The Screengrab : adrian lyne

Unwatchable #80: “The Smokers”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Take a look at that DVD cover and you’ll probably think you have a pretty good idea what to expect from The Smokers – a “chick clique” flick in the vein of Heathers, Mean Girls and Jawbreaker. At times it does play like that sort of movie, but at other times, it strives to present some big ideas. Some big, dumb ideas.

The Smokers was clearly made by someone who once read that a gun introduced in the first act must go off in the third, but didn’t get much beyond that chestnut as far as the finer points of storytelling are concerned. When it was over, I immediately went to the IMDb to find out who was responsible and what else they might have done. The writer/director in question is one Kat Slater, and here are some of the films she has made since The Smokers: Young Sluts, Inc. 4, Young Sluts, Inc. 6, Cum Swappers 1, Cum Swappers 2, Cum Swallowers, Cum Swallowers 3 and Campus Confessions 6-9. Those titles being a little too subtle for me, I did some research and it turns out they’re all hardcore porn releases from Hustler. I found this a bit surprising, given the extreme feminist ideas explored in The Smokers, but as I believe I mentioned, they are very dumb feminist ideas, explored very poorly.

The Smokers are Jefferson (Dominique Swain, Adrian Lyne’s Lolita), Karen (Busy Phillips of Freaks and Geeks) and Lisa (Keri Lynn Pratt, Miss Teen New Hampshire 1994), three students at the upscale boarding school Lindenhurst Academy. They smoke. They smoke a lot. They smoke the cigarettes and they smoke the pot. Also, they have boy troubles. Lisa’s boyfriend David cheats on her, Jefferson falls for a gay singer and Karen gets the brush-off after a one-night stand in the back of a limo. After Jefferson’s wacko sister Lincoln (where have you gone, Thora Birch?) pulls a gun on Karen (all in good fun, of course), the Smokers decide to use the weapon to turn the tables on the male of the species.

Thanks to the movie’s wildly inconsistent tone, it’s hard to say how we’re supposed to take this development. Is it just a goof when they sexually humiliate David at gunpoint, or is it rape? If it is just a goof and we’re meant to take it all lightly, what about the later scene in which Karen is date-raped on the hood of her one-night stand’s limo? It’s a disturbing moment deprived of any meaningful context. If The Smokers can’t decide how it feels about its own message of empowerment – that is, whether it’s a satirical take or a cautionary tale or even a genuine call to arms – then how are we supposed to figure it out? It’s not that the movie is being deliberately ambiguous, it’s just inept filmmaking hardly aided by unappealing performances, notably by the shrill Phillips.

I did find one hint as to the filmmaker’s intentions after the fact. If you check out the Amazon customer reviews of The Smokers, you’ll find this comment from one Kat Slater: “Finally a chic flick without all the wimpy girls. These girls are cool. It's very stylish and great preformances by Thora Birch and Dominique Swain. I loved it! And guys... you want to see what girls are all about... this is it!” So…this is the same person who went on to make movies with titles referring to women as semen receptacles? I think I’m more confused than ever.

Previously on Unwatchable:
81. Soccer Dog: The Movie
82. American Soldiers
83. First Sunday
84. It’s Pat
85. Battlefield Earth

Girl DisemPowering: Nine Films That Didn't Do Feminism Any Favors (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:30:00 GMT

And now that we’re all feeling nice and empowered from our Top Ten List of films with strong female characters and themes, here’s the other side of the coin: nine movies we’re guessing you won’t find on Gloria Steinem’s Netflix queue (unless she’s researching a new book on movies that didn’t exactly do wonders for the feminist movement).

(Oh, and while we're on the subject, a special P.S. to Katherine Heigl: Really? Knocked Up is more sexist than 27 Dresses? That's a fascinating theory. Please, tell me more!)

PRETTY WOMAN (1990)

Although she later improved her girl power street credit with her Academy Award-winning turn as an indomitable single mother in Erin Brockovich, Julia Roberts’ breakthrough role was about as healthy (and irresistible) as a deep fried bacon Twinkie for the mobs of women (and men) who made it a blockbuster hit. I mean, I’m a dude and I certainly have my issues with some of the more strident tenets of feminism, but even I was offended by the film’s basic premise about the whore-with-the-heart-of-gold who charms a rich Prince Charming with her sparkling personality (and fellatio skills) to the point where he decides to keep her for himself, making her dreams come true by paying for all the overpriced jewels and fashion she could possibly want. Oh, and he goes down on her on a Steinway...the movie’s one true nod to progressive gender relations. This movie is offensive on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. The blatant portrayal of women as whores who only get what they want by attracting successful men? The offensiveness of Jason Alexander’s loathsome chauvinist pig character, a personification of the film’s equal opportunity anti-male stereotyping (unattractive men are icky slobs and probably rapists, whereas good looking men are more trustworthy and morally superior)? The ridiculous depiction of prostitution as an Outward Bound-style empowerment program (complete with Laura San Giacomo’s mother hen prostitute telling a fledgling whore at the end of the movie that she expects big things from her, y'know, on par with Roberts’ home run of man-bagging)? Oh, sure...it’s just a movie, and an insidiously charming one at that, and maybe I’m reading too much into it and getting all het up for no reason...yet, at the same time, it’s also worth noting that many of the girls who grew up watching Pretty Woman (not to mention the film’s original audience) now enjoy (and sometimes embody) the film’s sex-for-crass-materialism ethos in pervasive cultural incarnations from Paris Hilton and The Real World to just about every show on the E! network.

FATAL ATTRACTION (1987)

One of the most polarizing blockbuster hits of the '80s, Fatal Attraction presents us with Glenn Close as the image of the sexy, successful unmarried career woman and turns her into what the movie confidently assumes is every man's nightmare: the one night stand who won't go away. Seen alone in her apartment at night, she's not really confident at all: she's a lonely neurotic wreck -- this is what being without a family, or at least a man, presumably does to a woman, what all career women are really like underneath. Then, after the married guy (Michael Douglas) who thought they were both just having a little fling stops putting up with her, she turns into an avenging harpy, and in the process she says all the things that women who are sick of being badly used and treated as objects have said. They don't apply to the situation, and you may think the fact that she thinks they do shows how sick she is, but given that this is the era of Reagan, AIDS, the "new chastity" and the anti-feminist backlash, a lot of people in the audience thought the fact this fruitcake was saying them proved what she was saying must be crazy in any instance. The movie isn't exactly misogynist; its real cunning is the way it uses the recently politicized concept of "family" to justify its turning Close into a she-devil while advocating the use of violence or whatever else it takes to ward off attacks by outsiders who try to damage the holy unit of family. As everyone knows, the movie originally ended with Close committing suicide and framing Douglas for her murder, an ending that was actually more plausible in keeping with the character's psychology, and one that pissed off test audiences who were denied the revenge-killing catharsis they'd been made to expect. The movie was probably always fated to end with Close getting it, but the stroke of genius was in putting the gun in the hand of Douglas's wife (Anne Archer) and making it a battle between the good wife and the hussy, a choice that made some women in the audience cheer louder than the men. The family that slays together...

LEGAL EAGLES (1986)

Everything about this slapped-together, thoughtlessly conceived comedy-thriller, starring Robert Redford and Debra Winger as dueling lawyers and Darryl Hannah as a pair of frosted lips sitting atop mile-high legs, is a testament to the hackish instincts of the director, Ivan Reitman, and the screenwriting team, Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr. (whose other collaborations include Top Gun, The Secret of My Success, and Anaconda). It's the kind of movie that seems to have been made by people who were in a rush to get the shoot completed because they couldn't wait to show up at the red carpet premiere, the kind of movie where less important things like telling a story or entertaining an audience never crossed anyone's mind. About the only thing of note about it is the example it provides of just how much damage simple hackishness can do, because Legal Eagles also wasted the time and bent the brain of one of the white-hot talents of the '80s, Debra Winger, at just the point in her career where she was lined up on the runway and poised for full takeoff. Her role here -- a foil to Redford and, ultimately, a damsel in distress -- is so stupidly written that it's an insult, and she's the only person in the large, talented cast who still hadn't had the idealism beaten out of her to such a degree that she knew enough to just go through the motions and collect her check. You can see her trying to bring some kind of truth to what she's doing, and you can see how unhappy she is that she isn't succeeding, and her unhappiness is contagious. The movie is said to have done Winger extended career damage, partly because it soured her on the movie business but also because the industry was appalled that she was so impolite as to complain about the director in interviews. Anywhere but in Hollywood, expressing confidence in Ivan Reitman as a director would be grounds for having a judge take away your power of attorney.

FLASHDANCE (1983)

This MTV-styled sleazefest was bad for women, sweatshirts, steelworkers, strip clubs, movies, lobster dinners, pit bulls, warehouse lofts, Top 40 radio, and Jennifer Beals' dance double. (It was also a little rough on Maureen Marder, the real-life stripper-welder who "inspired" the screenplay outline, and who was persuaded to sign away the movie rights to her life story for a flat payment of $2300. After the movie grossed in excess of $150 million, Paramount, in an industry that routinely writes checks to squelch nuisance suits, actually let Marder drag them in front of a judge after she came around begging for more money, secure in the knowledge that the agreement would hold up in court. Then, in an amazing act of chutzpah, the movie studio actually sued over a Jennifer Lopez video that was painstakingly designed as a tribute to the movie. Not that people shouldn't be penalized somehow for paying tribute to Flashdance.) It makes all the horrible sense in the world that, for this "inspirational" story of a girl who doesn't give up her dream to dance, the director Adrian Lyne cast an unknown who couldn't dance (but who had the "look") and then tried to suppress the information that her dancing was performed by a double, Marine Jahan, whom he subsequently threatened to punish for daring to publicly take credit for her own work in the movie. (He may have been successful in this: Jahan only appeared in one other movie, 1984's Streets of Fire.) Given the flashy fast-cut style that Lyne developed (with his work in TV commercials before transposing it to movies), this could just as well have been the story of a carefully lit can of peas that never gave up its dream to be a zucchini. Not trying to give you any ideas, Adrian.

MONA LISA SMILE (2003)

The thing that makes Mona Lisa Smile – the story of a bohemian art history teacher who comes to shake things up at the hyper-conservative cartoon of an East Coast university in the stodgy 1950s – so incredibly frustrating, and qualifies it for inclusion in our list of movies that are particularly disempowering to women, is that it actually thinks it’s a feminist movie. Set at a version of Wellesley University so reactionary that the board of chancellors might as well have Snidely Whiplash mustaches, the movie asks us to believe that Julia Roberts’ character has come to show young women the possibility of more than just a perfunctory education to put some polish on their cocktail party chatter before settling down into marriage, but it subverts itself at every turn, to such a degree that it actually comes across as more sexist that the milieu it rails against. Roberts shows her students the liberation possible through art – but never manages to mention any female artists. Roberts teaches her young charges that there’s more to life than being someone’s wife – but all of the characters are essentially defined by their relationship to men. Roberts encourages her students not to let themselves be limited by the expectations of others – but Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character is clearly condemned in the movie for her loose sexual morals, and in one of the movie’s ugliest scenes, Julia Stiles’ character excoriates an ashamed Roberts for expecting her to choose a career over marriage. When it comes to defining women by their power and potential, Mona Lisa Smile is a path to hell that’s paved with good intentions.

Click here for Part Two of Girl DisemPowering

Click here for Part One and Part Two of Chick Hits: The Girl Power Top Ten

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Yesterday's Hits: Fatal Attraction (1987, Adrian Lyne)

Paul Clark — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Whenever I describe the idea of Yesterday’s Hits to someone who’s never read the column, I’m often asked, “why write about movies that aren’t popular anymore?” There are a number of reasons, but one of the biggest has always been a kind of anthropological fascination with the movies to which earlier generations gravitated. In some cases, the reasons behind the films’ blockbuster status are simple- because they craved good special effects, or because the stars were popular at the time. But in some cases, it goes deeper than that, because the film taps into a certain zeitgeist that makes it a must see. Simply put, it’s the right film at the right time. One example of this is Fatal Attraction.

What made Fatal Attraction a hit?: The 1980s were a profitable period for R-rated movies, and one of the prime beneficiaries of this was the erotic thriller genre. But while most movies of this kind were fairly disreputable, Fatal Attraction was different- a classy project pairing bankable leading man Michael Douglas with three-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close. Because of its pedigree, Fatal Attraction was able to attract a bigger audience than most films of the kind, becoming the second-biggest hit of 1987.

However, the film’s success was bigger than box-office grosses, with its title entering the popular lexicon. This was due in no small part to the way its screenplay (penned by James Dearden) tapped into two major issues of the day. First, after the advent of feminism, there was a certain degree of anxiety among many men about these newly independent and sexually powerful women, exemplified in the film by Glenn Close’s Alex. But also important- although less explicit in the film- was the sudden fear of sex which was caused by the discovery of AIDS earlier in the decade. Suddenly, the casual sex of the sixties and seventies carried with it deadly consequences. These two factors combined to make Fatal Attraction a topic of national conversation, with the film garnering six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Not bad for a project that had repeatedly been dismissed as a ripoff of Play Misty for Me and passed on by almost twenty filmmakers, including Brian DePalma and John Carpenter.

What happened?: While Fatal Attraction transcended the genre to which it ostensibly belonged, its box-office performance paved the way for an explosion of erotic thrillers, few of which were remotely as good, and almost none of which were as respectable. Most of the films that were made in its wake were sleazy and shameless, with filmmakers like screenwriter Joe Eszterhas aiming to outdo each other for kinky sexuality and elaborate deaths. In addition, there was a rise in direct-to-video erotic thrillers at the end of the eighties, occasioned in part by the home-video success of Fatal Attraction. For both of these reasons, and others besides, the erotic thriller genre had largely become a parody of itself even before Carl Reiner made his dire spoof Fatal Instinct in 1993.

Does Fatal Attraction still work?: Mostly, yes. For a movie of this kind, Fatal Attraction is pretty low-key for most of its duration. Dearden and director Adrian Lyne take time to properly establish the film’s characters and story rather than simply barreling through to the sex and violence. From the beginning, the film portrays Dan Gallagher’s (Douglas) life in detail- his beautiful wife Beth (Anne Archer), his little girl, his job as a high-powered lawyer, and his close friendships. It’s not until after we see what his everyday life is like that the film throws Alex into the mix, which allows us to see what he has before he does something that could cause him to lose it.

It’s because of this that the casting of Douglas is crucial. Most big stars of the period specialized in uncomplicated heroes, but Douglas was the exception, often playing flawed yuppie types with a dark side. Fatal Attraction gave him the one of his best roles, as a decent man who is almost done in by his arrogance- he cheats on his wife because he knows he’ll have fun, and he figures he’ll never get caught anyway, so where’s the harm? But of course, he does.

Also important is Close’s performance as Alex, who’s crazy all right, but also says some things that make a good amount of sense. After Dan unceremoniously dumps her, she calls him on it, saying he treats her like “some slut you can just bang a couple of times and throw in the garbage.” After she finds out she’s pregnant, she seeks him out and demands that he “accept his responsibilities.” Alex has her share of problems- she’s suicidal, for one thing- but most of her actions in the film’s first half are actually pretty reasonable. She’s been wronged, she’s pissed, and now she will. Not. Be. Ignored.

The first hour or so of Fatal Attraction works so well as a morality play, with Dan trying to figure out how to shake off Alex while dealing with his own guilt and keeping the truth from his wife, that it’s sort of disappointing when it moves into more traditional thriller territory. Some of the film’s most famous sequences- the boiled bunny, the kidnapping- still pack a punch, but they don’t fit very well with what came before. Mostly though, it feels too easy to turn Alex into a psycho. By making her a villain, it provides an easy opportunity for Dan to emerge as a hero working in the interest of protecting his family and saving his marriage. Compared to what came before, it’s far too tidy.

Especially damaging is the film’s climactic scene, in which Alex brandishes a butcher knife and tries to murder Beth. In Dearden’s original ending, Alex committed suicide in a manner that made it appear Dan had killed her, which led to him being arrested for her murder. However, after disastrous test screenings, the studio shot the new ending, which tested much better. But while turning Alex into a knife-wielding slasher helped the film’s box office, it hurt it quality-wise. With its original ending, not only do all of the Madame Butterfly references suddenly make sense, but the film becomes far more about Dan having to deal with the consequences of his affair and less about providing clear-cut violent catharsis for the audience. Sadly, a move like this is all too typical of Hollywood- so short-sighted that they’ll gladly torpedo a future classic in the interest of making the movie more bankable today. Of course, this is what made Fatal Attraction so ideal for Yesterday’s Hits. Funny how that worked out, isn’t it?

No, But I've Read the Movie: LOLITA

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Usually, Hollywood is a tad standoffish about tackling the great novels. If they do it right, they win the admiration of critics, but risk losing the mainstream audience, who will think of their project as snooty and highbrow. If they do it wrong, people still won't go see the movie, plus the critics will turn the whole thing into a laughingstock. Producers are generally willing to let someone take a crack at one of the classics once and only once, and then only if they're an established filmmaker and there's nothing too controversial about the book. How, then, did not one but two movie versions get made of one of the most inflammatory, misunderstood and potentially dangerous books of the 21st century — a book that not only quite openly asks us to identify, to a certain degree, with an effete intellectual pederast, but which was written by one of the pioneers of postmodernism? Some might suggest that certain producers and/or directors simply jump at the chance to cast a movie starring a hot nymphet, but we are not so cynical here at the Screengrab, oh goodness no. We will not speculate how it came to pass that two high-profile film adaptations of Vladimir Nabokov's brilliant, subtle, subversive and daring story came to pass — one of them, by a titan of the silver screen, made less than a decade after the novel's publication and the other, by a flaky British director whose movies have always been a heartbeat away from softcore porn — and instead focus on the respective qualities of the two films.

A lot of people didn't think Lolita would ever make it to the big screen once, let alone twice. For all the pretentious, self-deluding protagonist Humbert Humbert's talk of "nymphets", he is nakedly and, for the most part, blindly and unrepentently a pederast — a dirty old man who chases after young girls and compensates for his failings by passing intellectual judgment on everyone else around him. This was, and is, considered a pretty volatile subject, even considering Hollywood's history of sexualizing young women; indeed, the tagline for the 1962 Stanley Kubrick version of Lolita was "How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?" Part of the answer to that is by soft-pedaling Dolores Haze's age: in the Kubrick film, she's sixteen and in the Adrian Lyne version, she's a year younger — both a level of remove from the highly uncomfortable fact that in Nabokov's novel, she's twelve. Regardless of the controversy that raged (and will probably always continue to rage) around the book, especially from people who haven't read it, Lolita is rightly considered one of the greatest books of the post-war and post-modern era. The films, however, are a touch more difficult to critically assess. Kubrick's 1962 version was well-received at the time, snaring an Oscar nomination and a handful of Golden Globe noms, but has it stood up to the test of time? Adrian Lyne's 1997 edition wasn't expected to be very good, and after a successful run overseas had a hard time finding distribution in the U.S. from controversy-shy studios until it eventually had to debut on cable. Was it better than its reputation? Let's you and me find out.

WHAT THEY HAD: Aside from being directed by a genuine master of the medium, the best thing Kubrick's Lolita had going for it was the coup it scored in getting Nabokov himself to pen the screenplay. If this didn't exactly ensure that it would remain faithful to the book (see below), it would at least ensure that the script wasn't a total wash. It was a gorgeous-looking movie, and with a couple of notable exceptions (see, again, below), the cast was top-notch, even if Peter Sellers was so overblown and overused in his role that a number of commentators (including Nabokov himself) suggested that the movie should be called Quilty. Lyne's version wasn't as assured in terms of filmmaking, largely because Adrian Lyne is worth about one and a half feet of Stanley Kubrick, but it was very stylish, and the always-terrific Jeremy Irons as Humbert was ably matched with the phenomenal Dominique Swain as Lolita. If Swain's career never let her equal this performance, she could at least be proud that she took one of the most difficult roles in modern drama and absolutely nailed it to the wall. Additionally, and to their credit, both films managed to weather the storms of controversy they met with, and although both suffered from studio interference to make the story palatable to sex-shy American tastes, neither was entirely wrecked because of it.

WHAT THEY LACKED: Kubrick's Lolita may have suffered the most; it doesn't hold up well compared to most of his other films, and at times comes across as lifeless and flat on the screen. Sue Lyons is pretty much a disaster as Lolita, having the right look but not even remotely the necessary acting chops, and Shelley Winters sometimes seems completely lost as her mother, Charlotte Haze. Studio tinkering and his own lack of familiarity with the discipline of screenwriting blunted the impact of Nabokov's script, and the whole thing, overall, comes across as one of those noble experiments that you want to like a lot more than you really do — not that it's a bad film by any means, but to call it, as some critics do, a great one is to force yourself to overlook a lot of its flaws. If Lyne's movie succeeded more on its own terms, that's only because no one expected anything out of it in the first place. It's certainly not a great film either, and not even as good a film as Kubrick's, but it didn't have the same high expectations as did a movie with Kubrick and Nabokov's names attached. Lyne wasn't lucky enough to snare Vlad as his writer, the novelist having passed away some twenty years prior, so he mistakenly assumed that if you can't get the guy who wrote Pale Fire, get the guy who wrote The Deep End of the Ocean. He also cast the merely competent Frank Langella in the role previously occupied by the resplendent Peter Sellers, and made the mistake of asking Melanie Griffith to portray a human being, something she has always had trouble with.

DID THEY SUCCEED?: Probably no version of Lolita is ever going to fully succeed; if Vladimir Nabokov himself couldn't pull it off, what chance does Adrian Lyne have? The transcendent value of the novel lies first and foremost in its rich, beautiful use of language, and second in its detailed and subtle crafting of irony; the former comes across on the screen not at all, and the latter, often, quite poorly. Lolita is a book that everyone is always constantly rushing to misinterpret, and looking at the production history of both films, that was clearly the case here; it didn't help much that, in the case of the 1997 version, the foremost misinterpreter of the book was director Adrian Lyne. He not only brought his trashy erotic-thriller sensibilities to a story that didn't need them, but he also seemed to completely miss the point of how funny Lolita is. Whether brought on by his own self-seriousness or a misguided sense of respect for the source material, that's a fatal mistake, and whatever its other flaws, it's not one that Kubrick's 1962 version made. It seems impossible that some future director will gather the courage and resources to take another crack at Lolita and avoid the pitfalls of the previous two versions, but as unlikely as it might be to think that someone will film a third version of the book, who would have ever predicted someone would film it the first time?

Video of the Day: "Lolita" Screen Test

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:45:00 GMT

When Adrian Lyne's 1997 adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's notorious novel Lolita hit theaters, most of the press attention it received focused on the fact that Lyne, striving for a certain literary verisimilitude, actually cast the then-fifteen-year-old Dominique Swain in the title role rather than handing it to an actress of legal age pretending to be fifteen. It was such a bold, controversial move that it took a lot of people a good long while to notice that, verisimilitude aside, the movie wasn't actually very good, and the hotly debated love scenes between Swain and a decrepit Jeremy Irons were less noteworthy than was some abominable casting decisions (a bored Frank Langella as Clare Quilty and Melanie Griffith in way over her head as Charlotte Haze) and a muddled script. However, this early read-through of said script is worth a peek, if only because, thanks to its cheap, loose video quality and 'your next-door-neighbor's basement' mise-en-scene, it actually comes across as a lot more provocative than the movie itself. (Side note to Screengrab readers who wish to avoid termination and/or imprisonment: do not, under any circumstance, Google "lolita screen test". I am a professional.)