Thriller

The Perfect Nanny

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Three stars

Delicious trash!  We lounged in twin beds, a hotel room’s fill of homies and flipped between this glorious garbage and Nick Jr.  Outside San Fran was getting started, inside we nurtured hangovers, took turns taking showers, flipped on our backs giggling and screaming and kicking air.  We goofed, we improved, we pillow fought, we cuddled.  I prayed “get it gurl” as Tracy Nelson shot one liners, clubbed exes, stabbed CEO’s.  Awestricken by harlequin romance dream sequences.  Buy the slow burn buildup of TV transgression.  Oh the soapy, campy, filth of it all!  During commercial breaks we were offered make-up and cleaning products.

D: Robert Malenfant; W: Mark Castaldo, Christine Conradt, Richard Gilbert-Hill, & Victor Shiller; P by: Don E. FauntLeRoy, M by: Richard Bowers, E by: Gregg London & Robert Pergament; w/Tracy Nelson, Bruce Boxleitner, Dana Barron, Scott Terra, Susan Blakely, Katherine Helmond, Darren Gray Ward, Cindy Guyer, etc…90 min, USA, 2000

The Babysitter

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Two stars

The thrilling wrongness of being outside peering in.  Men breaking boundaries, burdening budding sexuality.  Men fantasizing about giving Alicia Silverstone a bath.  Soapin’ up her back, oh yeah.  A #yesallwomen picture.  A classical piano score.  If this movie were made today the quarterback in the diner besot by patriarchal temptation would be reading the Robert Coover source material as a sorta meta nod or easter egg rather than Catcher in the Rye, the go-to text of Hollywood for symbolizing white male angst.

D & W: Guy Ferland; P: Rick Bota; E: Jim Prior & Victoria T. Thompson; M: Loek Dikker, thnx Robert Coover & Joel Shumacher, w/Alicia Silverstone, J.T.Walsh, Lee Garlington, George Segal, Lois Chiles, Jeremy London, Nicky Katt, Tuesday Knight, etc…90 min, USA, 1995

Crash

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Four stars

I remember reading this thing once where J.G. Ballard said he didn’t get any boners when writing Crash. Like somebody was accusing him of writing a smut book and he was like, “Hey, I did not pop a single bone on it, ok?” Seems like a weird thing to remember, like maybe I made it up in order to feel bad about my own carnal reactions to creative endeavors. Aroused by baking cheesecake, by writing copy.  James Spader dry humps wrecked motorists in dwindling twilight on the turnpike’s on-ramp.  Everybody hot for James Dean.

D & W by: David Cronenberg, More W: J.D. Ballard, P by: Peter Suschitzky, E by: Ronald Sanders, M by: Howard Shore, w/James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Deborah Kara Unger, Rosanna Arqutte, Peter MacNeil, Yolande Julian, Cheryl Swarts, etc..100 min, Canada, 1996

Mermaid’s Scar

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Three stars

Immortal frog flesh!  The blood of Mothers!  A strange woman on a hill, her nocturnal mysteries.  The day laborers have come by train to our seaside hamlet.  They swill our coffee and stand stoic with secrets but they work hard enough and soon we’ll have enough trenches for everyone’s peace.  That is, until the twisted carnage.  Always these mermaids and their twisted carnage.

D by: Morio Asaka, W & A by: Rumiko Takahashi, More W: Tatsuhiko Urahata, More A: Kumiko Takahashi, M by: Norihiro Tsuru, w/Jason Gray-Stanford, Lalainia Lindbjerg, Chris Turner, Janyse Jaud, Kathleen Barr, Terry Klassen & Teryl Rothery, 50 min, Japan, 1993