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Showing posts with label marisa tomei. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marisa tomei. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Bending Reality: HAPPY ACCIDENTS
As far back as I can remember, I've always been a sucker for a good time-travel story. If the time travel is wrapped around a convincing romance, even better. Literary standouts of the genre include Time and Again, Bid Time Return (which became the movie Somewhere In Time), and The Time Traveler's Wife. Movie-wise you've got Time After Time, 12 Monkeys, the obscure but great 12:01, and last year's Safety Not Guaranteed. On TV the grandaddy of them all was the first-season Star Trek episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever," written by Harlan Ellison and considered among the best Trek episodes ever made (of any generation).
Brad Anderson's Happy Accidents (2000) juggles elements from many of its predecessors yet manages, in its grounded, low-budget way, to make an impressive contribution to the time-travel-romance. You can tell this movie--written, directed, and edited by Anderson--was made with far more love than money. It's sci-fi of the mind, with nary a special effect to be seen. Imagine (if you will) a feature-length episode of The Twilight Zone, only shot in a realistic New York setting with quirky humor and bucketloads of heart.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Tales of the '70s: Freaks, Geeks, and Slums
Whether by coincidence or fate, two of the titles I decided to review today are late-1990s takes on growing up in the late '70s. One is a snappy indie comedy, the other a painfully honest (and funny) TV series that continues to deserve all belated praise hurled its way.
For a long time I avoided this movie. A long time. Like, since it was first released, which goes back 15 years now. Why? I remember the positive reviews when it came out, and it still seems well regarded today. But despite that—and the fact that it co-stars my alternate-reality future wife, Marisa Tomei—I just never felt drawn in enough to give it a shot.
Maybe it was the title. For whatever reason, titles are important to me, and the word "slums" has never exactly squeezed my happy gland. (Come to think of it, that may be why I still haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire.) And though I'd loved Paul Mazursky's Down and Out In Beverly Hills (and liked Beverly Hills Cop well enough), as a devout New Yorker at the time I may have simply had my fill of things L.A.
I was wrong. Twenty lashes for Past David. This brash little comedy/drama is that all-too-rare coming-of-age story told from the girl's point of view, and unlike a lot of American films on the subject, it's not afraid to push a few buttons. That's attributable not only to its indie outlier status, but to writer/director Tamara Jenkins, who based much of the film on her own nomadic childhood. This isn't a rose-colored portrait of (cue violins) "one girl's coming of age." There's little sentimentality here—at least when it comes to the kids—even if it's not as comically merciless as 1995's Welcome to the Dollhouse. Still, any film that depicts its 14-year-old heroine on a bathroom floor experiencing her first vibrator gets big points in a film industry still notoriously squeamish dealing with young girls' sexuality.
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Slums of Beverly Hills (1998) - EXPIRED
For a long time I avoided this movie. A long time. Like, since it was first released, which goes back 15 years now. Why? I remember the positive reviews when it came out, and it still seems well regarded today. But despite that—and the fact that it co-stars my alternate-reality future wife, Marisa Tomei—I just never felt drawn in enough to give it a shot.
Maybe it was the title. For whatever reason, titles are important to me, and the word "slums" has never exactly squeezed my happy gland. (Come to think of it, that may be why I still haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire.) And though I'd loved Paul Mazursky's Down and Out In Beverly Hills (and liked Beverly Hills Cop well enough), as a devout New Yorker at the time I may have simply had my fill of things L.A.
I was wrong. Twenty lashes for Past David. This brash little comedy/drama is that all-too-rare coming-of-age story told from the girl's point of view, and unlike a lot of American films on the subject, it's not afraid to push a few buttons. That's attributable not only to its indie outlier status, but to writer/director Tamara Jenkins, who based much of the film on her own nomadic childhood. This isn't a rose-colored portrait of (cue violins) "one girl's coming of age." There's little sentimentality here—at least when it comes to the kids—even if it's not as comically merciless as 1995's Welcome to the Dollhouse. Still, any film that depicts its 14-year-old heroine on a bathroom floor experiencing her first vibrator gets big points in a film industry still notoriously squeamish dealing with young girls' sexuality.
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