March 2000. This was the month I turned eleven, and I feel like this was the birthday where I got a CD of Highlights from the Phantom of the Opera (with Claire Moore!) and a VHS of Yellow Submarine. I had awakened early in the morning, so there was time before school to listen to the whole CD; the VHS I saved for later.
I had only recently gotten into the Beatles, and I remember it had to be fifth or sixth grade because my introduction to them was through neither their music nor their movies but through a small paperback in our classroom's Take A Book, Leave A Book library: Beatles Diary, written by their chauffeur and road manager, Alf Bicknell. Odd that without any other context, I latched on to the story told in those pages. I was so into the Beatles that, for a project asking us to create an Egyptian-themed calendar, I did one with images of a band called The Scarabs, with, I believe, Anubis in place of Ringo.
While I was turning 11 and dreaming of a past I never experienced, here's what was happening at the movies...
Drowning Mona
release: March 3
dir: Nick Gomez
pr: Al Corley / Eugene Musso / Bart Rosenblatt
scr: Peter Steinfeld
cin: Bruce Douglas Johnson
The most hated woman in town dies in a car accident, foul play is suspected, and life goes on...for some.
Rented from Hollywood Video, possibly in mid-to-late 2000, with my oldest sister and my parents - unusual, actually, given the subject matter, that I would be permitted to watch (my parents wouldn't even let me see The Blair Witch Project, not because of the scares, but because they cussed too colorfully and too often). This was everyone's first time watching, though, so I got away with it.
Often called a "white trash Orient Express," and while I understand that sentiment, it actually has far more in common with, just off the top of my head, Dumb Witness or Appointment with Death or Taken at the Flood. It also anticipates Gosford Park, which Robert Altman described as a "who-cares-whodunnit." Exactly the kind of movie that appeals to me: trappings of a cozy mystery - small town, kindly sheriff, the nice guy may have dunnit, red herrings galore! - but with crass Americans. Sometimes it's lazily offensive in its attempts to appall, but so are people in real life, so none of it rang false. It's fun to watch everyone let loose, especially Bette Midler as the titular Mona, a genuine nightmare person. And I must commend it, too, for being a film with real staying power: 25 years later, I still recalled two or three especially colorful Bette Midler diatribes word-for-word (I also vividly remembered the sex scene with Jamie Lee Curtis and Marcus Thomas, but how do you forget that?). A guilty pleasure? No, for I feel no guilt.
Final Destination
release: March 17
dir: James Wong
pr: Glen Morgan / Craig Perry / Warren Zide
scr: Glen Morgan & James Wong and Jeffrey Reddick, story by Jeffrey Reddick
cin: Robert McLachlan
A teen has a premonition about his class's flight to Paris and convinces others to deplane with him - right before the plane explodes in mid-air. But they're not safe: now the survivors are dying in increasingly unlikely ways...
My freshman year of high school - could even have been the summer between that and sophomore year - I watched this at a party with theatre friends. The girl whose house it was prided herself on being dark so we saw a lot of spooky movies at her place. I was very into her, we actually had a thing for a little bit after she and her boyfriend broke up, though never in any kind of official capacity. Great kisser.
Can you believe this movie was 25 years ago - and a sixth entry in this franchise just came out this past May! It's obvious why: horror movies are about scares, and nothing scares people more than the chaos of their own mortality, that Death eventually comes for us, no warning, and cannot be thwarted or cheated. There is so much discussion in this one about fate vs. chance, about people being blessed or snakebit ... well, it's thought-provoking. And then, too, there are the deaths themselves, increasingly Rube Goldberg-esque in their complexity and gotchas. The first is simple, brutal: a shower cord strangulation, slow. Twenty minutes later, we have a character killed by literally everything in her house, and then an explosion. Only thing I find a little lame-o is when Death starts covering its tracks, like the average person will be On To Him. Get a grip, Death!
High Fidelity
release: March 31
dir: Stephen Frears
pr: Tim Bevan / Rudd Simmons
scr: D.V. DiVincentis & Steve Pink & John Cusack and Scott Rosenberg, from the novel by Nick Hornby
cin: Seamus McGarvey
A record store owner reevaluates past relationships following a breakup.
Here's one I first saw at a friend's house, possibly in that marathon we had while he was bedridden, recuperating from knee surgery. I say marathon, but I think the only other one I recall from that period is the German horror-comedy Night of the Living Dorks. This must have been senior year.
Gets at something honest about the way men - people, I guess, but here the movie is mostly concerned with a type of Man - obsessively rank things, including people, reducing everything to a list, a scoreboard. John Cusack's Rob ranks his breakups like his co-workers rank musicians, albums, and singles, discarding or rearranging whenever inconvenient details get in the way of The Canon. Jack Black's a scene-stealer. Gets repetitive quick. Maybe the part Cusack was born to play,
Tomorrow, my first time watching Erin Brockovich!
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