Wednesday Horror: Raising Cain

Film: Raising Cain
Format: DVD from Peotone Public Library through interlibrary loan on The New Portable.

There was a glorious moment of time in the 1980s and early 1990s when it was a legitimate casting choice to have John Lithgow as a heavy. Movies like Ricochet and Cliffhanger had Lithgow playing a vicious, scowling bad guy, a psychopath or sociopath who reveled in the pain and degradation of others. Y’know, the guy from Third Rock from the Sun, the actor who has put out multiple CDs of children’s songs. Toward the end of that wonderful moment in history comes Brian De Palma’s Raising Cain, which has the lovable Lithgow playing a man who is truly malevolent.

Carter Nix (Lithgow) is a child psychologist who has taken a few years off from his practice to study the early development of his daughter (Amanda Pombo). But we learn quickly that there’s something really off about Carter. In the first 10 minutes of the film, Carter has blown some sort of dust into the eyes of a woman and chloroformed her so that he can kidnap her child. Oddly, Carter’s twin brother Cain (also Lithgow) shows up in the middle of nowhere to help him deal with the woman. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense, but Cain claims he will deal with the woman and take the child to their father, Dr. Nix (Lithgow again).

Now That's a Busy Day!

Film: Training Day
Format: DVD from personal collection on The New Portable.

One of the greatest television shows ever made was Chapelle’s Show, and one of the greatest episodes of Chapelle’s Show was the one involving Wayne Brady. I didn’t realize until tonight that at least a part of that sequence is a direct reference to Training Day. This movie has been sitting in my collection for a long time. One of the truths of pursuing a giant list like I have been is that it’s easy to overlook watching a film I own because I know I can always watch it. It’s the ones where my access is potentially limited that often take precedence. Still, eventually you’ve got to get to all of ‘em, and Training Day wasn’t going to watch itself.

Training Day gives us a young cop named Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke, nominated in a supporting role) attempting to join the narcotics squad. He’s going to be put to the test by highly-decorated narcotics officer Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington). While Harris is highly decorated, he’s also known to be extremely dirty, and that’s going to be perhaps the biggest test for young Jake. As his day goes on, Jake is going to find himself forced to take narcotics—specifically PCP-laced marijuana, have guns pointed at him multiple times, get into a few fights, come close to death multiple times, and be involved in a variety of illegal activities.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 2007

The Contenders:

Atonement
Away from Her
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
No Country for Old Men (winner)
There Will Be Blood

The Unbearable Length of this Movie

Film: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Sometimes I look at the list of movies I still have to watch for my Oscar categories and I figure it’s time to knock out the longest one. That spot has been occupied by The Unbearable Lightness of Being for months, so I figured it was time to remove it and move on. There’s something supremely satisfying in removing the longest remaining film. Sadly, in this case, it was about the only satisfying thing.

That’s a shame, too, because the cast is so good. The main characters are played by Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, and Lena Olin, with smaller roles for Donald Moffat and Stellan Skarsgard. That should be enough to get this not just over the hump but into the realm of must-see. The issue is that The Unbearable Lightness of Being wants to tell a lot of stories. It wants to be a sexy, erotic drama and a domestic drama and a political drama all at the same time. Because of that, the film runs just under three hours. There’s no reason for it to be that long aside from some artistic decision. The word is that Kaufman presented a two-hour confusing version for the studio to force the three-hour version he wanted. It’s clever, but I have to wonder if it was really worth it.

Familiar Territory

Film: The Breadwinner
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on the latest internet machine.

I bought a Chromebook today because there are new restrictions that have been placed on my laptop. I suppose those restrictions are fair; the laptop I generally use is owned by where I work. But streaming sites in general have been made no-fly zones, as have some game-related sites that I like to go to. So I bought myself a Chromebook and christened it today with The Breadwinner, which has just shown up as a streaming option on NetFlix. It wasn’t a film that I was leaping at the chance to watch, but Best Animated Feature is the only one of the latest set of Oscar nominations I hadn’t hit yet.

The first thing that struck me here was that this felt very familiar. Then I realized that I had kind of already seen this before. Osama, released in 2003, is very much the same basic story as The Breadwinner. In both films, a young girl and her family are more less left without a man in the household in Taliban-dominated Afghanistan. Since women are not allowed to leave their houses when not in the company of a man, this sets them up to slowly starve to death, unable to even set foot outside their home without the fear of immediate reprisal. In both cases, the daughter—still young enough to possibly pass for a boy—disguises herself in an attempt to find work and buy food. In the case of Osama, this goes tragically, terribly wrong. In the case of The Breadwinner, that’s much less the case.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1974

The Contenders:

Ellen Burstyn: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (winner)
Faye Dunaway: Chinatown
Diahann Carroll: Claudine
Valerie Perrine: Lenny
Gena Rowlands: A Woman Under the Influence

Girlfriend in a Coma

Film: The Big Sick
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

The most interesting thing going into The Big Sick for me was Kumail Nanjiani, who I’d seen before here and there. I realized as well that I’d Zoe Kazan as well. I was less excited about her, though, because Zoe Kazan starred in and wrote Ruby Sparks, which I hated. Still, the demand of the list being what it is, I knew I had to watch it. Also, not wanting to end this with a bunch of 2017 movies, and having not many available at this point, it seemed like The Big Sick was a natural.

I’m delighted to say that The Big Sick is difficult to classify. It’s not really a dramedy and it’s not a rom-com even though it has all of these elements. It’s a slice of life story about the real Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily Gardner—how they met, fell apart, and came back together, mostly because of a near-fatal illness that struck Emily.