High Fidelity (2000)

Director: Stephen Frears

Cast: John Cusack, Jack Black, Lisa Bonet, Iben Hjelje

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, well. Where does one begin with a question like that? I’m not entirely sure just how many times I saw this movie in the spring of 2003 (for reasons) but I do know it was a lot. Change popular music to movies, and I felt a lot like Rob Gordon there for a little bit about twenty years back.

Did I Like It: We’re a different world now. I’ve changed, and even Rob Gordon (Cusack) has changed*. Can a movie which lived so aggressively rent free in my head at one time mean the same thing now? Should it?

As with many other movies I have seen dozens of times before, I had half a dozen other things going on while it was playing, but I couldn’t help dropping those other things and once again being transfixed by the movie. I doubt I’ll ever have it on repeat again like I did back then, but the memories are all still there, and enough time has passed to make them something akin to pleasant. I wonder what Rob is like now. I’d like to think that he would have the same morbid fascination with his prior antics that I do.

Aside from that, every note of the movie feels correct. The soundtrack is great top to bottom, and that has almost nothing to do with the memories it inspires. Jack Black arrives as the movie star we now know him to be. It is truly impressive that the filmmakers were able to change the location of their adaptation from London to Chicago, aside from the long runner where Rob goes on and on about the hypothetical man “called Ian (Tim Robbins)” and I don’t think any American has ever avoided the verb “named” that resolutely.

* Played most recently by Zoë Kravitz in a recent television series that absolutely should have gotten a second season, but I digress

Say Anything… (1989)

Director: Cameron Crowe

Cast: John Cusack, Ione Skye, John Mahoney, Lili Taylor

Have I Seen it Before: Sure. In fact, it was after this screening I realized how much the film floated around in my head at that certain point in the early 2000s when I was that same age as Lloyd (Cusack) and Diane (Skye). Long, long ago, in the earliest days of Party Now, Apocalypse Later Industries where I thought the vanity card would feature a Lloyd stand in with his Peter Gabriel-infused boom box held high, only to have his leading lady breeze into frame, give him a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, reach for the controls of the radio, turn it to ACDC (or some other appropriate mood killer, probably Kiss, if I’m remembering the details of that far-flung era correctly) and head-bang her way back out of frame.

Did I Like It: That is, to bring up two points I feel about the film:

First, that moment with the boom box is, for all of it’s iconic significance in the landscape of romantic comedies, its a pretty perfunctory moment within the context of the film. To say nothing of the fact that it flies in the face of the very real affection that Lloyd and Diane enjoy, and depicts Lloyd at his least heroic, most obsessive low.

Second, and this speaks to the ultimate strength of the film, is that it singularly touches upon every type of person who orbits the subject of love. Other romantic comedies latch onto laser focus for their leads, and thus they lose their luster relative to your experience at the moment. If you aren’t slowly but surely falling in love with your best friend, then When Harry Met Sally (1989) may not always work. If you aren’t running the long con an amensiac, then While You Were Sleeping (1995) may not be the film for you anymore. If you aren’t ultimately a toxic person in a relationship that is somehow even more toxic, then I’m not sure how either Annie Hall (1977) or Manhattan (1979) is anything but uncomfortable*. But we have all, at one time or another, been some variation of Lloyd, some version of Diane, a riff on Corey (Taylor), and even a Joe (Loren Dean) on occasion. As we grow older, give or take a dollop of hair dye or an indictment, we might realize we’ve become Mr. Court (Mahoney). Don’t lie; you know you have. Thus, this film is evergreen for any time you might watch it, regardless if you might be the one holding the boom box or the one listening.

*As I type all of that, I may be just now realizing that all romantic comedies are a little weird.