MY MOVIE SHELF: What Lies Beneath

 

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 139  Days to go: 95

Movie #299:  What Lies Beneath

I love movies that thwart expectations. Harrison Ford has always played a good guy. Even if he’s a nerf herder or a scoundrel or an unfaithful husband and slimy lawyer who grows a whole new personality after being shot in the head, his characters are almost always on the right side of the law, or they are the law, or they’re fighting for justice somehow. He’s even played the President of the United States, who single-handedly fought off Russian terrorists on his plane with his bare fists. The guy likes to be the hero. That’s why What Lies Beneath is such a departure.

What Lies Beneath works, one hundred percent, because the audience expects the best from Harrison Ford as Norman Spencer. He’s an academic, a sophisticate. He has a beautiful wife named Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) and a gorgeous house in Vermont and you are compelled to think the best of him. That’s the kind of character Ford plays. He has an entire movie that can be (and has been) boiled down to him vehemently declaring over and over “I did not kill my wife!” And not ten months prior to What Lies Beneath coming out, Ford starred in a movie in which his loving wife was dead again, only it turns out she was cheating on him with the husband of the woman played by Kristin Scott Thomas. He’s the good guy; he’s the cuckold; he’s the right one. Even if the ghost haunting his wife is some student Norman had an affair with a year ago, clearly it is some Fatal Attraction sort of situation. She’s just some psycho hose ghost and he’s an innocent victim who made a mistake. One mistake! An indiscretion! It should hardly even count. He’s the impeccable one, right?

Okay, so What Lies Beneath is one of those movies that I’d love to be able to talk about without revealing too much of the plot, but that ship has pretty much sailed at this point — and honestly, it’s a movie from fifteen years ago. If you haven’t watched it by now, chances are you weren’t going to UNLESS someone told you the plot. And the plot is really, surprisingly great. (Props to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Agent Coulson — Clark Gregg — who I guess moonlights as a screenwriter, for writing this one.)

It’s safe to say What Lies Beneath was not what I was expecting, but it really surprised me in the best of ways. It’s a murder mystery and a horror story, but it’s not gratuitous or gory. The horror is created almost entirely through atmosphere and tone — setting, music, lighting — and there are some incredibly innovative shots meant to provide alternate visual perspectives: close, confining shots, done at awkward angles, or reflected through mirrors. One even seems to come up from below the floor. There is a physical ghost (Amber Valletta), but she’s used with great restraint and to great effect. She shows up at the most opportune times, to great optimal jump moments, and then the rest of the time her presence is implied through objects or events (I don’t believe in ghosts, but if my bathtub ever spontaneously filled itself once, much less on multiple occasions, I’d be moving.), and Pfeiffer even gives one hell of a great subtle possession scene, where we know Claire’s altered but her husband does not. And the entire final showdown, once Norman has no more outs, is a very suspenseful, tense and satisfying end, all around.

There’s a red herring story featuring Claire’s neighbor Mary Feur (Miranda Otto) that doesn’t seem to be handled quite as well as it could be, and the editing could be just a little bit tighter, but for the most part I find the movie incredibly successful. Even factoring in the two sort of obvious Chekov’s Gun situations (One, never show your villain’s students administering a paralytic agent to a rat without making full use of that paralytic agent come the film’s climax. And two, never explain that your cell phone doesn’t have service until the midpoint of the bridge without eventually needing to make a call on that bridge.), the plot unfolds at the pace and with the effect that the director and writers intend. It’s a solid film, and it’s unlike most everything else that rogue, rugged hero Harrison Ford has ever done.

 

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Story of Us

 

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 166  Days to go: 117

Movie #272:  The Story of Us

As the movie starts (after a brief anecdote from Ben, played by Bruce Willis), the Jordan family is at the dinner table and they are doing High-Low, where each member of the family gives their high point of the day and their low point of the day. My son happened to be in the room at that moment and he looked over at me. “Hey, they’re doing High-Low,” he said. “Is that where you got it from?” It is indeed.

Where Revolutionary Road is the story of a marriage going bad that fails at every chance for redemption, The Story of Us is the story of a marriage going bad that actually gets saved. Ben and his wife Katie (Michelle Pfeiffer) are each at the ends of their ropes. Years of missed connections and petty resentments have brought them to the breaking point. They’ve tried all sorts of therapy and made concessions on account of their kids, but they just seem to drift further and further apart. So over the summer, while the kids are away at camp, they separate. It’s clear there’s still love and affection between them, but they can’t seem to find it, can’t seem to get past the regular arguments that never get closure and can’t stop experiencing their own pain long enough to see things from the other’s point of view. Despite missing each other and feeling at a loss, they can’t find a way through the fog.

But, somehow, Ben spends the summer writing about his grandparents’ marriage and has a few epiphanies about the nature of longstanding relationships. And Katie experiences how it’s both nice and weird and disconcerting to have someone else notice her. But instead of letting it pull her away from Ben, it pulls her closer to him. He’s the friend she misses. He’s the one who knows her. And she begins to understand and appreciate him in a whole new way. Out of the darkness, suddenly, they emerge. Sometimes it takes that crisis to realize what you want most out of life and who you most want to spend it with.

There are so many familiar notes in The Story of Us to anyone who has been married. Not to say that all marriages are in trouble, but that all marriages are hard and that sometimes the everyday events of your life get in the way. It’s easy for one person in the marriage to become the disciplinarian or the “responsible” one. It’s easy to fall into roles that feel natural and inadvertently take each other for granted. Getting out of those ruts takes a conscious effort from both partners. I like that The Story of Us recognizes and is representative of that.

The film is creatively structured, with Ben and Katie each narrating different parts of their history, and the hair and makeup team did a fabulous job differentiating the years gone by. Rob Reiner and Rita Wilson are sensational as Ben and Katie’s best friends Stan and Rachel, and the cameos given by Jayne Meadows and Tom Poston (as Katie’s parents) and Betty White and Red Buttons (as Ben’s parents) are fantastic. But what I love the most is how everything works together to build a complete life for this couple — their milestones and their memories, their highs and their lows.

Katie makes a pretty fantastic case at the end of the film, but the line I think about most is in the middle, when Ben says in voice over how no matter how bad things got, he always felt if he and Katie’s feet could find each other under the covers in bed at night, they were okay. I feel that way too. Even if I’m angry or disappointed or upset or sad or frustrated, I like my feet to get tangled up with my husband’s at night, like a silent affirmation of our connection and commitment, no matter what.

Of course, there are a lot of really funny lines as well. You don’t get this cast together and not wind up with a pretty funny movie. Rachel’s ruminations on the natures of the penis versus the vagina alone are worthy of a place in the monologue hall of fame. But the one I always want to shout in anger is, “And you can take that bread and shove it up the tops of your legs!”

As you do.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Ladyhawke

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 211  Days to go: 214

Movie #166:  Ladyhawke

Ladyhawke was the first PG-13 movie I ever saw. I remember watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in the theater with my hands over my eyes the year before, and I remember the huge controversy it created, prompting the need for a rating between PG and R, so it was a momentous occasion when PG-13 movies first came out, and it was equally momentous (at least for me) when I went to my first one. I might not have remembered my first PG-13 movie, though, if it hadn’t turned out to be such a beloved one. At the age of 10, Ladyhawke was one of my absolute favorite movies, and in the nearly thirty years since, my love for it hasn’t really diminished.

Ladyhawke is a magical, mystical tale of lovers torn apart, but always together. Taking place in the Middle Ages, it’s sort of an historical fantasy tale. Philippe Gaston (Matthew Broderick) is a thief known as “The Mouse” for his ability to evade capture by twisting, squeezing and wiggling his way out of even the smallest spaces. As the film starts, he is escaping from the dungeons of Aquila and becomes a fugitive, with the guards hot on his trail. He is saved, however, by Etienne Navarre (Rutger Hauer), the former captain of the guard who was banished from Aquila and has a grudge to get back to kill the Bishop (John Wood). Navarre takes Philippe in his custody and care, intent on having Philippe get him back into the city to complete his quest. During the nights, Philippe encounters both a beautiful woman named Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer) and a large black wolf, and eventually he discovers that Isabeau is Navarre’s hawk by day, and Navarre is the black wolf by night. With the help of an old drunk monk named Imperius (Leo McKern), they all travel back toward Aquila to get revenge against the Bishop for damning them to these half-lives, and perhaps, if Imperius is right, break the curse.

I’ve been subjected to my fair share of mocking thanks to this movie, in my numerous and undaunted attempts to share it with the world. I remember, for instance, one friend of mine mercilessly taking apart the heavily ’80s-synthesizer score, and, sure, point taken. I still find it rousing and effective. Others scoff at the traveling accents or the fuzzy mythology of this curse. I do not care. This movie rocks.

As far as I was concerned, there had never been a more luminous beauty than Michelle Pfeiffer as Isabeau.  There had never been a wittier wiseacre or endearing liar than Philippe Gaston. There had never been a more gorgeous and devastating scene than when Navarre and Isabeau are lying together in the snow as the sun rises and they almost touch as humans, but not quite. There had never been more anguish in anyone’s howling cry than in Navarre’s, both as man and wolf. There had never been more thrilling or violent ends to a movie’s villains than befalls the Bishop and Marquet (Ken Hutchison) and Cezar (Alfred Molina). It was just the most riveting, the most interesting, the most thrilling and satisfying film.

And to be perfectly honest, it still hits all those emotional notes for me. I still love Philippe. I still warm to Imperius. My heart still swells and breaks and swells again for Isabeau and Navarre. I still fear and cringe at the Bishop and Cezar. And if I ever were to witness a solar eclipse, no force on earth could stop me from gruffly, passionately whispering to the heavens, “A night without a day. A day without a night.” I swear it.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Grease 2

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 245 Days to go: 250

Movie #132: Grease 2

There was never any way Grease 2 would live up to the beloved reputation of Grease. It’s sillier, stupider, and the music isn’t as great. But it does have its merits. I didn’t even find out Grease 2 existed until I was in high school, and I watched it a bunch after that, but for a long time with an element of a hidden shame. I mean, it’s just that cheesy. (And this coming from the girl who loudly and openly likes a LOT of cheesy movies.) When I got to college, however, I discovered there was this whole underground cult of Grease 2 fans — one of the girls who lived down the hall from me in my first dorm could even do Michelle Pfeiffer’s “Cool Rider” dance perfectly (the end where she hops and spins and spells “Cool Rider”). That was huge for me, because it allowed me let my Grease 2 freak flag fly a little more openly. And once I found out Drew Barrymore loved it as well, I voiced my affection with pride. (Drew, call me!)

Grease 2 attempts to turn the tables on Grease by having it be the guy who’s the outsider — Maxwell Caulfield playing Sandy’s cousin Michael Carrington — while the girl (Pfeiffer as Stephanie Zinone) is the super cool one he’s changing for. Some characters are there to bridge the gap between the two films — Didi Conn as Frenchy (finishing her high school degree for some reason), Eve Arden as Principal McGee, Dody Goodman as Blanche, Sid Caesar as Coach Calhoun, and Dennis Stewart gets a slightly bigger role as the same rival gang leader from the first movie, only this time they’re on motorcycles — but mostly the cast of characters are new and the story is its own.

See, Stephanie dumped T-Bird leader Johnny (Adrian Zmed) over the summer because “there’s got to be more to life than making out,” and she’s “tired of being someone’s chick.” But Pink Ladies are supposedly required to be available to T-Birds, even though T-Birds chase around whomever they want, particularly the ladies who work at the grocery store (don’t ask). Meanwhile, Michael is smitten with Stephanie and keeps asking her out, but she brushes him off because he’s not a “dream on a mean machine with hell in his eyes.” She wants a cool rider, see, and “if he’s cool enough, he can burn me through and through. Whoa-oh-oh.” (If it takes forever, then she’ll wait forever.) “No ordinary boy, no ordinary boy is gonna do. I want a rider that’s cool.” Those might seem like the most ridiculous lyrics ever sung, but Michelle Pfeiffer really pulls them off (everyone who was so shocked and thrilled at Pfeiffer’s singing in The Fabulous Baker Boys obviously never saw Grease 2), and so Michael is convinced of his next move: in order to get Stephanie, he must get a motorcycle.

Luckily, the T-Birds this time around are openly stupid (no more mocking the jocks) and pay Michael to write essays for them. So he saves up money and buys a bike and before you know it he’s “a devil in skin-tight leather.” He shows up at odd times — bowling night, or wherever — all mysteriously clad in his head-to-toe leather ensemble, along with helmet and goggles, so nobody knows who he is. But he can jump cop cars with apparently no ramp whatsoever and Stephanie thinks he’s hot as all get out.

Johnny doesn’t like this development, and Pink Lady Paulette (Lorna Luft, aka Judy Garland’s OTHER daughter), who’s been seeing Johnny since school started, gets really mad at him for using her while he’s still getting jealous over Stephanie. The T-Birds chase the mysterious biker over Dead Man’s Curve on the night of the talent show and they don’t know if he jumped it or what, but he’s disappeared. (This is particularly dumb, because Michael is the talent show’s piano player, so if he didn’t show up someone would notice, but the talent show goes off without a hitch until Stephanie zones out during “Girl For All Seasons” and makes up her own song on the spot about her broken heart — it wins, of course.) Michael doesn’t show up until the next day or several days later or whenever the end-of-year luau is. He’s dressed as the cool rider, then reveals his true self, and Stephanie is thrilled. Also, he becomes a member of the T-Birds. The end.

Silly, like I said, but it has merits. Sixties heartthrobs Tab Hunter and Connie Stevens are there as canoodling teachers Mr. Stuart and Miss Mason, and the “Reproduction” song Mr. Stuart starts and the students finish is pretty funny. (“Make my stamen go berserk.”) There’s also a part where Louis (Peter Frechette) tricks Sharon (Maureen Teefy) into believing nuclear war has started to get her to sleep with him, which is pretty underhanded if you think about it but it’s so dumb and she ends up foiling him anyway, so you can just laugh. Paulette’s little sister Dolores (Pamela Adlon) is also a highlight, mostly because she gripes about how “the [Pink Lady] code stinks” and it pisses her off. And Christopher McDonald (of Thelma & Louise and Happy Gilmore, among others) plays a T-Bird named Goose and he is HUGE compared to everyone else. Like, super tall. But if that’s not enough for you, there is also an entire musical number about bowling. (“We’re gonna scor-or-ore tonight!”)

See? Merits.