February 2023 Media Roundup
"You're cute, like a velvet glove cast in iron."
Illustration: Working Girls (1931)
Hello friends!
ICYMI this month, I covered the excellent series, Working Girl(s), at Anthology Film Archives. Centered around the 1986 Lizzie Borden film, the four entries in this series have nearly identical titles, span six decades of cinema, and all center on themes of sex, class, and labor.
If you’re reading this, thanks for coming along <3
FILMS
The Novice (d. Lauren Hadaway, 2021)
I feel like I haven’t heard anyone talk about this movie, which is a really strong directorial debut. The comparisons to Whiplash make sense and are fairly obvious (Hadaway apparently even worked in the sound department on that movie), but The Novice diverges by having its protagonist completely and maniacally self-driven. No external forces are pressuring her to become an elite rower, and we learn that she is not, in fact, relying on a varsity spot for a scholarship. Isabelle Fuhrman’s performance here is electric (I’ve only ever seen her in the Oprhan films, in which she’s also great); a compelling and sad portrait of someone mistaking self-destruction for self-improvement. While the viewer watches her in amazement and disgust, the fact that her pursuit of greatness, however misplaced, is one of life and death for her personally, rings true.
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (d. Russ Meyer, 1965) (Rewatch)
I watched this on 35mm at The Paris Theater on 58th St., aka the house that Netflix bought, as part of a series allegedly co-curated by Pam Anderson. This was by far the coldest, windiest night of the winter (knock on wood) and I’m glad I dragged my ass uptown because damn did I enjoy revisiting this on the big screen. I struggle to remember the last time I’ve seen what John Waters once called, “beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made. It is possibly better than any film that will be made in the future,” but it was definitely at least over a decade ago. What once resonated with a young cult film fan (me) for its camp and brazen sleaze filled me with a new appreciation. The line delivery is pulpy and punny, yes, but self-aware and really fun! And Meyer shoots his renegade women with a reverent, awed gaze. I’ve never seen a woman appear as heroic and worshiped in the frame as Tura Satana is in this movie. Her breasts are truly on screen to dominate, not just titillate. “Everything we touch is hard!”
OTHER FIRST WATCHES
The Dinner (d. Oren Moverman, 2017)
The People vs. Larry Flynt (d. Miloš Forman, 1996)
Knock at the Cabin (d. M. Night Shyamalan, 2023)
Juliana do Amor Perdido (1969, Sérgio Ricardo)
Solomon King (d. Sal Watts, 1974)
Alice Darling (Mary Nighy, 2022)
Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946)
Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964)
Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things (Thomas Casey, 1971)
Death Machine (Stephen Norrington, 1994)
Working Girls (Dorothy Arzner, 1931)
The Set-Up (Kathryn Bigelow, 1978)
She Must Be Seeing Things (Sheila McLaughlin, 1987)
REWATCHES
Road House (d. Rowdy Herrington, 1989)
Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
Alucarda (Juan Lopez Moctezuma, 1977)
The First Wives Club (Hugh Wilson, 1996)
Working Girl (Mike Nichols, 1988)
BOOKS
Jane: A Murder - Maggie Nelson (2005)
Poetic and disturbing and an underrated work by Nelson. She creates a portrait, or rather a feeling, of the aunt she never met. Felt like an antidote to the true crime “genre.”
Happy Hour - Marlowe Granados (2020)
Fun and frothy without being frivolous. The prose really worked for me here in a way that lots of modern novels about “twenty-somethings in the big city” do not. I love that it was uninterested in the Millennial experience of it all and more concerned with the wistfulness and aimlessness of being a certain age and being one foot in, one foot out of the class circles these characters travel in.
The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick (2019) - Mallory O’Meara (2019)
Didn’t put it down because I wanted to learn about Milicent Patrick, but boy was I tempted to multiple times. O’Meara is clear when mentioning that she is not a historian (and unless I’m incorrect she wasn’t previously a writer before this debut), but if you’re looking for in-depth knowledge of the book’s subject and the surrounding film industry landscape here, you’re in for a disappointment. It’s more the story of O’Meara’s research journey, which, while somewhat interesting, does not warrant the focus it receives at the expense of Patrick’s biography, and often does not complement the story of Patrick very well. I was left wondering, actually, whether O’Meara didn’t turn up enough biographical information in order to compose an entire book’s worth, and instead opted to tell the story in this meandering manner. Adding to this is amount of, for lack of a better term, “girlboss” language, and attempts of humor throughout. It’s not totally unexpected for a nonfiction work intended for popular audiences, especially written immediately post-#MeToo, but it takes up a LOT of space. The number of footnotes dedicated to the author saying things like “In other words she was a total BADASS” or “I would have loved to have thrown this sexist movie producer into a volcano” eclipse any actual useful information. Anyway, rant over. RIP Ricou Browning.
The Dead - Christian Kracht (2016)
Grabbed this on a whim in the clearance section of Politics In Prose in D.C. an enjoyed it. Apparently Kracht is a well-known author, but I was unfamiliar. Set during the Weimar era and centering around the May 15th incident in which the Prime Minister of Japan was assassinated, it’s about waging war through cinema (imagine that?).
Illustration: The Handmaiden (2016)
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