It’s retread week at the movies—on all fronts—from the Hollywood blockbuster remake of The Omen to Robert Altman’s latest social study, A Prairie Home Companion, to an experimental art film obviously made for a fringe audience, Psychopathia Sexualis. Although all three are good examples of their types, not one of them is likely to stir any kind of passionate following or hang around long in theaters. Neither particularly memorable nor dreadful, these movies are instead simply ‘OK.’
In the 31 years since Nashville, Robert Altman has directed scores of movies that follow the pattern of his controversial masterpiece. This is Altman’s patented style of honing in on a particular subculture of society and examining its flaws and pleasures—usually through a large cast of characters riddled with eccentricities. But after A Wedding, A Perfect Couple, Health, The Player, Cookie’s Fortune, Pret-a-Porter and Gosford Park—to mention enough examples to prove my point—Altman’s latest feels like just another chapter in his long cinematic novel.
Like many of the director’s films, this fictionalized version of the long-running public radio show A Prairie Home Companion is packed to the rafters with stars. Garrison Keillor (who wrote the script) appears, as he does on the radio show, as the deadpan emcee who presides over an hour of down-home, folksy-country music and comedy complete with vintage flavored commercials. The film follows what is to be the last on-air performance of the show because the old theater in St. Paul, Minn., where the show is broadcast live, has been sold to a developer who wants to tear down the building.
Meryl Streep and out lesbian and Altman company player Lily Tomlin head the bill as a singing sister act; Lindsay Lohan plays Streep’s daughter; and Kevin Kline is a security guard stuck back in the 1940s (and given the name—ouch—of Guy Noir). In addition, Virginia Madsen plays a mysterious blonde in a white trench coat (who’s listed in the credits as ‘Dangerous Woman’); Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly play bickering singing cowboys; Maya Rudolph is the show’s producer; and Tommy Lee Jones plays a representative from the evil corporation sent to make sure the group of ragtag performers packs it in.
The movie pretty much follows the final performance (onstage and off), which is long on charming, heartfelt songs (with the real Prairie Home Companion band providing expert backing) and short on comedy onstage. Not much happens backstage, although Streep’s hippy-dippy character (with a Minnesota accent that comes and goes), complete with her nostalgic dressing room monologues full of self-regret, reminds one of Barbara Jean, the tragic country music star played by Ronee Blakely in Nashville. Tomlin is funny and biting as the more realistic sister while Lohan’s character seems to be there to react. Kline wrings some comedy out of his role while Madsen is again underused. Keillor himself, the star of the whole shebang, with his frog-sized mouth beneath oversized glasses, surprisingly, given his appearance, leaves little or no impression other than the fact that his caramel-coated voice was meant for the airwaves. Radio truly is the best place for his odd talents.
The songs, which allow the actors to delve deeper into their characters, and the instrumentals are by far the strongest things in the movie—though there’s nothing here as memorable as the endless Nashville musical highlights, such as Keith Carradine singing ‘I’m Easy’ to a roomful of former lovers. It is these constant musical numbers that give the movie its structure and keep this pleasant and inoffensive movie from floating away even as you’re watching it.
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Damien, son of the devil, has returned 30 years on in a note-for-note remake of 1976’s The Omen. This time the producers have gone younger with their leads, recasting the parts of Damien’s parents, British ambassador Robert Thorne and his wife—played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick in the original—with Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles. Mia Farrow, who gave birth to Satan’s son in 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby, now acts as his nanny protector, stepping in for Billie Whitelaw. The script is again by David Seltzer, though—based on this almost word-for-word remake—one seriously wonders if some anonymous studio executive simply took the old one out of a drawer and declared, ‘This is good enough as it is. Let’s just shoot this.’
I’d have guessed that this was another case of Gus Van Sant reshooting a movie frame for frame a la his Psycho homage, except that director John Moore does add some visually arresting material that the junky original never had. The film is really quite beautiful, as is the music by Mario Beltrami. Jerry Goldsmith, one of the cinema’s greatest composers, won his only Oscar for his over-the-top score to the original which, ironically, was its campiest element. The uninitiated may have a good time but are warned to stay away from the DVDs of the original’s many sequels if they want to avoid knowing what comes next before the remake sequels squeeze more dollars out of this hellspawn of a franchise.
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Finally, for the truly adventurous moviegoer, comes the sorta adventurous Psychopathia Sexualis (which plays one week only at the Gene Siskel Film Center). This is writer-director Bret Wood’s experimental take on the 19th-century reports on ‘deviant human sexuality’ by psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing. The film eschews typical narrative and is presented in several unconnected segments that are narrated in a style highly reminiscent of Fassbinder’s homoerotic fantasy Querelle.
We get stylized examples of 19th-century cases involving S&M, vampirism, necrophilia, and, naturally, the most perverse of all—homosexuality and lesbianism. Wood purposely patterns the look and acting of the segments along the lines of silent German classics like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Pandora’s Box and traces of experimental filmmakers Kenneth Anger and Guy Maddin are discernable. What was missing for me was the purpose of making the movie in the first place. These acts, in and of themselves, are not in the least shocking to modern audiences and the recreations are pallid. If Wood had located a cache of hitherto unseen footage, like last year’s fascinating Electric Edwardians, or even assembled authentic, antique photographs of the acts he wants immortalized anew (or a compelling storyline to frame them in), this material might have had some resonance or shock value.
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June is Gay Pride month and, in honor of that, Windy City Times is presenting The First Annual GLBT Pride Movie Survey. This is your chance, dear reader, to weigh in with your thoughts on the best, the worst, the campiest and the sexiest GLBT movies (and more) of all time.
Head on over to the Web site www.knightatthemovies.com to fill out the online survey. Results will be published in my column (along with my list of favorites) in our Gay Pride issue later this month. As an enticement, one entry will win a copy of BOTH the forthcoming two-disc special editions of Valley of the Dolls and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (courtesy of Fox Home Video).