The Haunting; Plum Jam and Hard-Boiled Eggs

The Haunting (1963)

Director: Robert Wise

Had I seen this before: No

First, I would like to point out that there is a fun-bad 1999 adaptation of this same novel that I saw in the theater starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as the arch and smoldering Theo and yet I chose not to revisit it here. Please clap. Second, said novel--Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House--is one that I enjoyed a great deal but do not remember every specific detail from at this point, so this will not be a comparison of novel to movie, but rather a look at this movie on its own terms. Being assigned Jackson's short story "The Lottery" in middle school probably shaped my eventual tastes more than I realized at the time, and I sort of doubt any visual adaptation can scratch the same itch for me as her prose, so it seems unfair to expect it to. Plus I am too lazy to re-read it, as I am already very busy not reading this month's book club book. At any rate, I was curious to check out the contemporary adaptation of the 1959 novel and especially curious to check out the movie that director Robert Wise made in between making a couple of tiny films that you've probably never heard of called West Side Story and The Sound of Music.

The movie opens with a voiceover from "scientist" Dr. Markway explaining the tragic history of a 90-year-old New England mansion known as Hill House with unsettling glee. I scare-quoted his credentials in the previous sentence because although I was excited for a round of "let's apply science to ghosts," I would find, to my disappointment, that his methods were decidedly imprecise and mostly consisted of saying "mmm, yes, interesting" and "just as I expected." I'm not saying I need a bunch of spectrometers everywhere, but I did think he should at least be taking notes. I noticed that the doctor's name was the only one changed from the novel, where it was Montague, and then was changed again in the 1999 film, where it was Marrow. All of the other main character's names stayed consistent, so I'm not sure what the deal is with everyone trying to pin down this slippery doctor. I did like that this version of him reminded me a bit of John Astin's Gomez Addams, although probably 80% of that can be attributed to the mustache. The best thing about the doctor is his wife, who shows up late in the movie and makes fun of everyone at Hill House for being scared.

The Mysterious Doctor M is assembling a team of paranormal investigators to get to the bottom of Hill House's alleged haunting, again using methods that I neither understand nor approve of, but I'm not the one running the show here. He ends up with three assistants: Luke Sanderson, who has no interest in the paranormal and is only there because he is in line to inherit the estate; Theodora, allegedly a psychic and subtly--1963 subtly--a lesbian; and our heroine Eleanor "Nell" Lance, an anxious, lonely woman whose life was dedicated to caring for her invalid mother until her very recent passing. This movie is about the relationship between the house and Eleanor's persistent grief and guilt and stress and yearning to belong somewhere, so although it is not one of those "everything is happening in her mind" situations--all the characters very much experience haunting--it is closely echoing the pre-existing issues in Eleanor's life. That doesn't explain why she was selected for this job, but I guess it worked out.

Now, here's the thing about this version of Eleanor--she is a tough hang. She is rude to the servants who work on the grounds (more on them in a second!), she lashes out at everyone around her in a childish way when she is upset or overwhelmed, she refers to Theo as a mistake of nature in the movie's least thinly-veiled reference to her sexuality, and is generally just pretty unpleasant. In case we didn't get what her hangup is about, she starts almost every sentence with "My mother..." and often that is the entirety of the sentence. It made it slightly difficult for me to be scared for her because she seemed very determined to become a part of the house and frankly as far as I was concerned, the house could have her.

I'm pretty sure that's how the Hill House staff felt about the situation, too. When she arrives at Hill House she encounters a locked front gate and an admittedly unhelpful Mr. Dudley, the groundskeeper, who informs her that no one else is there and she shouldn't be there either. Now, Eleanor has taken the car that she shares with her sister without permission and is all wound up and very desperate to embark on this independent project and I understand that this obstacle is a frustration; I also know that if Eleanor was born in 1925, as the actress playing her was, then the name Karen only accounted for 0.0004% of the population of women her age. But her reaction is very much "I am going to escalate this situation to your manager, how dare you" and Dudley is like "....fine." Once she's in, she encounters Mrs. Dudley, who keeps up the usually-empty house, and they have the following exchange, which I'm including in full because it was my favorite part of the movie (transcription courtesy of IMDb):

Mrs. Dudley: [Eleanor has just been shown her room after she arrives] I can't keep the rooms the way I'd like, but there's no one else they could get that would help me.

Eleanor Lance: How very nice.

Mrs. Dudley: I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. I clear up in the morning. I have breakfast for you at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after I set out the dinner, not after it begins to get dark. I leave before the dark.

Eleanor Lance: Your husband?

Mrs. Dudley: We live over in town, miles away.

Eleanor Lance: Yes.

Mrs. Dudley: So there won't be anyone around if you need help.

Eleanor Lance: I understand.

Mrs. Dudley: We couldn't hear you. In the night.

Eleanor Lance: Do you have any idea when Dr. Markway--

Mrs. Dudley: [cuts her off] No one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that.

Eleanor Lance: I know.

Mrs. Dudley: In the night. In the dark. [Mrs. Dudley grins and leaves]

Now that's a harbinger!

So, it's not like Eleanor didn't know what she was getting into. I did find some of the effects nicely spooky--loud banging in the middle of the night, for example, is incredibly scary! When a doorknob seems to twist a bit a the behest of some unknown but potentially malevolent hand, it helps that it already has a creepy face carved into it. A rickety staircase of questionable design makes for a tense set piece. The house having endless halls full of confusingly identical closed doors where everything is just slightly tilted is effectively disorienting. Being trapped with strangers who you feel are being mean to you is a true nightmare.

Overall, I'm not sure this is as iconic a work from Robert Wise as the two musicals bookending it, but it does have one thing those don't and that's Mrs. Dudley grinning and leaving.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: [cuts her off]

Is it under two hours:  Yes

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: Questionably pedigreed scientists

Hard-Boiled Eggs and Plum Jam from A Baker's House

Okay, I genuinely did try not to refer back to the novel too much in this post but when it came to food there was none that I noticed in the film and plenty that I remembered in the book. Fortunately, the most helpful website I've ever seen gave me a list and I just grabbed a couple of appealing items.

Up next: Over the garden wall we go

BBC Ghostwatch and WNUF Halloween Special; Caramel Apples

Ghostwatch (1992); WNUF Halloween Special (2013)

Directors: Rich Lawden; Chris LaMartina

Had I seen these before: No

Since re-watching The Blair Witch Project, I've been thinking a lot about the legacy of Orson Welles's 1938 The War of the Worlds radio broadcast and how the (likely exaggerated) legend of its unexpected power over the populace has shaped modern attempts to thrill and chill. There is something almost admirably devious about sneaking a scary story into people's attention using straight-faced news as a Trojan horse, especially at a time when "the news" was something that the vast majority of the intended audience accepted as a reliable, categorically un-devious source of information. I had seen reference to the BBC's 1992  Ghostwatch program a few times, and understood it to be a a sort of Wellesian event wherein regular news anchors participated in a scripted story about a haunted house investigation that was presented as a non-fiction Halloween special. (One recent program that was obviously influenced by it is the very fun episode "Dead Line" from series five of Inside No. 9. And yes this is the second post in a row wherein I recommend a delightful BBC horror comedy to you, you are most welcome.) I had also seen reference to the idea that the British population absolutely freaked out about this fake demon house. Having not personally been a viewer of BBC in the early 90s, I'll never know for sure what it was like on the ground that night, but I suspect that, as with The War of the Worlds, the mythology of the event's impact does not entirely match with the reality of the reaction. Regardless, I wanted to see this creepy crawly betrayal of the public trust for myself.

Before I get into the details, I just want to say: I found this entire enterprise extremely charming, and I'm not sure I can even fully explain why. I think it's easy to get bogged down with how wretched everything seems to be and how unthinkably vile humans often are toward one another, especially if you spend too much time online (hello there, if you have found your way to this blog you are more likely than not Too Online). Obviously humans also do unbelievably generous and selfless things all the time as well, but if anything that often just makes me even more distressed that I am failing to rise to those lofty standards. But for whatever reason, this sort of endeavor is exactly the kind of thing that acts as a counterbalance to my more hopeless feelings about humanity--this silly little production where normally-earnest newscasters tell us a made up story and play pretend just for entertainments' sake, just to keep the actual darkness at bay for a while. I genuinely love that humans do that. Just a bit o' fun, innit? 

Of course, there can be a pretty wide gulf between finding something oddly life-affirming and finding it...scary. One of the most notable visuals is the main presenter's absolutely enormous hair bow, a trend which I had fully blocked from my mind until seeing it pop up on Jeanne Triplehorn in a rewatch of The Client a year or two ago. Do you remember when very serious grown-up ladies wore foot-long bows on their heads as part of a classy, professional look? This fact alone contributes a great deal to my emergent theory that the early 90s are one of the least gritty historical time periods, at least aesthetically. There is also the fact that this program relies very heavily on child actors--I don't want to be mean, they are fine, but they're not "I'm afraid this is really happening" good. They're no Osments, is all I'm saying. And then, perhaps most crucially, the participants continually refer to a scary space underneath the stairs as the "glory hole." Just...so many times. Is that not a slang term in Britain? I guess there wasn't an Urban Dictionary to check these things against in 1992? And while the sinister presence--an entity referred to as "Mr. Pipes"--is effectively creepy in the beginning, the lore spins out a bit too far by the end and is more confusing than anything else. At any rate, I thought Ghostwatch was a generally entertaining but not especially bone-chilling outing and I hope it made Halloween 1992 a memorable one for some Brits.

Now, if I found it slightly difficult to describe exactly what Ghostwatch is, it will be even harder to explain WNUF Halloween Special. It's a fictional movie from 2013, but it presents as a VHS tape of a Halloween night on local news in 1987--and when I say that's how it presents, I mean in every way possible. It's shot on vintage tape stock and includes numerous commercial breaks, including the bumpers with the station logo and announcement that you are watching the Halloween Special. (Ghostwatch's bumpers were also excellent.) It follows a similar plot to Ghostwatch (it even has one of its reporters joke about contacting Elvis, which is lifted directly from it), involving their reporters and a couple of "psychics" investigating a supposedly haunted house. It's a comedy, sort of, and horror, sort of, but more than either of those it's just a very historically accurate love letter to 1980s public access. Most of the commercials are played so straight that out of context it would be hard to tell they weren't real, although the cumulative effect is humorous. I wasn't exactly laughing but I was sort of mesmerized by the whole thing, and when I discovered that there was a sequel of sorts out this year, I was excited.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "She's in the glory hole"

Is it under two hours: Yes and yes

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: Local news

Caramel Apples from All Recipes

Not a lot of food in these programs, so I just went with a treat to match the feeling of excitement and nervous anticipation of a classic Halloween night. 

Up next: The eternal question: is this house haunted or are you just having a mental breakdown?

The Sixth Sense; Vegetable Noodle Soup

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Had I seen this before: Yes

A few things up top: 1) I did see this movie pretty soon after it came out, but not soon enough to not have the ending spoiled for me, so I've only ever watched it with an eye toward whether the setup works; 2) it does; 3) despite the marketing, this is not actually a horror movie, it's a weepy family drama with a couple of jump scares; 4) if you have a chance to watch this with a 13-year-old who doesn't know anything about it, I can't recommend highly enough that you do that, it was truly one of the most fun movie-watching experiences of my adult life.

I think for those of us who are not adolescents it can be hard to approach this movie without being weighed down by a couple of decades of pop-culture and director-nonsense baggage surrounding it. If you have seen Shyamalan indulge his worst impulses in later films, you can see the warning signs in some places here--a little treacly, a little melodramatic, musical stings a little too obvious, a lack of subtlety with some plot gear-churning, some almost-clunky color symbolism. And the most famous scene--Haley Joel Osment tearfully whispering that he sees dead people--has at this point been parodied six ways to Sunday, which I thought would make it impossible to take seriously. But here's the thing: that scene is really great. Osment and Bruce Willis are both doing terrific work and Shyamalan has done a good job of building slowly to this reveal while also toying with the reveal to come. And in my experience this time around, the whole movie plays like that--I'll be tempted to start rolling my eyes a bit at something and then boom it pulls me right back in, because the real twist if you are a skeptical over-consumer of culture is that this is an amazingly effective movie and a near-unparalleled cinematic magic trick.

I think it's likely that a less-good version of this particular plot setup would still have been successful upon release, but I can't overstate how much the re-watch value depends on the stellar performances from the main cast. Bruce Willis lends Malcom his natural genial cockiness, which is both sort of funny and sort of comforting in the beginning of the movie when the audience is still getting their bearings in this very haunted version of Philadelphia. In his interactions with Osment's Cole, he's believable first as someone who has a lot of experience talking to children in a professional capacity and later as someone who is slowly realizing that he's in over his head in some significant ways. There is also a lot of pathos in his attempts to charm his way through what he believes is a rough patch in his marriage. Toni Collette as Cole's beleaguered mom is the emotional heart of the movie and I think her part might be the hardest to pull off because it requires a range of emotions that could easily veer into the cheesy in less capable hands. The most tear-jerking scene of the movie--when Cole confesses his ghost-seeing secret to her in the car and relays a message to her from her mother--requires her to go from mildly frustrated at being stuck behind a wreck to confused about what Cole is trying to tell her to quietly but intensely alarmed that he is hearing voices that tell him to do things (you can see the words "specialist" and "medication" and "insurance" swimming in her eyes at this point) to shocked and overwhelmed and relieved and sad and happy and grieving all in the space of a few minutes and as far as I'm concerned, she does it. I think "mom with a spooky kid" can be a thankless type of role but everything about her character really works for me, and Collette does a great job establishing her as the third important character in the mix rather than just a foil for Cole's strangeness. 

But of course the film largely rests on the wee shoulders of Haley Joel Osment, and boy would this be a tough watch with a less talented kid actor. On first pass, he is successful at selling fear and vulnerability and earned distrustfulness and also a degree of off-putting weirdness that makes you understand, even as you feel sorry for him, why this character doesn't have any friends his age. But watching his performance when you are aware of all the dynamics at play, you realize that what originally seemed like nervous stand-offishness in his face is actually a weary pity for Malcom, and then later a sort of resignation and acceptance that this guy isn't going to leave him alone. And he does that layered bit so well that you don't even know what it was until it's all over. Plus, his delivery of the line "I didn't know you were funny" when Malcom performs an intentionally bad magic trick is truly aces.

I've established my policy on pedantically overthinking movies that involve fantastical elements, which is: I do it when I feel like it. And as much as I really did enjoy the experience of just being on this particular roller-coaster, this is a movie that is deeply aware of its own cleverness and practically begs one, double-dog-dares one to overthink it. So while I believe the Big Twist is solid--I would say one scene edges right up next to a cheat but never crosses the line--there are a couple of bits and bobs that I'm less sure about. For example: the Mischa Barton ghost, who has been poisoned by her own mother, wants Cole to find a video tape under her bed that contains proof of this and show it to her father. So did alive Mischa know that 1) her mother was poisoning her and 2) she had video proof of it? Why wouldn't she have...maybe mentioned that to her father while she was still alive instead of squirreling the tape away in a box under her bed? Is it only because her ghost pushing the box at Cole from under the bed is very spooky? Because it is very spooky! But quietly allowing oneself to be murdered is a pretty significant commitment to the craft of ghosting, especially for an adolescent. I would happily accept that her ghost had access to information that her living brain had been unaware of, and belatedly realized that one of her many puppet show recordings contained evidence of a crime, but this tape was clearly treated differently by her corporeal form. Anyway. The part where she barfs in Cole's tent is a real yeeeeesh moment, I'm not actually complaining about this subplot, not even the very dramatic and unrealistic confrontation at the memorial service. It's all perfect, don't change a thing.

I'm not actually complaining about this next bit either, which is in the so how does this work exactly category re: ghosts in this universe, I'm just wondering. Cole says that all these dead people are wandering around and they don't see each other and they don't realize they're dead ***pointed look at scene partner*** but what about those poor dudes hanging from the rafters of the schoolhouse? Are they conscious and aware like all the other ghosts but like...stuck up there? When Cole sees them they are just looking at him mournfully but I feel like I would be asking if he had any idea how I could get down, just a quick "yooooo can you give me a hand?" And wouldn't "being stuck in a noose for decades" be a strong tip-off that you have died? Listen, I also had this issue with the charming BBC series Ghosts which is basically a workplace comedy about the spirits who are jointly haunting a manor house, as well the two living residents of said manor house, one of whom can see and talk to them and one of whom cannot. When the living couple go to tour other potential domiciles, the wife can still see the various ghosts haunting all of them and it's a very good gag that I enjoyed a lot except in the instance of the two dead German pilots who apparently crash landed in a tree outside the window of one place and just...like, live in the plane? The existential implications of retaining conscious awareness but losing all mobility, like, forever--especially when you are trapped right next to one or two other conscious, aware beings--is almost more than I can take. You should watch Ghosts, though. Try to just hum cheerily through the German pilots, close your eyes, think of England, etc.

And how did Cole know about Stuttering Stanley? He doesn't read minds. That scene implies that someone who knew his teacher as a kid 1) died and 2) made it a priority to find Cole and, instead of addressing whatever unfinished business had tethered their soul to earth, tell him that his teacher had a stutter when he was a kid. Which is a pretty funny, petty thing for a ghost to do actually, so again, I'll allow it. In other questionable ghost behavior, why does his grandmother keep getting him in trouble? She needs to move that bumblebee pendant so badly that she doesn't care that Cole is getting blamed for it? Like, I am also particular about where my things go, but dang Grandma, the kid already has a lot on his plate! Ice cold.

Stray thoughts: 1) I would not go in a church that had a door that red, sorry. Can't be good news in there. 2) I hope that when I have nightmares I say out loud the exact things that are stressing me out in my waking life so that my family members are made aware of where I'm coming from. 3) At one point Malcom is telling a self-deprecating story that involves "I threw up chili cheese fries all over this male nurse" and I don't know why I thought that was such a funny thing to say, but I really did. This male nurse. Not some regular nurse! I threw up on a boy.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Keep moving, cheese dick"

Is it under two hours: Yes

Did the twist work: I have known how this movie ends for 23 years and my scalp still got all tingly when that "wait a minute" realization music kicked in 

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: Working with children

Vegetable Noodle Soup from The Food Network

Now, I am not a Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy expert, but I like to think that if I were slowly poisoning anyone, I would add the Pine Sol to the soup before I walked in to their room, not just waltz in with it right on the tray and theatrically turn my back to the victim to pour it. I'm just a planner that way. In any case, Anna was pretty adamant about watching me make this soup for some reason.

Up next: Newscasts gone wild

The Blair Witch Project; Marshmallows

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Director: Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez

Had I seen this before: Yes, somewhat against my will due to peer pressure from my 17-year-old co-worker at the mall coffee shop, what's up Kellan hope you're thriving

Hello and welcome to the time of year when I try to compensate for my utter exhaustion with summer by forcibly instilling my favorite of autumnal feelings: pleasantly creeping dread. I'm almost certain The Blair Witch Project was the first movie I went to see in the theater despite being absolutely terrified to do so--I'm not sure when I crossed the line from saying "I don't like horror movies, too scary" to "oh actually horror is one of those counterintuitive balms for my personal type of anxiety, like giving stimulants to people with ADHD," but 1999 was firmly in the prior segment. (Side note: I realize I have been spending a lot of time in or around 1999 in this space lately and I just want to say no you're having an extremely quiet and unobtrusive midlife crisis.) The thing is, the 1999 of it all is important context for this movie in particular, because the viral marketing strategy combined with the little baby internet really made it seem like this was going to be the scariest film ever presented to audiences. Like, there would definitely be people (maybe you!!) throwing up from fear at your screening. Maybe you would die. Of being scared.

Fortunately (for us all, am I right?) my attendance at that screening of The Blair Witch Project in the summer of 1999 did not prove fatal, nor even especially scarring. I did find it scary, and I before revisiting it I did still remember a couple of especially creepy bits (the teeth!), and I'm pretty sure at the time I played up the fact that afterward I had to drive home in the dark by myself through a few miles of slightly rural area, can you even imagine. Watching it now as a--I don't want to say jaded, but certainly more horror-experienced--adult, I do still think it achieves its goals as a tiny-budgeted little twig-wrapped package of creepiness. But I am also sympathetic to those whose reaction to watching it now is "this movie is not scary, nothing happens, it's just three idiots in the woods yelling at each other." I could counter that what those people fail to understand is that making a mistake and consequently being yelled at is the scariest scenario of all, but I really do see where they're coming from.

I can't say I personally knew anyone who was convinced that the movie and the people in it were all real, but that was certainly the winky winky impression that the marketing was going for at the time. I was about to blame the fact that the internet debunking machine wasn't as lightning-fast as it is today, but then I spent .000001 seconds thinking about the general fate of false information disseminated online today and you know what maybe we were better off when everything was just a matter of checking Snopes, actually. At any rate, the whole point of found footage is to create the sense that everything happening on screen is real, documentary-style--no score, no obviously scripted conversations, no tidy plot mechanics. Just some unknown people stumbling into a bad situation. And having, in the intervening years, seen many low-budget found footage movies, I think Blair Witch does a better job than most of its descendants in terms of following its own rules and creating at least a semi-reasonable excuse for questionable behavior. 

The main plausibility hurdles in found footage tend to be: 1) who is filming this and 2) why are they still filming this? The answer to #1 in almost every case is that someone is making a documentary, but lesser films usually fail to answer why anyone would continue bothering to film things once they turn horrific. One of the smartest things this movie does, once things are very tense but not yet completely unbearable, is have Mike accuse Heather of using the camera as a sort of filter so that she can put some distance between herself and the real world and doesn't have to fully experience how bad their situation is. If you, as an audience member, buy that explanation, then the fact that the camera stays on until the bitter end makes internal sense. (They also make a more half-hearted gesture in the beginning of the movie toward how much back-up battery power they have, presumably in order to stave off complaints that the video camera should be long past dead by the end, but frankly I'm usually happy to have technology work or not work depending on what the scariness of the scene calls for.)

Anyway, you know what's scary? The freaking woods. You know who thinks so? Most humans who have lived in the vicinity of densely-wooded areas since the beginning of time. See also: all fairy tales. It's easy to get lost and gets very dark at night and you're far away from help and there's a bunch of stuff out there that probably wants to eat you or poison you or at least poke or scratch or sting you. The idea to just film some random people being scared (and querulous) in the woods turned out to be such a good one that they made $250 million on a $60k budget and the thing is...that's tough to argue with.

Some stray thoughts: Heather's serious documentary voice in the beginning veers slightly into Catherine O'Hara territory and did take me out of the moment a bit; I appreciated the 90s dirtbag vibe wherein characters could all wear flannel and smoke cigarettes without it being any sort of specific character choice; this is the second 90s movie I've rewatched recently (the other being Dazed and Confused) where characters have an extended conversation about Gilligan's Island, a reference which is fully lost on my children; for me the most relatable moment in this movie is when one of the characters, awake in the middle of the night, hopes out loud that it's at least 5:00 or something and then swears in frustration to discover that it's 3:00 am.

Comments from the 13-year-old: First, she said that YouTube apologizers should take notes from Heather's tearful apology to everyone's mother because "she seems really sincere." Second, she noted that the lack of music in the end credits really leaves you with that sinking feeling long after the movie stops, and compared it to the lack of music over the end credits of Cabaret. Was that my proudest moment as a movie-loving parent? Maybe not? But...maybe! And finally, this was, in her opinion, the scariest movie we have watched together so far. 

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "What the fuck is that?!?"

Is it under two hours:  One of the greatest strengths of this sub-genre is that it tends to keep it tight--this one is a lean and mean 81 minutes, only 55 or so of which is people fighting about a map

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: Spending time outdoors

Homemade Marshmallows from Martha Stewart

One of my hesitations with doing horror for the blog was that I was worried everyone would be too busy running from their certain doom to bother thinking about food, but not only do the characters in this movie make a point of showing off their pre-journey grocery haul (complete with an extended marshmallow close-up), they spend so much of their time growing increasingly hungry while lost in the woods that they do talk about food quite a bit. So I had several options but I thought for this one I'd go with the campfire classic.

Anyway, I hope one or two of you are excited to join me on this Spooky Season journey or at least let out a less audible groan than my mother did!

Up next: Turns out I'm STILL not ready to leave 1999 and neither is the puking ghost of Mischa Barton

Easy A; Lobster Shack Biscuits

Easy A (2010)

Loosely based on themes from: The Scarlet Letter (1850)

Director: Will Gluck

Had I seen this before: No

Easy A is one of those movies that could also fit in another category I have occasionally contemplated, which is: I've Heard That's Surprisingly Good. There are so many movies that have pretty solid word-of-mouth or even cult-status followings that I just haven't gotten around to for whatever reason, and until this week, this was one of them. I imagine I missed it initially because it came out when I was 30 and had an infant and the only state of being further removed from high school shenanigans than 18-year-old-second-semester-college-freshman is 30-year-old-new-mom. But now I'm ready. I've been positively marinating in the cinematic high school experience for several weeks, and--game recognize game--this movie has also been marinating in the cinematic high school experience. It's time to get highly referential!

I think this is a good movie to end this school theme on, since it seems to have swallowed and digested every other teen movie ever made. There are either direct references or sideways allusions or similar vibes to Say Anything, Can't Buy Me Love, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Clueless (impossible to hear someone lob "You're a virgin" as an insult without filling in "who can't drive"), 10 Things I Hate About You, Heathers, and Grease. I'm not mad about it. I often reference these things myself. It's tempting to point out that it's harder to establish oneself as an iconic movie when one is so preoccupied with previous iconic movies, but Sleepless in Seattle does it with An Affair to Remember and I am not here today to argue that Sleepless in Seattle is not an iconic movie, so. Carry on, Easy A.

I can see why this earned the reputation (sorry) that it did--the script is full of actual jokes and more of them land than don't, Emma Stone as Olive is an unsurprisingly winning lead, the premise is clever-ish and the adults? Are good. I did not love it the way I was hoping to, but I do think it's a pretty entertaining little thing, which puts it ahead of many, many, many films. I know that these teen versions of old stories--in this case kinda sorta The Scarlet Letter, although it's by far the loosest connection to the source material of the movies I've covered--can have a bit of clunkiness in the translation, but I really had a hard time with the initial setup, which somehow made even less sense to me than the 10 Things "everybody dates or nobody dates rule," which in itself already made 100 points of negative sense. Now, this is not a gotcha or anything but I see in the trivia that the writer was homeschooled, which maybe goes some distance in explaining his very odd idea of how a 21st century public high school might function. It actually explains...almost all of my issues with the script, which seems very much like it was written by a person who has only seen movies about public high school but never been to one. With all apologies to the reputations of my lovely high school classmates, the idea that a rumor that one 17-year-old girl had non-"deviant," age-appropriate sex once would blow the entire student body's collective mind and turn the social ecosystem on its head is...genuinely so bizarre? Like, I'll give you the Amanda Bynes-led crusading soul-savers, maybe, but I just can't believe this would even be a blip on any other student's radar.

Now, this issue more or less resolves itself as the situation evolves into Olive taking gift card bribes to lie about hooking up with various students in order to give them cover (from homophobia) or cred (to feel up other girls). Once it's really rolling, everyone's behavior makes a little more sense. Although I do have to ask, how much money do we think Olive spent on her "Suddenly Slutty" wardrobe? Because by the looks of it, it's more than I have spent on clothes in the past 20 years. Multiple pairs of boots! One hundred different corset tops! I feel you could have made the point with like...two corset tops, Olive. You can't use your AutoZone gift cards for this stuff!

Beyond the precipitating incident, there were a few minor things that don't make sense to me. 1) Olive's relationship with her "best" friend--does she actually have any friends other than her parents? 2) Olive and Todd's years-long mutually-requited-but-unacted-upon crush--I just think that if Penn Badgley and Emma Stone wanted to kiss each other they would have figured out a way to make that happen long before the events of this film. 3) Using Bender from The Breakfast Club as an example of "lost chivalry"--I mean. Maybe give that one a rewatch, I really dunno. 

This is a teen movie that truly lives and dies by its Good Adults, which, as you know, goes a long way with me. Thomas Hayden Church is a realistically low-key jokey English teacher and this house we stan a dry delivery. And of course there are Stanley Tucci (of note: a recent Reductress post) and Patricia Clarkson as Olive's parents, who are laying it on almost too thick but in a way that I liked. (This is probably helped by the fact that Patricia Clarkson might be in my top five performers in terms of how ferociously I enjoy every second they are on screen, please check out her scene in Shutter Island if you want to experience some cinema.) Fred Armisen is an unamused pastor and if you are a certain type of person (me) that tells you everything you need to know.

My favorite funny bits in this funnier-than-you-might-expect movie: the whole "Pocketful of Sunshine" running gag, Olive's parents trying to figure out what swear word starts with "t," Fred Armisen describing hell as being located "right above The Orient," Emma Stone's delivery of the line "Dyed in the wool homosexual, that boy is."

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Not now, Quizno's!"

Is it under two hours: Yes

In conclusion: I believe this is the first film made from a Black List script that I've written about, so it seems like the right time to brag that I went to summer camp with The Black List founder Franklin Leonard and am clearly way more of an industry insider than you ever imagined, just in case you are ever tempted to question my movie takes.

Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits from Damn Delicious

There is a quickly-abandoned date at a Red Lobster stand-in wherein a large plate of food is very enthusiastically received and then not eaten. As my lobster-dealing days are a full decade (!!!!!!!!!!!) behind me, I went with the chain's celebrated biscuits, which I assume were populating the untouched basket on the table. For what it's worth, the effort-to-results ratio on these, especially when compared to lobster, is highly favorable.

Up next: As I indicated above, judging by the way this theme has begun limping along, I think it's time to put Back to School out of its misery and--if my neighbor's cobweb-covered yard is any indication--jump directly into Spooky Season.

Clueless; Asparagus and Breadsticks

Clueless (1995)

Based on: Emma (1815)

Director: Amy Heckerling

Had I seen this before: So many times

Sometimes the more deeply ingrained a movie is in my brain, the worse my blinking cursor paralysis becomes--if I hadn't already boxed myself in by saying that I was going to cover four high school versions of classic stories (legally binding!!) I would have finished this movie, thought to myself "Ah, well, I have nothing to say about that," and moved right along. But obviously I must cover four movies in this category, and what am I supposed do as an alternative, follow Julia Stiles and Andrew Keegan into what seem like much trickier Shakespearean waters with O or something? I don't think so.

Clueless is an imperfect but better-than-average high school movie from 1995 that is elevated by several very funny performances and a classic soundtrack from the era when movie soundtracks used to mean something. (We used to be a country, a proper country, etc.) It tracks more closely than you might guess with the Jane Austen novel Emma. I would argue that this is one of its greatest strengths when compared to the other films in this mini-category--the story of Emma actually works quite well in the context of a wealthy high school without having to twist itself into any knots. It came out when I was 15, the same age as the characters (although not the actors, in some cases by a long shot), which means when I call it "imperfect" I am using my grown-up powers of analysis but I don't actually believe it in my heart.

There was no reason, then or now, for me to relate to any of the characters in this movie (outside of maybe Brittany Murphy's at the outset--I wasn't a stoner but I did wear flannel and dye my hair purplish-red and may have found Breckin Meyer cute, who's to say). I've never been rich or cared about designer clothes or felt moved to play matchmaker and I was a generally well-prepared student who would not have had need to argue my way out of any Cs. So how did Cher Horowitz manage to win me over so thoroughly? For one thing, I think Cher, like Emma before her, is basically an anti-hero--she's privileged and selfish and vapid and doesn't seem to have any problems that aren't her own doing--but she's also nurturing and generally well-meaning and charming and fun to root for. She's a benign schemer. And there just weren't that many adolescent female protagonists who were a mixed bag like that--teenage girls at that point were almost always a victim of something or someone, and Cher really isn't. She's just a sort of unfettered force of nature. And Alicia Silverstone brings that combination of frustrating and appealing to life in such a believable way that you understand why people in her life are often exasperated by Cher, but never really mad at her. 

She also looks like a teenager but older than her actual character, which is fine with me because one of the handful of things in this movie that I don't especially want to think/write about is the legally questionable age difference between Cher and Josh (I could, in the spirit of this movie, argue that pairings involving Paul Rudd should get a pass due to his unsettling agelessness anyway). Most of the main high school cast were between 18-21 when this movie came out, with the notable exception of Stacey Dash, who nearly 30--but they all gel pretty well visually as being believably in the same cohort. (Fun fact, Stacey Dash is older than Molly Ringwald, who was playing characters the same age a decade earlier.)

I would say this has aged okay overall, there are certainly some insults that would be worded differently now, and the touchstones for heartthrobs sort of jump out in an unpleasant way (Mel Gibson and the Baldwins, yeesh). Also, I forgot how many times they say the phrase "Marky Mark" in this movie, I was afraid they were going to summon some ancient force. I appreciated that the movie's one gay character is just treated as another goofy rich teenager--there are a lot of opportunities for homophobia but the movie is just busy making fun of him for his chosen affect ("What's with you, kid? You think the death of Sammy Davis left an opening in the Rat Pack?"), or making fun of Cher for being oblivious to his orientation.

Good grown-ups check: why yes, there's Dan Hedaya, the gruff but proud father, laying the groundwork for Larry Miller's threatening-but-in-a-funny-way 10 Things performance ("I got a .45 and a shovel, I doubt anyone would miss you"). I know it's a necessary plot device to keep Josh around, but I always found it sweet that he has a continuing positive relationship with his ex-stepson because "you divorce wives, not children." And hey look, there's Wallace Shawn, playing the teacher who is most hard-nosed about grades but exceptionally laid back as a personality. I laugh every time he reacts to something like Breckin Meyer's acceptance speech for having the most tardies in class with light bafflement and amusement. I find his character so comforting, probably because being yelled at is my greatest fear in life and I am confident that the most aggressive response I could elicit from Mr. Hall would be a head tilt and a brow scrunched in confusion.

Some feedback from the 8th grader: "Who is...Nine in Snails?" Hahahaha sigh. She also noted, after watching Brittany Murphy sing the entire Mentos commercial (one of the movie's most perfectly delightful moments, I really think Brittany Murphy has a strong case for MVP of this film) "ahhh, that's why you're like that," meaning, I think, that she has accepted that knowing a lot of lyrics to jingles is a generational condition and not a personal flaw of mine.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Yeah, I hope not sporadically."

Is it under two hours:  Yes

In conclusion: It took me seven days to write this lmao

Asparagus and Almost Famous Breadsticks from The Food Network

The characters eat in almost every scene of this movie--mostly a realistic collection of teenage junk food, but a lot of proper sit-down stuff too. Since I had such a bounty to choose from, I picked the two items that Cher picks up and uses to articulate her points in a couple of different scenes: mall breadsticks and asparagus (steamed, for dad's cholesterol). 

Up next: A teen take on a classic tale (4/4) because my word is gold!!

Cruel Intentions; Exotic Fruit Picnic

Cruel Intentions (1999)

Based on: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782)

Director: Roger Kumble

Had I seen this before: Yes, a long time ago

One of the problems with doing several high school movies in a row is that they have a tendency to register somewhere on the "funny and/or charming" scale, and after a bit I start to worry that it's all getting a little too same-y. So I thought I would pivot and throw in a film that I find neither funny nor charming, just to change things up--in fact, this one isn't even really a school movie, just for good measure. (Listen, they talk about school a lot and Sarah Michelle Gellar wears her school uniform in the last scene and I don't want to have rewatched it for no reason, so we're doing this.) I did glance at the Letterboxd page for this film just to get the temperature over there and it seems like this is one of those things that a certain age group mistakenly remembers as being good or at least fun, so I'm going to re-issue my perennial disclaimer: it's okay to like bad movies! I personally do it all the time. And also, my bona fides: I watched several seasons of the original run of Gossip Girl, so I don't want it to seem like I think I'm above this genre. I just wanted it to be better!

The real problem with this movie for me is that I was the sort of insufferable cinephile teenager who already had a very positive relationship with the 1988 Stephen Frears film Dangerous Liaisons by the time this movie came out and I absolutely did not understand the point of making a worse version, with children. Glenn Close and John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer and Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves had already put in the work, that's not enough for you people? You need Ryan Phillippe with his Justin Timberlake hair and Joker smile to retread this ground? You think because Glenn Close keeps having near-misses with Oscar she needs to be updated as a coked-up Sarah Michelle Gellar yelling increasingly absurd things? (The fact that this movie is tagged as "Cerebral" on Amazon really sent me down a certain kind of path with it, I implore you to watch this and ask yourself whether the dialogue is engaging your cerebrum in a complex manner.) You had a luminous and enchanting 18-year-old Uma Thurman playing the innocent music student who is very understandably pining for her teacher Keanu Reeves and thought "what if this situation, but it's 27-year-old Selma Blair and we instruct her to dress and emote as though she is a petulant kindergartener"? (I know there are a lot of things in this movie that are supposed to be upsetting, but the fact that multiple people were trying to romance this character that clearly has a mental age well below ten was actually upsetting.) Reese? Reese is fine. I appreciated that Nurse Ratched was there to keep the vibes a little weird. And shout out to Swoozie Kurtz, who I believe is the only person to appear in both films. You get that bag, Swoozie. 

Mostly this movie just left me with a lot of questions. For example, I was not very familiar with the concept of revenge porn in the late 90s, did it generally take the form of a tasteful nude photo that does not show anything explicit but does have the word "slut" flashing in bright blue while the You've Got Mail voice says "slut" over and over? How can Sebastian's alcoholic father be both impotent and diddling the maid? When Sebastian mentions his journal and Katherine asks "could you be more queer" like an even more homophobic Chandler Bing, is that...a thing? Fellas, is it gay to write things down? Was Samuel Pepys gay? (Samuel Pepys might have been gay, I do not know anything about his personal life, pretty ironic when you think about it!) Sebastian also indicates that email is "for geeks and pedophiles," and I guess I probably qualify as one of those things, but I'm almost sure by 1999 I was using email for official school-type communications, so was my school more technologically advanced than the fancy Manhattan prep school that has incubated all these monsters or did Sebastian just never bother registering an address? And do you think Katherine ever thinks back to that conversation as a middle-aged lady who definitely spends her days spamming her MLM downline? And finally, where in the timeline from targeting Annette for seduction, making a wager regarding said seduction, falling in love with her, refusing to sleep with her, sleeping with her, breaking up with her, getting slapped, chasing after her to win her back, then dying suddenly and unexpectedly, did Sebastian take the time to amend his will in order to bequeath his cool car to her? Frankly it's the most responsible and forward-thinking move his character makes in the entire film, I just would have liked to see the scene in his attorney's office where he is like "if I get in a sex-related fist-fight and fall into traffic very soon, make sure Annette gets my wheels." Or do we think Annette just fully broke bad at the end and stole the Jag?

Anyway. Let's end on a nice note with some things that I liked. I had a very intense attachment to the Counting Crows song "Colorblind" in the early 2000s, so its presence did cause me to feel some emotions in the midst of this movie, although not about this movie, per se. When the teens volunteer at a nursing home, they walk by an old lady who is repeatedly spraying a parrot with water as the parrot says "Stop it" over and over. This is by far the best part of the movie. Sebastian started to grow on me a little once he got sad and started dressing like a vampire. It's sort of interesting to watch the earnest scenes between Reese and Ryan knowing that they would get married a couple of months later and eventually have two children who look exactly like them and then get divorced and then Reese would get drunk and yell "I'M A U.S. CITIZEN" at a cop during a traffic stop (that last bit isn't really relevant, it just still makes me laugh). Finally, all the slow-motion, disapproving head-shaking in the last scene as Katherine's many crimes are made public and her special cocaine cross necklace is revealed for all the world to see is extremely amusing.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Why should I care?"

Is it under two hours: Yes

In conclusion: Again, I'm so sorry, but the more movies I cover the more I am just not convinced that Regina George is even that mean at all? She what, kept a private burn book? Please.

A Pile of Exotic Fruits Next to a Bottle of Mineral Water from H-E-B

No one really eats in this movie, probably because of all the coke, but the most iconic scene--Sarah Michelle Gellar teaching (27-year-old) Selma Blair how to kiss--did have an artfully arranged stack of exotic fruits next to a bottle of mineral water. I couldn't find a star fruit and I recently discovered that I don't like figs, so this lot will have to do.

Up next: A teen take on a classic tale (3/4)

10 Things I Hate About You; Bratwurst

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Based on: The Taming of the Shrew (1592)

Director: Gil Junger, side note, please check out this man's IMDb pic

Had I seen this before: Yes, a long time ago

I'm kicking off a little mini-genre within the Back to School theme, which is: modern high school versions of old stories. Classics, but make it teeeeeeeen! (Something like William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet would not count, for example, because it is originally about teeeeeeens and also none of those hooligans ever see the inside of a classroom.) Since this one involves a lot of heart-on-sleeve wearing, I thought I would open with a couple of embarrassing confessions of my own. One, I did see this movie when it first came out and my main memory of it was that I was already too old to be very invested in it. Reader...this movie came out in March of 1999 when I was *holds notes at arm's length, squinting, due to advanced age* eighteen years old. But I was a second semester college freshman, which, as you know, is as far from high school as it is possible to be. Two, the second this film started I literally threw my hands in the air and said "Yeeeeeaaaaaah Barenaked Ladies!" much to the absolute non-response of my child. (This was followed immediately by "oooooh David Krumholtz!" just so you know where I'm at, enthusiasm-wise.)

So I had a couple of things going on with this movie--a lack of youthful affection for the particulars of the film but an abundance of unexpected nostalgia for at least the music of 1999, which is plentiful. For example, I had completely forgotten about the existence of the Semisonic song "Fascinating New Thing," and my brain was so distracted by its rediscovery that I couldn't tell you what was happening in that scene at all. Some sort of paint...balls? And just, the general Letters to Cleo of it all was sort of overwhelming. (I was also unable to to focus on any scene involving Andrew Keegan because every time he appeared I thought "Didn't that guy start a cult?")

The leads work pretty well--Dan came into the room and watched a few minutes of the scene at prom and then later commented that he finds Julia Styles' acting "wooden," which I felt surprisingly defensive about. But also, I'm not sure it's fair to hold any teen actor up against Heath Ledger, who is just a freight train of charisma and presence (and of making me feel lightly bummed out). I think Julia Styles is fine, and she sells the parts she really needs to (did I tear up at the poem and then roll my teary eyes at myself yes I did). I found Joseph Gordon Levitt to be on the twerpy side and if Krumholtz wasn't there keeping things moving I would have had a harder time with his whole plot line. Larisa Oleynik is very cute and looks right at home in late-90s fashion, which is mostly all she needs to be and do. (Are platform sandals back yet? Just...wondering.) Gabrielle Union is clearly too old to be in high school, let alone a sophomore, but who isn't happy to see Gabrielle Union?

As an adaptation, this movie takes a sort of interesting throw-various-things-at-the-wall approach. It's clearly modern but there are random bits of Shakespearean dialogue thrown in, and it alllllllmost works as just teenagers being overly flowery but I found it a little too scattershot and sort of jarring each time. It squeezes in references that are in some cases subtle (the sisters' last name being Stratford) and in some cases just clunky (Padua High School). Trying to contort the premise of the original story into something that works in a Y2K high school setting is not totally successful but it is ambitious, and the fact that Larry Miller is the one selling it makes it function a little better than it should, on paper. (Going from not letting either daughter date, ever, for any reason, to letting the younger daughter date if the older one does...as a...joke? ...a legitimate parenting tactic? is fully nonsensical.)

Speaking of Larry Miller, a running theme through all of these high school movies is the importance of the adult cast that our teens are bouncing off of. Miller has a deeply thankless, tiresome sort of role as the Overprotective Father of Daughters, but he gets some of the strongest laugh lines mostly due to his delivery. It would be easy for the strict parent to be the element of the film that bogs everything down, but I personally was happy every time he was on screen. (Is this because I am now significantly closer to the 40-something parent of teens than the teens? No, it's the children who are less compelling.) Is the fact that Allison Janney's principal character spends all her time openly writing erotica and is also named Ms. Perky a little bit of a hat on a hat? Sure, but I'll allow it. I thought Daryl Mitchell's abrasive English teacher was sort of funny but I was genuinely a little distressed at how easily Kat got kicked out of class, repeatedly. (She is removed from class for saying some sort of vaguely feminist and correct things about Ernest Hemingway but there is no punishment for flashing a detention teacher? Or for Bianca committing full-blown physical assault at prom? I also have some concerns about the lax safety standards about archery practice at this high school, I guess this is what happens when the principal has bratwurst on the brain at all times.)

Anyway, as someone who also likes Thai food, feminist prose, and angry girl music of the indie rock persuasion, I overall found this more charming and funny than I expected to. I also just want to point out that Kat's weird friend's Shakespeare dress looked more normal than half of the 1999 prom outfits.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Those damn Dawson's River kids sleeping in each other's beds and whatnot"

Is it under two hours:  Yes

In conclusion: Sometimes having black underwear is just a hedge against period stains, sorry to ruin the mystique, everyone.

Bratwurst in Beer with Onions from Foodie Crush

We are introduced to Heath Ledger's character as he is being scolded for a previous "flashing" incident in the cafeteria involving a bratwurst. The joke is then elaborated on when Ms. Perky inserts it (sorry) into her florid prose. I cannot tell you how disappointed in me Anna looked when I excitedly said "oh, bratwurst!"

I think it's because she doesn't really like sausage.

Up next: A teen take on a classic tale (2/4)

Heathers; Spaghetti with Lots of Oregano

Heathers (1988)

Director: Daniel Waters

Had I seen this before: Enough times to have the entire film memorized, apparently

About 15 minutes into this, I had a couple of realizations: 1) A passing thought I had while watching Mean Girls but didn't bother including in the write-up was that I thought they would be...meaner? Like, there is bullying, but it's lacking a sort of quintessential cruelty that one might expect in a movie literally called Mean Girls? And that's almost certainly because I cut my teeth on Heathers and my standards for meanness in girls are very, very high. 2) Guys...I think this movie holds up.

I'm not very consistent about doing plot summaries in these things, but since this one is in the "cult movie" category, it seems like it might be worthwhile. So, if you haven't seen Heathers, it's a dark dark comedy about Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder), a high school junior who is in the popular group that rules the school, otherwise comprised entirely of girls named Heather. They are rich and mean; they have signature colors; they play croquet; they abuse their social underlings. Veronica is intrigued by new student J.D. (Christian Slater doing a pretty good Jack Nicholson), a dark brooding type who seems to see through all the high school hierarchy bullshit and calls out the popular class for the assholes they are. Soon, Veronica and J.D. hook up, and when a prank on Heather #1 turns sort-of-accidentally deadly, they stage it as a suicide. More high school carnage follows, J.D. grows increasingly out of control, teenage suicide becomes a cause célèbre, and there is a dream-sequence funeral for the ages. (It's hard for me to pick up a video game controller without Glenn Shadix's delivery of the line "Em Tee Vee video games" from that scene echoing through my brain.)

I don't know the last time I watched this, but it's very likely that it was in a pre-Columbine world, when the aesthetics of J.D. with his floppy hair and black duster and scheming smirk were unattached to any real-world horrors. And I assumed that now it would be somewhere between uncomfortable and unbearable to sit through, or at the very least cringe-inducing to reflect on how entertained I was by it as a teenager. But if anything, the movie seems slightly ahead of its time--using the 80s stereotype of the monstrous popular high schooler to set up the idea that the smart but angry white guy loner with a chip on his shoulder who opposes them might be even worse. A toxic know-it-all who wants to (literally) burn it all down, all the while insisting that he is the put-upon victim of society, the appeal of J.D. wears off pretty quickly but you understand why it was there initially in the context of a bunch of bitchy narcissists and lunkhead jerks.

There are so many things about this movie that still work so well, and some that I think probably don't but because they were seared into my brain at a formative age, I found it easy to glide past them. (The title of this blog at this point should probably be "I'm Sorry But I Fell In Love With This Before the Age of 21.") For example, the utter horribleness of Heather #1 is still effective but I do think some of her more over-the-top lines are probably a little more clunky and full of empty shock value than they seemed in my youth. But the overall feel of this film is still so dark and so funny, enhanced by an eerie, somewhat sinister, synth-y nightmare score and the one 80s wardrobe to rule them all. The late-80s-ness of this is probably one of the best things about it, making it seem like an almost alien world that is amazing to look at--it's like a pitch black rendering of Pee Wee's Playhouse. 

Winona Ryder is a perfect center to this slightly unearthly universe--she rocks some Gen X Barbie power suits and suspenders over tight tops and one  black dress that makes you think "whoa people can be shaped like that?" She scribbles manically in her journal while sporting a monocle on a chain. She is cynical but alarmed, self-confident but still caught up in other people's machinations, beautiful but odd. Our hero!

And, much like Grease, this high school movie has incredible adult performances on the periphery. Veronica's wealthy, detached parents joke drily and offer her pâté but have no idea what actually goes on in her world or how to respond to it. The beleaguered, clueless staff of Westerburg High try addressing the "suicide" problem first by downplaying it ("I'd be willing to go a half day for a cheerleader"), then by hippy love-festing it, chain-smoking cigarettes all the while, and offering the most out-of-touch support possible ("Whether to kill yourself or not is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make"). And J.D.'s father reads as an absolutely terrifying psychopath--mirroring the way Veronica has running jokes with her own father but making it deeply uneasy--in case you needed any extra foreshadowing as to where that character was headed. 

I don't know if this movie still resonates with young people, although the existence of both a musical version and a recent abandoned attempt at what looked like a fairly misbegotten television version indicates that some executives at least seem to think so. But if you're looking for deep alienation with style and slushies, I say give it a shot. It'll be very.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: Literally every single one of them, I'm sorry, I am what I am

Is it under two hours: Yes

In conclusion: Regina George wouldn't last two minutes in the ring with Heather Chandler.

Spaghetti with Easy-Peasy Oregano Pesto from Soli Organic

Another mark in Veronica's favor is that not only does she explain what her favorite meal is, she has it for dinner and includes it in her nightmare. I'm just saying, if every movie I watched involved a character's face being shoved into a plate of their favorite food by a dream version of the best friend they sort of accidentally murdered, my life would be much easier and I wouldn't have to stretch so much on some of these recipes.

Up next: A teen take on a classic tale (1/4)

Grease; Cherry Soda with Chocolate Ice Cream

Grease (1978)

Director: Randal Kleiser

Had I seen this before: You know it

I didn't originally have Grease on my list for this theme because I was trying to stick with movies that were primarily about school and not dominated by a specific genre (i.e., musical or sports or horror or teen sex comedy). But last week we lost Dame Olivia Newton-John, who was, for me, a formative Australian. And so I felt it was only right to revisit Grease, as it is certainly a back to school movie as well as, perhaps unfortunately, a formative movie musical in my life. I first saw it when I was too young to understand several lyrics (The chicks will do what for Greased Lightning? Is...is he saying "scream"?) and wholly ignorant of its flaws. And I was fully braced, at this point in time, for it to be bad in a way that I would have to apologize to the 13-year-old for but on the whole I found it more odd in a way that I had to try to explain to the 13-year-old with only a lightly apologetic shrug. "The 70s were weird" is one lesson that I will absolutely impart to my daughters before they leave the nest.

The actual bad things are lurking in there, I'm not denying it: this is basically Boys Will Be Boys: The Musical, it's somehow slut-shaming and prude-shaming, the lesson at the end seems to be that women should contort themselves into whatever shape they need to for the benefit of the male gaze (more on that), one of the characters is entirely defined by being the "fat" girl (made weirder by the fact that the actress playing her is thin but wearing a kind of lumpy sweater), Rydell High is uhhhhh...definitely still segregated and you know they made the one Black guy in Sha-Na-Na come in through the back door. These are problems.

But most of what's wrong with this movie is goofy stuff that just endears it to me more. The fact that, in order to set the stage for this tale of the 1950s, to really get into a retro, throwback feel, the opening credits are the most 70s things I've ever seen in my entire life? Perfect. It's a Barry Gibb song accompanied by animation that I'm almost certain is full of Scooby Doo villains in the background. I could feel my insides turning Avocado Green and Harvest Gold by the end. The fact that all the teenagers look like 40-year-olds? Hilarious. They're actually in their 20s for the most part (Stockard Channing, fully in her mid-30s, is the exception, also the recipient of the rudest caricature in the credits, I was incensed on her behalf), but they have 70s faces, which as we all know adds 15 years. To me, this only gives authenticity to the characters because you do get the sense that these actors were genuinely in high school in the 1950s. The fact that the poster for this movie is a picture of Danny and end-of-movie Sandy and is therefore technically a huge spoiler? Tremendous. The fact that one guy at the dance contest is way, way too excited about the hand jive? Incorrect. No one else is excited enough. The fact that in the stage show Sandy is an all-American gal but they decided to cast Olivia Newton-John and were just like "eh, Sandy is Australian now"? A clear improvement! Make more characters Australian! Every movie should have one!

So I don't really believe Olivia Newton-John is a teenager but I do believe she is maybe a college student who wants to kiss John Travolta, which in 1978 was pretty relatable. I also find her highly charismatic and I think she pulls off Sandy being naively nice then lightly scheming then--look, I'm gonna make the argument here--at least somewhat empowered by deciding that she wants to look unbelievably hot in black leather and red lipstick and a cloud of cigarette smoke. I don't find the ending as much of a problem as a lot of people do, mostly because the conflict with Danny was never that he was embarrassed to like her because she was a good girl--he was just embarrassed to like her as opposed to writing her off as a summer fling. And he spends half the movie trying to change for her! He joins the track team and wears a Letterman jacket! So it's not at all one-sided, it's just that Olivia Newton-John's transformation at the end is so iconic that it's the thing people (correctly) remember. It's just a movie about two teenagers who are into each other but are equally bad at expressing their emotions. It's also a movie that ends with people singing at a carnival. Multiple carnival songs. It's like 25% happy ending, this thing. Let Sandy be hot! She's so happy! We're at a carnival!

The point is, Sandy is a tricky character to make appealing all the way through but ONJ did that and she also belted out "Hopelessly Devoted to You," which I can tell you, as someone who has car-sung it many times, is not the most forgiving tune. And that's why we're here today, to remember a legend and to lightly defend her character's agency in her own aesthetic experimentation.

One aspect I don't feel defensive about praising is the impeccable casting of the school faculty and staff--Sid Caesar as the coach? Come on. Eve Arden as the principal? Forget about it. Joan Blondell dishing out advice as a diner waitress, Alice Ghostley holding down shop class, Dody Goodman bringing a charming incompetence to the front office? I can't get enough. All of the older generation actors seem to be having such a good, silly time and their sections still really work for me. I love that everyone in the administration is generally good-natured, they're just understandably exasperated with having to corral all these middle-aged greasers.

As for the Gen Z take, Anna was confused about the car culture stuff and I tried explaining that the boys thought having a cool car would cause girls to want to have sex with them, which is basically the entire plot of this film as expressed through lyrics that are mildly incomprehensible in early adolescence, and she rightfully gave that whole idea a side-eye. "The car could be cool and you still could be bad at sex or whatever," she noted skeptically and accurately. So I guess standards for teen status symbols have changed over the past 45 years, and are probably more focused on the numbers your Soundcloud is doing or whatever.

Line I repeated quietly to myself because that part is good, Actually: "Tell me about it, stud."

Is it under two hours: Yes, which is impressive for a musical! I don't know why I'm still out here defending it this late in the game but here we are!

In conclusion: I'm sorry there were so many exclamation points in this, does anyone know if that's a side effect of COVID?

Cherry Soda with Best Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream from Joy Food Sunshine

"Uh, I'm not very hungry, just give me a Polar Burger with everything and a cherry soda with chocolate ice cream."

Up next: Oh who knows, I'm sick and can't be trusted to make these decisions