NYCweboy

White Hot: The Boys in the Waistband

There's a fascinating word missing from White Hot, Netflix's new documentary about the Abercrombie and Fitch years: the word is Aryan. And it dovetails with a similar elision in examining Bruce Weber's visual aesthetic - which the documentary rightly centers much of its grim fascination and derision upon - as the film also elides comparing Weber to Leni Riefenstahl.

And yeah, I get it: "Nazis? Can't you see why that might be a problem?" The point is, yes I do, and frankly I am neither the first, nor the last, to have brought up those comparisons. The other point is, the very reluctance of this doc to follow its own through line to some logical, difficult and obviously uncomfortable ends is why the film, which dances adroitly around the hard questions, never really lands a solid indictment of what was, and is, most deeply problematic about the whole moment when A&F dominated our popular culture.

And boy (cute boy), did it ever. I can tell you because I was there: The whole Abercrombie and Fitch thing was a little nuts. The cadre of topless boys outside their flagship stores! They literally sold a softcore porn catalog 4 times a year! They ran an ad of a naked man on a horse! (BTW - bareback? Get it?)

The first 30 minutes or so of White Hot get at, mostly well, but somewhat imperfectly, what it was to live through the madness. How desirable the bran was at its height. The weird, oversexed vibe of the stores. The even weirder, even more oversexed vibe of the advertising. After that the documentary delves, more deeply, into the underpinnings of how the venerated brand was reshaped by owner Mike Jeffries, and the role, especially, played by Bruce Weber, in creating the brand's visual identity.

Left surprisingly unspoken, really, is the role of the changing culture around the brand, and specifically, the sudden, newfound openness of the American culture to explicitly gay iconography. A&F spoke, as a brand, to teens and college kids... but even more obviously, it spoke to a generation of young, often recently out, gay men in their twenties and thirties, newly positioned in urban enclaves and white collar work. Largely white, heavily professional and service working, these gay men knew Weber, knew what he was doing, and knew it was aimed at them. And they, in turn, helped propel "A&F style" into a cultural watchword.

That the documentary misses, or at least sits quietly, around these dynamics is part of the major hole in its presentation. Because it's the very white, very oblivious nature of this gay community to its own internal racism, that helped create the problems the documentary points to: a culture within A&F focused on lookism and frankly racist definitions of attractiveness that affected hiring, store staffing, as well as advertising and marketing. It's partly why all of this was a merry little game   part of which was merrily avoiding asking why images weren't just overwhelmingly white, but so very male. Or asking why "Fierce" the store's signature fragrance, was a men's cologne. Or asking, eventually, whether straight frat boys understood how gay all of this really was?

The film unpacks, cleanly and effectively, the unravelings of the brand as lawsuits over representation, hiring policies and the like came home to roost. It helps, but also hurts, that key players like Jeffries and Weber don't participate in the documentary, thus making convenient, easily blamed bad guys.

But questions linger: why does the film absolve virtually every staffer in the film of any role in perpetuating just this kind of racist iconography? What does it say about a top to bottom corporate culture that hid, minimized and mistreated its minority work force? What does it say about our culture that the brand was so dominant, so revered, so damn hot? And can we not, at the very least,, take a moment and unpack that difficult and uncomfortable role of Aryan ideals luring in Weber's work?

No, by the end of White Hot, everything has vanished: the images from the bad years, the voices of the minority workers, the omnipresent, overly easy moralizing of folks like Robin Givhan.... in favor of corporate branding that literally tries to paper over the past. It's okay, the film says, because A&F now runs ads with a wide mix of body types and skin colors and... blah blah blah... world peace. That the film soft pedals its own outrage and runs away from the hard questions is, unfortunately indicative of how this mess came to be in the first place: if we don't examine our idealized views of these perfect fit bodies and sexualization of youth, we really aren't trying to sort out how this all worked to sell the brand to begin with. And that's the real problem we need to solve. not run from. Or at least, not continue, in our dirtiest secrets, to ogle them while claiming pious purpose. Cause boy, you still look hot in dem jeans.

Shang Chi: How Do You Say "Wakanda Forever" in Cantonese?

One surprise of the pandemic period is how Hollywood has struggled to save the film industry. No one, necessarily, could have predicted that TV and streaming would be more nimble in facing every problem from restarting production to creating material more relevant to a sudden change in the zeitgeist... but watching big time film production both struggle to adapt to wholesale shift in media consumption while also stalwartly refusing to change preplanned future productions... well, the mind reels.

From kicking a whole bunch of film canisters down the road (I do think the world may be ready for James Bond by November) to haphazardly releasing projects to generally dismal box office, this has been a bad year for the big budget film and things are only barely looking up (and in a year when the only seeming sure thing Hollywood can agree on is... Ryan Reynolds, is that a surprise?).

Mostly, I'm dismayed that Hollywood seems to have entered this vicious circle of throwing already finished films out to see if anything hits, with no regard for where audience tastes might be, and then being surprised when nothing really hits.

And so, after watching Black Widow basically fail (and after stunning streaming audiences with the string of hits starting with Wandavision)... Marvel too is just sailing along blithely, sending out Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings as if we're all just watching comic book movies and the genre isn't fast heading towards a dead end. Nice try - and to it's credit, Shang-Chi hits some fine notes in the early going - but in the end, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings offers a surprisingly stale mix of standard International Asian Legend hooey crossed with Black Panther crossed with typical third act CGI overkill, and the result is about as pedestrian as one could come to expect.

We open with some narration about an ancient Asian legend and what falls somewhere between cutting room footage from Mulan and whatever recently got made in Hong Kong or Taiwan - which is to say, ancient Chinese soldiers guarding some Forbidden City looking gate... blah blah blah. The legend is about the man who holds the "Ten Rings" - magical bracelets that have otherworldly laser power or something - and how he conquers, well, whatever he wants.

This turns out to be Tony Leung Chiu Wai and in the first fairly bravura move of storytelling, our villain is our opening narrator... and the film does a nice job of setting up a string of unreliable narration, which carries much of the first two thirds. This leads to the actual into of Shang, er, Shaun Chi, the villain's son, who is leading a mild mannered life in San Francisco as a young adult until Dad shows up to reclaim his son's birthright... or something. This leads us to Macau, where we meet Shang-Chi's sister, more fights ensue and we learn that Dad is trying to find the magical land where their mother is from to bring her back from the dead... or something.

And, much like Black Panther, for much of the early going, the mix of well executed action sequences and nods to cultural integrity play well. There's a lively sequence on San Francisco's hill streets with a bus that's very solid and the Macau sequence of a multilevel fight on the bamboo scaffolding in front of a mirrored tower is close to a visual masterpiece. But for all that setup, once we're locked into the fairly standard comic book family dynamics. Shang-Chi has almost nowhere to go, and the weariness shows. The film takes over an hour, for instance to introduce Michelle Yeoh's character and once she's in, she has almost nothing to do except motivate the kids to defend the magical hamlet that gave them their mom (her sister). From there it's the usual, over the top battle with a CGI monster that's busy with visuals, but hard to connect with emotionally. And ultimately, that's been the last 5-7 Marvel and DC pictures in a nutshell, and it's why the whole genre is starting to wear a bit thin.

Sure, Shang-Chi boasts Yeoh and a fine turn from Akwafina, as well as Simu Liu as Shang-Chi and Leung, of course, who really can convey pages of dialogue in a single look, and little here is wasted with him. But Leung's acting strength alone can't save a largely predictable, awfully pedestrian enterprise, try as he might. And ultimately, what doesn't quite carry through is either the much ballyhooed direction of Destin Daniel Cretton or the weak, much labored on, script; neither of them seem like more than the newest toys off the Marvel studio factory assembly line.

There are lessons here should Kevin Feige - or anyone else with some senior executive status - choose to look: the first being that lively post credit sequences can't save moderately entertaining films; and beyond that, the whole genre could use an infusion not of new blood so much as new approaches to telling fresh stories. Wandavision hinted at this; so did The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings just feels like Wakanda Forever in a shiny Asian dress.

Jaded? Perhaps. In many ways, in this golden age of the MCU, we've never had it so good and it may be a little unfair to expect every film to be a profound reimagining of what comic book movies can do (see what I did there?). Still, even in a world untouched by pandemic problems and struggles for film as a medium, it's hard to portray Shang-Chi as much more than a colour-by-numbers Mad Lib version of 3 other, better comic book films at least. That the film's weaknesses will be more apparent in a less instant boffo BO world like the one we have now doesn't mean we shouldn't look harder at this Marvel revolving door of machinery like film production over livelier, more risky creative swings. It's a little too easy to imagine what a better, smarter, more creatively adventurous Shang-Chi could have been; and that's yet another not good sign for a Hollywood film business that desperately needs to get ahead of their problems, not fall to them, repeatedly. 

The Hillbilly Elegy of JD Vance's Senate Campaign

While it's not entirely surprising that JD Vance has achieved "massive distraction status" in his campaign to campaign for Ohio's Senate seat, that doesn't make it any more serious.

Vance, a veritable compendium of notes on white rural poverty in Appalachia with a soupçon of absurd Trumpism plus a lot of angry white guy, has enjoyed outsize success with a modest book... and well, that's about it. Initially hailed as possessing some sort of unique insight into the Appalachian communities of his ancestors, over the course of the Trump years Vance devolved from Trump critic keenly aware of Trump's know-nothing appeal to rural communities to a Trump cheerleader eager to join the jeering crowd of rural supporters. 

The theory is that Vance's high profile combined with a media ready presence results in a field clearing romp to the GOP nomination; so far that 's been held up by a number of pesky realities. One of which is that Vance isn't from Ohio, but Kentucky, and though he has borderline appeal with some parts of neighboring Ohio territory, he's been out of step with Ohio's less rural, more cosmopolitan cities and nearby suburbs. Another is that Trump personally, for a variety of reasons, favors other Ohio candidates. A third is that Vance seems to be struggling to find a narrative that can be comfortably pro-Trumpist, while not edging into simply "out there" politics. The latter is what's been surprising, since Vance initially seemed well within political mainstreams.

But these are wild times and Vance has, so far, managed to head for Crazy Town at almost every opportunity. He advanced a "pro-family" notion of politics so weirdly extreme even conservatives were baffled (claiming at one point that all left wing politicians including Nancy Pelosi, a mother of 5, could only be childless and anti family). His opposition to even the most common sense approaches to vaccination and other public health responses to Covid has been as extreme as a deep southern governor: fine for them, but absolutely at odds with the popular, sensible policies of Ohio's Mike DeWine. More to the point, Vance has yet to advance the kind of holistic politically centrist policies of a senatorial candidate that have traditionally marked Ohio, where candidates achieve national status as bellweathers of the "realistic middle").

Democratic fear of Vance, aside from the relative star power, has everything to do with the vast nameless fears that Trumpism isn't in retreat but rather running silent, but deadly, under America's cultural notice. The theory being that while normal people may think this stuff is crazy and disastrous for the GOP... just like 2016, liberals will be caught short when Republicans overwhelm them again at the polls.

What can one say? Perhaps that's true... though as a theory it tends to favor 2016 over all that's happened since, including Trump's eventual defeat in 2020, and the sense that without Trump, Republicans are struggling to achieve similar vote results (which, fair enough, could be fine for 2022, but just kicks the fears to Trump re-emerging for 2024). 

Either way, though... Vance, as a harbinger is so far not working out as planned. He continues to poll weakly in potential Republican matchups, never mind any scenario in which he actually gets a nomination and runs against a Democrat. Hillbilly Elegies alone won't solve that problem, and political extremism, so far, is making it worse. Unless some GOP behind the curtain magic works to transform Vance's extreme edges and tendency to mouth off unsupervised, it's hard to see how Vance pulls off a primary, never mind the general.

One larger thread to pull from this, though, is an insight that upsets both the right that's invested in Trump and the left that fears that they're right: ultimately, Vance's take on the rural audience may be right about their anger, but wrong about how that translates to long term political success. Vance's insights, such as they are, provide a window into the sense of hopelessness and despair that drives rural poverty, and he's surely onto something there. But rather than proving that populist politics can be their salvation, the events of the last few years have probably illuminated that hopelessness and despair tend to lead to poor choices, not wise ones, and thus, may just reinforce what it was meant to relieve. Trump, in other words, is a dead end. And Vance, provocative views or not, can't solve that any more than any other non-Trump voice. Trump himself only manages to camouflage the dead endedness with more bluster.

And that bluster, I suspect, is itself wearing thin... which is why, while Trump serves as a major distraction for the GOP, he doesn't represent any kind of solution down the political road. Between legal issues, his own short attention span, laziness and greed, Trump would happily scoop up all the money he could and shirk the actual work of even running again if he can avoid it. All because, unlike Vance, Trump isn't running away from a nightmare past in rural poverty. And because much more like Vance, he has little empathy or sympathy for all the people still trapped there.

As an aside, I suspect Vance would seem more dangerous, his appeal to rural whites more on point, had Hillbilly Elegy translated into a film that had not been met with derision rather than awe. Ham-handed and overthought, the film underscored that as much as Vance's story had some appeal, it was not necessarily new, save for the reality that America tends to ignore the addiction issues of non-privileged whites. And indeed, were Vance to position himself as an earnest, hard working voice fighting to help those addicts against an unfeeling system of bureaucracy and privilege, he might very well be the threat many left and right imagined he might be. Doing that, though, would require tapping into the things Vance himself has rejected via Trumpism: a sense of hope, of fairness, of seeing the good in what we do when we help one another.  By defining his quest in terms of his own personal victory, Vance underscores why the Trump dead end is just that dead: "only one of us gets out of here alive. And it better be me."

Halston: The Boys In The Bland

My best friend suggested that it's possible Ryan Murphy was put here to destroy all our icons, but I'll be slightly more charitable. Halston means well - unlike, say, Glee - but the combination of Murphy's expansive deal with Netflix and his usual hangups and tics when it comes to storytelling lay waste to what clearly could have been a dazzling, messy epic of gay life in the seventies.

Halston is, of course, one of fashion's great stories of success and self destruction, played out against the backdrop of Studio 54, the cocaine years, and too much too soon careers. Originally a hat designer much loved by the ladies who lunch crowd, Halston had to reinvent himself as hats fell out of favor in the mid sixties, and he launched a high end fashion line noted for his easy, breezy use of flowing fabric and a keen eye for distilling the key elements of American style. I remember the first time I saw Halstons at the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum in New York - what amazed was not the sense of their time, the height of seventies style, but the way most of them could have been taken out of a closet and worn today without a second thought.

It's very obvious that part of what's missing in Halston is just that sense of the clothes. The show keeps sort of showing them, as if somewhere, in a room just off camera, there's a collection of stunning clothes we've only been allowed to glance at. It's frustrating, and eventually exasperating - especially in key moments like the famous "Versailles Show" of 1973 - that what was boldly beautiful about Halston's work is mostly merely sketched at.

Yet the other frustrating element is that if this was then meant to be a juicy, dishy tell all of famous messes and their excessive ways, the series only sketches at that, as well. Halstoin swans around a lonely, oddly depopulated Manhattan that lacks grit or glamour or a sense of the city's energy, and that's just deadly for the story of someone who clawed his way to the top of New York's ultimate importance. Wearing Halston, knowing Halston, being Halston... it's hard to understate how off the wall his celebrity as a fashion icon was... and yet, somehow, that's what Murphy manages to pull off.

And all of that makes what works here all the more puzzling. Halston's genuine closeness to Liza Minnelli is beautifully portrayed, as is Liza's intelligence and sense of herself. Halston's ability to see women, and to get what they're looking for in clothes and style is instinctive and that clearly comes across. But too often the film both madly name drops and yet not enough. Where's Diana Vreeland? Grace MIrabella? Why is Eleanor Lambert coyly half revealed when every fashion person on earth will love the character on display here? why two mentions of Jackie O and then... nothing?

Meanwhile, what could and should be a frank assessment of drugs and louche behavior is just... wasted. Too often Halston's descent into addiction has the feel of the kind of music biopic lampooned in the Dewey Cox Story: some man of color Halston is having sex with pulls out poppers or coke... and off he goes. Clearly Halston's tastes were well established, but it's hardly surprising that more white gay men trying to make sense of Halston's dark skinned boyfriends comes off as pretty much as problematic as it could possibly be.

None of which is to fault the performers Krysta Rodriguez' Liza is indeed a delight, Rebecca Dayan's Elsa Peretti floats around the edges of scenes like any good Italian heiress of the seventies would. Halston's various louche bedmates are fine. And Ewan McGregor? It's not the first time he's played a toppy (not necessarily bossy) bottom - that would be Todd Haynes' lovely Velvet Underground, where he finishes the film getting railed by Christian Bale on a London rooftop - but I sure hope the intimacy coach made sure he had a safe word here in Halston. I've rarely worried so much for a star in sex scene after sex scene - getting pounded never looked so, well, pounding, and God knows, Murphy should know enough about that. To his credit McGregor goes balls to the wall (no, literally) on playing Halston at every level, but it's hard when a key role like this is so emotionally cut off from himself that it becomes hard to know what's going on in side his head at all. A better film wouldn't leave us wondering, if only by distracting with endless falderal, a party that seems to neither start nor end. Because that's what the seventies were, and the film just fails at it, utterly.

I suspect Murphy tried to impose all the lessons learned from remaking The Boys in the Band - itself a reminder that, armed with solid material, this Netflix deal gives Murphy room to fly - and on the one hand he's right: Halston, too, is a stunted boy from a deeply repressed background covering it up with style, wit and a lot of drugs and sex in pre and post Stonewall realities.  The trouble is, you can't tell Halston's story and mistake the former for the latter... that is, the story needs a lot of style and drugs and sex... and probably less psychologizing about What Made Him That Way. Halston - which could yes, use a lot less of people walking into rooms saying "Halston" - takes the racy, sexy undercurrent that both defined the seventies and the stylist who dressed it, and trades it for a morality tragedy of lonely people looking to connect. As Halston - or Steve Rubell or Liza or any number of seventies icons would say - "how boring." And, well, they had a point.

Then, too, a crowded messy orgy of a superstar existence is probably the absolutely wrong thing to expect to tell well when filming into the teeth of the pandemic. One wonders why launch a project like Halston right now, really, at all. And still, the bigger struggle of a Halston is when and how someone will step in and give Murphy the kind of feedback he needs to balance his ambitions in ways that deal more constructively with his limitations as a storyteller and producer. Big, beautiful, yet emotionally inert and off the mark, almost anyone can see what Halston lacks... except apparently, the person making it.

Justice League, The Zack Snyder Cut: And I Think It's Gonna Be A Long Long Time...

Personally, I don't have quite the problems others may have with the messy, somewhat convoluted unfolding of the DC Universe on film; we can't all be Marvel, and I wasn't really raised on Marvel to start. DC, for me anyway, was always about incredible, marquee level heroes whose stories were always in some sort of odd flux. You can't really mess up the conceptual purity of Superman, or Batman, or Wonder Woman... but my goodness, how DC can make a mess of which version and back story applies to which version that may be in a comic book, or on TV or on film. Any company that can simultaneously push "Titans" and "Teen Titans GO!" while seemingly oblivious to the inconsistencies, is happily, endlessly, slightly psychotic. 

Ultimately, a true DC fan knows if whatever you're watching or reading is working for you... you just say "let's just go with that version and see where it winds up. How about that? Later, you can explain to me all about how Earth 7 is totally different from Earth 2."

So, sure, I can accept that the TV series Flash is a charming upbeat adventure, while the new movie Flash is possibly on the spectrum and kind of all over the place. Or let's just go with the Gal Gadot Wonder Woman because, well, she's just awesome. I miss Steve Trevor... but sure, whatever.

And so it came to pass that just when DC seemed to have all its ducks in a row: a grand plan to harmonize Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman and launch a full Universe of films and sequels... Zack Snyder (and his wife Deborah, who serves as producer) suddenly faced a tremendous personal loss, three quarters or so into finishing Justice League. Faced with mounting costs, and a film seemingly headed off the rails, DC rushed in Joss Whedon, who rewrote and recut the film, leading to the all right, but not necessarily great version that stumbled through theaters and set back DC's grand plans somewhat.

Meanwhile, a tantalizing online discussion emerged that "The Snyder Cut" - a mythical, magical version of the same film - would have been the show stopper that was promised, if only Zack had been allowed to finish it. Geeked out fans being what they are, and comic book intensity being all the rage these days... it's not exactly surprising that DC, Warner Brothers and HBO decided that, well, what the hell, it couldn't get worse, so why not go ahead and give the fans what they said they wanted.

So here we are... and here I am, four long hours later, still the DC fanboy of my childhood, making the best of yet more messy DC shenanigans. Is The Snyder Cut good? That may be the wrong question. Is it necessary? Kind of, yes. Is it a massive, bloated mess of a film that probably needed some judicious pruning? Well, definitely on that one, yes.

While the new Justice League does make clear that the Whedon version made a hash of a more coherent tale, at just over 4 hours, to say the Snyder Cut could benefit from a bit of a trim is kind of an understatement. An expansive opportunity for extended storytelling, this new Justice League offers a solid two part comic book of a grand adventure, yet still struggles to land solid emotional resonance and a sense of urgency.

As before, we start on parallel tracks: the mysterious emergence of alien forces searching for hidden devices on Earth, guarded by Amazons and soldiers of Atlantis... while Batman struggles to assemble DC's biggest names into some sort of League... a League of... Justice? Gradually, it becomes clear that the assembled group is meant to fight the arrival of Darkseid (which I always pronounced "Darkseed" as a kid, but is "Dark-side"), a massive evil bent on world destruction. Because of course he is.

It might help Snyder's case if mild variations of this plot hadn't been both the provenance of Endgame and The Chronicles of Riddick (no, really, go look). You can argue that some of this is archetypal - the hero's journey, and all - but much of what's here feels painfully regurgitated, both too much and not enough all at once. Moreover, more than Whedon's "smash and grab" version, Snyder's bloat robs the film of urgency and surprise: every development is so telegraphed or familiar, there's just no commensurate feeling of achievement. This much of a slog should at least feel like we got somewhere.

Snyder's long been a dialogue minimalist (which is good, because too much talk leads to Cameron like pedantry), and it's remarkable a film this terse runs quite this long; the third or fourth set of moody staring to dark rock tracks was pretty much enough, but the film soldiers on, relentlessly. A parade of "Isn't that...?" cameos also gets pretty tiring, since the ancillary characters mostly have little to do (except possibly to set up the exhausting set of sequels we may never see). Visually, the film holds together better under a consistent Snyder vision than in a Whedon/Snyder hybrid; Snyder really does have an eye, and even if I don't love it, his attention to visual detail is impressive. 

As for the lead performances, it's fair to say Affleck shines best in this version, the blank slate nature of his acting gives Snyder the room needed to tell the story his way, with Batman more as observer than narrator. Ray Fisher's Cyborg benefits from an expanded presence and more coherency in his narrative.  Gal Gadot has a sureness as Wonder Woman that overcomes the thinness of her role. Ezra Miller's jittery Flash, on the other hand, benefitted from smoothing out in Whedon's cut; here the intensity overwhelms. Henry Cavill's Superman languishes on the sidelines too long; his calm presence centers the final act and should have been there sooner. As for Jason Momoa... I get the whole flavor of the moment feeling... but Whedon had a better sense of how to make him feel more essential to the proceedings.

Ultimately, the Snyder Cut isn't a disaster. It's just a little long, a bit much, more hype and a bit less actual sizzle than was advertised. In its best moments - where dizzying heroics, dazzling visuals and minimal talk work together seamlessly - you can see the vision it takes to pull storytelling off on this scale. What wears the viewer down is all the rest: the needless discursions, striking levels of humorlessness, and the saggy feeling that little here feels new or fresh. (One interesting point: Whedon apparently lifted Snyder's Batman/Aquaman intro completely intact; and that sequence weighs down both films.)

So, now that we know what "The Snyder Cut" promised... where does DC go from here? Does the DCU honor the promise of Snyder's original?  Or is it just a fever dream of possibilities that we'll always wonder about? Like many DC messes, the answer is probably "let's leave this here while we lurch off in an altogether new direction." Welcome newcomers! This is the life of DC fandom! You're welcome.

The Mauritanian: Knowing May Not Be Enough

Is it enough that The Mauritanian provides one of those all too rare (these days) moments when Jodie Foster reminds us she can carry a picture? It ought to be, really; Foster is that rarest of Hollywood stars, the one who can remind us, in moments, how we've missed her intelligence and that calm knowing presence behind her eyes. If she picked it, well, you know there must be something to it.

And yes, there's a lot here, in The Mauritanian, the first film to tackle the stories out of Guantanamo Bay and the prisoners held there. Unfortunately, most of what's there is largely sketched at, suggested and implied. Well designed, and ably directed by Kevin Macdonald to provide just the right amount of fresh outrage, The Mauritanian, for all of Foster's best efforts, is just not quite big enough, or surprising enough, for the searing indictment it seems to hope to be.

Foster plays Nancy Hollander, a prominent human rights attorney based in New Mexico who was asked to look into the case of a Mauritanian man being held by the American government at the request of his mother, via officials of the Mauritanian government. Mohamadou Slahi had been picked up for some suspicious phone activity in the aftermath of 9/11 and, as it turned out, had been transferred to Guatanamo Bay shortly after the base had been converted to receive the various Muslim prisoners held in the Middle East and elsewhere.

One doesn't have to be very well informed to know where the film is headed, but Slahi's case turns out to be a good Example A of how broken and perverted the search for justice has been and will be at Gitmo. Hollander's methodical approach to compiling a record of Slahi's confinement, combined with Slahi's own intelligence, positive attitude and storytelling, makes for a compelling narrative of a heavy handed process that quickly lost its way. Gradually, as the layers peel away, it becomes clear that whatever tangential case federal authorities might have put together on Slahi, or anyone else, has been lost in the ugly morass of "extreme measures" - or more accurately, torture - used on him.

And here's where the film, well intentioned as it is, runs into a bit of a snag: depicting torture is hard, especially in a way that both dramatizes the brutality without, well, reveling in it. For better and worse, The Mauritanian sketches at the worst of Slahi's treatment, and while it's intense and uncomfortable, it's also a bit third hand and cautious. Slahi's story, while deeply compelling, and clearly drawn around his inner strengths, is at heart an intimate look at the difficult journey of one man. For what it is, the film tells that small story well. In terms of being a full-on, wholesale indictment of the whole ugly ball of wax that GItmo was and is... there's just not quite enough here to make that larger argument.

In some ways, this is a talky two hander between Foster's Hollander and Slahi, and she is well matched by Tahar Rahim, probably most familiar to American audiences from A Prophet on Netflix. Rahim does terrific work finding and holding onto Slahi's humanity through what was clearly a nightmarish, horrific series of events. And, as I said, Foster is such a welcome presence onscreen that she makes her tough, no nonsense work here look easy, and necessary. Benedict Cumberbatch and Shailene Woodley also provide fine performances as the marine lawyer and Hollander's second chair, respectively, both gradually radicalized by the injustices they are forced to confront.

Will an audience be similarly radicalized? I'm not sure The Mauritanian, for all it's strengths, winds up telling most people something they didn't already know. Nor does it really address or resolve the questions that linger - knowing what we do know, what do we do now? What do we do with the prisoners who remain? Can anything, really, make an entirely messed up moment right again? At best, the film gives us one man's poignant journey. What it can't fix - or really even comprehend - is how so many did so many bad things trying to... well, whatever it was, we lost sight of it, long ago. No one, really, should have been treated like The Mauritanian. Being forced, via The Mauritanian to confront those events, unfortunately, doesn't necessarily tell us what to do with what we now know.

Coming 2 America: Give The People What They Want

The thing about Eddie Murphy is that the bar he set really was of his own making. You kinda had to be there, but as a culture we went from zero to Eddie so quickly it almost seems like a quaint fairy tale now. Saturday Night Live to 48 HRS to Beverly Hills Cop with what, an HBO special in there for good measure? The man really was comedy gold. And all by just being, well, Eddie.

Movie stardom is its own specialized, particular thing. It's acting, sure, but it's also being, that instant quality you have in front of the camera where the audience expects you and you just deliver you... as a young moviegoer I didn't entirely understand watching the process as it was happening to newcomers I liked. I get it now. I can see the way that stardom arrives, how it happens... how it's really not new or different, it's just the right person in the right place, at a certain time. And Eddie, well... that happened.

But the bar is high and Eddie, while there have been brilliant hits, there's been plenty of misses, and a lot of... well, just okays. It's easy to blame "expectations" and that bar... but I think it's probably that usual thing about writing and directing. Get great writing in front of Eddie, get him a great director... and he shines. I mean, really shines. Dreamgirls. His last appearance on SNL. Good Eddie is fine. Great Eddie is... well, kids, you kind of had to be there for those opening weeks of Beverly Hills Cop.

Of all his initial stardom projects - before the first trough of 91-96 - Coming to America always seemed like a promise not quite fulfilled. For all that it was - a big budget, pretty much all African American driven project that succeeded tremendously - it also was a bit hit or miss. What works (seriously, go back, it's a satisfying watch, in spite of itself) really works, what doesn't... well, they can't all be Beverly Hills Cop.

And here's where looking at Coming 2 America is frustrating: on the one hand, the bar is maybe too high, on the other, it has been more than 30 years, and you think we might have learned, well, something. But what we have, well, is kind of what we get when you get good, but not great, Eddie. Coming 2 America, while funny in starts and fits, never quite gels into the kind of "second swing at what still feels really promising and just out of reach" that the first film has long represented. While his core audience will get a lot of what feels familiar... what's missing is the kind of sharp attack and insightful power of Eddie's best work.

Like it's predecessor, Coming 2 America leaps over Paramount's mountain to return us to that magical, fictional nation of Zamunda (and the movie more or less fails to land the obvious joke about Wakanda being nearby) where Eddie's Prince Akeem is moments away from becoming King. Without a male heir, the country's future seems vulnerable... until we discover (conveniently) that Akeem may have, well, also fathered a child while he was in America with another woman - and here, in one of the film's brightest moves, it inserts Leslie Jones not just into the sequel, but also the original film. In short order Akeem and Semmi (a somewhat wan reprise from Arsenio) wing their way back to Queens, pick up the son and his Moms and head back to Wakanda... I mean, Zamunda, to ...

Well, to be honest, nothing makes a lot of sense once Lavelle (the son, ably played by Jermaine Fowler) comes on the scene, and the film meanders between a young man's quest to become prince, some tepid family drama, and Eddie learning to be the Lion King or the Black Panther... or something. Fundamentally, the problem is that much of this isn't nearly as funny as it wants to be, and the familiar dilemma of many an Eddie film - all the dick jokes and gross outs - is as present as ever. Is clever too much to hope for? I don't see why - and I mean that literally: this thing has a dream, cross generational cast of African American talent, almost all of it semi-wasted.

Because part of what's always separated Coming to America - and, indeed, Coming 2 America makes even more explicit - is how it put black America in a film in front of white America.  Eddie's movie stardom has always been about confronting our racial divide in ways that shake white cultural complacency, and celebrating African American heritage. The original film made a point of telling a story aimed at black America to show white America would watch... and they did. Coming 2 America just doubles down on that promise. The thing is, that promise should feel more, well, promising... shouldn't it?

More pointedly, the film literally dances uneasily around what was, in the original film, already a dubious stew of racial, ethnic, cultural and wildly sexist tropes. Yes, women fare better here, but barely. Partly that's because of Jones, who's apparently incapable of phoning it in, as well as the serene presence of Shari Headley, reprising her role as Queen Lisa, and reminding us that Hollywood can let women age gracefully.  But lots of sexist nonsense abounds. I don't even know where to begin with the dicey aspects of what passes for "African" here. At best, the film skates by what's obviously problematic with a nervous laugh and a "well, we are a comedy" ... but there's a field day to be had unpacking it all.

The film quickly and neatly wraps everything up, largely by importing what seems like the tone and approach of another film all together... and even that's fine, if a bit Tyler Perry, by which I mean a lot of feel good moments black people like and a hearty dose of sentimentality. For what it is, Coming 2 America wraps things up as well as can be expected. It's fair, though, to ask why no one tried to do more.

Director Craig Brewer did Dolemite with Eddie (after helping produce and direct Empire, and writing Hustle and Flow), but I'd call this more akin to his directing the remake of Footloose - he's capable and he gets the sensibility of the source material... but he's not exactly visionary (and he's no John Landis, for better and worse). As for the script, it definitely feels assembled by the committee credited with writing it: no real point of view, full of pedestrian dialogue and a bit of a mess. What's best, I suspect, is the music - how can you miss with cameos from Gladys Knight and En Vogue and Salt and Pepa? - and some pretty tasty (Ruth Carter of course) costumes (including Eddie's, natch). Which isn't everything... but like much of this project, hints at what could have been, well, great, rather than just okay.

The younger cast are lovely but colorless, including Fowler. But who knows what could have been, with a better, smarter script and more of a point of view? Coming 2 America isn't Bad Eddie - not Norbit bad, or Pluto Nash bad - it's just that "somewhere in the middle" Eddie which reminds you (still) that he can open a picture, but feels a little disappointing. Like I said... that bar is high for a reason, and that reason isn't entirely fair. The trouble is, really, that we all know that Eddie is entirely capable of "fuck that bar." And that's the Coming 2 America I was hoping to see. It's in there, somewhere, still fighting with a crowd pleaser to get the fuck out.

The Best of What We Saw, 2020

Look, we all agree, it's been a weird year; and while no area has been untouched, it is sad and terrifying to realize just how deeply the performing arts has been up ended by a pandemic. Movies, obviously. But live theater, dance, classical music, indeed, pretty much all live performances of music... with performances spaces largely dark, it's been a horrific moment for those who love and care for life upon the wicked stage.

As i started reading year end summaries, I've been caught in up how fruitless and pointless the whole exercise can be: pretending we've had anything like a normal year at the movies, for instance, watching film critics assemble "best of" lists has been both frustrating for us and, well, embarrassing for them. What is that job, again, and why are you doing it?

For my part, I'm not here to clue you into obscure unseen projects; and I am surely not here to pretend Tenet is a "best of the year" when there wasn't really a year to speak of. This list, well, is what I made it... what most of us made -- a year primarily built on TV and streaming services, when we all just had to admit we were moving into a brave, new, somewhat uncharted, not entirely better, world. These, then, are the bright spots I found:

1. The Boys in the Band (Netflix) - I was leery of seeing the Broadway revival, even for it's Glorious Cast of Major Names, too afraid they'd be too easy star turns that lost the beauty of Mart Crowley's nuanced, challenging work. And I avoided the (re) filmed adaptation, at least at first... until my best friend peppered me with questions and I figured I would have to, if only for completeness sake (and theoretical loss of my Gay Card). What I found was... a happy surprise: a still nuanced, well done look at pre Stonewall Gay Life in the Big City, a reminder that new ensembles bring out new insights. Sure, Jim Parsons and Zach Quinto did sound work as the bickering Michael and Harold (and I dreamed of reversing them, just for actorly research), but Matt Bomer turned Donald into a revelation, and Andrew Rannells' Larry was such a fresh rethink of the role that much of the play's final third sang in a way I'd never even noticed. Even Charlie Carver managed to flip The Cowboy into a sweet, unforced charmer. Which isn't to say it was perfect: Robin DeJesus does what he can, but his Emory feels less essential, and Michael Benjamin Washington's Bernard just felt wan. But watch Rannells tear into the second verse of Heatwave for an actor living in a moment he was born to play. A real labor of love, that pays off, handsomely.
2. American Chaos (HBO via Max or Streaming) - Alex Gibney's 4 hour deconstruction of the "Russia Hack" and the story of the 2016 election puts fresh eyes on the familiar and, from everyone I know, brings a kind of clarity that's thrilling and scary and depressing all at once. From the assured lies of the head of Russia's RT to its unraveling of the Internet Research Agency to its revealing presentation of "Fancy Bear" and the Russian Intelligence operations behind it... American Chaos takes complicated topics and gives them the room needed to make sense. And none of your preconceived notions, whatever side you're on, will be quite the same after taking all of this in. For better, and worse.
3. Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (Netflix) - A multipart unraveling of the "Epstein Story" that makes fools of us all, for ever not seeing, or believing, that Epstein was anything other than simply a monster who molested large numbers of women and trafficked them around the world to other powerful men. Told largely by the women and the law enforcement folks who tried to help them, Filthy Rich is mostly one horrifying and depressing turn after another, but in the end he's dead and they're alive and they have come together to support one another in a way that just has to provide some measure of hope. Lord knows, that's all we have to hold onto.
4. The Undoing (HBO - Max and Streaming) - I'm with those who call it "Big Little Lies on the Upper East Side" and for whatever reason, watching Nicole Kidman swan abut Park Avenue penthouses (and yes, her fabulous coats!) is less immediately aggravating than watching her and others swan about Marin County. Kidman's wealthy psychotherapist heiress struggling to process the possibility that her pediatric oncologist husband might be a cold blooded killer was every bit as fascinating as her Big Little Lies performance, even when the scars are fully internal. Kidman's TV work has been profound, quality acting, ably assisted here by Donald Sutherland's complex portrayal of her patrician father and Hugh Grant turning his charming rakish qualities inside out. 
5. Bosch, Season 6 (Amazon) and Bosch generally (Amazon). Back when "they dropped another season this week" was more main event than pandemic last hope, the penultimate run of Michael Connelly's grizzled LAPD detective was just another great addition to a strong series run, this time unraveling a potential terrorist plot, a perplexing murder and Chief Irving's run for Mayor while allowing a host of other great roles (Honey Chandler, J. Edgar) to shine. And the performances, anchored by Titus Welliver in the role of his lifetime, remain first rate. As does the writing. Pandemic rescreening isn't just recommended. It's required. 
6. The Crown, Season 4 (Netflix) - The Crown crashed into modern memory, up aging its main cast and taking us through the twin poles of the Thatcher years and the Diana years on a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs. On the one side was Gillian Anderson's (brilliant) Thatcher, discovering that her sense of mission hadn't entirely anticipated that she was less enamored of Royal Toffs than her royalist ways suggested, and Diana discovering that her dreams of a fairytale romance didn't square with the hard realities of a deeply dysfunctional family. From Dickie's assassination to Fagan in the Queen's bedroom, the eighties as remembered by The Crown is darker and harder than one we may have gotten on TV at the time. But knowing how we got here, and why this is happening, infuses Season 4 with a knowing sadness that makes the tragedy more heartbreaking - everything happens for a reason, and could hardly have been otherwise. And The Queen soldiers on. 
7. Perry Mason (HBO - Max and Streaming) - HBO's reimagining of Perry Mason's origins is a return to, and squarely in the resurgence of, pulp noir, America's dime store book legacy of postwar darkness and deceit playing in our fervid imaginations. Miles from Raymond Burr's upstanding jurist, Matthew Rhys plays Perry as a down and out drunken PI with a decency streak hard up against the worst of Depression era LA. A brutal child kidnapping/murder, the involvement of an Aimee Semple MacPherson like faith healer and a set of compelling back stories eventually pulls Perry Mason into the stratosphere... but the early episodes are about as grim and dark and unpleasant as Peak TV can get. The payoffs, and the promise of of more, makes the journey altogether worth it.
8. Watchmen (HBO - Max and Streaming) - Damon Lindelof's reimagining of the seminal comic book series (and disastrous feature film) as a fresh way to reexamine the American moment was bravura television, exploding our past and present while blowing up its own preconceived comic conventions, a shining example of how our newfound interest in diversity, fresh casting and telling the unheard stories can result in our best art, not just bromides and easy answers. Regina King is a revelation in a cast full of stars and surprises. And each episode is its own mini movie of masterful storytelling. While it may be sad to see it as a one and done... the series is so ultimately satisfying that there really is nothing left to tell.
9. The Hunt and The HIgh Note (Streaming) - The last film I saw in a theater, and the first film I went out of my way to see opening weekend online have no real connection... except that what's happened to movies, and moviegoing, breaks my heart. The Hunt, the long delayed comic horror pic that offers (very) wry commentary on the Trump era was a surprisingly witty slasher flick, enlivened by strong performances and a series of faintly inspired twists. The HIgh Note offered Tracee Ellis Ross the role she was kind of born to do as an aging pop diva looking to reinvent her career and Dakota Johnson as the musical savant who could do it for her. Glorious visuals, and some inspired musicianship lifted a fairly standard music biz flick into the upper echelons, and a pleasantly surprising plot twist really does make the film sing.
10. The Plot Against America (HBO, Max and Streaming) - Philip Roth's foray into "what if" reimaginings of World War 2 posits Charles Lindbergh as the candidate capable of defeating FDR, sending America headlong into its own creative fascism and all that would up end. Set in a New Jersey all too familiar to my mother, The show reminds that the Depression and and waves of European immigration are not the hazy tale of a Greatest Generation we like to tell ourselves, but a messy melting pot of prejudices and old scores. All the more terrifying for its analogues to the Trump years, The Plot is a reminder that anti Semitism isn't as hard or as farfetched as we might like to believe, and the skilled, unnerving performances make everything all too plausibly possible. Sure, it's got Roth's familiar bugaboos of randy boys and stereotyped women, but the adaptation is sharp enough to see beyond even Roth's flaws. Between this and the Man in the High Castle, I think we've pretty much covered all the dystopian alternatives. Now do The Civil War!
11. Designated Survivor
12. Madam Secretary
13. The Blacklist (all, Netflix and/or Hulu) - my three choices for Pandemic binge redux, but fill in with your own comfort foods. For my money, watching Tea Leoni's work with greater care both restored my faith in our American government and the show's real skill in crafting worthwhile plots. Designated Survivor's "what if" scenario of rebuilding government after a massive attack had its charms (even Sutherland seems surprisingly understated). And giving The Blacklist a chance opened up some tasty spy thriller storytelling, if tinged with a bit too much violence and gore; but James Spader's scenery chewing turns out to work better than it really has any right to. And all 3 have enough episodes to make the trip worthwhile.
14. Titans (Season 1, Amazon; Season 2 DVD). DC's clever reworking of the Teen Titans franchise (and even cleverer kickoff via Teen Titans Go) is long on dark muttering and tortured beauties, and maybe a bit thin on avoiding plotted preposterousness... but the result is Saturday morning live action cartoon TV for growups, or at least overgrow kids. From its multiple Robins (Dick Grayson and Jason Todd) to origin stories for almost any Teen Titan you can remember, Titans provides just the right mix of lore and legend to give its less plausible turns a comic universe to call its own. Here's hoping pandemic production schedules don't throw it off kilter.

What didn't make my list? Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was nice but meh, Ryan Murphy's too preposterous for belief Hollywood insults any true Golden Age film lover, FX's "yeah but you should have been there" Mrs. America just didn't do it for me, the less than essential second season of Big Little Lies and the BBC's one too many Christie's of The ABC Murders on Amazon (which, by the way, don't get me started on how Branagh's Death on the Nile is either bravura or a disaster, no in betweens). And no, I didn't watch Tiger King or any reality TV (and that includes RuPaul's Drag Race trying to pretend a pandemic can be business as usual).

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: Art Isn't Easy

In a "quality film" season deeply truncated by the pandemic - we will never know what we're not seeing until well after the fact - it's easy to overstate the relative importance of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom finally getting a film adaptation. No doubt, it would be a contender even in normal circumstances. But this is not normal, and this Ma Rainey will shine more so by being the only game in town.

The second recent adaptation of an August Wilson play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom secures the down payment on Denzel Washington's commitment to produce the full "decalogue" of August Wilson's plays, meant to cover the twentieth century experienced by black Americans. First up was Fences, which won Viola Davis her Oscar. And here, as Ma Rainey, her presence makes clear how these projects will be approached: as prestige vehicles with top flight casts, big name directors, and handsome productions.

Whether that's the best approach is harder to say; I suspect few will want to quibble, but like Olivier in the forties, filming Shakespeare's major works as prestige projects, the approach to Wilson may just be a necessary, well intentioned step towards cementing his importance. Later, when the stakes are lower and/or different, we can take apart these works and evaluate different ways of seeing them. But for now, presenting them as Very Important Art may be just how we get from here to wherever it is we wind up.

As it is, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is an impressive mounting of an important works - the performances sing, and much of it is richly emotionally resonant. But for its impressiveness, choppy storytelling and the weight of expectations does rob the overall work of some of its potential audience impact. It's very well done; which is not the same as creating a visceral audience connection or response.

The setting is a sweltering Chicago recording studio in the twenties, where Ma Rainey, the Queen of the Blues, is set to record some sides. A "small" play, the action revolves around the interplay of her band, particularly a talented trumpet player with dreams of stardom; and Ma herself, the definition of diva, complete with a small entourage of a young man and woman who both attend to her needs and demands.

While overall, there's not necessarily much happening - the recording process at the time requires perfect takes captured mostly with hope and prayer - the tensions of recording, the demands of performance intersect with Wilson's storytelling, which is the real draw here. There are beautifully laid out monologues (acting arias, really) for several of the male principles, and Rainey herself talks about her realistic assessment of just how much stardom she has and its actual worth. Lost in these stories, the film takes on incredible depth, profound sadness, and the omnipresent powerlessness of people trapped in a society that can rob them of their humanity in a flash.

The role of Levee, the young trumpeter with big dreams, was the last project Chadwick Boseman filmed before his untimely death this past year, and it is definitely a rich, brilliant performance. Never one to phone it in, his commitment and intensity shines through, and I wouldn't rule out posthumous recognition. As big, important roles in major works go, this is a dream job for many young black actors, and having seen it, I can now see why. Still, "over the top" doesn't fully convey what Boseman has to try and make sense of here in his performance. As good as he is - and he's masterful - the screenplay isn't doing him a lot of favors, and it would be miraculous to pull off where this story goes. Boseman delivers a lot of miracles; so many, that what's not working here is definitely not on him.

As for Davis, I'm not entirely sure she's exactly right for the role; now in that rare position of stardom where her capabilities are matched to the best material, it's gratifying to see her stretch and take on roles outside of her comfort zone. Hell, we should all have so much willingness to dare to try. But this isn't an especially up piece of work to begin with, and there's a sense of joy missing from her solid, but often grim seeming, performance. Seeing the role, I'm curious how a number of "singers who act" (Jennifer Hudson leaps to mind) might tackle the part. No doubt, Davis is a fierce actress at the top of her game, and reverent with the material. I'm just not entirely convinced reverence is what this film needed most. 

George Wolfe's long history directing Wilson, and overall artistic commitment to chronicling the black experience makes him a natural for directing this, and he does what he can to open out what is, ultimately,  a great one set play (or one great set). More frustratingly, there's a choppiness to the storytelling that feels unnecessarily forced. I'm not sure film is Wolfe's strongest medium. As for the script, Ruben Santiago-Hudson has a sure hand for adapting works to film, and here he mostly seems to get out of the way and let Wilson's words speak.

And again... whether that's the best approach, or not, could be, and probably should be, debated at length. As it stands, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom lets an impressive cast, led by 2 stars in their prime, set a marker for bringing Wilson effectively to the screen. It may well be expecting too much to get a fully transcendent, moving experience to boot. In its best moments, this Ma Rainey really sings. Getting to a film that's more than moments may require trying less hard to make very important art. 

Friday Favorites: Wild Things

Rarely do films wind up more appreciated as the years go by, and even more rarely do especially sleazy B movies suddenly take on the reputation of "art." Wild Things is the exception that shows why, rarely, all the forces can turn potentially cheesy noir into a classic.

In retrospect, it's obvious that the film's stars were major talents at the top of their respective games. At the time, the film seemed like an unassuming little bit of nonsense dropped into theaters in the relatively dead month of March in 1998 that quickly achieved the level of "cult classic."

The film tells the tale of Sam Lombardo, an apparently straight arrow of a guidance counselor at a coastal Florida high school, who gets ensnared by a racy student (Denise Richards) who accuses him of rape after a student car wash. When a second teen (Neve Campbell, pre-Scream) comes forward with a similar charge, it seems like Sam's career is toast. but a last minute courtroom revelation turns the tables and Sam is apparently innocent... or is he?

Wild Things benefits both from strong writing - the scripts various twists are genuinely unexpected - and a string of solid performances, starting with Richards and Campbell, but also Matt Dillon's Sam and Kevin Bacon as the police detective investigating the girls claims (along with his partner, played expertly by Daphne Rubin-Vega). But the cast also includes Theresa Russell, Carrie Snodgrass, Bill Murray, and Robert Wagner, finally getting to play the grown up part in some version of Flamingo Road or Peyton Place, and swearing like a sailor to prove it.

A twisty, tasty plot is part of the film's charm, but what sells it is the sleaziness of the business at hand. Almost nothing this racy has been made for movie screens in years, and while some tv shows offer hints of debauchery, this film spares almost nothing. Renowned for Richards' nude scene, and full rear - and frontals - of Kevin Bacon, Wild Things shares with Cruel Intentions (1999) that sense of Hollywood smashing the last vestiges of innocence at the end of the century. Nothing is off limits, and everything is up for grabs.

In retrospect, Wild Things is simply a B movie noir flick that somehow got made with solid direction (John McNaughton) and a top flight cast, a reminder of what can happen when great talent really lets loose on good material, even the dark, smutty storytelling at play here. Dillon's slinky smoothness has rarely been used as effectively. Richards made a career out of this, and Campbell added this to a string of successes (The Craft, Scream) that established her as the smart star of dark films. And Bacon, well, aside from producing it, turns in one of his most solid performances, where the darkness only gets visible by degrees.

But mostly, Wild Things holds up as a great, crazy ride through a naughty funhouse of sex, deceit and murder. And really, how many films offer that, even now?