic platitude (propaganda?) honoring the sanctity of marriage.

     The thing about the rules of the game is when it’s love we’re dealing with, suspension of disbelief can stretch pretty far. I know Tracy and Hepburn were an item, so the chemistry there is palpable. But do I buy TESS HARDING falling for SAM CRAIG? How could a wealthy, polyglot, steeped in international affairs, strong, independent, star columnist fall for a sports writer who takes a cheap shot at her in one of his articles? The absurdity of it is ripe for screwball. There’s maybe even a possible subtle cue it could be read as Tess wants to get laid; Sam Irishes because he wants to marry. Whether or not you view it this way, what follows in a more emphatic comedy of trad gender role-swapping.
     The midpoint is Tess and Sam consummating the marriage. Shortly thereafter, Sam becomes the woman and Tess the man. It all starts when Sam gets his feeling hurt because Tess doesn’t notice his new hat. And then he has to cook dinner for everyone. Then Sam gets over-emotional, and distant because he feels like Tess’s heart isn’t committed to their relationship. What happened? Did sex have anything to do with it?
     Right before they sleep together, Sam is overtly masculine. He is an expert on sports. He’s assertive. Confident. Calm. And right before they make use of their nuptial bed and there’s that screwball misleading appearance gag with the Jew who escapes Hitler in Tess’s bed, Sam invites his riffraff crew over and seems bent on fighting to preserve his tough guy identity. Yet after they’ve shared their night of passion (the cut way before anyone can even come close to glimpsing), Sam becomes femininized. It’s funny then, less far-fetched in today’s modern culture but still fun. I’m just trying to highlight and emphasize the abrupt implausible shifts as characteristic of the screwball nature of Woman of the Year.
     The film’s climax is a set piece that plays around with the way Tess doesn’t know her way around a kitchen, but wants to prove her subservience as a way to reclaim their marriage. The film’s resolution is Sam bashes GERALD, Tess’s (male) secretary over the head with a bottle of champagne that she was to christen an ocean liner with, to show he’s putting an end to her career once and for all so she can be his wife. Or so it seems? The ending is such a mess. You know I’m saying it: screwball context it gets away with it. But even for screwball, this is a big ask. How will they resolve their marriage? There’s no way Tess should quit her career to be a wife. She’s like one of the most successful important, literally “outstanding woman of the year.” 
     I think Woman of the Year is an early example of one of those Hollywood movies that have an ending on the surface to appease the masses and morally just set; but the rest of us know there’s no way that ending is meant to be taken seriously. What happens when we ask ourselves would Hepburn really take a role of an empowered woman who gives up everything to be a docile wife? And if not, why would she take the role? The only way I can reconcile these questions is to imagine she means it as a send up; a put on; the ultimate screwball sentiment being if you actually buy this ending the joke’s on you. All this despite knowing George Stevens would never be complicit in something so subversive. I really do feel bad. I thought for once I’d found a screwball that wasn’t underhanded.

     Unless marriage really meant that much to Hepburn. And the dream doesn't have to correspond to real life. It can be funny. Tender. Sweet. Hopeful. Impossibly perfect.

Pen 15 Club: Is This Loss? OR When Hobbies Collide

AKA: How To Deal With Fucking Up

One area of conflict that obtains when a Bag Person (cf: Toward a Total Theory of the Messenger Bag: An Previous Series, et al) gets into pens is the issue of: What pen goes in what bag? What pen to walk around with? As the pens get fancier, this gets more complex and complicado, given that fountain pens are at the best of times and under the most controlled conditions slightly fiddly, fragile items. (And items that don't necessarily love uncontrolled, random conditions, meaning there's always a chance the pen you're carrying around won't actually work well if you pull whip it out.)

So were these the considerations the other day that led me to conclude, "To the basketball game, I should carry my still quite new Lamy Safari, along with a tiny notebook, and of course no bag, because basketball arenae are panicky control freaks w slash r slash t bags. Now, since the arena is in San Francisco and I shall need to walk more than a bit to it, I should wear a Pendleton Board Shirt, for layering." All these conclusions were, so far as they went, more or less correct:

• The Safari I carried was the Strawberry colorway, which is made of tough plastic and, crucially, has a matte finish, so it is not prone to scratching—it is a pen I liked; it is not a pen I loved
• a Pendleton Board Shirt is the correct layer for most purposes

Where I got into trouble is, as clever lede readers will no doubt have predicted, is in the overlap between two preferences:

1. To wear a Pendleton, with only a flap pocket (no button)
   
   
2. To avoid the use of most pens' clips, even the Safari's clip, which is, like, its main feature
   
   

And that is how the Safari, I concluded later, must have escaped my shirt pocket when I bent over to swoop up my hat after a blustery San Franciscan wind took it from my head and into a filthy crosswalk.

A good note, I guess: If you want to keep your stuff, use the elements of them designed to help you do that. Or at least pay attention when you're doing things. And maybe, for extra credit, notice when your preferences are in conflict and are laying traps for you.

Anyway, I'm pretty mad that I lost the Lamy I had gotten deliberately to solve the issue of "What pen to walk around with?". It was far from my nicest writer, but it was supposed to be something I liked but didn't really care about, which is the right mix, I think, for something to carry around all the time.

Since I am superstitious about objects and bad things happening to them, I now regard the Strawberry Safari as possessed of energies inimical to my possession*, simply replacing the Safari is out of the question, I decided to ask The Pen Addict Podcast about it, which you can listen to at the link linked.

Anyway, since hobbies can involve gear and gear are things, the wise hobbiest will prepare herself to encounter and move through loss, and think well through the soaring heights of using items of pleasure versus the fatality of engaging with alienable objects.

*This goes back to Grade 8, when my copy of Blue Öyster Cult's Secret Treaties tape was stolen along with my Walkman three times. My love for "Career of Evil" and the lyric "I choose to steal what you choose to show / and you know / I will not / apologize", I believed, and believe, opened me up to be the victim of theft. I am not sure what the deal with the Safari is, but I'm taking no chances.

Sic erat in fatis

Opposites attract. The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges) is equal parts hopeful and cynical about romance. It’s a screwball comedy about the love that strikes between a virgin scientist nepo bookworm and a sexpot grifter career criminal. Yet it does stick with one creative choice that links the two through a similarity. At its midpoint when the couple awake to the reality that their dream of sharing a life together happily ever after has ended, they both suffer equally from the cruelty of it all.

     JEAN’S (Barbara Stanwyck) seduction of HOPSY (Henry Fonda) lays it on pretty thick. The dialogue in which they finish each other’s sentences gets risky dangerous at the part about her wanting to be taken by surprise like a burglar. I won’t spell out what that innuendo means for me but in the context of the scene it works well. 
   Act III is a gaslight melodrama that really throws you off any attempt at guessing what Jean’s motives are. Because we the audience are being conned. There’s this red herring involving why Jean’s alter ego EVE SIDWICH has wedged her way back into Hopsy’s life. Is she imposing herself as a British aristocrat imposter into his social circle in order to humiliate him? Rob him again? Harass him out of spite? What kind of revenge does she have in mind we wonder. Because of that line right before the end of the second act: “Unfinished business. I need him like the axe needs the turkey.” 
     After Hopsy and the Lady Eve are married, she confesses to him. She tells him about several sordid sexual partners she’d had in an elliptical anecdote montage. And we think that makes them even. She wanted to hurt him like he hurt her. But after a tacked on shockingly thrillingly random bumping back into each other encounter we learn what the third act was really all about.
     Jean created Eve as a proxy to get Hopsy to reevaluate her. After having his heart broken by the royal teen slut, the crooked felon hustler in comparison now looks to him ideal. So The Lady Eve is telling us a man can forgive being swindled out of vast sums, lied to, used, and tricked, but not a woman who’s slept around alot. It’s funny in a screwball context. So its moral is: whatever it is keep it to yourself if you want to build a relationship on trust. 
     Lastly, I don’t know why but I’ve always hated Charles Coburn as the COL character inordinately. Like just how this grifter family is out to scam the poor Henry Fonda character just aggravates me because I have to see it coming and he can’t maybe. Also I’ve always liked Coburn in anything else I’ve seen him in. Which brings me to ask myself how I feel at the midpoint when Jean gets busted and subsequently broken up with. Something that always works in movies is having a character vow to reveal some immoral spot from their past to a loved one, and the other party finding out just a little too soon. I know she’s good, which is why this plot point probably works so well. So can we really buy the ending? Or do we buy it because we’ve been conned and don’t realize it? In which case would that also possibly be intentional? To on some level equate falling in love or being moved emotionally by a love story as falling for a grift?

Gentrifishcation

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson) is a pop slasher astroturfing shill for the therapy industry. But it’s really about boobs. 

     I Know What You Did Last Summer is bookended on two consecutive Fourth of July holidays, and is set in a coastal town, released in theaters the same summer as the fiftieth anniversary of Jaws (1975, Steven Spielberg). If that connection sounds like an overreach, trust me I felt it. Crowdpleaser horror. And the night exterior scene on Reaper’s Curve uses the fireworks in its sound design as suspenseful jumpscare adjacent like that Chinese kid in Boogie Nights. Also during that scene the muscle prep dude playing chicken with traffic because he smoked a joint is so very teenager.
     Reaper’s Curve for the first time got me thinking of The Fisherman as like the grim reaper. But that’s wrong. The Fisherman is trauma manifested in a corporeal vessel. And to indulge my cheesiest of impulses I’d like to think of the harbor town of Southport, NC as a place where the teens-twentysomethings harbor their overwhelming guilt. I Know What You Did Last Summer is a subgenre I would coin as Dawson’s Creek horror. It’s about privileged pretty WASPy kids. The group is composed of half altruistic ambitious hardworking kids and the other half spoiled nepo jerks. Good mix.
     But this reboot adds a new dimension: resentment-based class conflict. Throw in some divorces, break-ups, and wealth envy and the ammo is there for them all to blame and attack each other. Skewer some church and state. Also new (or a desperate attempt to seem to be) is throwing in Gabriette as a sexy it girl—so basically playing herself. Toss in some quasi dangerous sex and kinkbaiting and the genre formula is complete. For the first half of the movie DANICA only wears bikini tops, and her boobs aren’t gratuitous because its franchise requisite. The TEDDY actor seeming to be doing a Channing Tatum impersonation had me puzzled initially but I just went with it. 
     Visually my favorite touch is the red bath bomb. And there’s a certain aftermath that’s strung up in a way you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say all that and the town hall meeting have got me back to thinking this has gotta be some kind of intentional Jaws homage. I thought this movie was great. Slick, fun, teen soapy, effectively designed Hyannis giallo.
     But sometimes it lays things on a little too on the nose. Like second screen pandering. And there’s a suggestive line at the end about a character surviving, which you think means potential return in a sequel. Then someone says it outright, spoonfeeding it for the audience. And then yet again the same exposition is an apparatus for a mid-credits sequence way too shoving advertising the sequel down our throats. Also I really wish they could’ve got Sarah Gellar back for this. Minor complaints that don’t detract for how much I seriously love this.
 
7/17/2025 AMC Phipps 14
Atlanta, GA

A narrative about framing narratives

Eddington (2025, Ari Aster) is a crime thriller comedy that satirizes how 2022 was a new lowpoint for how stupid Americans are; also, it’s an unsettling male crisis slowburn psychological cautionary horror about social media. Its tone is a slow, quiet, sustained disintegration in a desert small Anytown, U.S.A.

     The first hour or so roughly lays the groundwork for this memorial of the inane hive mentality of Americans for us to laugh at. Looking back at all Covid brought with it like facemasks, 6 feet apart distancing, nasal swabs, reduced-capacity public spaces, is just the start. The rift of conflicting values, politics, convictions, and character assassinations is too scary and true to be funny, which makes it even funnier. When this all starts to coalesce I am conditioned to even laugh at Black Lives Matter protests, zoom meetings with 2 out of 8 people that have their pronouns as part of their screen identification, and conspiracy theorists. It all happened so gradual but so quick. It was such a drastic phase and it’s interesting to see the power of cinema to organize it all into an experience to soak in for a couple of hours traveling through this terrain of emotional national identity recognition. 
     The message of Eddington is that America is very online and behind and in-between all the social media, real news, fake news, and politics, people use people and causes whenever it’s convenient. And if they can get away with it they will. Online Darwinism rewards self-interest. And anyone can rise to the top of the foodchain if they have a wifi connection.
     Something I find effective about the plot is how the BRIAN kid fakes his way into sounding like he’s a political activist to impress the SARAH girl, but when she’s no longer available, not only does he seem to preserve his budding awareness, but he doesn’t seem to care too much that he lost his chances with her. It’s a subtle but very integral touch to show some of these young adults with more on their mind than crushes and hookups. Also the way they have this sense of rebellion for gathering in public to drink some beers during quarantine is ridiculous but so very truthful to the culture of the time. 
     My favorite gag is this bit where there’s this unhoused mentally ill denizen screaming at an Amazon Prime sprinter van stopped at a crosswalk angrily honking at him. If I had to pick one scene to define the zeitgeist that’s it. That’s real life. The feeling Eddington left me with reminds me of what Ariana Grande says after she licks that donut: “I fucking hate America. I hate Americans.” But if I can see a movie like this and laugh this much life is good.
 
7/17/2025 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA