MOVIE DIARY 2023: WHERE ARE WE NOW? ARE WE REALLY EVEN HERE?
Hello! I’ve got an incredible special guest for MOVIE DIARY 2023 this week! Readers of MOVIE DIARY 2023 who read to the the last section of my posts might remember that I am a big fan of Allison Picurro’s brilliant substack newsletter Boy Movies, and in one post I’d put out an open call to Allison to come on MOVIE DIARY. It actually happened, and this week I’ve finally got Allison on the blog to talk about an absolute classic! Thank you for coming onto MOVIE DIARY 2023, Allison!
Wayne’s World (1992) dir. Penelope Spheeris
SPECIAL GUEST WRITER: ALLISON PICURRO
Dudes have generally not stopped rocking, and yet we are experiencing a dearth of movies about how hard dudes rock. I get this might not be one of the trendiest sentiments right now, but I kept thinking about it during Wayne’s World, which is the rare movie about dudes rocking as seen through the eyes of a woman — in this case, the film’s director, Penelope Spheeris. One of the lessons from the one-two punch of Barbie and Oppenheimer is that dudes who think they rock actually suck. I don’t disagree with this, but I still found Wayne’s World, definitively not about dudes sucking and also one of those movies I’ve been lying about having seen for basically my entire life, to be a total charmer.
Wayne’s World, to date the most successful Saturday Night Live sketch to get the movie treatment (all due respect to MacGruber, but what a relief that everyone learned these really don’t translate well), centers around two exceedingly chill, heavy metal-loving buddies, Wayne (Mike Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey — genuinely a little transcendent in this), who host a silly, low budget public-access show, which becomes the target of corporate greed after it catches the attention of a droning, ruthless TV producer (Rob Lowe). Tantalized by the offer of two $5,000 checks, more money than they have ever seen, for the rights to their show, Wayne and Garth abandon their reservations and sell their souls to Hollywood. A gentle and airheaded pair, neither really understands what this means, or the ways their hobby will be manipulated and reinvented to service a conglomerate’s bottom line.
“Sellout” was a dirtier word when Wayne’s World was released in 1992, something the film is cheekily aware of: “I will not bow to any sponsor,” Wayne says, before chomping down on a slice from Pizza Hut and a bag of Doritos while staring directly into the camera. “It’s like people only do things because they get paid, and that’s just really sad,” Garth adds, decked in head-to-toe Reebok gear. Every day, someone logs online to argue inanely about the ethics of selling out — is it actually empowering of Greta Gerwig to get paid immensely to shill for Mattel, as so many male directors have done before her? — but Wayne’s World has a less complicated view of it. The key to selling out is being in possession of something cool that corporations are desperate to harness, but the addition of a moneyed sheen to just about anything makes it inherently less cool. Art can’t be for everyone, but the guys with the checks sure haven’t stopped trying to make that so. Obviously, the mere existence of a film version of Wayne’s World is in conflict with this, but there’s a refreshing lack of guilt here, an exuberant confidence in itself even as the snake eats its own tail.
This general concept is relevant enough that the constant deployment of catchphrases and references to cultural touchstones of the time like “Stairway to Heaven” and Chia Pets are less of a bother and more of a cementation of itself in the era. It’s a cartoonish fantasy about American suburban burnout that doesn’t turn its setting into a total wasteland; Wayne’s World is detailed and specific, the goofy gags are allowed to breathe, and fourth wall breaks hadn’t yet become overdone. Brother, it really was the damn early ‘90s. The dudes were rocking, the chicks were bangable, and you could cycle through multiple endings of your own story until you found the one you liked best. Look no further than that famous “Bohemian Rhapsody” singalong scene for an example of its central ethos: It doesn’t really matter what’s to come when life’s greatest joys can be found in something so simple as hanging with your friends, making sort of dated pop culture references, banging your head, and partying on.
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Allison Picurro is a writer from New Jersey. You can find her having weekly meltdowns in her newsletter, Boy Movies, which she’s really hoping will soon become a subsidiary of the Dua Lipa newsletter.
Hypnotic (2023) - dir. Robert Rodriguez
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Did you know that Robert Rodriguez has a new movie out? Did you know that it’s a William Fichtner vehicle? Did you know that Ben Affleck now cannot help himself from drifting into Batman voice, the same way that Austin Butler has permanent Elvis voice now? I didn’t either! And I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t seen the thumbnail for this movie while I was scrolling through Peacock trying to dip into my 9 billionth rewatch of Vanderpump Rules.
Ben Affleck plays a gruff detective understandably obsessed with the mystery of what actually happened to his missing daughter. Along the way he discovers that her kidnapping and disappearance may have had something to do with William Fichtner (still one of our nation’s great hey-it’s-that-guys), a former CIA operative or something who is the most powerful Hypnotic in a whole little secret division of Hypnotics. Hypnotics are like super psychics who can make people do, see, or feel whatever they want. At first it’s explained as a sort of heightened combination of hypnotism and telepathy, but then it just sort of becomes more like superpowers. Who cares, that’s not important. What’s really important is what this means for both Ben Affleck and us, the audience: *big breath* NOT EVERYTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS! *AIRHORN AIRHORN AIRHORN*
The thing about nothing-is-what-it-seems movies is that there’s usually a twist that alters the shape of the movie, right? What Hypnotic proposes is: What if there were like no less than three twists, they’re all poorly paced, and none of them really change the architecture of the movie? And you know what, it works. The twists aren’t so unexpected, but they just sort of happen very quickly and then they’re immediately and breathlessly explained (there is a fuck ton of exposition happening in this movie). The central element of Hypnotics being able to alter anyone’s perception of reality makes it so that no one can be trusted, everything the audience sees could potentially be a fakeout, and nothing is real which makes it all kind of meaningless if you come into this caring about things like “pLoT” or “StAkEs.” A big part of what makes this totally unhinged approach work is Ben Affleck. He’s making a few weird choices with this performance, but it all fits because how could one not be weird in a situation where nothing is real? When he’s not doing a Batman-style growl (now his default tone in an action movie, I guess) Affleck is reacting to everything with a tired bemusement as if the movie is just sort of happening around him. He receives the supposedly movie-altering twists with a patronizing smirk, as if to say, “Yeah man sure if you say so.” As an audience stand-in character, I think Affleck is doing a wonderful job since I too received each insane new development with a game “Yeah man sure if you say so.” Except instead of a little smirk I was fully howling.
Hypnotic is fully nuts. Sure it’s not, like, good, but it’s such a blast. I just could not handle what I was seeing. There’s so much going on and it’s all stupid as shit, it’s truly incredible. It’s schlock, but it kind of feels like a throwback to a time when schlock could be truly bizarre. We’re all familiar with how nothing-is-what-it-seems movies usually shake out, and it’s certainly true that you can see Hypnotic’s reference points (I saw a little bit of Scanners in it, a little bit of Inception, I feel like there’s a bit of Stephen King in there too) but this movie just pushes everything to such an extreme and stupid degree, and even if you know what’s coming and you can see where it came from it’s still disarmingly exciting. You really gotta hand it to ‘em.
A Few Good Men (1992) - dir. Rob Reiner
You know what, this kind of rocked? Aaron Sorkin’s worst tendencies and affectations are all on display here, but the performances are just so confident and it’s easy to get swept up in it all. Tom Cruise is at the center of it, and he really delivers. It’s a good and memorable Tom Cruise performance, and it’s interesting too considering his current status as Action God Savior of the “post”-pandemic Box Office. Sometimes you can forget that Tom Cruise actually used to do some solid, capital “A” Acting, and that he wasn’t always just purposely imperiling himself on camera. In A Few Good Men he’s playing Lieutenant Kaffee, this young, hotshot Navy JAG. He’s a little bit of a bratty piece of shit, but everyone’s ok with it because he’s just so good at the job. He’s been recently brought on to defend two young Marines who may have been responsible for hazing a fellow Marine to death at their base. This was a case that the very smart and plucky Lieutenant Commander Galloway (Demi Moore) was angling to be assigned to, but they went with Kaffee because he’s a man and also his dad was apparently one of the most successful Civil Rights lawyers ever, so he’s like, sort of a nepotism hire too. Galloway still gets to work on the case, but her job is to pretty much babysit Kaffee, who’ll be the lead lawyer. Moore is great, but since it’s a Sorkin script there’s not really a whole lot to do for her except 1) be a woman who’s usually right but who no one listens to because she’s so pushy and 2) get sexually harassed. Sometimes even our finest actors are unable to rise above the material. Rounding it all out on the good guys side is reliable character actor Kevin Pollack as Lieutenant Sam Weinberg, Kaffee’s partner. He pretty much acts as a buffer between Kaffee and Galloway’s combative personalities and also as a third wheel to keep the two from giving into their obvious sexual tension.
Our bad guys here are Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) and his top dog crony Lieutenant Kendrick (Kiefer Sutherland, who absolutely looks like he’d kill someone without question if he was ordered to). They’re responsible for ordering the hazing that led to the Marine’s death and they’re doing everything they can to cover it all up. Nicholson is only in this movie for a couple of scenes, but those few scenes are incredible. He has such an emotional weight about him, his presence fully overpowering everyone around him. It’s real “uh oh Daddy’s mad” energy, watching him steamroll Tom Cruise and Demi Moore. There’s this sort of jaw-dropping moment during the famous “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH” part where Col. Jessup is on the witness stand, on a big, angry monologue about how this country needs men like him to do the real dirty work to keep the American people safe, and he punctuates it with “Who’s gonna do it? You, Lieutenant WEINBERG?” Nicholson’s delivery is perfect, just dripping with contempt for these college boy Naval officers who’ve never been in a firefight. There’s also a revealing undertone of antisemitism mixed in there for good measure, just so you know that Col. Jessup’s a bad man. In another actor’s hands it’d maybe feel cartoonish or trying too hard, but Nicholson’s a pro and he makes Jessup a real and nuanced character while simultaneously working as a symbol of unchecked and misused military power.
A Few Good Men works best once it fully goes into legal drama mode. I loved seeing Cruise, Moore, and Pollack working late nights, figuring out all the angles, researching, ordering Chinese food and eating it right out of the takeout containers, all those wonderful legal drama signifiers always seem to work on me, someone who cares a normal amount about his job and tries his best to never ever have to stay late at work. At times the legal drama elements of it felt of a piece with the old reliable sports movie structure, and it makes it fun to root for the good guys (it’s hilarious that Lt. Kaffee’s strategy with questioning Col. Jessup on the stand is just to troll him so hard that he gets mad enough to admit it), but the movie can’t really pull out from under the looming shadow of Sorkin’s politics. This is a whole other discussion that we can take up in the MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord if you want, but basically I think that Sorkin has far too much loyalty and reverence for institutions, which keeps him from ever really examining their ills and the spiritual rot that seems to be inherent in the concept of something as big, violent, and complex as the military. Nicholson’s Jessup is the bad guy here, but his YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH, man-with-a-gun-on-the-wall-protecting-America monologue is there to make us think, “Damn, yeah I guess we do gotta keep giving more money to the military.” Kaffee digs deep to reach his full potential as a trial lawyer, which itself feels very sports movie protagonist at heart, but it’s in service of defending two guys who definitely did kill this other guy, and his defense really just kind of amounts to “They were just following orders,” which apparently works in a trial like this because it’s a military trial and military guys hear that and are like, “Damn, yeah it’s true. What were they supposed to do, not follow orders?” I feel like the endgame of this movie is for Sorkin to comment on how the military is unsavory but necessary, and A Few Good Men certainly does just that. Personally I find that sort of centrism to be kind of a pointless half-measure, but I definitely still pumped my fist when Lt. Kaffee successfully pulls off his plan and Col. Jessup gets escorted out of the courtroom by military police. I’m just normal men, and a good movie’s a good movie.
The Equalizer 2 (2018) - dir. Atoine Fuqua
On a recent work trip, I had this whole plan to watch The Equalizer and The Equalizer 2 while I was on a plane, then once I landed and checked into my hotel, I’d go out and find a theater that was playing The Equalizer 3 and finish up the trilogy in one go. That last part didn’t end up happening, but I did watch The Equalizer and The Equalizer 2 on the plane. I’m confident that at some point I will end up watching The Equalizer 3, maybe on a plane, they’re good plane movies. I don’t know, I’m not worried about it.
While The Equalizer was sort of about how the quiet yet affable older guy at work who’s super into self improvement is secretly a total badass, I think The Equalizer 2 pushes that even further into a sort of peak oldhead cinema. McCall is the supreme oldhead. He’s an old soldier, a widower who’s learned to be content in a life of solitude, but who will also gladly bestow his wisdom on anyone he sees as worthy and strong willed enough to endure his relentless poking and prodding to better themselves. The Equalizer movies are no different from Westerns featuring an aging gunslinger or Kung Fu movies where an unassuming old man hides his devastating skills and talent for violence. Every oldhead has this fantasy of being those guys, their harried experience honed to precise and natural skills with their age, and using that experience and skill to teach the young fellas some respect. Sometimes teaching the young guys respect means giving them some tough love and mentorship, the way McCall takes his young neighbor Miles (Ashton Sanders) under his wing, trying to keep him off the streets and to teach him to follow his dream of being an artist. Other times teaching the young guys respect means beating the shit out of them with your fists and whatever random object you can grab and use as a weapon, another thing that McCall excels at. I guarantee you that almost every guy in their 50s to 60s at least fantasizes about being perceived with a quiet awe and respect by everyone around him, and that they’d like to think if they were pushed to resort to violence they’d handle it easily.
I was a fan of The Equalizer, and The Equalizer 2 delivers more of the tried and true formula of Denzel Washington’s former assassin McCall trying to better his little community by taking a vested interest in their personal lives by day while also acting as a quiet and extremely violent vigilante by night. The daytime escapades have a kind of episodic nature to them, which is a fun tonal throwback to the original idea of the TV show from the 80s which I briefly read about on Wikipedia. McCall has taken up a job as an Uber driver, where he gets to talk to people and listen to/eavesdrop on their problems. He handles a lot of problems by being friendly and a good listener, but for the more dire problems, he’ll follow up later in the night to do some altruistic violence. It’s a formula as old as time, a good guy has to do some bad things in order to do good for the people around him. There are no great surprises, and if there’s a twist, it’s not going to upend the entire world. Denzel is still the good guy, and he’s still going to win. The difference maker with these movies is obviously just the sheer magnetism and star power of Denzel.
You come to these movies because you want to see Denzel be Denzel, and you want to see Denzel kill or injure some guys with absolutely no hesitation and be completely in the right about it. McCall was once a CIA operative, working in morally gray areas, but now that he’s out of that life, he now operates in stark black and white. There’s no internal conflict about killing off Russian mobsters and busting up their prostitution ring, there’s no agonizing about whether he should kill his former partner Dave (Pedro Pascal) who’s now become a rogue mercenary involved in the murder of a CIA official who’s one of McCall’s only real friends. Using McCall’s former partner as the main villain of the movie is an interesting shift from the Russian mobsters of the first movie. The conflict in The Equalizer 2 again arises from a wrong being done that McCall simply can’t abide, but now there’s an added layer of personal stakes with this betrayal from his former partner and friend. Personally, I thought there would have been a bit more handwringing on McCall’s part about how to handle the situation with his former best friend, but McCall is a man of action and conviction. Handwringing is just something that he does not do. He discovers Dave’s betrayal, and immediately decides that Dave and everyone on his team has to die. He does all of this while playing with Dave’s toddler daughter and making small talk with Dave’s wife. It’s one of the best scenes in this movie, using Denzel’s particular movie star confidence to show off just how single minded and threatening McCall can be. It doesn’t matter whether you’re his best friend or a nameless henchman— McCall is has a strict code, and he only ever does violence in the service of justice now that he’s no longer doing violence in the service of American imperialism via CIA black ops. His former life as an assassin coupled with his current stoic lifestyle lends the appearance of some internal moral struggle, but the trick of this movie is that the audience can trust that McCall is always right to do the things he does, even if it’s some spectacular violence because he adheres to a strict code of traditional values, which kind of just makes McCall not that different from an untouchable superhero. The Equalizer movies are superhero movies for oldheads, a power fantasy for every old guy who just wants to be left alone to read a book in the diner like he likes.
The third part of the blog, where I plug the MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord
My Street Fighter 6 journey is on pause for a bit since Blasphemous 2 is out, and now I simply must obsess over unlocking the map of this wonderful, cartoonishly Catholic game.
Now that you’ve read Allison on Wayne’s World, why not read Screen Slate on Wayne’s World 2?
I know we all love Marty at MOVIE DIARY 2023, so you’ve probably already read the Martin Scorsese profile that’s been going around.
This Vanity Fair piece on Black audiences’ love for Italian-American crime movies, is worth everyone’s time.
I somehow had never seen this video of Regis Philbin dressed as Shrek walking onto The Late Show with David Letterman!
That’s it for now, see you next time!