Cat People; Apple Pie

Cat People (1942)

Director: Jacques Tourneur

Had I seen this before: No

Before you get too excited by the title of this film (I assume everyone reading this has the same level of obsession regarding felinity as my daughters) I should warn you that this is really only a movie about a singular cat person. Or is it?? No, it is. She's a cat person. But if you ask me, she's also a grand gal who gets railroaded by the Hays Code. Railroaded, I say!

We open on an attractive woman at a zoo, sketching a black leopard. There is an element of Kelly Clarkson in her face and I immediately love her. She crumples up her sketch and tosses it in the general direction of a trash can but misses by, I'm sorry to report, a pretty significant margin. A tall, bland slice of white bread in a hat picks it up and disposes of it before pointing to a sign--the only reason I have related the opening moments of this film in such detail, because it is a delightfully 1940s sort of sign--which reads Let no one say, and say it to your shame, That all was beauty here, until you came. I'm talking hand-painted on wood. I want one of these for every room in my house. Litterers are getting absolutely roasted out here. Anyway, this is what passes for a meet-cute between Irena, our main character, and Oliver, the worthless man she is going to marry. This may already be apparent, but I am fully on Irena's side for the duration of this movie and blame her for absolutely nothing other than a tendency to be careless with her trash. 

We soon learn that Irena is a Serbian immigrant who believes that she is a victim of a mysterious curse passed down from wicked ancestors in her village. She also riles up the pets at the pet store something fierce (one of the best things about this film is the little asides from random characters, like the sweet old pet shop lady who reports that animals are quite psychic, and while she has nothing against her sister-in-law, for example, the cats can tell something isn't right with her), but I ask you--is it worse to have an aura that distresses a room full of birds or to have bought someone a whole entire kitten after a first date, requiring it to be returned to said pet store, Oliver? Anyway, Oliver dismisses her concerns as backwoods fairy tales and in the same breath describes himself as a "good plain Americano." Ugh, Oliver.

Despite Irena's reservations, Oliver eventually convinces her to marry him, but she is still afraid to be physically intimate with him--even kiss--due to the curse that she believes will turn her into a killer cat if her passion is aroused. When, on their wedding night, she asks him to be patient with her, he says "Darling, you can have all the time there is in the world if you want it." Hoo boy, start that timer! He arranges for her to start seeing a psychiatrist who is significantly more horrible than Oliver himself--his general advice is "stop believing what you believe" and also "consider kissing me instead?" THE WORST. When this therapeutic technique somehow doesn't immediately fix her problems, Oliver becomes frustrated and confides to his beautiful coworker Alice, verbatim: "You know what's a funny thing? I've never been unhappy before. Things have always gone swell for me. I had a grand time as a kid, lots of fun at school, and now at the office with you and Commodore and Doc. That's why I don't know what to do about all this! I've just never been unhappy." Oliver...I absolutely believe you and also this is a hilarious thing for a grown person to say. Being a white man in America in 1942, whew.

Less hilarious is that Alice sees an opening and is immediately like "well guess what, now that you mention it, I'm in love with you and I'm a good plain Americano as well!" Lady, they just got married! What is wrong with all of these people? Before long Oliver and Alice are discussing lawyers and such with Dr. Unprofessional and the fact that "you can't divorce an insane person" which--is that true? I thought mental illness was historically grounds for divorce? Anyway, I will tell you that one of these four people gets what is coming to them one of them gets what is not coming to them and that is because certain things had to be punished in American motion pictures in the year 1942, regardless of whether they were that character's fault or if she had literally spent the entire film being like "I'm trying to tell y'all."

Despite all that, I found this to be a tremendously enjoyable film with some very striking and suspenseful scenes, and if you enjoy movies of this era I highly recommend it. It's even credited with establishing the horror movie trope of the jump scare that turns out to be something benign, which means that roughly one million movies owe some credit to Cat People. And in the end, all I will say is: Dynamite the black leopard innocent!

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Things have always gone swell for me."

Is it under two hours: Mister, it's barely over one hour

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: The Motion Picture Production Code of 1934

Perfect Apple Pie from Pillsbury

Oliver's only redeeming quality is that when he is upset, his instinct is to go to a diner and order a coffee and a slice of apple pie, seemingly for breakfast. A good plain Americano indeed.

Up next: Can't wrap up spooky season without a single vampire, that would be spooky malpractice

The Ring; PB&J

The Ring (2002)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Had I seen this before: Yes

The Ring is a 2002 American remake of a 1998 Japanese horror movie about a very creepy VHS tape that wants to kill you. You, specifically. I mean, also me. This tape is pretty indiscriminate, it's really a chain-letter sort of deal. Anyway, this means The Ring deserves most of the credit for ushering in the J-horror trend in the U.S. and also the blame for the many inferior knockoffs that followed. I recently watched The Cabin in the Woods with the 13-year-old and didn't have to explain very many of the references, but when they threw to the situation in Japan, I was like "ah, right--J-horror has a lot of spirits and creepy children and everything is sort of bluish green," which I now realize was just me describing this movie specifically, despite having seen many actual Japanese films in the intervening years. It makes an impression, is what I'm saying.

We open with one of my favorite things, which is: a gimmick. The FBI warning glitches, everything glitches, we're entering a theme park and the theme is glitchy tech. Two high school girls are chatting and watching TV and the conversation turns to an urban legend going around about a cursed tape that kills you seven days after you watch it. One of the girls confesses that she did see a tape like that..................seven days ago!!!!! Oh no! It was at this point that I gently warned Anna that Amber Tamblyn was not going to be a Final Girl and she said "No, she is a what's-her-name from Scream." I did not point out that Amber Tamblyn in 2002 was nowhere near as famous as Drew Barrymore in 1996 and therefore it is an imperfect comparison because the audience expectations are very different in those two instances, but rather said "Yes, she's a Casey." Sorry, I know it's annoying when people low-key brag about their parenting.

At any rate, Amber Tamblyn gets good and Casey'd but we don't really see what happens--one of the things I appreciate about this movie is how it selectively hides the ball from the audience and then BAM whips the ball right at your face when you aren't expecting it. For the most part it is a pretty standard modern mainstream horror movie with a lot of familiar beats, but it does subvert expectations a couple of times in the way it tells the story. In this case, you escape that opening scene thinking "well that wasn't so bad" because everything scary was implied rather than shown, and then a couple of scenes later in the middle of what feels like a very safe, daytime scene between two characters talking in a kitchen you get a quick flashback to what Amber Tamblyn's corpse looked like when they discovered her and it is straight up horrifying. My guard? Well, it sure was down. So kudos to Gore Verbinski for that one.

Cursed tape established, we meet our main characters, Rachel (played by Naomi Watts) and the young son she displays absolutely zero interest in parenting, Aidan. Turns out Amber Tamblyn was Aidan's cousin and they were very close and he's having a tough time. Rachel does not seem particularly concerned about this or about the tragic and inexplicable death of her 16-year-old niece but she is very intrigued when some teens at the funeral describe the cursed tape rumor, because she is...........an investigative journalist!!!!! She excitedly tells her editor "I'm cooking up too good a story" with absolutely no hint of grief for her extremely dead niece at the center of it. This is because work is her life and Aidan is just her sad little burden who distresses his teacher with his death-related drawings and makes his own lunch and walks himself to school and, spoiler, selects his own filmed entertainment because no one is ever supervising him. 

Rachel watches the tape. It is basically the scary boat ride scene from Willy Wonka but in black and white. She enlists the help of her ex, Noah, another hot person who absolutely does not want to be a parent, which is a shame because he is Aidan's father. They spend so much time together not parenting their shared eight-year-old. At least we see at one point that Aidan has a babysitter, who reports that he was very good and easy to take care of, like, maybe you should try it sometime, Rachel or Noah. They can't though, because they are busy investigating. Eventually Aidan watches a copy of the tape that Rachel brought home and just left sitting there for him I guess. She pays some lip service to the fact that she's really gotta figure this thing out now that her kid is in danger, but I gotta say, you do not really see the hustle on the screen.

Several horror tropes come at you pretty fast: people affected by the tape show up blurry in photos and security cameras; multiple people have nosebleeds that indicate, I dunno, something scary; a patient in a mental institution is cryptic rather than helpful; animals act strangely. At one point Rachel is on a ferry and tries to pet a horse (?) that is also riding the ferry (?) and the horse is like "no thank you" but she keeps trying for reasons that I absolutely do not understand. When a horse says no, it means no, Rachel! So she's shushing it and shushing it and still trying to touch it and eventually it fully loses its mind, breaks out of its little cage, jumps off the dang ferry, and gets chopped up by the propellers. It's a genuinely shocking and awful scene and also is 100% Rachel's fault.

Eventually the pieces of the puzzle start coming together and it is a satisfying sort of mystery with nicely creepy clues. The fact that they have this physical object--a tape--and a bunch of equipment to science it with is pretty great. I'm not going to explain everything that happens in the back half because despite my personal reservations about the character of Rachel as a human I do recommend that you watch this if you haven't seen it. But I will say there is a terrific rug pull near the end of the film that elevates it above a lot of other things in the genre--this movie basically lulls you into thinking you're at the happy ending and then puts all of its actual scary shit after that. Respect.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "I'm sure it's a lot scarier at night."

Is it under two hours: Yes

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: Low-rise jeans

Simply Sandwich Bread with Peanut Butter and Jelly from Simply Recipes

No one in this movie eats anything (except that one horse who ate some ferry propeller sorry sorry sorry it really did upset me so much) but as mentioned above we do watch Aidan the parentless child make and pack his own little lunch complete with peanut butter and jelly on white bread.

Up next: A rousing 1940s game of Cursed or Neurotic?

Paranormal Activity; Butter Chicken with Naan

Paranormal Activity (2007)

Director: Oren Peli

Had I seen this before: No

One of the things I touched on in my Blair Witch post was the movie's funny-in-hindsight hyperbolic marketing which implied that the events in the movie might be real and also that the terror of seeing them might be fatal. But of course I am now a seasoned consumer of both cinematic horror content and cinematic horror advertising, a worldly and skeptical sort, not some nervous teen. And it is with that worldly and skeptical voice that I say to you now aaaaaaauuuuuugggggghhhhhh you guys. I can't believe I fell for this movie's over-the-top marketing for so many years. I was genuinely afraid to watch this film, which as it turns out is mostly about an annoying boyfriend and a door that swings open or shut once in a while, neither of which are the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.*

Released in 2007, Paranormal Activity took up The Blair Witch's found-footage torch in a major way, spawned seven sequels and counting, and kick-started a low-budget horror empire. It borrows a lot from its spiritual predecessor, including a chyron at the top of the film thanking the families of of Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat (the actors' real names), setting up the idea that this video footage was turned over to the filmmakers by the victims' families. (The fact that the last shot in this movie--spoiler spoiler spoiler obviouslyyyyyyyyyy--is of Katie's face morphing into a literal demon, makes that idea is very funny to me, like their families saw that, shrugged, and were like "well here you go I guess.") And like Blair Witch, it involves far more scenes of scared people arguing with each other than it does of scary things happening. 

It also thoroughly convinced me that it was too frightening for me, a suburbia-dweller who is often alone in my house, as the premise seemed to be "your suburban house is constantly doing weird stuff when you're not looking and probably wants to eat you." In that sense it is also continuing a different legacy, that of John Carpenter's Halloween, which spends a shocking amount of its fairly short runtime on various characters just walking down the sidewalk through a quiet neighborhood in order to impress upon you that your nice suburban neighborhood might be harboring dark things, such as an inexplicable gentleman in a Star Trek mask. The dark thing in this case is not a seemingly motiveless knife-wielding maniac, but rather a demon who is attached not to the house itself but to the main character Katie. When I thought we might be dealing with a ghost, I was interested, because I find ghosts to be compelling and scary and good vehicles for storytelling because there are all manner of things that a ghost might want from you and figuring what that is can be pretty fun as a viewer. I have absolutely no use, on the other hand, for cinematic demons. Demons in movies are almost all the same, just raging asshole bullies who are overly attached to Latin. And like human asshole bullies, they are very boring to me. What does a demon want? To make you unhappy and cause pain. But...making someone unhappy is the easiest thing in the world! That's not narratively intriguing at all! Like, try tip-toeing through life trying not to cause other people pain if you want a real challenge, demons.

Anyway. This particular demon spends the days sleeping I guess (?) and the nights just sort of wandering around Katie and Micah's big ugly house, so Micah buys a video camera to try to record the goings-on. Now, I am personally in possession of one (1) camera-adoring husband, so I do have some immediate empathy for Katie on this front, but I want to point out that Dan is nowhere near as annoying as Micah is with that thing. I guess this is in the grand tradition of characters in horror movies being irritating so you don't mind later when a demon stabs them (spoiler), but ugh. For reasons knows only to the entity itself, it does a lot of things that don't wake up the house's residents but do look spooky when played back on a laptop screen. So is it just showing off for the camera? At one point it moves a planchette around a Ouiji board and then lights it on fire, but there is no one in the room when that happens. What was that for?? If you were trying to get a message across, why not do it when someone is looking? This demon is a bully and a weird show-off. YouTube was a brand new platform when this movie was shot, but it seems like it might have been a natural home for Katie's entity, a true stunt queen.

Anyway. The funniest character in the movie is the paranormal expert who comes over twice and both times is like "sorry, I do ghosts not demons, I'm getting out of here." Same, man. Same. And the most inexplicable decision made by the main characters is to pull the very cozy-looking comforter off their bed every night and just sleep under a flat sheet. Upsetting.

*The kind of thing that keeps me up at night: Victorian children, ventriloquist dummies, bad things happening to eyeballs

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Knock it off Micah" (I might have improvised this line)

Is it under two hours: Yes

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: San Diego

Butter Chicken from What's Gaby Cooking

At least Katie and Micah eat one solid meal before things really go sideways, and that meal looks to be some very tasty Indian food.

Up next: Gonna watch this VHS tape I found and hope nothing horrifying happens seven days from now

Over the Garden Wall; Potatoes and Molasses

Over the Garden Wall (2014)

Creator: Patrick McHale

Had I seen this before: Yes

Over the Garden Wall is an animated miniseries that first aired on Cartoon Network in 2014, but that I personally discovered last year with an overwhelming sense of why didn't anyone tell me this existed? So here I am, telling you that this exists, trying to spread the autumnal vibes as far and wide as possible. This show is everything I want in the month of October: funny, spooky but not terrifying, full of pumpkins and crunchy leaves and trails of candy, safe for (older) kids but still entertaining to adults, or at least this specific adult. I have indicated that I consume a lot of "horror" content, which is true, but I should clarify that I am very picky about what kind of scared I prefer to be, which is: quietly unsettled and is not: grossed out or depressed. I like mysteries and cobwebs and nice wool coats and creaky floorboards. I do not like viscera. Think British people in drafty old houses looking mildly alarmed, not maniacs with masks and chainsaws. Somehow this cartoon fits essentially all the things I like into ten 11-minute episodes and still has time for several musical numbers.

The story follows two brothers, serious teen Wirt and his hijinks-inclined little brother Greg. We meet them wandering through a perfect set of breezy fall woods--Wirt is wearing a tall conical red hat and an old-fashioned button-down cape (nice wool coat check) and Greg is, for reasons that will become apparent late in the series in my favorite reveal of the whole show, wearing an upside-down teapot on his head. He also has a pet frog whose name changes frequently, my favorite of the list being Dr. Cucumber. They are joined by a cagey talking bird who is clearly harboring secret motivations of her own. It is soon apparent that they are lost and attempting to get home, but they will first have to make their way through various places that range from slightly strange to deeply creepy. There is a gruff woodsman, a mysterious beast, a town of dancing pumpkins, a child-eating witch, an eccentric old tea baron in a labyrinthine mansion, an archetype-populated tavern, and a ferry filled to the brim with anthropomorphic frogs. There are clear references to Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Wizard of Oz, and Alice in Wonderland, as well as a lot of general visual throwback to cartoons from the early 20th century. All of those allusions combined with the simple but lovely 2D-animation style manages to create the feeling that you are watching something old and comfortingly familiar, but fresh and interesting at the same time. It's like taking a bath in a giant mug of apple cider. 

Here are some of the voice actors that appear in this series: Elijah Wood, Melanie Lynskey, Christopher Lloyd, John Cleese, Shirley Jones, Chris Isaak, Bebe Neuwirth, and Tim Curry. Even though this blog is an avowed spoilers-whenever-I-feel-like-it zone I don't really want to give away any of the secrets of this show, but I will tell you that the character Tim Curry voices is named Auntie Whispers. So I assume with that information you either know for sure that this is not something you're interested in or there is already a you-shaped hole in the wall left behind in your pursuit of watching it.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: I've been singing the "Potatoes and Molasses" song (see below) to myself for daaaaaaaaaays

Is it under two hours: Yes, even all added up

Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: Expressing my feelings via mix-tape

Perfect Mashed Potatoes from Favorite Family Recipes (and Molasses)

Oh, potatoes and molasses

If you want some, oh just ask us

They're warm and soft like puppies in socks

Filled with cream and candy rocks

Oh, potatoes and molasses

They're so much sweeter than algebra class

If your stomach is grumblin'

and your mouth starts a mumblin'

There's only one thing to keep your brain from crumblin'

Oh, potatoes and molasses

If you can't see 'em put on your glasses

They're shiny and large 

like a fisherman's barge

You know you've eat enough when you start seeing stars

Oh, potatoes and molasses

It's the only thing left on your task list

They're short and stout

To make everyone shout

For potatoes and molasses

This is a "Big Top Candy Mountain"-esque song performed by Greg in an old-timey schoolhouse full of animal students while an escaped gorilla rampages outside. I really don't know how else to sell you on this show.

Up next: A movie I have actually been too scared to watch until now; if there are no further entries you should assume that I simply failed to work up the nerve

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!!