Previous What I’ll Remember Posts:
1925, 1930, 1943, 1949, 1958, 1965, 1969, 1978, 1982, 1992
Appetizer: What I Remembered About the Films of 1990:
I turned 3 years old at the end of 1990 — too young to have seen the films that would appear in my childhood at the time of their release. But growing up was peppered with film-specific imprints from 1990 releases. I’m going to start with those:
Misery being the first DVD I ever owned. I remember marveling at the typewriter centric menu (there’s a menu?!?). Up top, flashes of the film intercut with Paul’s steadfast typing and an urgent section of score. I used to watch this a lot as a teenager so I know every beat of its accumulative tension. Let this be a Misery memories dumping ground: the rush of the “Shotgun”-into-credits needle drop starting the exact moment that snowball hits the tree; Caan’s subtle deadpan sass in almost every scene following the forced burning of his manuscript; Reiner channeling Hitchcock so cleanly and effectively; “But I didn’t cheer”; “Bitchly cow corn”; Pills, matches, and penguin chachkis; “Paul, you can’t!” “Why not, I learned it from you” (mike drop, or rather match drop!). The suspense I still feel watching Paul race back to his room
My 4th grade obsession with the Mel Gibson/Franco Zeffirelli Hamlet, starting from a kids summer Shakespeare program I attended. It’s one of the films I watched most growing up, and it’s still my favorite Hamlet adaptation. I’ll never shake off how powerful and permanent it felt to me as a child. Gertrude’s death scene petrified me. Ennio Morricone’s score as patient grim reaper, the slow zoom-in as we watch her piece together the truth, and the almost cartoonish way Close stands, falls, and convulses (her face is the same one she uses right before her “Nancy Reagan chandelier” death in Mars Attacks!) into her final moments bore into me so intensely that watching it again was like unearthing a long-buried strand of my psyche
Too many memories and moments connected to Home Alone to list, but here are a few: hours spent on parsing out the McAllister family tree; “Snakes snakes, I don’t know no snakes”; “maybe he committed suicide”; “Kevin you’re such a disease”; Kevin’s “What??” to his sister’s “you’re what the French call les incompétents“; hating Uncle Frank; skipping the church scene as a kid; is Marv hot? I think Marv might be hot; reciting the film with the blind automation that comes with knowing it by heart
Edward Scissorhands making me super uncomfortable from a very young age. My complicated feelings towards this undeniably gorgeous fairy-tale, & the ultimate manifestation of Tim Burton’s weirdo boy hang-up, stem from the sense that watching it is like being behind the glass wall of some fucked-up social experiment where I know the outcome going in but can’t do anything about it. And, much like Glenn Close’s poison-face, Edward’s face frightens me, mostly during moments played for humor
That time circa 2012 when revisiting The Witches for the first time since childhood resulted in deep-seeded visual memories multiplied by body horror divided by public humiliation = a full-blown panic attack
Not being able to look at the Rescuers Down Under poster we had in our room when I was a toddler because the movie scared me, so the poster scared me even though it’s just cliffs and sun
There’s no way to fully describe this but, more than any other film, DuckTales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp acts as a sense memory key into what childhood felt like. Bits of this are retained in a lot of the stuff I watched as a kid. The Great Mouse Detective, some of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and the opening puppy scenes from Lady and the Tramp are other major examples. But DuckTales isn’t good enough for me to have revisited it outside of childhood, or for it to have had any sort of ongoing presence in my life. So when I put my VHS on, the sounds, the gold, the voices and their intonations all act as a sort of time machine. Not to anything specific, but just the very fact of being a kid. And the fact that it’s so long gone
1990: the year fish-eye lenses sicced horrors on my childhood years with The Witches and Mother Goose Rock n’ Rhyme (the latter made entirely out of the “Whip It” video aesthetic). Two of the scariest films ever made, both shot as if aggressively intent on making the viewer as uncomfortable as possible (The Witches is even scarier than Don’t Look Now, I will not hear otherwise!)
How scared my kid self was when little Christina Ricci gets drunk and almost drowns in Mermaids. Drowning and inebriation were inextricably linked in my head for so many years because this (wow a lot of these memories are fear-based!)
(Not) Fun memories of my 9th grade English class laughing when Piggy gets crushed by the rock in this year’s version of Lord of the Flies
Gary Oldman’s monologue about the cognizance of death in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Along with Charlie Korsmo’s “We’re going to die. You are going to die” musings in 1991’s What About Bob?, these were the first two times I’d heard my fears & anxiety about death articulated back to me better than I ever could
The Main Course: What I’ll Remember About the Films of 1990
Wild at Heart & the pop-culture dominating 1st season of “Twin Peaks”. 1990 is, perhaps more than any other year, full of David Lynch fever
If I had to pick the actors that defined 1990 they would be: Julia Roberts, Kathy Bates, Jacky Cheung, Anjelica Huston, Joe Pesci, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Johnny Depp, Fred Ward, and the young women of “Twin Peaks” (primarily Sherilyn Fenn and Mädchen Amick)
Noir throwbacks with The Two Jakes, Dick Tracy, Love at Large, The Grifters, Miller’s Crossing
Adrienne Shelly’s purple candy color lipstick and eyeshadow in the opening act of Trust
The worst movies (that I watched) of 1990:
The Local Stigmatic, The Boyfriend School, Flashback, Braindead, The Comfort of Strangers, Repossessed, Shakma, Bonfire of the Vanities, Desperate Hours, Die Hard 2, A Shock to the System, Meridian, The Reflecting Skin
Cry Log 1990:
Life is Sweet (defenses come down for a mother and daughter heart to heart), Gremlins 2 (Gizmo so cute he brings me to tears), Demon Wind (from laughter, the magician kicking cans), Robocop 2 (from laughter, “Born to Be Wild on the fiddle), Awakenings (“learn-learn-learn from me”, the last 20 minutes), Paris is Burning (Venus Xtravaganza)
Young Janet Frame’s torn and forever worn rainbow striped sweater in An Angel at My Table
The characteristic wooden manner of the era’s (often) video-made meta-experiments (such a specific vibe; see also, a lot of low-budget 90s indies). You can feel it wholesale in Privilege, Made in Hollywood, Without You, I’m Nothing, Desire Inc, etc
This moment from Spontaneous Combustion, one of my favorite special effects moments in any movie. Major Prince of Darkness energy
Bright Futures Ahead/Hot Tickets of the Moment (from the point-of-view of 1990, not exhaustive!):
Penelope Ann Miller (Kindergarten Cop, Awakenings, The Freshman, Downtown), Sherilyn Fenn (“Twin Peaks”, Meridian, Wild at Heart), Madonna (Dick Tracy, the hyper-calculated movie star era of her acting career begins), Lena Olin (Havana, hot off Oscar nod for Enemies, A Love Story) Charlie Korsmo (Dick Tracy, Men Don’t Leave), Wesley Snipes (Mo Better Blues, King of New York), Samantha Mathis (Pump Up the Volume), Demi Moore (Ghost), Nancy Travis (Three Men and a Little Lady, Internal Affairs, Air America, Loose Cannons), Madeline Stowe (Revenge, The Two Jakes), Mary McDonnell (Dances with Wolves), Jane Horrocks (Life is Sweet, The Witches, Memphis Belle), Elizabeth Perkins (Avalon, Love a Large, just off Big), John Turturro (Miller’s Crossing, Catchfire, State of Grace, Mo’ Better Blues, Men of Respect), Elizabeth Peña (Jacob’s Ladder, Blue Steel), Balthazar Getty (Lord of the Flies, Young Guns II), Carré Otis (Wild Orchid), Kerry Fox (An Angel at My Table)
The raddest time machine you’ll ever see in Lovers Beyond Time
3 Jim Thompson adaptations: The Grifters, After Dark, My Sweet, and The Kill-Off
The year of sex demons and/or beasts with Night Angel, Crystal Force, Def by Temptation, Grim Prairie Tales, Spirits, Meridian
The Madonna pap smear in Slacker (“that’s like, a medical label, Ciccone?”)
The, as Al Pacino in Heat would call them, “dead-tech” interiors in In the Cold of the Night, The Guardian, Bad Influence, Impulse, and Catchfire
Thinking that Lady Battle Cop was if “Power Rangers” and Robocop had a baby, and sure enough, it was made by Toei!
The wild subplot of Men Don’t Leave in which 17-year old Chris O’Donnell becomes Joan Cusack’s bitch, moving in with her while she ritualistically molds him into her vision of who he should be. And the movie ends with them still together! Except that he has reclaimed his identity by wearing…crop tops!
Virginia Madsen slinking over a staircase balcony flanked by giant stuffed animals saying “Bad boy. Bad baaaad boy” (The Hot Spot)
“You told me a little and hid the rest”, the tragically unfillable hole that is Yuddy (semi Don Draper vibes) in Days of Being Wild
1990, a huge year for Winona Ryder with three films released: Mermaids, Edward Scissorhands, and Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael. And of the three, her best work is in the worst one!
Tianqing drunk and openly sobbing at a communal gathering because he can never be, or be known as, Tainbai’s father in Ju Dou
Jenny Holzer art in Catchfire
The Mexican bicycle joust in Quick Change (“It’s bad luck just seeing a thing like that”)
“What’s the rumpus?” (Miller’s Crossing)
Portraits of loneliness in The Match Factory Girl, Edward Scissorhands, Days of Being Wild, and the girl in the painting in The Witches
The amount of times Al Pacino and his botched attempt at a cockney accent say “Hermosa of Selsdon” in The Local Stigmatic
The out-of-this-world climactic chicken warehouse fight between Yukari Oshima, Frankie Chan, Jeff Falcon and Mark Houghton in Outlaw Brothers
The friendship between Kinderman and Father Dyer in Exorcist III. They get, what, two maybe three scenes together? But it feels like we’ve known their friendship for as long as they’ve known each other
This is the kind of passing exchange in Goodfellas that packs such a punch in that space between what is being said & the attitude of those saying it. The film is full of these, and it’s in this space that it finds greatness
The nourishing noir dress-up of Alan Rudolph’s Love at Large. Tom Berenger plays frog detective and Anne Archer does a femme parody a la Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
The score for Outlaw Brothers just being instrumental versions of Tom Tom Club songs????
The justifiably crowned King of Jump Scares in Exorcist III. Widely acknowledged as the scariest of its kind, yet the instructional “take notes horror filmmakers” potential of its quality has been pretty much ignored across-the-board!
Juliet Stevenson in Truly Madly Deeply, a portrait of grief that would level anyone’s emotional defenses, capturing the push and pull between staying back with memory or moving forward with it
This Jami Gertz look/pose in Don’t Tell Her It’s Me, way too good for any of the wretched people populating this thing
The crazy coincidence that two British films made in 1990 feature scenes involving light bondage and jams/spreads being slathered on the body. Is this a specific thing?
(Life is Sweet and Antonia & Jane)
Blue Steel and Impulse, two films directed by women about women in the force and the thorny intersection of desire, authority, control, and violence in their lives
Dermot Mulroney’s hot shy boy in Bright Angel whining “I just got my ass kicked and I don’t like it”
The absurd wheelchair dick-measuring race between man-children Tom Cruise & Michael Rooker in Days of Thunder!
The sacrifice of perception and relationship for your person in Truly Madly Deeply, emotional kryptonite
Wow, vaporwave aesthetics owe so much to The Mind’s Eye
The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment (it’s literally half a second, would I even be able to find it again?) when two soon-to-be-cooked crawfish scuttle towards each other and embrace in the sweetest of ways
(Yum, Yum, Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking)
Sheryl Lee Glinda, the Good Witch in Wild at Heart. It’s connected to Laura. Laura encased in orbs, her reach and significance are beyond this world. Lynch is already being pulled by that here
Alternate realities and conspiracy theories abound in Slacker
A peek into the fully formed subculture of NYC ball life in Paris Is Burning. Survival by redefining and reaccumulating family, and making a beautiful spectacle and performance out of the presentation of selves so vigorously denied existence outside the world and rituals of their making. A defining and still-vital cultural touchstone
Brad Dourif staring into the fire in Spontaneous Combustion. The American Dream perished by a network of embers
The steady timbre and baton-passing rhythms and pauses in all of Trust‘s two-person conversations
Virginia Madsen throwing an empty ice cube tray at Don Johnson in The Hot Spot
The extremely unfortunate casting of Madeline Stowe as a Hispanic, complete with accent, in Revenge. Same goes for Nora Dunn in Miami Blues
The room Abel Ferrara makes for the magnetic peculiarities of Christopher Walken & Laurence Fishburne in King of New York. The camera is always drinking them in, allowing for a looseness in performance that locks you in
Revenge should have been about Kevin Costner and Miguel Ferrer getting it on because this might be the sexiest shot of 1990
Scanning the sunflower fields with string-buzzing paranoia in Vincent & Theo
That time Jodie Foster & Dennis Hopper put fireproof hazmat suits on each other & skipped out of their enemies clutches arm-in-arm in Catchfire
Late night phone calls, trumpets, and longing to the sound of Leonard Cohen’s “Ain’t No Cure for Love” in Love at Large
This scene from The Guardian in which scumbag sadists are impaled and decapitated by an evil tree
Annie Potts and her terrible text tees in Texasville
The delayed streak of Post-Top Gun movies with Air America, Fire Birds, Memphis Belle, and Navy SEALs
Exterminators! (John Goodman in Arachnophobia & Brad Dourif in Graveyard Shift)
The use of food as the falseness of family in Goodfellas
Haviland Morris’s old-timey rat-a-tat-tat talking giving Rosiland Russell a run for her money in Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Unmistakable auteurs making bigger movies than they’re used to and retaining all their idiosyncrasies in the process: Nic Roeg (The Witches), John Waters (Cry-Baby), Warren Beatty (Dick Tracy), Sam Raimi (Darkman)
The one-for-the-books elephant scene in Darkman
All of the one-pot food porn in Yum Yum Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking
The looming larger-than-life Gothic angel sculptures (a Schumacher trademark) surrounding the med students experimenting with death in Flatliners
The inventive moment when The Hunt for Red October switches its Russian speaking characters to English. A zoom-in on a mouth lingers just long enough for it to have the transitional function of a shimmery dream sequence. The seamless conversion occurs on the word “Armageddon”
An aerosol can strikes out on its own, slowly rolling down the street in Close-Up
God of Gamblers comes out in 1989. 1990 gives us both All for the Winner, which spoofs & shows characters watching that film, and God of Gamblers II, with Andy Lau’s God of Gamblers character teaming up with Stephen Chow’s All for the Winner character!
The dye-mill erotica in Ju Dou
Madelaine X’s music video in White Room
Lindsay Duncan walked so Tilda Swinton could run (you could also argue Lindsay Duncan ran so Tilda Swinton could walk) (The Reflecting Skin)
The calm insistence of Yuddy’s seductions in Days of Being Wild
Andy Lau, without missing a beat, improvising a weapon out of a pillow case & a pack of beers in A Moment of Romance
Janet Frame stepping into her father’s shoes, and ever-so-slightly miming his mannerisms, as if gently and momentarily possessed in An Angel At My Table
The middle of Hong Kong’s gambling movie craze: God of Gamblers II, All for the Winner, All Risk No Gain, King of Gambler
The moment in The Godfather Part III where Vincent (Andy Garcia) shoots Joey Zasa (Joe Mantegna) with the “see ya”-esque “Zasa”
Take a drink every time Kevin Kline says “I’m Italian!” in I Love You to Death
The film gets hijacked in Gremlins 2: The New Batch
The way Willem Dafoe’s head wobbles slightly, like a defective ventriloquist’s dummy, during the bank robbery scene in Wild at Heart (“those are dummies, dumm-y“)
That moment when an arcade full of kids just start chucking popcorn at Robocop (Robocop 2)
The Wong Kar-Wai-isms of Days of Being Wild: the myth of the bird with no legs, one-minute friends, clocks, and rooms full of cluttered night-stands, rustled sheets, rotating fans, hanging clothes, and draped bodies full of yearning
The “women are made for tennis” lyric of Lady Battle Cop‘s theme song (which is apparently mistranslated but remains memorable nonetheless)
Tim Robbins’s frightened bespectacled boy with a mop of hair look in Jacob’s Ladder. His eyes are like tiny pools of purity constantly making pleas, his terror is so immediate and heartbreaking because of them
The persistent blares of an autobiographical boy and his tuneless trumpet in To Sleep with Anger
There’s something endlessly lovable about Trust, and also deeply melancholy, in a way I can’t quite describe or dissect. I can see myself trying to see further down its soul, and to untangle the place where I and the film meet, for a very long time
The relaxed pace and eternally charged horniness of The Hot Spot. A lust triangle with the good girl and the bad girl, sweating it out across just a few buildings in a dingy town we feel we’ve been to by the end
A few favorite title cards
Double “Freeze! Police!” in Miami Blues
Some actors largely contained to this micro-era: Emily Lloyd, Robin Harris, Bradley Gregg, Charlie Spradling, Traci Lind, Lisa Zane, Amy Locane, Craig Scheffer, Anne Bobby, Harley Jane Kozak, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Cynda Williams, Jenny Wright, Cynthia Gibb, James Lorinz, Patricia Tallman, Robert Oliveri, Dean Cameron
Heartbreaking moments of recognition in Paris Is Burning, of comprehending that the fame and adoration they have extends as far as those city blocks, and that their dreams have probably limits in the intolerant world of their moment (and, so extremely often, our moment too)
The heart of Trust, led by Adrienne Shelly’s uncommonly open performance, brimming with an introspection and blunt curiosity for how a newly self-reflective mind can impact the life as lived
The creative and otherworldly use of what looks like faded color smudges on plexiglass (?) in front of the camera to signify the time machine past in Lovers Beyond Time
The goofy and violent extremes of Baby Blood, a true video nasty-ish b-movie. Brain Damage in the uterus
The bookended fantasy duels of Demoness from Thousand Years. Glowing beads, swords, long flowing sleeves, and flying on a cave set. Wuxia at its most charming
Juliet Stevenson when she’s first back with ghost boyfriend Alan Rickman in Truly Madly Deeply, a feeling akin to when two people make a fort and vow never to leave it
There are, and I cannot stress this enough, flowing curtains everywhere in Revenge. Even when Tony Scott is shooting a scene outside he’s like “nope, I need white fabric flowing in the wind!”. Great stuff.
Impulse as major Theresa Russell canon. Powerhouse work utilizing her bold approach in portraying contradictory complicated women. I wish the queasy dynamic between her and George Dzundza had been explored more
John Landis’s great cameo in Spontaneous Combustion & by great I mean he spontaneously combusts & burns to death in a most heinous fashion
The extremely Toy Story 3 energy of Basket Case 2
Paul Gauguin shows Vincent van Gogh the “proper” way to cook, while Tim Roth’s spaced out dagger eyes and wine drooling create a dangerous tension (Vincent & Theo)
There’s something comforting in how unassuming and kind-hearted Texasville is
Italian Caricature Performance Face-Off!: Steve Martin in My Blue Heaven vs Kevin Kline in I Love You to Death
This high af bird in The Mind’s Eye
The way Anjelica Huston in The Witches inadvertently foreshadows 1992’s Death Becomes Her. Eternal youth. The twitchy adjustments of putting yourself back together to hide the grotesque true form. Tight form-fitting dresses and old glamour presentation. Artificial vanity and legendary bitch mode. It’s all there. And to bring it full circle, Robert Zemeckis (director of Death Becomes Her), is directing The Witches remake!
The endearingly offbeat irreverence found in the tunes, style, and humor of Rockula
The confident and at times mesmerizing strangeness of White Room
That time Tom Cruise and Michael Rooker were late for dinner because they were, fucking — sorry, I mean car-racing (Days of Thunder)
Jan de Bont’s cinematography on The Hunt for Red October, in which submarine interiors glisten with fuzzy pockets of bright light and color against a backdrop of tech screens and buttons, all conveyed without being showy about it
The monstrosity that is Lobo Marunga, the made-up Kiwi persona concocted by romance writer Shelley Long for her brother Steve Guttenberg so he can woo poor unsuspecting Jami Gertz into a false relationship so she can give him the post-chemo companionship he needs. I would not have believed any minute of this film had I not watched it myself (The Boyfriend School)
The uncontrollable electric glee with which Laurence Fishburne goes out in King of New York. Never gives Caruso an inch
The interrogative fetishization of cop gear in Blue Steel
The Beatrice Dalle-ness of Emmanuelle Escourrou in Baby Blood
Patrick Swayze annoying Whoopi Goldberg by singing “Henry the VIII I am I am” over and over (Ghost)
No wonder I enjoyed Lisa! I’m a sucker for a. young girl/girls get in over their head stories (I Saw What You Did! or Scream for Help, both of which would make a perfect double feature with Lisa) and b. films that feel like a not-for-kids old-school “Are You Afraid of the Dark” episode (see also from 1990: Mirror Mirror and It)
Patricia Arquette’s blue box from Granny & the end sequence from Made in Hollywood, transcendent & cutting. She walks off the set into gradual black and white before walking back on set into gradual color, choosing to seek a life of fantasy & hopeful stardom through the most artificial form: commercials
An announcement from Clamp Tower: “Fire: The untamed element, oldest of man’s mysteries, giver of warmth, destroyer of forests… right now, this building… is on fire. Yes! The building is on fire! Leave the building! Enact the Age Old drama of Self-Preservation!” (Gremlins 2: The New Batch)
There’s a movie missing from this movie: Desperate Hours, The Guardian
John Goodman’s jaunt-in-your-step theme music in Arachnophobia
An auction far in the future echoes into the past as Vincent van Gogh decides he wants to become a full-time artist in Vincent & Theo
The intense One-Eyed Jacks/Renault energy of the Marcellus Santos/Juana/Marietta segments of Wild at Heart
Predator 2, Die Hard 2, and Robocop 2 all feeling cobbled together from interference and production meetings, going big and going nowhere
The gift of Phoebe Cates and her animated comedic expressiveness. One of the most likeable people ever put in front of a camera, I really wish she had a much richer career as a comedienne! (Gremlins 2: The New Batch)
The rooted three-dimensional world-building of Nightbreed‘s director’s cut, that uncommon feeling when you sense you’re in a world that’s filled out far beyond what it’s able to show and tell you
The sweet sweet pleasure of watching Carl frantically sweat bullets when he sees that the Rita Miller account has been closed in Ghost
Sy’s improvised keyboard songs (🎵i’ve got psychic anorexia / she’s got spiritual dyslexia / and our parents won’t let us use the car 🎵) in Streets
Charlie Spradling, an actress who had a brief moment of semi-visibility (billing herself as just Charlie) in supporting or bit parts in Mirror Mirror, Wild at Heart, & Meridian
Mel Gibson’s interpretation of Hamlet: boisterous, pained, observant, full of teeth-gnashing wrath. There is something refreshing about a screen actor playing a screen Hamlet. He interprets the text with an emotional interiority rather than a projection of words and tradition. The unpredictable and destructive energy of his agony is a hit! a very palpable hit! (Hamlet)
Mermaids: the opposite of food porn
The “Please Mr. Postman” moment in Jacob’s Ladder
Alex Descas dancing with a woman at the club, a desperate grasp at salvation as he slips further and further into despondent abyss. Denis’s forever focus on touch and the body reflecting back to his intimate time with the animals he trains (No Fear, No Die)
Blackie Tat’s useless fighting style and Yee Mong’s mole in All for the Winner
River Phoenix’s character being named Devo in I Love You to Death
The magnitude of the elaborate sets and wide array of full-body prosthetic designs in Nightbreed
Demon Wind sucks but the completely random magician character and his can-kicking entrance is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen
My favorite troll in Troll 2, the cheapest and goofiest of the bunch. Seeing it with an audience last year proved this little guy’s popularity, because we all laughed and clapped every time he was in a shot
The strung-out should-be-iconic would-be murderous duo of William Hurt and Keanu Reeves in I Love You to Death. The way they easily forget the task at hand as they sidetrack themselves into whatever reminds them of whatever is so entertaining and more than worth watching the film for
Bad cops, bad cops: Maniac Cop 2, Streets, Impulse, Blue Steel and King of New York
The confounding elaborate conspiracies and rapidly escalating body horror of Spontaneous Combustion. The looming implosion of a life borne of lies now ending has echoes of the emotional build-up & release that Deathdream made me feel. Think The Truman Show if it took place in one day and instead of him trying to get out of Seahaven, a fireball was trying to get out of him
Dan Hedaya doing master-class work with endless variations of “I know he can get the job, but can he do the job?” and “I’m not arguing that with you” in Joe vs the Volcano
Laura Dern’s trademark hands-in-hair + bend-at-the-knee sexual pangs in Wild at Heart. Through performance, an unconditional visual of sexual desire. It’s as if she carries the world’s lust inside her
Kevin Kline holding up and saying “Mono-Polyyyyyy” in I Love You to Death (you had to be there)
The exact same neon see-through radio and neon see-through phones (those are different though) in Def By Temptation and Spontaneous Combustion
Jack Nicholson telling Madeline Stowe “I’m trying to be a gentleman here. Now, get on your knees, put your ass in the air, and don’t move until I say to” in The Two Jakes
The way Jon Polito says “ethics” in Miller’s Crossing (“ehttics”)
Sailor and Lula are ready to party. She hotfoots in place, bits of styrofoam bounce like popcorn and the bed pounds like a machine, as we dissolve into the club with red strobes, Powerman, and the same can’t-go-fast-enough sprint-in-place dance
(Wild at Heart)
Bill Nighy being an artist who specializes in photographing series of body parts (“I’m doing elbows next” “He’s going abroad to photograph necks for Vogue” “Maybe he’s sick of toes”) in Antonia & Jane
1990 Crossover: Stephen Chow wearing a Dick Tracy shirt in All for the Winner
Bless Deborah Reed and her ultimate high-school-theater-kid-playing-to-the-back-row energy before transforming into a Stevie Nicks wannabe who is really into popcorn in Troll 2
In a just world, Jill (Stacey Travis) from Hardware would have a seat alongside Ripley & Sarah Connor
The mousy and earnest Jennifer Jason Leigh in Miami Blues, trying so hard to stand by and stand up for her dreams of the unfulfilling domestic life so many live in
Andy Lau in head-to-toe denim brooding with cigarettes, motorcycle, and destructive emotional hang-ups in A Moment of Romance. The ultimate incarnation of the bad boy archetype
The way Suzanne (Meryl Streep) looks at Doris (Shirley Maclaine) as she performs “I’m Still Here” during the party scene in Postcards from the Edge. Her face holds a lifetime of history and contradictory emotions towards her mother – the entertainment, the attention-grabbing, the pressures of not being that — all in her face. Meryl’s finest acting?
Sharon Stone in Total Recall. That’s it, that’s the observation
The simple transformative magic of the fish lamp in Mermaids
Movies about men in big business, an 80s holdover (Bonfire of the Vanities, A Shock to the System, Pretty Woman, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Ghost)
The undeniable star power of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. The way the camera tries to capture her like lightning-in-a-bottle. Vivian’s sex-work-as-window-dressing is just a front until Richard Gere comes along and shows her that she is, in fact, Julia Roberts. Then all is right with the world
The unkillable serial killer cop and his humongous homemade silencer shotgun in Streets
Isaach de Bankole sullenly observing his close friend publicly and agonizingly bottom out in No Fear, No Die
Childhood as a fluid but immovable collection of incidents, environment, and ritual in An Angel at My Table
Prison garlic sliced translucently thin with a razor blade in Goodfellas
The way young love is expressed through neon, big explosions, fatalistic tropes, aching ballads, and an 80s pop sheen in A Moment of Romance
Chucky’s “Hi, I’m (comic blink to the side)..Tommy!” in Child’s Play 2
The death shriek to end all death shrieks in Lady Battle Cop
The astute acknowledgment in Antonia & Jane that female friends can be susceptible to perceiving and projecting onto friends the things they think they lack themselves. Wish the film had been more about this
Traci Lords in Cry-Baby. You love her immediately. Definitive vintage pin-up but with a startling amount of self-possession and character
Preserving our unified time with another in Lovers Beyond Time
A sight you wish you could unsee: Belial gets laid (Basket Case 2)
The spotless bathroom that still needs cleaning and the dreaded cigarette in the sink in Trust
The bad dancing striptease party in Slumber Party Massacre III
John Waters sustaining Cry-Baby entirely by its delinquent film send-up framework. You keep waiting for the film to start, but it never really does (thankfully it’s a fun framework)
All Hail Vegetable Gremlin!!! (Gremlins 2: The New Batch)
My 1990 Crushes:
Claire Skinner in Life is Sweet, Andy Lau in A Moment of Romance, Traci Lords in Cry-Baby, Sharon Stone in Total Recall, Tim Roth & Gary Oldman in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Bob Hoskins in Mermaids, Kadeem Hardison in Def by Temptation, Jason Patric in After Dark, My Sweet, Dolph Lundgren in I Come in Peace, Kiefer Sutherland in Flatliners, Don Johnson in The Hot Spot, Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis in Pump Up the Volume, Demi Moore in Ghost, Elias Koteas in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Madonna in Dick Tracy, Kristen Minter in Home Alone, Andy Garcia in The Godfather Part III, Clancy Brown in Blue Steel
The surgical excavation of a soul in suffering in Close-Up
The New York Stock Exchange scenes in Blue Steel. The camera barely acknowledging Ron Silver participating in the daily exorcism of greed and one-upmanship hollering
The faceless purgatorial nightmare of Jacob’s Ladder
“P.S. I wish I could mail this to you.” (Sink or Swim)
Could you imagine if more filmmakers had the precision of William Peter Blatty (The Exorcist III)?
That time Brian Thompson kissed Oliver Reed (Hired to Kill)
Joyce Gorenzi and Carina Lau trying to keep it together for the family in She Shoots Straight
Meredyth Herold in Singapore Sling. Think Julie Harris in The Haunting if she were much more theatrically deranged and ripped out of a John Waters film, her every sentence and mannerism peppered and led by the jolts of perverse sexual spasms and infantile presentation
Dennis Hopper directs 2, yes 2, erotic thrillers in 1990. One is the steamy potboiler The Hot Spot and the other is the must be seen to be believed recut debacle Catchfire
In Shredder Orpheus, a DIY skate-rock take on the myth, Orpheus’s lyre is, wait for it, a magic lyre-looking prototype of an electric guitar designed by *Jimi Hendrix!!!
*Jimi Hendrix never designed this
Michael Keaton’s demise in Pacific Heights, which definitely rivals Marion Cotillard’s in The Dark Knight Rises for funniest death scene
The heated and long overdue talk between mother and daughter in Life is Sweet
Trippy new ways of seeing the outrageous architecture of our bodies in Sanctus
The intentionally and effectively jarring fairy tale/metal oscillations in Wild at Heart
That time a black cat forced itself down David Johansen’s throat in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie
Videotaped lovemaking in Flatliners and Bad Influence, the latter a direct reference to Rob Lowe’s 1989 flash point sex tape fiasco
Could/would/should always watch Bill Nunn and Kadeem Harrison fight a sucubus together (Def by Temptation)
The 90s, the decade where the action film reaches its highest relevance, kicking it off with Hired to Kill, Lady Battle Cop, Total Recall, Robocop 2, Tiger Cage II, The Swordsman, Short Time, Predator 2, I Come in Peace, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, The Rookie, She Shoots Straight, Nikita, Days of Thunder, Maniac Cop 2, Navy SEALs, Martial Law, Marked for Death, Lionheart, Island of Fire, Hard to Kill, Bird on a Wire, Death Warrant, Outlaw Brothers, Air America, Another 48 Hrs, Bullet in the Head, etc.
The Exorcist III‘s surreal heaven sequence complete with Fabio and echoes of A Matter of Life and Death
The hilarious sequence in A Chinese Ghost Story 2 where Jacky Cheung is frozen and can only communicate with his eyes
The story of “Polly Perkins” in Metropolitan
The toy factory climax of Child’s Play 2
Chris Sarandon’s immensely watchable Why-Am-I-Here energy in The Stranger Within
Matthew Modine’s self-satisfied whisper to himself, foolishly thinking he’s bested Michael Keaton. No yuppie, you haven’t (Pacific Heights)
The way the camera sees, and the actors articulate, the exact moments Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau register that their relationships with Yuddy are an act of indifference for him (Days in Being Wild)
The hustle & bustle of brutalist spaces in Total Recall (see also: Gremlins 2: The New Batch)
Intimate video confessional pieces from queer filmmakers (Janine, Sink or Swim, Jollies) using experimental film as coming-of-age catharsis
The Old Hollywood torture palace of Singapore Sling. It looks, sounds, and feels just like a studio era melodrama, then adds outsized hysteria, lots of bodily fluids, and BDSM. Laura + Sunset Boulevard x knowing superficiality x Salo = Singapore Sling
Being in no way prepared for the hellscape descent of Clara Law’s Farewell China. Was expecting something depressing and sobering but it takes all the possible misery and turmoil of the Chinese immigrant experience in America and distills it into a filthy dissociative unbearably bleak nightmare. Miserablism done right. My brain keeps going back to it more than almost anything else I watched for this year
Miserablism done wrong: The Reflecting Skin, an “it insists upon itself’ movie if ever there was one
The way Andy Lau’s police hat covers the top half or his face in Days of Being Wild, and the telephone booth that waits for a call
The touchable textures of Total Recall and Goodfellas. Both have a tactile quality in the cinematography that I can’t put my finger on (they were not shot using the same film stock, though both were shot on different kinds of ARRIFLEX cameras)
The story of Cry-Baby’s father, the Alphabet Bomber, in Cry-Baby
The loyal and laid-back energy between Joel and K in Def by Temptation. James Bond III cannot act at all but his awkwardness creates a nice counterbalance to Kadeem Hardison’s charisma, and the result is a super endearing and believable friendship
Mysterious fragments of a life without you in Farewell China
Carter Burwell’s lilting Irish score for Miller’s Crossing is some serious we’re in the Shire shit
The excruciatingly dull attempt at existentialist art film erotica that is The Comfort of Strangers
The makeup and matte work on Dick Tracy, gangsters as geometric shapes in a world of primary colors, a world brought to life using the visual schematics of 2D
The won-the-lottery gleam in Bob Hoskins’s eye every time he looks at Cher in Mermaids. You can actually see him thinking “wait, am I dreaming or does she want me?”
Antonio Banderas’s hair metal impression in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
Miller’s Crossing: a quintessential break-up movie!
RIP Robin Harris (House Party, Mo’ Better Blues)
Cyber screens!
(Hardware, Lady Battle Cop, Total Recall, Cyber City Oedo 808, Class of 1999, Darkman, Robocop 2)
Jason Patric’s voiceover narration in After Dark, My Sweet, some of the best ever written (thank Jim Thompson because it’s all from the book) or performed. A sample: “We sat there for another half hour or so, and he was talking every minute of it. The words poured out of his mouth, and they didn’t mean a thing to me. They were just a lot of noises coming from a sickish-looking face. What other people said had never meant a thing to him, and now it was his turn. Now he was meaningless and what he said was meaningless.”
Charlie Korsmo (Dick Tracy, Men Don’t Leave) >>>> Macaulay Culkin (Home Alone)
Surprises (movies I wasn’t expecting much from that I loved): Nightbreed, Presumed Innocent, Prayer of the Rollerboys, Lovers Beyond Time
The unforgivably bad Flashback, which goes from exploiting Dennis Hopper’s iconography for cheap laughs to the sentimental twist that Kiefer Sutherland’s right-wing FBI agent grew up in a hippie commune and was born with the name Free
The shots of Mary Woronov walking down the grocery aisle in Made in Hollywood
Duplicates in Total Recall
The Exorcist III ultimately setting up shop in a jail cell so we can watch Brad Dourif monologue: the dream
Blue Steel getting slack for turning into a salacious over-the-top stalker film, but that preposterous genre lean-in is part of what I love about it so much
Considering the Chinese immigrant experience in America in Farewell China, Full Moon in New York, and Bumming in Beijing
Tom Hanks breaking out of the zombified and sickly toxic waste dump palette of his job in Joe Versus the Volcano
The playing-house suburbia of Edward Scissorhands where every interior space is designed as kitsch heaven
This animated Hell ghost thing from Demoness from Thousand Years
James Earl Jones’s gum-chewing in The Ambulance, a character quirk that hilariously extends itself into an all-timer onscreen death
Jason Patric’s astonishing performance in After Dark, My Sweet, the quintessential stray dog character, appropriately nicknamed Collie. Boxer’s shuffle, eyes to the ground, is he all there? He straddles that central question throughout like a shifty ragdoll
The badass climactic fight between Joyce Godenzi and Agnes Aurelio in She Shoots Straight. That moment when Aurelio slowly flexes her muscles!
♪ ♪ Hop to it, don’t be late! Hop to it, gotta make it today! ♪ ♪
(Mother Goose Rock n’ Rhyme)
The callous overstuffed misfire that is Robocop 2. One of those movies where everything you can think of seems to happen but in that peculiar way where nothing seems to happen
A new contender for favorite movie montage: women spies in boot camp training for their mission as undercover fashion models! in Hired to Kill
Dreamy Dolph in I Come in Peace
The adorable Splinter flashbacks to when he’s a rat-in-training in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Shout-out to the baby turtles flashback too!
Annette Bening’s genius performance in The Grifters – the walking contradiction of an intelligent dolt, shimmering through life on the grift when she’s desperate to sparkle. And she does sparkle, the moment she sees John Cusack conning those sailors on the train
Fuzz (The Stranger Within)
The gorgeous LA sleaze of In the Cold of the Night. If lowbrow was less easily dismissed, & if more people knew Niko Mastarokis, his predilection for tech sleaze & the obsessive incorporation of experimental video analog images as a way of sight in both Blind Date & In the Cold of the Night would be very much a film crit topic fav
The nerve of Awakenings has in being both emotionally annihilating and not very good
Dennis Hopper angsting out with the saxophone, crying, in front of a Bosch painting in Catchfire
Dennis Hopper, so distraught over loving (& by loving i mean obsessing over lingerie polaroids for 2 months) the woman he’s been hired to kill that he stops angst playing the sax to throw the sax against some unbreakable glass….while the sax continues to blare dramatically on the soundtrack
That time when House Party‘s climax was a hip-hop number about not wanting to get gang-raped in prison (“me a homo, that’s a no-no”)
Jeff Fahey & George Dzundza appearing in both Clint Eastwood’s White Hunter, Black Heart and Sondra Locke’s Impulse in the midst of their legal battle & the Warner Brothers trap deal that Eastwood set up for Locke which effectively ended her career
The many similarities between Darkman and Dick Tracy: the post-Batman comic pulp boom, Danny Elfman scores, lots of matte work bringing The City to life, and proposal scenes where the woman says she likes living alone
The pink-purple glow of Mary Lou Maloney in Prom Night III: The Last Kiss
Madonna as icon in Dick Tracy. Deliberate myth-making that works, despite a flat & confusing character, simply because it’s impossible to take your eyes off of her
I’m never attracted to Andy Garcia, but Andy Garcia in The Godfather Part III….hello
Starting with 6 Hong Kong films on my watchlist and gradually adding more until it became 13. By the end, I’d watched (Swordsman, A Chinese Ghost Story II, Outlaw Brothers, Tiger Cage 2, Demoness from Thousand Years, Bullet in the Head, Days of Being Wild, Song of the Exile (Hong Kong/Taiwanese), All for the Winner, Full Moon in New York, A Moment of Romance, Farewell China, She Shoots Straight)
Petting and hugging the German Shepard after Joe’s diagnosis in Joe Versus the Volcano
Eric Roberts in The Ambulance: off-the-wall even for him, full of line deliveries that skip into falsetto, and unconventional speech rhythms that get stuck in your head. I love the gradual realization that the film, & the characters that populate it, are also aware of Roberts’s more alarming qualities, as if the peculiarities of his natural essence were baked into the film after casting. “A lot of people think you’re odd Joshua”
The tale of the girl in the painting. A story within a story that leaves such a mark on many who watch it, most especially when they’re young. I’ll find myself thinking about it randomly, staring at the painting in my mind
(The Witches)
Before In Fabric there was I’m Dangerous Tonight. Makes a great double feature with Mirror Mirror!
Surely one of cinema’s most baffling moments: Bob Dylan as a chainsaw wielding artist being interrogated by Dennis Hopper’s unintentional gangster parody in Catchfire
That time when our protagonist just suddenly kills himself to defeat the demon & when everybody gets massacred & the movie doesn’t really follow up on most of this??? I know Hong Kong cinema is a cinema of moments & not continuity but holy smokes!
(Demoness from Thousand Years)
Communicating through video (Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (educational film reel), Hardware, Total Recall, Bad Influence, Desire Inc., Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Frankenhooker, Mo Better Blues, Robocop 2, Shredder Orpheus)
The very disturbing animatronics used for busted-up Robocop (Robocop 2)
Recognizing the animation style from Igor Kovalyov’s Eraserhead adjacent, highly recommended short Hen, His Wife & learning that because of this he was sought out to help direct & design “Rugrats” and “Aaaah! Real Monsters!”. It’s that lumpy beady look (the Mushy Cauliflower aesthetic?) of his I love so much. Extremely strange and totally unique
Wishing Gary Oldman played a lovable doofus more (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)
My adoration for Marina Sargenti’s underappreciated direct-to-video horror film Mirror Mirror. Between the TV movie feel, the persistent presence of a beyond, and the high school setting, its got a slight “Twin Peaks” vibe, which it fitting since it’s the same year the show was a phenomenon
Elmer Bernstein’s playful (with a dark undercurrent) and permanently “up-to-something” theme for The Grifters. Reminds me of both Danny Elfman’s score for To Die For and Lou Reed’s “Lady Day”
Deborah Rennard’s wardrobe in Lionheart (courtesy of Joseph A. Porro)
Traversing the world of Vincent Van Gogh’s brush strokes in Dreams
Ron Silver in Blue Steel: schizophrenic or sadistic mastermind? The film makes him both and it’s a goofy choice that gradually undermines how unrelenting he is in either mode
This one-for-the-books line delivery in Slumber Party Massacre III (“shewasstuffedinagarbgebginacloset!!!”)
Mister Frost’s kitchen walls, tile work overlaid with a checkered pattern of food Polaroids. He makes the food, collects his photographic trophy, and then…throws the food out! (Mr. Frost)
Anjelica Huston’s undulating back, the exorcism of grief in The Grifters‘ haunting final turn
The way the Mother and Daughter’s fourth wall breaking refracts the isolated madhouse inward while making us secret keepers of their world. In one instance it echoes Spencer Tracy’s fourth wall breaking in Father of the Bride (instead of wholesome wedding stresses we are made privy to mummy incest and disembowelment) (Singapore Sling)
Tinsel in the snow in Dreams
Unintentional cringe comedy acting class in Central Park
Meg Ryan’s Colonel Blimp triple performance in Joe Versus the Volcano
When we watched it in 2017, The Ambulance became a major reference point for Greg & I. We spent the following months regularly quoting it & watching the same clips together. A few highlights (which are completely useless without the context of line delivery): “Hey Robbie POWers!!! Your girlfriend wants ya, I mean fucccccck him”, “You will die. I could’ve cured thousand of people…if it hadn’t been for you–and your comicbookBRAIN!!!! You hadtohaveitall!!!!!”, “I killed mySELFFFFFFF”
Harrison Ford’s deeply unsexy hair in Presumed Innocent
Ricky Schroder’s in-your-face “HE WILL KEEP” outburst in The Stranger Within
The eye-bulging body-altering special effects of Total Recall
♪ ♪ This is what you want, this is what you get ♪ ♪, the seductive crawl of Public Image Ltd’s “The Order of Death” in Hardware
The heartbreaking pettiness of Su’s father in Sink or Swim
If Gary Oldman as Rosencrantz is Mr. Lovable of 1990, then Patty Mullen in Frankenhooker is the Ms. Lovable. A performance worthy of any physical comedienne, the piecemeal mechanics of her face and body zig and zag (her lip constantly trying to make a beeline off of her face), her “Wanna date?” an automatic recitation delivered with guileless pluck
Can somebody please remaster Mother Goose Rock n’ Rhyme into something better than VHS quality so we clearly witness its school play rainbow splatter insanity?
The interview footage in Mama. Mothers speak candidly and crushingly about the challenges and societal stigmas in raising a disabled child in China. The very act of hearing them speak, and the existence of a film about this social issue, is a political act in and of itself. Unflinching and sparse, and a landmark for Chinese independent cinema
🎵 New York New York 🎵
(Gremlins 2: The New Batch)
A pair of pearl earrings hanging from human organs in Singapore Sling
The crazed smile on Tom Hanks in that courtroom zoom-in in Bonfire of the Vanities. A brilliant performance beat unlike anything I’ve seen from him…and it’s the only good moment of both the film and his performance, because not even reading The Devil’s Candy beforehand could’ve prepared me for this bankrupt compromised nothing of a film
The great Ernest Dickerson and his work in 2 1990 films: Mo’ Better Blues and Def By Temptation. Incredible experiments with beams and coats of sectioned off color lighting
Prosthetics Heaven: Nightbreed, Dick Tracy, The Witches, Basket Case 2
If only Bad Influence had leaned into its homoeroticism or been, you know, good!
A Shock to the System‘s ashes in the face moment 8 years before The Big Lebowski
Winona Ryder’s very endearing delusional breakdown in Mermaids (“I love toast”)
Is there a more era-specific cast than Harrison Ford, Greta Scacchi, Brian Dennehy, Raul Julia, and Bonnie Bedelia in Presumed Innocent?
Shirley Maclaine’s delivery of “TWIRLED UP!” in Postcards from the Edge
The vastly different presence of marbles in In the Cold of the Night and To Sleep with Anger
The tasteless sight of the powers that be behind Desperate Hours making sure Kelly Lynch’s breasts pop out on three seperate and largely humiliating occasions
The visual gag of Edward slowly crouching down out of the frame to put on his pants in Edward Scissorhands. Also the moment he shuffles down the hall like a malfunctioning android after Kim finds him in her bed, my two favorite funny bits
The exhilarating final 20 minutes of Tiger Cage II, featuring 3 non-stop very different martial arts face-offs between Donnie Yen and his opponents
The fascinating and deliberately off-putting presentation of Sandra Bernhard and John Boskavitch’s Without You I’m Nothing. Paying tribute to and mocking lounge acts, the narcissism, the icons, the construction of persona, and the incomparable ability of the entertainer. And she does it all while placing herself in a space of total disinterest
Being convinced that the score for Lionheart was made by someone who thought they were making Bridge over the River Kwai or Lawrence of Arabia or Raiders of the Lost Ark, it is that distracting in its overreach
Lindsay Crouse in Desperate Hours, a performance so fundamentally inept that she’d even feel out of place in a bloated 80s miniseries. It doesn’t help that the incoherent cut of the film makes her presence feel disconnected and from a different story entirely
The full circle journey of Mo Better Blues, even reflected by the bookended swooping camera curls. I wish the journey between A and A2 felt more driven by the jazz-as-capital-F filmmaking instead of drowned out by it, but oh, what Filmmaking it is
The adorable pride that Gary Oldman has over his stacked burger in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Sexual tension by way of extremely clumsy lemonade making in Revenge
Bless Jean-Claude Van Damme’s eagerness to show off his bare ass, we are all the better for it (Lionheart)
The candy necklace in Wild at Heart
the genuine surprise of Prayer of the Rollerboys. It received one vote in the poll which led me to look it up (see, this is exactly what I hope the individual ballots can do for people!). I added it in because it sounded ridiculous (Corey Haim goes undercover to stop a white supremacist rollerblading gang that is taking back America after a Japanese takeover dystopia?) but here’s the thing: it’s actually really good. Inherently goofy but so invested in itself that you’re all in. And it’s the same screenwriter as Point Break, so the fraught male bonds in an undercover LA setting is an authentic warm-up for Bigelow’s film a year later, and a really cool lower-tier companion piece in hindsight
Ken Russell popping up in The Russia House as a sassy MI6 agent
The sultry swagger and pent-up sexual energy in Cry-Baby‘s “Please Mr. Jailer” number
The couple of scenes we get with Dinky interacting with her ark full of animals in Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael. Winona has never been more adorable (“Dave, try to be a cut above!”)
I always forget the focus Wild at Heart gives to Sailor and Lula’s conversations. For all the unstoppable sex drive of their relationship, Lynch loves to show them engaging with and accepting the eccentricities of the other via meandering bedside talks borne of stray dreams and the mind’s deepest traumas
Alec Baldwin’s “Get this thing off me, I’m a cop” in Miami Blues. Such a strange emotional quality to the moment, catches you completely off-guard
My Blue Heaven and Goodfellas: the latter based on Nicholas Pileggi’s novel, and the former written by Nora Ephron, who was married to Pileggi, and wrote her comedy based on the research Pileggi had done re: writing Goodfellas. Goodfellas came out one month after My Blue Heaven, a strategic blunder to be sure!
The feeling of solitary interconnected domestic purgatory in Home Stories, in which clips of women from melodramas of the 50s/60s are stitched together in uncanny repetition. This short feels exactly like Audrey’s scenes in Twin Peaks: The Return. They are all stuck there
Avant-garde POVs in Predator 2 and In the Cold of the Night
2 films about disaffected youth using “Head Like a Hole” by Nine Inch Nails which had come out the year before (Class of 1999, Prayer of the Rollerboys)
The (purposely) self-indulgent philosophizing in Metropolitan, young U.H.B (“isn’t it easier just to pronounce it UHB?”) folks trying so hard to talk their way out of the bubble, desperate to convince themselves they aren’t the worst
The (purposely) self-indulgent philosophizing in Slacker, the adjacent musings of hazy Gen-Xers and aged lifers from the fringe
Where do I start with Harvey Keitel in Dario Argento’s The Black Cat segment from Two Evil Eyes? The beret, “it’s a fucking cat, MEOW, MEOW”, “You wish to speak to Mr. Usher? I’m sorry, Mr. Usher is not at home”, the insanity of him putting together a photography book featuring cat abuse and crime scene photos which is not only released but featured in bookstore displays, trying to convince people his girlfriend is alive by pulling a “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” from Home Alone. The list goes on. I even took the time to make a montage of my favorite bits
Loving the revamped Barbara (played by Patricia Tallman) in Night of the Living Dead, her PTSD catapults her into unnerving laser-focused survival mode that is both courageous and troubling. Approach her with caution.
The backstage dressing room scene in Mo’ Better Blues when the other band members rag on Giancarlo Esposito for his white French girlfriend
Lady Battle Cop‘s one earring look (which also doubles as a weapon!)
The Viet Cong sequence in Bullet in the Head, in which violence becomes a forced repeated glitch. No longer violence as John Woo trademark, but trauma rewiring the function of violence
The fact that Streets, Katt Shea’s Corman produced The Terminator but with homeless kids thriller drama, has more notable cinematography than most other 1990 films. The colors of sun-kissed Venice Beach and their dilapidated interiors co-exist as washed-out spaces
That time kidnappee Jodie Foster coyly tells Dennis Hopper about her really boring recurring dream involving Hostess Snoballs so Dennis Hopper goes and buys her a bed full of Hostess Snoballs and she wakes up in a bed full of Hostess Snoballs and then makes out with Dennis Hopper on a bed full of Hostess Snoballs in Catchfire
This man who turns around and lo and behold is carrying two gigantic turkeys on his person in Close-Up
Genuinely not knowing if Charles Band just doesn’t realize that the endless parallel slow-motion softcore sequence from Meridian are rape or if he does and doesn’t care. Either way: EEK and SNOOZE
The way punches sound like punches in Miller’s Crossing and not movie punches. Muffled impact and pained groans
The gap year between Do the Right Thing and the all-too impermanent Black Boom of the 90s that would kick off more officially in 1991. To Sleep with Anger, Mo Better Blues, Def by Temptation, and House Party hint at the temporary pivotal shake-up that’s around the corner
Death by digital metronome! (Two Evil Eyes)
Sandra Bernhard’s closing striptease dance set to “Little Red Corvette”. Camera canvassing, empty venue, both satirical and intentionally sad. Strange and unforgettable. My favorite ending of 1990 (Without You, I’m Nothing)
The unadulterated joy of the following dance numbers: the meringue sequence in My Blue Heaven, the dance-off between Kid ‘n Play vs Sydney and Sharane in House Party (with choreography from the actors themselves), and the end of Mermaids, in which mother and daughters dance (“If You Wanna Be Happy”) through their upbeat table-setting teamwork. This last one meant a lot to me growing up
My love for the daughter’s out-of-nowhere dance routine in Troll 2 runs so deep that I once wasted a full afternoon trying and failing to recreate it
The WASPy legal teamwork and ethical debates in Reversal of Fortune
Meryl Streep’s delivery of “Relax, they’re just blanks. Asshole.” in Postcards from the Edge
Roxy Carmichael’s all-pink room in Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael. (note the X Y & Zee poster and fridge as closet!)
Reversal of Fortune tapping into the external inscrutability of relationships & personality make-ups that build up to crimes in ways that can’t really be explained to anyone on the outside
The dinosaur calling contest in Central Park, surely one of the lamest most uncomfortable things I’ve ever seen
Films that take place removed from any sense of specific time: Metropolitain, Love at Large
Being completely unprepared for the last reel narrative gut-punch and all-around greatness of Presumed Innocent. The perfect legal thriller? Why did anyone continue making these after this? Pakula, I should’ve known!
The blatant Lydia Deetz rip-off of Winona Ryder lookalike Rainbow Harvest in Mirror Mirror (her character also moves into a new house & has a complete disconnect with her mother!). Her fashion is definitely more cutting edge and connected to the times than Lydia
“This is how your life will unravel, Sylvia” The unwinding of a sound recording as curse in Lovers Beyond Time
The only good 10 seconds of Graveyard Shift, when it becomes a film about surfing rats
The big Waiting for Guffman energy of the dinosaur balloon reveal and the rehearsed cornball quality of the City Parks representative’s Dinosaur Day speech in Central Park
Oh yeah, that time when erotic films and/or erotica in film weren’t a needle in a haystack (In the Cold of the Night, Hardware, Presumed Innocent, Total Recall, Prom Night III: The Last Kiss, Pump Up the Volume, Brain Dead, Meridian, Bonfire of the Vanities, Dick Tracy, Nightbreed (director’s cut), Jacob’s Ladder, Ghost, The Comfort of Strangers, Cry-Baby, Mo Better Blues, Revenge, Def by Temptation, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, The Hot Spot, Impulse, The Grifters, Miami Blues, White Room)
The frigid blue early mornings of Reversal of Fortune courtesy of Luciano Tovoli
The aimless cross-cutting that makes up most of Dick Tracy: a shame, really
Feeling guilty for admiring, but not really caring for, some of the experimental what-it-is-to-be-a-woman docu-fictions from this year like Strangers in Good Company, “Desire Inc.”, and Privilege
Jon Polito’s interactions with his kid in Miller’s Crossing (the failed penny trick!)
Paul Anthony’s (of Full Force) delivery of “and just when I was about ready to wax that a-s-s-s” in House Party and Greg’s repeated hysterics over it
The way Tim Roth patiently waits for Gary Oldman’s idiocy to play out with a combination of disgust and fascination in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
People, Rupert Everett really ain’t worth all this obsessive awe (The Comfort of Strangers)
Stacy Keach with that hair and those eyes eating that banana in Class of 1999
The use of sound in The Exorcist III. Brad Dourif’s voice. Honed in on something at once thunderous and microscopic
The Reggie/reggae joke in I Love You to Death
The non-existent Jack Billingsley in After Dark, My Sweet
The sublime gift of seeing Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, at their prettiest, playing absurdist meta-material off each other in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
tired: Die Hard is a Christmas movie
wired: I Come in Peace is a Christmas movie
A special shout-out to Marit Allen’s costume design in Mermaids, full of beautiful period pieces, colors, and of course Cher’s iconic mermaid look
The entirety of Repossessed making me supremely uncomfortable. Is the worst offender the Leslie Nielsen tuckus-shaking “Devil with a Blue Dress” performance? Or the 20 minute gym sequence featuring inflatable boobs and women being punched? Or Linda Blair apeing Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice in a very game and earnest attempt at relevance? Or is it…..
The claustrophobia we feel as everyone works Jason Patric over (don’t think he doesn’t know it) in After Dark, My Sweet, and tells him about himself, making us feel cornered at every turn
The distracting discomfort radiating off Jodie Foster in Catchfire, due to the sexual demands of the film and in working with Dennis Hopper. It is palpable
Practicing “femininity” and bodily assessments in the summer woods in An Angel at My Table
John Turturro in Miller’s Crossing really creeps me out in the same way Shannon from “Home Movies” (1999-2004) really creeps me out. I can’t put a coherent explanation to it but they are linked in their transparent slipperiness and their habit of just waiting for you when you enter rooms, For whatever reason makes me more uncomfortable than most things
Favorite Performances (no order):
Harrison Ford in Presumed Innocent, Adrienne Shelly in Trust, Jamie Lee Curtis in Blue Steel, Alec Baldwin in Miami Blues, Theresa Russell in Impulse, Alex Descas in No Fear, No Die, Mel Gibson in Hamlet, Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne, and Victor Argo in King of New York, Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Kati Outinen in The Match Factory Girl, Eric Roberts in The Ambulance, Jason Patric in After Dark, My Sweet, Glenne Headly in Dick Tracy, Brad Dourif in The Exorcist III, Andy Lau in A Moment of Romance, Stacey Travis in Hardware, Lu Hsaio-Fen in Song of the Exile, Kerry Fox in An Angel at My Table, Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas, Bradley Gregg in Class of 1999, Sharon Stone in Total Recall, Juliet Stevenson in Truly Madly Deeply, Traci Lords in Cry-Baby, Winona Ryder in Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael, Christian Slater in Pump Up the Volume, Patty Mullen in Frankenhooker, Tim Robbins in Jacob’s Ladder, Timothy Spall in Life is Sweet, Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, Sandra Bernhard in Without You, I’m Nothing, James Caan in Misery, Virginia Madsen in The Hot Spot, Elizabeth Perkins in Love at Large, David Cronenberg in Nightbreed, Chris Eigeman in Metropolitan, John Turturro in Miller’s Crossing, Jon Polito in Miller’s Crossing, Dianne Weist in Edward Scissorhands), Tom Hanks in Joe versus the Volcano, Meg Ryan in Joe versus the Volcano, Corey Haim in Prayer of the Rollerboys
Favorite Characters (no order):
Jill (Stacey Travis, Hardware), Tess (Glenne Headly, Dick Tracy), The Kid (Charlie Korsmo, Dick Tracy), Flattop (William Forsythe, Dick Tracy), Peg Boggs (Dianne Weist, Edward Scissorhands), Suzanne Vale (Meryl Streep, Postcards from the Edge), Sheila (Barbara Lee Alexander, Hired to Kill), Stella (Elizabeth Perkins, Love at Large), Jimmy Jump (Laurence Fishburne, King of New York), Maria (Adrienne Shelly, Trust), Matthew (Martin Donovan, Trust), Peg (Edie Falco, Trust), Amador (Miguel Ferrer, Revenge), K (Kadeem Harrison, Def By Temptation), Sivi (Kim Lonsdale, Hired to Kill), Jane (Hayley Man, Farewell China), Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead) Lena (Shannon Tweed, In the Cold of the Night), Dinky Bosetti (Winona Ryder, Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael), Wanda Woodward (Traci Lords, Cry-Baby), Susie (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miami Blues) Jan Emerson (Ellen Greene, Pump Up the Volume), Lisa (Staci Keanan, Lisa), Elizabeth (Patty Mullen, Frankenhooker), all the Gremlins & Gizmo & Phoebe Cates & Dick Miller (Gremlins 2: The New Batch), Natalie (Claire Skinner, Life is Sweet), Nikki Chandler (Kristen Dattlaio, Mirror Mirror), Fredrick Frenger Jr. (Alec Baldwin, Miami Blues), Inspector Mina Kao (Joyce Godenzi, She Shoots Straight), Kid Collins (Jason Patric, After Dark, My Sweet), Casey Jones (Elias Koteas, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Johnny Caspar (Jon Polito, Miller’s Crossing), Sydney (Tisha Campbell in House Party), Marv (Daniel Stern, Home Alone), Lori Winston (Anne Bobby in Nightbreed), Helga (Mai Zetterling, The Witches), Roy Bishop (Victor Argo, King of New York)
Least Favorite Characters:
Seth Dove (Jeremy Cooper, The Reflecting Skin), Jim (Anthony Michael Hall, Edward Scissorhands) Paul (Waise Lee, Bullet in the Head), Jeffrey (James Lorenz, Frankenhooker), Captain Eigerman (Charles Haid, Nightbreed), Lawrence/Oliver (Malcolm Jamieson, Meridian), Carl (Tony Goldwyn, Ghost), Lizzie Potts (Shelley Long, The Boyfriend School), Gus (Steven Guttenberg, The Boyfriend School), Alex (Rob Lowe, Bad Influence), Tianbai (Yi Zhang, Ju Dou), Jinshan in Ju Dou (Li Wei), everybody in The Comfort of Strangers, everyone except Carol Kane (Carol Kane Innocent!, Flashback), Charlie Black (Taylor Nichols, Metropolitan), Cory (Eric Larson, Demon Wind), Norm (Maurice Godin, White Room), Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino, Dick Tracy), Paul Gachet (Jean-Pierre Cassell, Vincent & Theo), Mumbles (Dustin Hoffman, Dick Tracy), Durant (Larry Drake, Darkman), Woman in Black (Anne Lambton, The Witches), Joel (James Bond III, Def by Temptation), Harry Cooper (Tom Towles, Night of the Living Dead), Maria Ruskin (Melanie Griffith, Bonfire of the Vanities), Kimberly Shawn (Adrianne Sachs, In the Cold of the Night), Alex Grey (Tim Conlon, Prom Night III: The Last Kiss) Charles Simon (Arliss Howard, Men Don’t Leave), Dennis Gilley (David Caruso, King of New York), Polonius (Ian Holm, Hamlet), the head square in Cry-Baby, Joe Peretti (Michael Schoeffling, Mermaids), Megan Gordon (Rainbow Harvest, Mirror Mirror), Dr. Juliette Faxx (Belinda Bauer, Robocop 2), Hob (Gabriel Damon, Robocop 2), Danny Pennington (Michael Turney, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
Least Favorite Performances:
everyone in The Comfort of Strangers, Melanie Griffith in Bonfire of the Vanities, Lindsay Crouse in Desperate Hours, Al Pacino in Dick Tracy, Dustin Hoffman in Dick Tracy, Jeff Fahey in White Hunter, Black Heart, Dennis Hopper in Flashback, Bill Pullman in Brain Dead, Richard Dreyfuss in Rosencrantz and Gulidenstern Are Dead, Eric Larson in Demon Wind, James Bond III in Def by Temptation, Madeline Stowe in Revenge, Adrienne Sachs in In the Cold of the Night, Sofia Coppola in The Godfather Part III, Michael Schoeffling in Mermaids, Willard E. Pugh in Robocop 2
QUOTES:
most of the dialogue between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is justifiably seared in my brain, but the following had a profound effect on tween me:
“Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. Must have been shattering. Stamped into one’s memory. And yet, I can’t remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squawling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there’s only one direction. And time is its only measure.”
(Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)
Dorian Corey: “I always had hopes of being a big star. But as you get older, you aim a little lower. Everybody wants to make an impression, some mark upon the world. Then you think, you’ve made a mark on the world if you just get through it, and a few people remember your name. Then you’ve left a mark. You don’t have to bend the whole world. I think it’s better to just enjoy it. Pay your dues, and just enjoy it. If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you.”
(Paris is Burning)
“I can’t feel my life”
(Postcards from the Edge)
“When a man stops caring what happens, all the strain is lifted from him. Suspicion and worry and fear, all things that twist his thinking out of focus are brushed aside, and he can see people exactly as they are at last.”
(After Dark, My Sweet)
“I longed to be as full of secrets as she seemed to be, that would prompt a man to discover them”
(An Angel at My Table)
“Nude women! Nude women! Clowns welcome! Nude women!”
(Quick Change)
“There’s nothing the matter with my face. I got character!”
(Cry-Baby)
“Now, be careful! These things are like a bad, fucked up, George Jetson nightmare!”
(Class of 1999)
“You’ve died, and you’re still into party politics?!”
(Truly Madly Deeply)
“What university did you attend?”
“The university of suck my dick!”
(I Come in Peace)
“The stink of death was in the air! He said he knew how to make men sit up and bark!!”
(Quick Change)
“So, what did you do before you signed on with Daddy?”
“I was an advertising librarian for a medical supply company”
“Oh, I have no response to that”
(Joe Versus the Volcano)
“Tell him The Cyclist is part of me”
(Close-Up)
“I’d like to give him a push”
(Mama)
“In a blaze of blood, bones, and body parts, the vivacious young girl was instantly reduced to a tossed human salad, a salad that police are still trying to gather up, a salad that was once named Elizabeth”
(Frankenhooker)
“The acid test is whether you take any pleasure in responding to the question “what do you do?”
(Metropolitan)
“I killed a man I hated today”
(Revenge)
“Dad???”
(The Godfather Part III)
Doris: “I was such an awful mother, what if you had a mother like Joan Crawford or Lana Turner?”
Suzanne: “These are the options? You, Joan, or Lana?”
(Postcards from the Edge)
“How come you never came to see me?”
“Who wanted to see you in a cage, man?”
(King of New York)
“I had a bad day, I had to subvert my principles and kowtow to an idiot. Television makes these daily sacrifices possible. Deadens the inner core of my being”
“Let’s move away then”
“They have television everywhere, there’s no escape”
(Trust)
“If he weren’t up there now…I don’t think it would be snowing. Sometimes you can still catch me dancing in it”
(Edward Scissorhands)
“You can’t piss on hospitality!”
(Troll 2)
“Friends is a mental state”
(Miller’s Crossing)
“Stab it and steer”
(Wild at Heart)
“What’s that on your face blubber boy? A booger?”
“Are you blind? It’s a lonely teardrop!”
(Cry-Baby)
“We have cancer and mongoloid babies and murderers, monsters prowling the planet, even prowling this neighborhood, Father… right now, while our children suffer… and our loved ones die, and your God goes waltzing blithely through the universe like some kind of cosmic Billie Burke”.
(The Exorcist III)
“I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you about me, but I’m a purple people… a person pimple… a people person, there we go”
(Brain Dead)
“You mark me the deepest”
(Wild at Heart)
“You’re the realest person I’ve ever met in the abstract”
(Postcards from the Edge)
“When you love something for what it really is, you leave it alone”
(Yum Yum Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking)
“Your job is making you boring and mean.”
“My job is making me a respectable member of society”
(Trust)
“I come in peace”
“And you go in pieces, asshole”
(I Come in Peace)
“It’s amazing Molly. The love inside, you take it with you”
(Ghost) (schmaltz that works!)
“You’ve been gone eight days, Jack. A week I could understand, but eight fucking days?”
(I Come in Peace)
Dick Tracy: “No grief for Lips?”
Breathless: “I’m wearing black underwear”
(Dick Tracy)
“Yeah, I did it. I’ll cry two tears in a bucket, fuck it”
The genius George Clinton in House Party
“You should quit traumatizing women with sexual intercourse. I should know: I’m a medical doctor”
(Slacker)
“Do you miss your kids?”
“Sure”
“Do you hate your husband?”
“Absolutely”
“Would you ever get married again?”
“Of course”
(Trust)
“Orphans have special needs!”
(Cry-Baby)
“I don’t want life to imitate art, I want life to be art”
(Postcards from the Edge)
“I’m not a box! I don’t have sides!”
(Postcards from the Edge)
“Where are you shot?”
“In my ego, get me a bullhorn”
(Desperate Hours, picture this delivered a la Cate Blanchett in Hanna but really bad)
“If you don’t eat boudin on Saturdays, they probably won’t bury you when you die”
(Yum Yum Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking)
“I used to think there was a kind of bird that, once born, would keep flying until death. The fact is that the bird hasn’t gone anywhere. It was dead from the beginning.”
(Days of Being Wild)
“She spit on her own floor. That never made any sense to me”
(Goodfellas)
“Take your flunky and dangle”
(Miller’s Crossing)
“Oh, come on. It’s not as though you farted during all your dialogue; we sat there in rushes saying ‘what’s that noise all over her lines'”
“I’m so…relieved. That analogy has bathed me in relief”
(Postcards from the Edge)
Cinema Enthusiast 
Your film library is amazingly rich. Can I ask how you manage to get through so many films?