Pop Culture Grab Bag: The Return

I feel a grab bag coming on.

-A friend reminded me of an important SJP/Cattrall fact. SJP may have felt compelled to comment on the Cattrall family sadness in press interviews--yes--but did she really need to go and post on Instagram? *That* move does feel calculated and political and gross, and *that* is something Andy Cohen has *not* felt moved to comment on. (I talk shit about Andy Cohen, but in large part I think I’m just envious. I myself would like to have a large media empire and a memoir called “Superficial.” Also, the way he denied knowing Kathy Griffin--like Peter denying his knowledge of Jesus! So brazen and ruthless. I do not have those instincts. Perhaps I would have climbed higher in my early life if I’d taken a page from Cohen’s book.)

-You couldn’t pay me to see “The Shape of Water,” but I’m very excited for “The Strangers II: Prey at Night.” “The Strangers I” came out around ten years ago, and it was an especially effective shocker. Basically, Liv Tyler lives in the woods, and then random masked folks arrive to rape and kill Tyler and her family. There’s no explanation for the violence. It just happens. Horrifying! “Prey at Night” promises to pick up where “Strangers I” left off, at least thematically, but Christina Hendricks is in the Tyler role (or in the same general category as the Tyler role). Because Tyler’s character ended up dead? I can’t remember. 

-Home invasion is among my favorite movie scenarios, because it’s terrifying and it could conceivably happen. I especially love “The Invitation”--which is a clever spin on the home invasion movie. Here, the killers invite the victims to the killers’ house. And the plans for homicidal mayhem gradually unspool themselves, as the killers reveal they are coping with a tragic loss by signing on to the tenets of a nihilistic murder cult. After they have slaughtered everyone at their party, they hang a symbolic red light in their lawn, and then the entire San Fernando Valley (or somewhere like that) also lights up in red, and we must infer that nefarious murder games have been happening ALL OVER CALIFORNIA. A great ending, because it sends the movie into a new, shocking place--just as Act Three of “Ten Cloverfield Lane” takes us to a new nightmare scenario we may not have anticipated. (What was the smart John Gallagher home invasion movie? Where his prey is deaf or something? That's a good one. And "The Purge." And "Scream." And "Wait Until Dark.")

-Actually, I’m sure you *could* pay me to see “The Shape of Water.” But I’m prepared to dislike it.

-We’re all thinking about Frances McDormand right now. It seems to me this actress has been blessed with at least four iconic roles--“Blood Simple,” “Fargo,” “Billboards,” “Olive Kitteridge.” (She was also terrific onstage, in “Good People,” for which she won a Tony Award, opposite a pre-“Hamilton” Renee Goldsberry.) Famously, McDormand will not get plastic surgery. She’s an advocate for Film Forum. She met her husband--one of the Coens--while making “Blood Simple,” and the two have stayed married for thirty-plus years. Surely, this marriage informed McDormand’s choices in “Kitteridge”--the best material she will ever work with. 

-The great weirdness of “Kitteridge” takes many forms. One part of its weirdness is choosing to focus on a single forty-year marriage, choosing to show the end stages of that marriage. (How often do you see these particular protagonists in a movie? With liver spots on their hands?) A great insight in the script is that Olive and Henry love each other, even when the love seems disguised as passionate hatred; they do not lose an interest in each other, and that’s the secret of their relationship. All the prickliness and deep pain--It’s not clear that this is a relationship you would ever consciously choose to enter. It’s really not clear. Not clear because there’s also a good deal that is beautiful in what passes between Olive and Henry. Their laughter at the hospital, the startling sex scene, the tender comments about the homemade dress, the moments of great care in the nursing home. The series ends with Olive regarding the world--the sky and a flock of birds through a window--and saying, “I don’t want to leave this place yet.” Earlier, she has crouched in the woods with a gun, prepared to off herself. A small group of kids has startled her; “I’m a witch,” she says, “and I’m on a little picnic.” When Olive announces her plan to stay in the world, her voice is part-wonder, part-resignation. The melding of Strout and McDormand was a big moment of serendipity in pop-culture history. Not that that’s news. It’s worth revisiting “Kitteridge,” now that McDormand is back in the limelight, touting a notably inferior (but still sort of enjoyable) movie.

P.S. I forgot about "Almost Famous"--! Surely that one counts as an iconic role for McDormand, as well.