Reservoir Dogs

Reservoir Dogs

Miramax etc.

January 21, 1992

Crime Comedy?

DVD
D-

You know the drill by now.  I'm not going to like a Tarentino movie.  This one got bumped up for the brilliant casting of famously deadpan Steven Wright as a radio d.j.

The Muse (1999)

The Muse (1999)

October Films

August 27, 1999

Comedy, Fantasy

DVD
B

Very witty Albert Brooks vehicle about life in Hollywood, with some nice supporting material for Stone, McDowell, and Bridges, as well as fun cameos.  The "fantasy" tag (spoilers) may not be strictly accurate, but I choose to believe it is.

So I Married an Axe Murderer

So I Married an Axe Murderer

TriStar

July 30, 1993

Comedy, Horror?

DVD
B

I saw and, to my surprise, liked this movie over twenty years ago, when it was still relatively new.  Now the '90sness adds to its charm, especially that soundtrack!  And it's set in San Francisco, and I used to live in the South Bay, so there's a certain nostalgia to that.  And then there are the cameos, including Steven Wright as a prop-plane pilot!  So I can forgive the unevenness and plot holes and just enjoy all that, and the still funny and still sweet moments.  Not a great movie, maybe even at the time, but still delightful.

Thomas Schlamme directed.  Note that the third and final disc of this "Laugh Out Loud" collection didn't load, but at least I got to watch this again.

Desperately Seeking Susan

Desperately Seeking Susan
Orion
April 12, 1985
Comedy, Romance
DVD
B-

I of course heard about this movie at the time (how could a 17-year-old not?), but I was always somewhere in the middle on the "You either love her or you hate her" Madonna scale.  Watching it today I found it a bit slow and quiet, especially for the mid-'80s.  It's really more Arquette's movie, although it is "about Madonna."  And Metcalf is of course a scene-stealer as Arquette's sister-in-law (with proto-Jackie-Harris lines).  Oddly enough, it casts more light on the flop Who's That Girl (reviewed here https://reviewingeverymovieiown.blogspot.com/2014/12/whos-that-girl.html), with Madonna as a rule-breaker who causes others to stray.  I'm not calling this a "musical" (and it is a comedy and a romance but not a romcom) but there are a lot of hits in the background, including a well-used "Into the Groove." 

Susan Seidelman directed this four years before Cookie, which I think was trying to recapture the magic of this movie, with its mix of '80s fashion, snark, and crime.

Canadian Bacon

Canadian Bacon
MGM
September 22, 1995
Satire
DVD
C+

Michael Moore directed, produced, wrote, and Hitchcock-cameos as Redneck Guy #2 in this dizzyingly dated and sporadically funny non-documentary.  Remember, this is pre-Wag the Dog and pre-"Blame Canada" (in the South Park movie), and it is very much pre-9/11, so that the president (Alda)'s search for someone new to have a "cold war" with is, well, chilling.  As an over-the-top comedy, sort of Dr. Strangelove with (more obvious) dick jokes, it sometimes works, even if I was mostly amused by relatively benign stereotypes like Canadians being overly polite.  And it was of course fun to see what familiar faces popped up in what felt like a low-budget film.  (It cost $11 million and made $178,104!)

Some in the cast are so typecast that I thought things like "Oh, look, he's Alan-Aldaing" (and I like Alda), but then you get the delicious irony of making one of America's favorite Canadian actors (the dead-before-this-movie-could-be-released John Candy) as a simple-minded but oddly good-hearted (and romantic) American sheriff.  I actually thought there would be more of the Perlman & Candy relationship, but her character being "held hostage" obviously prevents that.  Unless a lot was edited out for final release, I swear I didn't notice Wallace Shawn until the Where Are They Nows at the end, but I'm tagging him anyway because of the reverse-casting of a Canadian prime minister played by someone so famously New York and New Yorker.