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Creep; Diner-Style Buttermilk Pancakes

Creep (2014)

Director: Patrick Brice

Had I seen this before: Yes

There are many morality tales about the importance of showing kindness to strangers--maybe that beggar in rags is secretly an angel, testing your generosity; maybe that hunched old woman is really a beautiful sorceress with a penchant for punishing superficiality. Maybe it's actually just a fellow human, down on their luck and deserving of care. But there is another, more popular category of story that serves as a warning--don't be so trusting, so agreeable, so gullible or it might spell your doom. So when someone asks you for help but you feel uneasy about it, it can be difficult to tell what exactly it is underlying your discomfort: is it selfishness, laziness, prejudice, callousness--or just a spark of self-preservation? 

Creep is a low-budget found-footage-style movie in a category that I would describe as "politeness horror," or more specifically in this case "compassion horror." I find this genre almost unbearably effective because it raises a question that I ask myself all the time, namely: How weird would things have to get before I overcame my anxiety about overreacting or hurting someone's feelings in order to extract myself from a bad situation? Could I inadvertently people-please my way into a cult or a serial killer's lair? If you have ever thought to yourself "Oh no I definitely would have helped Ted Bundy load that furniture" or "It's possible I would let myself get murdered out of fear of being called a Karen if I made a fuss," then you probably understand why watching someone else try to navigate these questions can be so compelling.

The navigator in this case is Aaron (Patrick Brice), a freelance videographer who is on his way to a vaguely-described but well-paying job that he found on Craigslist. One day of video services, $1000, "discretion appreciated." Maybe it's a lonely, sexy 40-something woman looking to have fun with a young videographer, he muses as he makes his way to the isolated cabin. Oh, buddy. That would be a really different movie. When he arrives, deep in the California woods, he knocks briskly on the door, to no response. Tries the doorbell. Calls the number listed in the ad. No answer, no voicemail. This is the first of a few significant potential off-ramps for Aaron, although of course he does not realize it yet and has no reason to think it's worth abandoning a potential payday. He decides to wait in the car, where he is soon startled by the very sudden appearance of Josef (Mark Duplass) at his window. When he gets out, Josef expresses immense enthusiasm for the day ahead of them and immediately gives Aaron a huge bear hug. "Let's just do this now, because at the end of the day, it's going to be so normal. Trust me, that's not...anything weird at all." Wildly reassuring, Joe. I should probably point out that this film, co-written/largely improvised by the two stars and directed by the man playing Aaron, started life as a psychological black comedy before being shaped into more of a horror narrative, and that comedy DNA is thankfully still apparent throughout.

Once in the house, Josef explains that he has been diagnosed with a brain tumor and given two to three months to live, and that his plan today is to record a video diary for his still-in-utero child. He mentions that the brain tumor has caused some "cognitive misfirings," low-key laying the groundwork for explaining away some of his oddity. Aaron, a nice person, of course agrees to help him and is immediately punished with another hug. He is also paid up front, in cash. I am not yet yelling "Aaron, no!" at the screen, but that time is nigh, my friends. Josef gives a little speech that makes him come across as a very earnest, somewhat socially awkward guy. He then gives Aaron a high five, says "Okay! I'm gonna go get in the tub," and dashes upstairs. And thus we have reached OFF-RAMP #2.

Here seems like a good time to talk about why the casting makes this movie work better than you might think from the bare outline of the story. The fact that Aaron and Josef are ostensibly on a level playing field in terms of power in this relationship--both white guys in their thirties, on the handsome side of average, seemingly physically fit--means there are almost no complicating factors beyond the basic question of social/moral/ethical pressure in an uncertain situation. Their only connection is a pretty casual verbal agreement for a minor, one-day job. There is some financial imbalance--the money is obviously why Aaron stays in the beginning, although at some point it moves well beyond that. But Patrick Brice absolutely towers over Mark Duplass, so in theory Aaron has the upper hand in terms of brute strength. (When I first saw this movie my takeaway was that Mark Duplass was shorter than I thought, but what I have discovered in today's research is that Patrick Brice is six foot six.) Which is all to say that while I, a not particularly strong middle-aged woman, would probably have drawn the line at this point because staying would clearly be more uncomfortable than leaving, I can accept that Aaron, a giant of a man in the prime of his life, follows him up the stairs. But I'm not happy about it.

There he finds Josef undressing and running a bath, explaining that when he was young he had "Tubby Time" with his father and he wants to recreate that experience for his unborn child since he won't have a chance to do it in person. Now, I know that what I just typed out is objectively demented. But you have to understand that Mark Duplass is absolutely incredible in this film at threading the needle between "sad person" and "dangerous person." The entire movie is a game of "sad person or dangerous person?" And because there are probably a lot more of the former in this world than the latter, I understand why Aaron consistently makes the empathetic judgment calls that he does. In this case, agreeing to film an absolutely excruciating edition of Tubby Time.

Things continue to alternate between bizarre and solemnly heartfelt--there is a very upsetting wolf mask called Peachfuzz that pairs with an incongruously happy story about childhood, then an overly long trek through the woods in search of a pool of "miracle water" said to have healing properties. At this point I was forced to ask myself if I would rather be lost in the woods with Josef or the Blair Witch and...it's a tough call but at least the Blair Witch doesn't seem like a hugger. At one point Josef carves J + A with a heart around it onto a rock. Then, at Josef's suggestion, they go to a diner called Billy Bear's, where Josef eats pancakes and pressures Aaron to tell him about something he's done that he's really ashamed of. Aaron, the people-pleaser, complies with a sympathy-inducing story about wetting his pants as a child. Josef reciprocates by showing Aaron a bunch of stealthy creep shots he took of him when he first arrived at the cabin. I'm going to call this OFF-RAMP #2.5 because Aaron is far away from his own vehicle but he is in a public place with phones and such.

When they return to the cabin, it is dark out, and Aaron says "I think...I think I'm gonna head back," because he recognizes that this is OFF-RAMP #3. He agreed to one day of video services, and he has gone above and beyond in providing such. But Josef wants Aaron to come back inside for a whiskey, "to commemorate our day." And after a little more wheedling, Aaron, the nice person, agrees.

There is almost half of the movie left at that point, and things...well, they don't go uphill. But for almost the entire runtime I truly did not know which direction things were going to go, overall. Don't creepy weirdos also deserve compassion? Aaron thinks so! And that's why Aaron is the best. He's such a sympathetic protagonist, even when you are yelling "NO!" at him--which, by the way, I highly recommend doing with company. The first time I saw this with my friend Alex we talked through each escalating scenario while also glancing nervously at the darkened windows around us and it was basically a perfect viewing experience. Which is why this write-up is in honor of her birthday, by request--a thing which, based on my average view counts, is probably a service that I can offer to any dedicated reader so...you know, hit me up.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "The...tub?"

Is it under two hours: Yes

In conclusion: Happy birthday, Alex!

Diner-Style Buttermilk Pancakes from Epicurious

Just a warm stack of Billy Bear's famous pancakes, perfect for a chill hang with your best bud.

Now You See Me, Now You See Me 2; Macanese Minchee

Now You See Me (2013) and Now You See Me 2 (2016)

Directors: Louis Leterrier; Jon M. Chu

Had I seen these before: No

"The closer you look the less you'll see." This is the mantra of the first film in the Now You See Me series, a terrifically-premised couple of movies about magicians who use the tricks of the trade to Robin Hood money away from unsavory people and distribute it to those who have either been wronged financially or happen to be standing on the streets of London. The phrase opens the movie and is repeated a few times throughout. It's the kind of thing that sounds smart and mysterious, especially before the action gets going and you aren't quite sure yet how events are going illustrate this thesis. It's also the kind of thing that, when revisited at the end of the movie, made me wonder...are we sure this means anything at all? Or is it just the catchphrase equivalent of a sparkly outfit and a handful of flash paper, giving us the ol' razzle dazzle so we don't notice the emptiness at its core? Is it, in fact, more of a plea--don't peek too closely at the impressive cast and stylish set pieces or you might realize it's just an old Kansan grifter pulling levers behind the curtain?

Each of these movies is, in fact, a pile of jumbled half-nonsense wearing the shiny costume of a clever movie, and here's the thing: I'm not mad about it. The fact that they manage to have the cadence of intelligent dialogue is its own impressive feat. I don't think these movies are bad, I just think they're kind of dumb, and also that there is a place for pleasantly dumb, glittery movies in a well-balanced cinema diet. I want to be absolutely clear that if they ever make Now You See Me 3 I will be watching it, popcorn in my hands and sequins in my eyes. Things that I like: close-up magic, loud announcers letting me know that I am at an event, shiny things, spotlights, double crosses, secret identities, people faking their deaths, Lizzy Caplan, movies where Daniel Radcliff is revealed to be a cheerfully insane villain, being given the ol' hocus pocus, flim flam flummox, double whammy, and/or three-ring circus. Who needs coherence when you have all that?

My journey with the first movie is illustrated by the state of my notes, which started off fairly detailed and then dropped precipitously once I realized there was really no point in trying to track all the details. By the second movie I had adjusted my brain down to the correct level and was just swimming through a sea of pure abracadabra vibes, which is probably why I enjoyed the second movie a bit more despite the fact that it makes even less sense. Nevertheless, this means that I am able to give you the particulars of the opening of the first film, typed up intently with the confidence of someone who is absolutely certain that it will eventually all be falling into place like so many tumblers in a combination lock.

The movie opens with someone performing a card trick straight to camera, which is really effective--he hesitates a near-imperceptible amount of time on a certain card as he shuffles them all past you so that you, like the mark in the movie, have that card in mind for the rest of the trick. It's skillfully done and I am already amped. The character performing this is a David Blaine-style street magician played by Jesse Eisenberg, and by describing my notes as "fairly detailed" earlier I did not mean "including a single character's name," just to be clear. Eisenberg, smooth and snarky and kind of a dick, is playing against type here--haha, just kidding, this role is platonically Eisenbergian. Which, again, is fine with me, I kind of enjoy his whole deal--at one point in the film someone makes a crack about magicians not getting laid and he has a low-key "whatever you need to tell yourself dude" expression that is honestly very funny. He is starting to hook up with the woman on the other end of said card trick when he discovers a mysterious tarot card--The Lover--that doubles as an invitation. Hook up canceled! Secret magic society calling! Eisenberg snark on the way out the door! So far so good.

Okay, now to round up the other three. Woody Harrelson is performing as a hypnotist for tourists at what seems to be some sort of resort. His actual grift is blackmailing a cheating husband by revealing compromising information to his hypnotized wife and then promising to wipe her memory if he pays up. Ethically....uh....pretty gray area with this one. Also, Harrelson's main skill--hypnosis--is basically superpower-level, which is something you just have to get on board with or these movies are truly untenable. He receives a card similar to Eisenberg's, except his is The Hermit. He was just performing in a very public place, but okay. Different kind of hermit, maybe. Next up, Dave Franco is on a ferry bending spoons but actually stealing wallets. For some reason this bothers me less than Harrelson's thing. He gets the Death card. We don't know it yet but his main skill is throwing playing cards really really hard. No I am not kidding. Last but not least is Isla Fisher, performing a Houdini-type water escape that almost killed her in real life. Knowing that story before watching this scene made it incredibly stressful. She gets The Priestess, because she is a girl.

The four meet up as per the instructions on their cards at a sort of magic-booby-trapped location and then we fast forward to the future, where they are performing together in Vegas under the name The Four Horsemen, to a huge and boisterous crowd. The name of the group is another example of something that sounds sort of good on first blush but actually doesn't mean anything, other than the fact that there are four of them. They are neither equestrians nor apocalyptic entities, at least in the first two movies. There are just...four of them. One of whom is not a man. (One of the reasons I like the second movie is that Lizzy Caplan, who replaces Isla Fisher, gets some fun meta lines like the deadpan "I'm the girl Horseman.") Michael Caine is there, I believe in a bankrolling capacity. They perform a trick that involves stealing money from a Parisian bank vault and scattering in amongst the Las Vegas audience. At this point, the presence of both seemingly impossible magic and Michael Caine forces one to ask, is this a Prestige situation where there is something that is not an illusion but is in fact deeply messed up happening? But it is not, at least not regarding this specific trick, although the question of whether there is real magic in this universe is...frankly unclear to me to this day.

They are soon joined by Morgan Freeman, playing a famous debunker, and Mark Ruffalo, playing a deeply incompetent FBI agent. OR ARE THEY? These movies have a lot of twists and reveals and I will just say that the first big reveal in Movie One made me frown and say "Sure...I guess?" and then every subsequent reveal, once the crucial brain-adjusting had taken place, engendered a calm "why not" sort of nod. I was at peace with the reveals. I was one with the twists. "Show me more tricks with pigeons," I would say serenely. 

Anyway. My pitch for the second movie is that Dan Radcliff says "You may not be having fun but I am" and I think he is literally talking to the audience, and that Woody Harrelson plays his own twin brother by wearing a wig and bright white teeth and doing an Owen Wilson impression. The MacGuffin in that one is basically the same as the one in Sneakers, a legitimately good movie that is mostly cogent. No one is who you think they are, except some people, who are.

Line I repeated quietly to myself and will likely try to use in the future: "Was that an act of God? No, that was an act...of me."

Is it under two hours: The first one is just under, the second just over

Did I understand the plan: Absolutely not and I hope I never will

Easy Macanese Minchee from What to Cook Today

Okay to be fully honest the only reason I watched the second movie was that no one eats anything in the first movie and I could not come up with any magic-themed food. No one really eats in the second movie either, but lucky for me The Four Horsepeople do slide down a long tube and get dumped in a restaurant in Macau, from whence this minchee recipe originates.

.

Up next: A birthday special request which is not a heist movie, unless you consider Mark Duplass craftily stealing my full attention for 77 minutes a heist

The Thomas Crown Affair; Pan-Seared Fish with Tomatoes and Capers over Rice Pilaf

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

Director: John McTiernan

Had I seen this before: No

The biggest advantage to creating content that no one asked for is probably the ability to surrender to the occasional bout of Pierce Brosnan-induced writers block without fear of consequence. There is, unfortunately, no one to fire me from this gig. I can't even figure out how to get comments to work on here, which means you would have to go to the trouble of contacting me through a different medium in order to tell me to either work harder or to quit entirely, a degree of effort beyond the motivation level of either my supporters or my haters. All of which means that I watched the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair about a month ago, made a somewhat elaborate meal to accompany it, then abandoned the blinking cursor because for whatever reason I didn't feel like writing about this movie. And, judging by this opening paragraph of feet draggery, I still don't.

Thomas Crown is a very handsome and wealthy man who is bored by what an alpha he is. I believe he has more or less the same job as Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, except here we are meant to be impressed rather than repulsed by its heartless capitalist nature. His bottomless resource pool means that he has access to the type of equipment that essentially makes him Batman, but instead of fighting crime in a legally/ethically murky fashion, he uses it to waste everyone else's time because that is fun for him, as a sociopath. We the audience are rooting for him because he is played by Pierce Brosnan and the movie keeps indicating that we should be doing so. Also, our alternative is Dennis Leary.

Obviously what has happened here is that I made the fatal mistake of approaching a 24-year-old movie with a great deal of confidence that I would enjoy it. I know better than to do this! And yet. Here is a movie that I certainly would have liked at the time of its release but find to have aged a bit sourly, the exact feeling I was braced for when watching The Italian Job and surprised not to find therein. And now I've taken this slightly soured film out of storage and left it on the counter of my brain for multiple weeks, where it has started to grow mold and give off a sort of...odor.

The actual heisting elements of the film are pretty good. It's fun to use a Trojan horse to sneak into a building, although I worry about the educational level of the American public if anyone working at any building is like "sure, I'll sign for this giant horse no one ordered." Doomed to repeat, etc. It's amusing to watch what are clearly enormous hired thugs pretend to be docents. It's interesting to observe Thomas Crown interrupting the heist that he staged with his own secret mini-heist, although I believe this was also the point of no return in terms of my ability to overlook his many glaring personality flaws. It's one thing to be a soulless, bloodsucking captain of whatever in the normal course of the late-90s finance industry, but here he has hired undocumented laborers under false pretenses for the sole purpose of setting them up to get arrested and remove attention from himself. That sucks! I know they are throw-away movie thugs, but it genuinely sucks! It is, however, undeniably impressive that as someone my exact current age he manages to drop to the floor and wriggle underneath a metal barrier without drawing a lot of attention to himself, a feat I am certainly not capable of at this time. Apparently I am in my prime heisting years and didn't even realize it. (Also my prime having sex on a large marble staircase years, but sneaking through museum security looked significantly more comfortable if I'm being honest.)

Crown is being pursued sort of listlessly by the police, represented by Dennis Leary and Frankie Faison, who is playing the only character I liked in this movie. He's a cop and he's not really doing his job especially well, but he's so cheerful in every scene. Crown is being pursued much more aggressively by Rene Russo, who, I feel I should point out, I absolutely love, playing a character who is a Late 90s Sexy Woman. Her hair is always artfully hovering 3/4 of an inch away from her scalp, as dictated by the gravity of the era. She wears tight clothes and is an ambitious, tough talking business dealer. She only consumes green juice and Pepsi One. She is thrilled by the hunt but also inexplicably intrigued by the fact that Pierce Brosnan destroys a sailboat for laughs. This is appealing, to Late 90s Sexy Woman. She values a man who has money and refuses to do anything even remotely useful with it. It's the late 90s, baby! The end of history!

The middle part of the movie has far too much sexy saxophone and yelling and crying and not nearly enough planning and heisting. Eventually, we get to the end, which goes pretty hard and almost makes up for the fact that the hero of this film might be actually evil. The climactic set piece involves lots of fellas in hats, being confusing in a museum. I like it. I do not like that the Dennis Leary monologue meant to make him sympathetic involves him beating a suspect unconscious because he was sad, but it just wouldn't be a McTiernan joint without that shit. John McTiernan has never met a cop abusing their power who he didn't feel sorry for. Anyway, Frankie Faison would never. Too cheerful.

Y'all know me. I desperately want to root for the heisters if at all possible. I managed to root for Mark Wahlberg with very little friction. I approach every film absolutely desperate to be charmed. And I certainly understand why people liked this movie so much, although I do sort of wonder how much Rene Russo being topless a lot ran up the numbers there. Or hairy-chested, dad-jeans-wearing Brosnan for that matter. Or, you know...Dennis Leary, I guess. The world is a wide and varied place.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Oh....Renoir"

Is it under two hours: Yes

Did I understand the plan: The plan? Yes. The point of the plan? Not especially.

Pan-Seared Halibut from A Mediterranean Gourmet and Easy Rice Pilaf from Simply Recipes

At one point they namecheck Cipriani, where Rene Russo generically orders "the fish." We don't actually see her eat "the fish," because, as previously noted, I am almost positive her character has an eating disorder and only consumes green juice and Pepsi One. Nevertheless, there is some sort of pan-seared fish over rice pilaf on their menu, so, here we are. Or, here we were several weeks ago. I think this was fine.

Up next: Illusion, Michael

The Italian Job; Venetian Risotto

The Italian Job (2003)

Director: F. Gary Gray

Had I seen this before: No

So, first of all, I really thought this movie was about stealing cars, which (spoiler) it is not. It is, however, very much about driving matching cars in exciting and coordinated ways. Now, I have seen the original version of this film starring Michael Caine and the only thing I remember about it is that Michael Caine is in it and he steals cars, the latter half of which I am now really starting to question. Is it possible that no Italian Job in history has ever been about car theft? I guess I'll never know.

Second of all, I was wholly prepared for this movie, like many popular movies that came out twenty years ago, to have aged in a way that would make me think "oh well, I probably would have liked this in 2003," but guess what? Aside from the expected shimmer of sexism on several of the jokes, I in fact liked this very much right here in 2023, which is a nice surprise. I've actually had such good luck with these first two heist entries that my spirits are dangerously high and I am considering attempting another half hour of Heat just to even things out a bit.

The opening credits are promising-- they're giving detailed plans, maps, teamwork, and exotic locales. Notes, measurements, distances, I truly cannot get enough planning. Did I get a look at one of those opening maps and excitedly think to myself "oh, that’s Italy!" for one second before remembering the title of the film? I certainly did, and I want you to keep that in mind lest you ever mistakenly come to believe that I am in any way smarter than any of the movies I watch. Especially when it comes to heists, I'm just along for the ride, baby! You might notice that this genre brings out a much softer side of my internal film critic, one who has a fairly high tolerance for not-great dialogue as long as it isn't actively terrible or distracting or annoying or overly self-serious—and this bad boy’s got tolerably not-great dialogue for daaaaaays. If anything, this streamlines the whole process, because there aren't too many effective emotional beats getting in the way of the planning and teamwork and matching cars.

We open on the titular Italian job (I personally already knew it would take place in Italy, due to my earlier map analysis) with the team in place. Mark Wahlberg plays Charlie Croker, whose job is to be handsome and keep a cool head and also mastermind cinematically elaborate European heists. And look, Wahlberg at this point comes with some baggage, both as a human and as an actor, but I was impressed with how low-key he kept it in this and it's hard to complain about this bit of casting. He was in fact handsome and cool-headed, I don't know what to say. ALSO HARD TO COMPLAIN ABOUT: Donald Sutherland as John Bridger, the mastermind mentor, tagging along for one last job which is how you know that he will definitely die in the process; Jason Statham as a driver named Handsome Rob; Seth Green as Lyle, the computer guy who does a very funny imitation of Handsome Rob in a later scene; Yasiin Bey aka Mos Def as Left Ear, the guy who blows things up; and Edward Norton as Steve, the guy who has a mustache and looks like he is only here out of contractual obligation.

The heist itself is both interesting and easy to follow and frankly I think more movies should open with someone blowing a rectangle out of two floors of a building so that a safe will drop neatly through into a Venetian canal where scuba-clad divers then crack it and extract $35 million worth of Balinese-dancer-stamped gold bricks and escape on motor boats while the Italian boat police and the protectors of said gold bricks chase them. Like, if we're worried about the state of the theatrical model of movie releases, I'm just saying, it's right there. The people want canal chases!

The people also want victory toasts in the snowy Dolemites while everyone congratulates themselves for being geniuses and not needing guns (I genuinely appreciated the not needing guns aspect) and prematurely gushes about what expensive item they will be purchasing with their cut. Everyone, that is, except mustachioed Steve, who has no original ideas of his own, and is also debating whether the deal that got him his breakout role in Primal Fear was worth being coerced into standing here right now.

Well, curse Steve's sudden but inevitable betrayal, because that's right--it's a double-cross. THE PEOPLE WANT A DOUBLE-CROSS. Steve and his Italian minions shoot Donald Sutherland and attempt to shoot everyone else, but by that point they're all underwater and sharing an oxygen tank and he can't see them so eventually when no one else surfaces he gives up. This part, to me, was pretty funny because when you're talking $35 million I would maybe wait a full oxygen tank's worth of time just to make sure that the group of people I just screwed over and left for dead were actually dead. Not Steve! Steve doesn't even want to be here! Do you know how heavy $35 million worth of gold bricks are? This whole thing is, frankly, a huge hassle for Steve.

Anyway, all of this happens before Charlize Theron as Stella Bridger, the deceased John Bridger's daughter, even gets involved. That's how hard this movie goes. The one-last-job heist is just a set-up for the revenge heist. I will not detail every step of the revenge heist plot, but Charlize gets to pretend to be a cable technician or something, which is hilarious, because...as much as the movie tries to lampshade it, the idea of Charlize Theron walking into your house because your television stopped working is so preposterous that no reasonable human would accept it. You would just greet her at the front door and shake your head in confusion until she left. Good thing Steve doesn't care about anything.

This movie has aged much better than I expected, but there are some 2003 signifiers: Charlize's thin eyebrows, hiding a spy cam in an American flag pin as though that's a normal accessory, Seth Green typing furiously into a Dell and claiming to have invented Napster, Ed Norton thinking he is too good for this good-ass movie.

Also, there is a helicopter vs. car chase that is honestly amazing. The helicopter swings into a parking garage like it's the freaking Predator or something. To me, that's cinema.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: [Left Ear, in response to hearing that the tiles in Steve's house are imported from a monastery] "Monastery for punk-ass creeps."

Is it under two hours: Yes

Did I understand the plan: I did not understand any of the specifics of the computer hacking aspect, but I also did not try to do so. Sometimes when they are explaining things in these movies my brain sort of zones out so that it will be more surprising when I watch it happen later. I did understand all the moving pieces and the general goal.

Risi e Bisi from Simply Recipes

Ugh, no one eats in heist movies. They're too busy heisting and swigging victory champagne. I guess this risotto is something that other, non-heist-related people might have been eating in Venice as several boats flew by them at alarming speeds.

Up next: I'm going out of town next week, definitely not to steal anything in a manner that involves a group of wisecracking characters with different skillsets and a lot of maps and diagrams, so I'm not sure yet. 

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three; Subway Sandwich

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Director: Joseph Sargent

Had I seen this before: No

As a New Year's treat to myself I have decided to embark on one of my favorite film genres, the heist movie. As a New Year's resolution-ish edification endeavor, I'm gong to try to cover at least a few examples of the genre that I have never seen. Now, you should know that my very first attempt at this was a failure, as I got about 31 minutes into the 170 minutes of Michael Mann's Heat before accepting that I have been correct all these years in assuming that the work of Michael Mann is powerfully, almost elementally, Not For Me. Because I do not want to feel like I wasted 31 minutes of my time, I am now going to waste even more of my time and also some of yours with a mini-review of the first half-hour of Heat. This is the energy I am taking into 2023, i.e., the same energy I have always had about everything.

At the time of this blog post, Heat is streaming on Hulu, which I mention only because I would genuinely appreciate any fellow Hulu subscribers searching for the movie Heat and then letting me know what film or films are listed for you under the "You May Also Like" tag. Because there is exactly one movie in that category when I personally pull up Heat and that is the 1995 Liv Tyler classic Empire Records. I have many, many questions about this, including 1) Am I the only one who sees this? 2) Is the single common link between these two films that they are 1995 movies about white people? 3) If I had gotten more than half an hour into Heat would it have eventually developed some unexpected Rex Manning energy? 4) Does Robert De Niro yell "Damn the man, save the Empire!" at any point? 5) Does Hulu's algorithm believe that Warren's foiled shoplifting attempt makes Empire Records a crime movie? I need answers.

Heat is a serious movie about serious men who know that both crime and anti-crime pursuits are serious and manly. They like to wear chunky gold rings and have sex with beautiful women but they do not like when beautiful women are annoyed with them for coming home very late and missing dinner. Beautiful women do not understand the seriousness of the serious jobs they have. They says things like "drop of a hat, these guys will rock 'n roll" about a brutal triple homicide and do not mean it to be remotely humorous, because things are not funny in the serious man crime game. Humor is for other people, possibly the beautiful women although I doubt it. I highly recommend this film if you like any of the above elements or if you enjoy the ecstatic sense of freedom that comes with abandoning a piece of art that is making you very weary. Alternatively, you can simply do what I did at the recommendation of my brother, which is watch Tom Hiddleston perform the diner scene to the mild amusement of Robert De Niro on the Graham Norton Show.

Now, lest you think I have a blanket aversion to manly men, let me go ahead and introduce you to one tall, rumpled drink of water named Walter Matthau, aka NYC transit cop Lt. Garber. Garber has a brightly colored plaid shirt, the yellowest necktie on God's green earth, a boring job, and borderline-worthless colleagues. The subway train leaving Pelham Station at 1:23 is there for the taking. It's the 1970s, baby! And it's dirtbags all the way down. Everyone involved on both sides of this crime is a little schlubby in the best, most multiple-shades-of-brown sort of way. The hottest person in this movie is Hector Elizando, maybe tied with the guy who played Wilson on Home Improvement. You need some more guys? How about Jerry Stiller as a transit employee who truly does not care about doing his job in any respect? Or maybe I can interest you in Martin Balsam, best known to me as the detective from Psycho, sneezing his way through this movie as one of the hostage-takers? Or the lead hostage-taker, Mr. Robert Shaw, lending the perfect amount of calm British psychopathy to the proceedings? That enough masculinity for ya? There's even plenty of sexism and some truly unfortunate hard-r racism in the mix here--it's just that the 99% of the movie surrounding those elements is extremely well-constructed and fun.

The first ten minutes or so of the film gives us our entire setup in a satisfyingly economical way, not to mention some banging 70s horns. We see a man in a hat, glasses, a mustache, and a trench coat board a subway train--is he suspicious or is it just the 1970s? But then we see an identically outfitted man board, then another--there are, in total, four men in glasses and mustaches and hats and coats and you know what? They look great. What a team. One of them is sneezing a lot. I think this guy's cold really resonated with me because here in Austin we are currently in hell cedar fever season. As this is happening, we also see that one of the train conductors is new at the job, as evidenced by the fact that he is walking through all the steps he needs to do and saying them out loud to the guy training him. We also see the diverse group of soon-to-be-kidnapped passengers boarding the train. At this point did I realize that my beloved Speed contains a lot of Pelham DNA? Oh, you bet I did.

We are also being introduced to Lt. Garber at this time--he's been tasked with giving a tour of the transit police operation to a group of Japanese executives from the Tokyo metro, which is both an amusing, effective bit of exposition and also the source of most of the movie's racism, so....uh, mixed bag there. The transit office is not exactly a bustling and efficient hive of activity--the general vibe of the entire building is "eh, whaddya want" in a New York accent. The degree to which absolutely no one here is prepared to or has any interest in dealing with any sort of crisis is outstanding.

But also, you know, bad, because a crisis they soon have--four bespectacled gentlemen have taken a subway car hostage and are demanding one meeeellion dollars within the hour or they will start killing one hostage per minute. As things progress, two mysteries develop: how do the bad guys plan to get away and who is the plainclothes undercover officer amongst the passengers? Meanwhile, the not-very-beloved mayor is sick in bed with the flu (sick to the point that we see a nurse taking his temperature...not orally) and just wants to be left alone to watch The Newlywed Game.

This movie is so much funnier than I expected, one of the villains goes out in a way that I have absolutely never seen in any other film, Robert Shaw's steely British pronunciation of "Left-tenant" is wonderful, the final shot of the film is a gem, and Matthau just absolutely rules in this. He's slumping, he's skulking, he's mumbling, he's frustrated, he's explaining how subway trains work to me by saying things like "there's a little gizmo known as a dead man's feature." I watched this entire film in less than the time that it would have taken for me to finish Heat yet I could have listened to Walter Matthau explain little gizmos to me all day long.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Turn this thing around and burn rubber!"

Is it under two hours: Yes

Did I understand the plan: Yes, mostly, although I have to admit I actually dropped the ball slightly on what was going on with the little gizmo.

Copycat Subway Cold Cut Combo from Recipes.net

The only sustenance any of the passengers brought on board was a sneaky bottle of purse booze, so we gotta make do with a thematic sandwich.

Up next: A remake of a stylish 1960s movie that I believe is about cars and/or how attractive Charlize Theron is