Opening wide this Friday is David E. Talbert's First Sunday, which should represent the final nail in a coffin which contains the mouldering remains of Ice Cube's reputation as an American nightmare. Younger Screengrab readers may not realize this, but Cube was once a rapper who so terrified white America that they put him on the cover of national news magazines, where he sneered and scowled his way right into your scaredy-bones. Now he just makes comedies that Steve Martin is too busy to bother with. Anyway, Talbert is being claimed as the new Tyler Perry, which, depending on your inclinations, is either a refreshing change or a dire threat. We were sort of hoping that First Sunday would function as a pseudo-sequel to the Friday films and would, at the very least, treat us to the spectacle of Cube and Katt Williams having to sit through a really long, dull sermon while stoned out of their gourds, which is an experience we've all had at one time or another. Unfortunately, it's no such thing, so here's some other movies you can look forward to after this endless Sunday is over.
STORMY MONDAY (1988)
Back before Mike Figgis hit it big, he directed this quirky little neo-noir thriller. It hasn't proven to be one of his lasting legacies as a filmmaker; for everything it does right, it goofs up in some profound way that nearly sinks it — its plot is pretty thin even by the standards of such potboilers, and two fine lead performances by British actors (Sting and a young Sean Bean) are clumsily countered by two dopey ones by American actors (an ultra-hammy Tommy Lee Jones and Melanie Griffith, clearly letting the clock run down on her fifteen minutes of fame). That said, it's worth watching for two reasons: first, it gives you an important stepping point in the development of Figgis' career, should you be interested in pursuing such a thing; and second, it's crazily gorgeous to look at. It features some nearly perfect cinematography by the estimable Roger Deakins, all rain-slicked streets and cheap neon and hazes of cigarette smoke and shadows that people fall into and never emerge. It's all surface; you'll find no depth here no matter how hard you look. But if surface is all you're looking for, you could do a lot worse than Stormy Monday.
IF IT'S TUESDAY THIS MUST BE BELGIUM (1969)
Movies like this must have seemed like such a good idea in the Sixties. Get an all-star cast, or at least as much of an all-star cast as you can afford. Have them rampage around a picturesque collection of back-lot set pieces mixed with stock footage. Stick Norman Fell in there looking pasty and irritated, then stick an unwieldy, ridiculous title on the thing and watch the money roll in. It's not quite clear exactly when Americans lost their patience for this particular brand of witless comedy, but I think it was right around the time this movie came out, which just so happened to coincide with the time at which it became acceptable to talk about smoking marijuana. Still, it's not entirely without its charm; Suzanne Pleshette makes a vivacious lead, Sandy Baron has some amusing scenes, Murray Hamilton reminds us that he once existed, and you get a fun look at what Hollywood thought of Ian McShane before it discovered how good he was at cussing like a sailor who's just had an anchor drop on his foot. It plays even better if you pretend that it was made in 1959 instead of 1969.
BIG WEDNESDAY (1978)
Highly influenced by The Endless Summer and a rash of other surfing documentaries that had hit the screens in the 1960s, Big Wednesday takes a similar visual approach and a comparable 'surfing as metaphor for nascent mystics communing with nature ' storyline, but wraps it all up in a big mushy box of coming-of-age drama by writer/director John Milius, who had not yet discovered that the one thing he loved even more than surfing was killing communists. Based loosely on his own southern California teenhood, Big Wednesday is actually a pretty accomplished film for what it is, but it really soars on the strength of what today seems like an incredibly goofball cast: shirtless, bronzed, toned young beachcombers portrayed by...future acid casualty Gary Busey, future heroin junkie Jan-Michael Vincent, and future Greatest American Hero William Katt. Patti D'Arbanville wanders through there as well, as does a woefully out-of-place Joe Spinnell as Busey's shrink. All in all, not a bad little movie, but one that's highly improved if you're in a Gary Busey state of mind when you watch it.
THURSDAY AFTERNOON (1984)
Right around the time that MTV was robbing us all of our ability to process visual information that didn't come with cuts every fifteen seconds, avant-garde composer, musician, and filmmaker Brian Eno offered a refreshing, if highly unusual, tonic in the form of Thursday Afternoon. Essentially a series of eight nearly motionless "video paintings", Thursday Afternoon was meant to be viewed in a vertical format; the video packaging actually instructed viewers to upend their television sets. Whether anyone actually did that or not, the video was an interesting exercise in changing the video shorthand that accompanies music on screen. Accompanied by music that is highly suggestive of his 'ambient' period circa Music for Airports, the videos bring us nearly static images (of nature scenes, shifting electronic displays, and fashion model Christine Alicino, also the film's cinematographer), and manage to accomplish visually precisely the effect that Eno was going after musically with that ambient work. It may not be the most compelling thing ever set to video, but it's a lot better conversation-starter than your iTunes Visualizer at a party.
SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1977)
So iconic is John Badham's 1977 disco document that it's easy to overlook what a colossal impact it made at the time it was released. John Travolta became such a huge star following its box-office-busting run that his fall from grace seemed inevitable and his comeback seemed incredible; with the benefit of hindsight, one might be forgiven for thinking he was the only person in the movie as none of the other actors went on to even remotely the same level of fame. Badham, likewise, never made a film as good as this, or as successful. Endlessly parodied, riffed on and exploited, it's the kind of movie that even if you've never seen it, you feel like you've seen it. It really went off the rails early on; it's impossible to guess from the final product, but it was actually based on an edgy, almost scholarly piece of cultural studies by the brilliant English polymath Nik Cohn called "Tribal Rituals of the New Saturday Night". Still, a few of its dance scenes, its relentless energy, and Tony Manero's slow, arrogant strut through Brooklyn have lost none of their power, and make it clear why this movie meant to its time and place what it did.
