Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)

Director: Michael Patrick Jann

Cast: Kirstie Alley, Ellen Barkin, Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards

Have I Seen It Before: Pretty sure I have, although memory has faded. There was definitely a time where I was taking in every mockumentary I could get my hands on, and the sight of a beer can welded to the remains of Ellen Barkin’s hand is not one would just forget.

Did I Like It: It is regularly very funny, and with a pitch-black quality to the proceedings that in my own head this film and Fargo (1996) take place in the same universe*.

But there’s got to be some kind of problem, right?

If one were to get within striking range of watching this now, especially with people who love the film—as I did during a late-night screening at the Circle—there are always whispers that the film couldn’t possibly be made today**, for fear of it being immediately cancelled. I tend to think that for every pitch-black joke on display, its horrifyingly funny not because we are laughing at someone’s plight, but more because we realize that the only reason these characters are as miserable as they are is because the myopic conservatism that passes for some sense of community in Mount Rose obliterates any degree of human kindness and will inevitably destroy everyone it touches. I’m laughing at Kirstie Alley and Denise Richards, not so much Will Sasso or Alexandra Holden.

Then again, maybe it’s the day before the election, and I’m reaching.

*Aside from a blink-and-you-miss-it (and I sincerely hope you don’t miss it) appearance by Kristin Rudrüd as “Pork Products Lady”, there’s no cast overlap. There’s almost as much connective tissue between these two movies as there is between Fargo on film and TV.

**When did 1999 become so long ago? Oh. Sometime between numbers starting with “2” and it being a quarter of century ago. Got it.

Small Soldiers (1998)

Director: Joe Dante

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Gregory Smith, Jay Mohr, Phil Hartman

Have I Seen it Before: Ahem. So, here’s the thing. I’m about a month away from what I hope to be a peak movie experience. Circle Cinema will be running Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). This would be enough to get me there with bells on. That it will be projected in 35mm is enough to make it worth a trek of many miles, to say nothing of going across town. That film alone gains more than perhaps any other by being projected on film, as the film infamously breaks by design. What’s more? Joe Dante himself will be there in person. June of 2023 will be a peak month of movies for me.

I’m stalling. You’re wanting to know if I’ve ever seen Small Soldiers. I did go see it in the fall of ‘98 at a second run theater, and the friends I went with got bored pretty quickly. To be fair, I wasn’t exactly not bored by the whole thing. They wanted to leave. I thought the movie would get better, but bowed to peer pressure and went with them.

So, yes. It’s with supreme shame I admit that the one film I’ve ever walked out of in the theater was one directed by Joe Dante. Is it possible to feel guilty about not thinking much of a movie several decades later.

Did I Like It: I’m comforted by the realization, after a little bit of further reading, that Dante never felt particularly thrilled with the film, as he was initially hired on to make a Dante film, with subversive and demented being the guiding words. Then, the studio decided that this had the potential (or market research) to be a big summer movie for kids, and the whole thing got smoothed out.

That’s why it will never be among the great Dante films. But that doesn’t make it uniquely unfortunate. As long as Dante kept making big studio films after Matinee (1993), or probably after Gremlins 2, those studios tried to reign him in. That’s okay. You can only get away with absolute heists of movies so many times before the powers that be get wise.

But he still manages to fit in some singularly Danteian things. The fundamental construction of the piece is a little subversive, with the monstrous creatures the heroes and the soldiers being (without much modification) the villains. References to movies like Bride of Frankenstein (1935) abound to let us big kids know that the man is still trying to show us all as good a time as possible.

Interview with the Vampire (1994)

Director: Neil Jordan

Cast: Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Kirsten Dunst

Have I Seen it Before: Sure. My main memory is “Sympathy for the Devil” playing over the film’s last few minutes, which seems like a weird tonal choice. One wonders if several years later it will rise above that memory. I recently read the book, and I found it to be far too mired in an unrelentingly unhealthy fixation with Claudia (Dunst).

Did I Like It: I still think the final needle-drop is a weird tone shift for the movie. It reeks of something added in reshoots at the behest of a studio executive that felt if the movie had to end on a down note, it at least needed one more jump scare to get people out on an adrenaline high. It doesn’t really make sense that Lestat (Cruise, back when he could reasonably be expected to share leading-man status with anyone else in a film) is there in San Francisco, back to something resembling full strength after spending that much time enfeebled by his last encounter with Claudia.

And yet, I did enjoy the movie if I take those last few minutes out of the equation. I’ll admit that I found the novel to be a terrible slog, more interested in navel gazing than in moving along with themes or plot, but Jordan and company have wisely moved things along at a brisk enough pace. I was especially moved by the notion that this is—if even briefly—a movie briefly very in love with movies. Louis finds he does miss the sunlight, and eventually finds as motion pictures develop that he can get that back by taking in a late screening. The characters of Rice’s novel are unconcerned with finding comfort in books, so it was a delight to have a moment where form and theme become one. Honestly, if it was clear that I could still enjoy movies as they are released for the years to come, I might be able to get on board with the whole immortality thing.