JUNESPLOITATION Week Five (June 27-30)

27. Albert Pyun!

DOLLMAN (1991)
Trailers: Trancers, Cyborg

This ends up being a fairly simple movie for such an out-there and frankly silly premise. Tim Thomerson (Trancers) plays a policeman on another planet who, in pursuing a criminal into outer space, is somehow shrunk to 13 inches tall and becomes stranded on Earth where everyone is a giant in comparison. He's offered shelter by a mother and her son, and I have never wanted to throttle someone more than this boy, who invites half the neighborhood into his mom's apartment to gawk at Dollman's spaceship while he's actively trying to hide. Despite the movie's sci-fi trappings, the plot feels more like a western, with the hero protecting this family and their neighborhood from an oppressive group of outsiders. Jackie Earle Haley shows up here, just before he took a decade-plus break from acting, and he makes a fairly good villain, if easily disposed of (one of the movie's key problems).

28. ‘80s Horror!

DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE (1980)

Trailers: Maniac, Absurd

This was another one I was dreading because of its reputation. But like They Call Her One-Eye before it, I ended up really loving it. It reminded me a lot of Maniac (1980), both for the main character and his ultimate demise. The infamous burning scene (the only time we see him do it, with clever cuts to imply all future incidents) is genuinely upsetting, and I can see why people at the time were so shocked by it. But some very smart camera work (a split prism effect) tricks you into thinking you're seeing more than you are. The killer is played by Dan Grimaldi (of The Sopranos) and he's really good at being a nice guy who (somewhat) believably is able to lure women to his home, and I love that the movie spends a lot of time dealing with his issues, especially in the scenes where he monologues at his room of corpses.

29. Sword and Sorcery!

LEGEND (1985)

Trailers: Willow, Krull

I'm not sure what's wilder: seeing Tom Cruise in a movie like this, playing a role like this, or Ridley Scott directing a film like this. The story I could take or leave, but the visuals in this movie are pretty extraordinary. I don't just mean special effects, which here of course are practical, but the overall look of the film, which is beautiful. There's also some decent worldbuilding and incredible makeup work. I do wish it looked less like the entire film was shot on a sound stage. It has to have been, right? It doesn't look like any of those actors even saw an actual tree during filming. I don't really care all that much about that in general, but it does take away the sense of scope and it doesn't feel like anything that happens has much impact on the world outside this forest. But then that's the same for a whole lot of fairy tales, which is ultimately what this feels like.

30. DTV!

THINGS (1989)

Trailers: Sledge Hammer, Dream Stalker

I probably could have made a distinction for this prompt between "direct to video" and "shot on video." But I'd been waiting for an excuse to circle back to this ever since I pooped out on it when it was on The Last Drive-In last season. I had to watch that version of this, so that I could get a periodic jolt back to my senses from Joe Bob Briggs's commentary. This truly feels like a movie that was shot over the weekend at a friend's house. I *think* the basic story is that this guy and his wife had been trying unsuccessfully to have a kid, then went to a doctor who was part of a demonic cult or something and performed this strange procedure on them ... which for some reason not only killed the wife but resulted in a hoard of Things infesting the guy's house? I guess? I'm glad I saw this, but I found myself longing for the competency of Ed Wood and Neil Breen. I mean, a guy disappears from frame in a jump cut, and we're told he entered the third, fourth and fifth dimensions? This is a movie that has to be seen to be believed, and not in a good way.

SUMMERFEST '22: Wanna Play? (June 20-26)

I’d seen the first two Child's Play movies, heard mixed things about Bride and Seed, and great things about Curse and Cult. I got the box set of these main seven films about a year ago and decided to use my summer calendar as an excuse to finally tackle this franchise properly. The reboot and TV series are on deck for next week. Spoiler alert: I think this has turned out to be my favorite overall slasher franchise.

Child’s Play (1988) (rewatch)

Trailers: Fright Night, Magic

I like this more every time I watch it, and it’s still pretty effectively scary. I love how the story builds and that you don’t even hear Brad Dourif’s iconic voice performance until just past the halfway point, and that weirdly it's frequently the job of adorable child actor Alex Vincent to sell the scares in the first half. But when Chucky finally reveals himself to Andy’s mom in one of the greatest profanity-riddled explosions of all time, the movie really kicks into high gear. The ending is a bit much, with one or two too many “we got him”s. But this movie spawned a franchise for a reason. Classic 1980s horror.

Child’s Play 2 (1990) (rewatch)

Trailers: Friday the 13th Part 2, Toys

The concept is already getting a *bit* repetitive here, but I appreciate that the early movies take seriously what would actually happen to the characters who cross paths with Chucky. It feels pretty logical that Andy would be separated from his mom (who was put away because no one believed her about the murderous doll) and end up a ward of the state. While I like the original more, the second film has several memorable sequences, such as the opening reassembly of the original doll, Chucky beating the teacher to death with a yardstick and basically the entire third act in the doll factory. Also, Kyle rules. Can’t wait to see her again later in the series.

Child’s Play 3 (1991)

Trailers: Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, Trilogy of Terror

I appreciate that this is a wholly new setting, but it’s not a very interesting one. Putting a now teenaged Andy in military school is, again, a refreshingly realistic development given what has happened to him and the fact that no one could possibly believe his reality. Much like Freddy in *his* third installment, this is where Chucky’s personality and one-liners start to wear thin (it will get much worse, I’ve heard). The climax in the dark ride is kind of fun, but you have to wonder where all the other people are and how no one else is seeing what’s going on (also why a ride in a pop-up carnival is so dang huge). I didn't think this was terrible, but I can understand why the movies went in a completely different direction after this.

Bride of Chucky (1998)

Trailers: Bride of Frankenstein, The Bride

So between the third movie and this one, Scream happened and this was creator Don Mancini’s response to horror's new self-awareness trend. I know it’s super-cheesy and messes with the series continuity in some annoying ways (Since when does Chucky need an amulet to transfer his soul? Why is Charles Lee Ray buried in New Jersey when he died in Chicago?). And it has maybe the most boring and annoying human/non-killer characters in the entire franchise. But it *does* bring in the best new addition to the series so far — Tiffany Valentine, as played by Perfect Queen Jennifer Tilly. Every moment she or her doll counterpart are on screen is a gift. Okay, maybe not the wackadoo ending. For all its flaws (doll sex, wtf? — also criminal underuse of John Ritter), it’s still incredibly fun and takes the series in a welcome (to me) new direction. I loved it.

Seed of Chucky (2004)

Trailers: It’s Alive, Demon Seed

Even more ludicrous than its predecessor, this one introduces super-accelerated voodoo pregnancy, Jennifer Tilly as herself *and* as Tiffany, and Tiffany and Chucky’s nonbinary offspring named Glen/Glenda (in a nod to Ed Wood’s film), voiced by Billy Boyd. Just when you thought they couldn’t take the possessed doll concept even further, there is this insane but still very fun hot mess of a movie. Having said that, as much as I loved the change of pace of this movie and Bride (and props for the gender fluidity themes), I’m rather glad this was the last of the self-aware Scream-influenced yuckfests.

Curse of Chucky (2013)

Trailers: The Pit, Devil Doll

The series changes direction *again* with this early 2010s movie. It’s much more a return to horror, with more gore than previous installments and a tone that’s more serious while still having a hint of humor, like the original film. It also has an unmistakably modern vibe, particularly in its "old dark house" setting. We’re introduced to our final girl Nica (played by Brad Dourif’s real life daughter Fiona Dourif), and she is another great addition to the series. This installment is a breath of fresh air, while still bringing together most of the mythology that’s been built up through all the previous films. Notably, it brings back both Jennifer Tilly as Tiffany (still possessing Jennifer Tilly’s body per the previous film’s events) and Alex Vincent, reprising his role as Andy from the first two movies. I genuinely dug this.

Cult of Chucky (2017)

Trailers: Dolls, Asylum

Like its predecessor, it continues the more serious tone and more traditional horror tropes. It also very effectively plays on the gaslighting themes of the original film, with most of the action taking place in a mental institution, where no one believes the patients when they try to tell anyone about Chucky because everyone just thinks it's a product of their illness. (Side note: Brad Dourif does a nod to his first film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that had me HOWLING.) Fiona Dourif returns as Nica (and eventually a new manifestation of Chucky). We get to see Jennifer Tilly *and* Alex Vincent again (the latter with a much larger role). Not to mention a cameo from the awesome Christine Elise as Kyle. The ending of this movie, beginning with the multiple Chuckys (and his anger over the cancellation of NBC’s Hannibal, which delighted me to no end), is bazonkers and great. I sincerely hope this is a foretaste of where the TV series is headed. But I have to watch the 2019 reboot first.

JUNESPLOITATION Week Four (June 20-26)

20. Regional Horror!

DON'T GO IN THE WOODS ... ALONE! (1981)
Trailers: Don’t Go Near the Park, Graduation Day

(Rewatch) The poster and video boxes WAY oversell this as a supposed gorefest. If all you saw was the poster, you’d think this was going to be New York Ripper or something. It is not. It is what happened when John Carpenter made Halloween and it was a huge hit and suddenly everyone with a camera thought “hey, I could do that.” This is no Halloween by any stretch, but it does have its charms in an “if you showed an AI 1000 slasher movies…” way. There are like 10 kills before we even meet our core group of "characters" and most of the characters who die are a seemingly random assortment of people (there are SO MANY people in these woods). The killer is an unidentified mud-smeared man with Mardi Gras beads on his face. And the score mostly sounds like someone bouncing a dodgeball. But I don't know, it's still pretty fun.

21. Jackie Chan!

SNAKE IN THE EAGLE'S SHADOW (1978)

Trailers: Drunken Master, Police Story

This is a favorite among fans of Jackie Chan, and I can see why. It was directed by Yuen Woo-ping, who choreographed and/or advised on fight scenes in a lot of your favorite martial arts movies. This movie follows the time-honored martial arts tropes of both “abused weakling learns kung fu and becomes the Best Ever” and “who’s martial arts style is best; anyone who disagrees with me dies.” More significantly, it established Chan's comedic martial arts style, which was further developed in Drunken Master, which came out the same year and was my Jackie Chan pick for Junesploitation last year. Both movies have a plot structure that would be exploited by a lot of American martial arts films in the 1980s, notably Karate Kid and its sequels, but it's well-worn for a reason.

22. Lethal Ladies!

HARD TICKET TO HAWAII (1987)

Trailers: Picasso Trigger, Miami Connection

(Rewatch) I took “lethal” in the prompt to mean L.E.T.H.A.L., which is Andy Sidaris’s anagram for his fictional organization of hot, gun-toting, female agents who fight crime and take super-important meetings in hot tubs. Most of Sidaris’s movies have nearly identical tropes and conventions, but the formula hit its peak with Hard Ticket to Hawaii. After intercepting a delivery of stolen diamonds, agents Dona and Taryn have to defend themselves and protect the diamonds while also dealing with a big deadly snake that’s on the loose for no reason. Everyone in this movie knows exactly what movie they're in and there is no illusion that this is not purely exploitative on every level. It's hardly feminist, but I love that the women in this and other Sidaris movies are almost always more capable than the men. Everything about this movie rules.

23. Giallo!

DOUBLE FACE (1969)

Trailers: One on Top of the Other, Hatchet for the Honeymoon

This one was a little slow for my taste, but it’s interesting seeing Klaus Kinski playing a good guy (and giving the most restrained performance I’ve ever seen from him). The story follows a man whose wealthy wife dies in a car crash and, after mourning her, has some encounters with some suspicious characters and starts to suspect that she might not be dead after all. (Fulci's One on Top of the Other, which came out the same year, has a similar premise.) There are some interesting twists and turns, as well as threads that seemingly go nowhere – all part and parcel of the giallo experience. The dubbing was an issue, though perhaps only on the version I watched. It was out of sync with the closed captioning by a couple of seconds, which made it more work than it should have been to follow English-dubbed dialogue.

24. ‘90s Comedy!

CEMETERY MAN (1994)

Trailers: Zombie, Shaun of the Dead

Also known as Dellamorte Dellamore, this is another one from Michele Soavi (who also made Stage Fright from earlier in the month), and unfortunately it's a bit hard to find unless you want to buy a physical copy (which I was trying to avoid for this project). Very charming, especially as it stars Rupert Everett, who could be a cover model for romance novels. He plays a cemetery caretaker who frequently has to kill his tenants a second time when they come back as zombies. After falling in love with with a widow, who soon becomes another of his charges, he goes on a spiral into ever-increasing insanity and misery. This has a lot of the “tribulations of the working schmoe” feel of a lot of 90s comedy, but with more visual flair and fantasy than most of its peers.

25. Revenge!

THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE (1973)

Trailers: Ms. 45, House on the Edge of the Park

This is also known by its far better title, They Call Her One-Eye, and I liked it a *lot* more than I expected to. I’d been nervous about it, because it’s been lumped together with the likes of Cannibal Holocaust and I Spit on Your Grave. But this is nowhere near as upsetting as either of those movies. This is the movie I Spit on Your Grave thinks it is, and I much prefer it. Especially as it spends far less time wallowing in the woman’s suffering and more time building her up to take her revenge. Side note: I watched the Synapse DVD, which is supposed to be a full reconstruction of the film. But it’s still three minutes short of the original runtime, so I might be missing some stuff (I know it’s missing an eye-gouging shot that I read a gruesome description of). So maybe the true full version *is* more horrifying. But I liked the version I saw.

26. Free Space!

SWITCHBLADE SISTERS (1975)

Trailers: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Mi Vida Loca

First off, on a very silly note, I can't see the title without singing it to the tune of the "Sister Sister" theme song. This movie, though, is perhaps the greatest girl gang movie of all time. The story follows Maggie, who's a transfer student to the high school that's run by the male gang Silver Daggers and their sister gang, the Dagger Debs. The movie is full of double-crosses and power struggles, and the girls' relationship with the male gang members is pretty fascinating (though I could have done without the "he raped her, but she might still like him" bit). I love that the movie isn't shy about these girls violently killing people and that they don't get away with stuff just because it's a movie. These girls have all done time at some point or another and accept it as part of this life. I loved this.

SUMMERFEST '22: Days of Future Past (June 13-19)

These are all movies that, when they were made, were set in the future. But are now the past. More than half of these ended up being set in the last five years.

The Time Machine (1960)

Trailers: Forbidden Planet, Time After Time

This is kind of a cheat, since most of it takes place in the 8027th century, but the main character’s initial travels take him through the first half of the 20th, making stops in 1917, 1940 and 1966. I liked the device of showing us the passage of time by way of the mannequin across the street and her changing fashions (although … the shop kept the same mannequin for decades?). And I kind of love the ending, which is the kind of conclusion you don’t see often with time travel stories.

The Apple (1980) (rewatch)

Trailers: Can’t Stop the Music, Xanadu

The metaphor could not be more obvious and the filmmaking could not be more half-baked. But my goodness everyone on screen is going for it 1000%. There are flashes of inspiration here, particularly in the songs, which feel like “body snatcher” versions of much better songs. There are loads of great campy moments that may or may not be intentionally hilarious (I mean … “I’m coming … coming for you…” — they had to know how obvious that was, right?). It’s an absolute mess, but it’s an entertaining mess. Hey, hey, hey! BIM’s on the way!

Timecop (1994)

Trailers: Universal Soldier, Double Impact

A fun movie, with some great action (and sick Van Damme splits!), but this is an especially bad and ill-thought-out time travel plot. For an organization that deals with time travel day in and day out, they seem really surprised when their agents come back and something has changed in the timeline, leading to confusion. I guess the idea is that they’re there to *keep* things from changing, but you’d think they’d debrief their agents after a mission to be sure. I also couldn’t believe how relevant the political aspect of the story felt to current events.

Rollerball (1975)

Trailers: Logan’s Run, Outland

This was a good deal more contemplative than I expected, given that all I’ve seen of it are the sportsy scenes. I ended up enjoying it, but in the end it’s not much different from other future dystopian stories where society has traded freedom for comfort and consumption. James Caan is great, as usual, and I liked the look of everything. But I feel like other movies have covered these kinds of ideas better (though this may have been one of the first to do it).

The Running Man (1987) (rewatch)

Trailers: Total Recall, Escape from New York

I love this movie and it’s always a fun watch, but on this rewatch I couldn’t help thinking of how much more detailed the world of this story must be in King’s novel, which the movie presumably eschews for the most part in favor of a pure action spectacle. I’m more curious than ever what Edgar Wright’s version of this material will be, if this indeed ends up being a future project of his. Perhaps the best thing about this movie, though, is the absolutely perfect casting of Richard Dawson.

Blade Runner (1982) (rewatch)

Trailers: Alien, The Fugitive

This movie is beautiful and iconic and I know I should love it but it never fails to leave me cold. That is not at all to say that it’s not a good — even great — movie. But I always feel like I’m standing outside of it, chipping away at it and only occasionally getting glimpses of what it’s trying to say to me. I also wonder if the deliberate ambiguity about Deckard’s true nature (the nature of everyone in the film, really) makes it hard for me to relate to him or anyone else. And like a lot of dystopian movies, the details and worldbuilding look great but I can’t tell that very much of it has more meaning than just being interesting background noise. This one just remains an enigma to me.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Trailers: The Matrix, Chain Reaction

Cool idea that I think someone could take another crack at now that technology has advanced. Good action and some pretty brutal violence, if you’re into that kind of thing. Keanu Reeves had just come off of Speed here, and while he’s fun to watch, I missed the empathy of Jack Traven. I liked what the Great Whatsit of this movie ultimately turned out to be (to say nothing of its timeliness -- especially as it takes place last year), but the conclusion feels rushed and unearned. Side note: That visor eyeglass thing in the image above reminds me far too much of Martyrs (2008).

JUNESPLOITATION Week Three (June 13-19)

13. Italian Horror!

STAGE FRIGHT (1987)
Trailers: Curtains, Demons

I was in love with this movie from the first couple of minutes, where we see rehearsals for a musical about a serial killer who wears a giant owl mask and a cat suit and dances around the stage after he murders ladies of the night. I got so frustrated for the security guard, who repeatedly had to put his job on the line when some white girl decided her problems were more important. But this has some great, gory kills and a fairly good story (I mean, it’s Italian, so we’re talking certain values of “story”). There are also some wonderful moments of tension, particularly the key scene. There are also some flat-out ridiculous elements, especially in the stage show. I will never be over the one woman playing the saxophone while wearing Marilyn Monroe’s iconic Seven-Year Itch dress.

14. Blaxploitation!

TRUCK TURNER (1974)

Trailers: Across 110th Street, Hell Up in Harlem

Isaac Hayes plays the titular role and is joined by Yaphet Kotto, Nichelle Nichols, Scatman Carothers and Dick Miller, among others. It has a pretty standard exploitation plot, with the main character getting on the wrong side of some very bad people who want him dead. But the cast makes it stand out. If you’ve only ever seen Nichelle Nichols as Uhura on Star Trek, this is something wildly different. I love that her character is as tough as the toughest men in the film. My favorite scene by far is a funeral scene, which has some incredible 1970s fashion, as well as a scene where people drop pinches of cocaine on the deceased’s casket. It also has some very recognizable music, if you’re familiar with Kill Bill.

15. Bugs!

BUG (1975)

Trailers: Phase IV, Kingdom of the Spiders

This was almost too much for me, as I get pretty squicked by bugs. I’d always thought of this movie as being about cockroaches who fart fire, but I don’t think that’s quite how it works. They do *start* fires, though, and it’s surprising how scary it ends up being. There's a lot of downtime, with characters figuring out or explaining what's going on, but there are some definite high points (like the bugs spelling out messages on the wall to our protagonist). The third act is when it really starts to sing, but it wraps up too quickly and we don’t get to see the new and improved super-engineered bugs really go nuts. But it’s a respectable entry in the killer creatures subgenre.

16. ‘80s Action!

THE EXTERMINATOR (1980)

Trailers: Savage Streets, Vigilante

This movie goes HAM from frame one, and I loved it. It reminded me a bit of Rolling Thunder, but this veers more toward vigilantism than strict revenge. The plot is pretty simple: two war buddies come home from Vietnam, having experienced a lot of horrors; when one of them is attacked, the other gets revenge and then some, eventually becoming a vigilante (who the press dub the "Exterminator"). There are some absolutely gruesome deaths in this thing. Especially upsetting is a subplot where our antihero discovers and ultimately lays waste to a child sex trafficking ring. The ending doesn’t really make sense, and I wish Samantha Eggar had more to do than canoodle with the detective character. But I mostly loved it.

17. Fulci!

THE DEVIL'S HONEY (1986)

Trailers: Murder Rock, Velvet Dreams

Something quite different than what Fulci tends to be known for, this is a fairly graphic erotic drama in which a woman whose boyfriend has just died kidnaps the doctor she blames for his death and performs a series of borderline kinky tortures on him. Even before the revenge stuff, there are some sexual elements in this that are just weird (I will never look at a saxophone the same way again). I do like the direction the movie takes in making its protagonist realize the guy she’s doing all this for was pretty shitty to her. But the ending is a little mystifying and I'm not sure I buy the character motivations -- the guy's maybe, and perhaps after enough time has past, the woman's, but it just doesn't sit right for me as the movie presents it.

18. Cannon!

THE WICKED LADY (1983)

Trailers: Lady Oscar, The Sentinel

This was Faye Dunaway’s feature film follow-up to Mommie Dearest and it does not exactly rehabilitate her. She looks fabulous, of course, but the movie straight-up hates her character. I can cheer her on to some extent, since there were so few options for women (even wealthy women) at the time the film is set. And Dunaway in highway robber cosplay is pretty awesome. But she truly gets what’s coming to her in the end, and as someone who likes to root for female characters in general, I had mixed feelings about it. And for someone who is supposed to be so independent, she's awfully easily influenced by the opinions of others she fears might have a better life than she does.

19. Free Space!

BLOODY MAMA (1970)

Trailers: Machine Gun Kelly, What’s the Matter with Helen?

Shelley Winters in the 1970s is hit or miss, but this is one of her better latter-career performances. Loosely based on the life of Ma Barker, this follows her and her criminal sons as they blaze a path of death and destruction across the American South. I liked this but didn’t love it. The best things about it are the cinematography – from John A. Alonzo, who would go on to shoot Vanishing Point, Harold and Maude, and Chinatown – and the cast (including Robert DeNiro in definitely the earliest of his roles I’ve seen).

SUMMERFEST '22: Drag Race (June 6-12)

I’ve never watched an episode of Drag Race or Dragula, but I’ve watched a zillion YouTube videos of Drag Race alums Trixie Mattel, Katya Zamolodchikova and Jaymes Mansfield. So I couldn’t resist doing a week of drag movies.

Some Like It Hot (1959) (rewatch)

Trailers: The Apartment, Seven-Year Itch

All I could think of watching this movie this time was how a 1980s comedy would deal with this same material. Jerry would be way more creepy and would be “punished” for it by being stuck with Osgood, and their relationship would be merely the butt of a joke. I mean, on the surface, that’s what it *looks* like here, but it’s handled so cleverly and with a surprising amount sensitivity considering when it was made. Marilyn Monroe is at her absolute sexiest in this movie, and it’s at least partly due to Orry-Kelly’s costumes. And oh honey, that ending. Perfection.

Victor/Victoria (1982) (rewatch)

Trailers: S.O.B., 10

Blake Edwards made some surprisingly thoughtful movies about human sexuality and relationships (see also 10, which I just saw for the first time recently and which is FAR better/smarter than I thought it would be). I don’t know that I like the end of Victoria’s character arc, even if it gives a happy ending to her romance with King, but the rest of the movie is seriously great and, like SOME LIKE IT HOT, dramatically ahead of its time in terms of how it handles queer characters and issues of gender identity. Julie Andrews is fantastic as always, but Robert Preston is the MVP. His early exchange with Lesley Anne Warren is one for the ages.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

Trailers: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Muriel’s Wedding

I should not have been surprised at what a lovely woman Guy Pearce makes. He and Hugo Weaving play drag queens, while Terence Stamp rather problematically plays a transgender woman. The three of them are on a trip across the wild deserts of Australia to a gig in Alice Springs. I’ve seen enough movies set in the Australian outback to feel that, when their bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere, that I would not survive in that situation. So maybe I thought these girls were in more danger than they were. But the way this movie uses the landscape as a stage is incredible, particularly in a scene where the characters climb Kings Canyon in full drag. This is a great character piece, with lots of great ABBA music.

To Wong Foo: Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995) (rewatch)

Trailers: New Jack City, Road House

I remember seeing this in the theater when it first came out and the audience went bananas for it. The marketing played up both Snipes’s and Swayze’s tough guy resumes, and the movie gets a lot of mileage out of the seeming incongruity of these guys as drag queens, but it never makes the characters a joke. These are real characters, with distinct personalities and motivations, and the movie wouldn’t work if they weren’t. This has aged surprisingly well, given how much the vocabulary around LGBTQIA people has changed since 1995 (the only truly dated terminology in the movie is “transsexual”). And the only thing that really makes me cringe now is the Latin stuff at Chi-Chi’s expense. Despite that quibble, though, I love this movie a lot.

The Birdcage (1996) (rewatch)

Trailers: Mrs. Doubtfire, La Cage aux Folles

Based on the 1973 play “La Cage aux Folles,” adapted by none other than Elaine May, and directed by the great Mike Nichols, this is another movie that on the surface looks like an “ain’t those gays hilarious” farce. But of course if you’ve seen this, you know the *real* joke is the uber-conservative senator who’s fleeing from a scandal-by-proxy and runs headlong and unknowingly into his worst nightmare. It always moves me (and makes me incredibly sad) how much Armand and Albert are willing to do — at the expense of their own identities and hard-won self-dignity — to help their son be happy. I was particularly irritated with Val this rewatch, and his heel-turn is basically the whole purpose of the movie. Though the greatest moment will always be Robin Williams’s HYSTERICAL “history of dance” moment (“but you keep it all inside”).

Flawless (1999)

Trailers: St. Elmo’s Fire, Stardust

I did not like this very much. Philip Seymour Hoffman is great, as he always was, and his scenes with Robert DeNiro are the heart of the movie. But the rest of the movie feels like an afterthought. I couldn’t follow who was who and most of the time everything was so underlit that I couldn’t see what was even happening. (What was with the late 90s/early 00s trend of barely lighting scenes and keeping the audience literally in the dark?) I did appreciate that Hoffman’s character was not some perfect angel and was willing to do some not great things to protect his own self interest. It made him a lot more real and relatable.    

Kinky Boots (2005)

Trailers: The Full Monty, Billy Elliott

Fun but fairly formulaic British working class underdog story. Chiwetel Ejiofor is lovely, but the real surprise here for me was Joel Edgerton, who I did not realize until this movie was not American. Nick Frost, fresh off SHAUN OF THE DEAD, was another standout in the standard “misogynist asshole who comes around a bit too quickly and conveniently” role. Even if it was predictable, I did love the runway climax and how Charlie’s embarrassing moment ends up looking like it’s part of the show. I’ve never seen the musical but this movie makes me curious to check it out, especially with Billy Porter as Lola.