Adolescent Indulgence

"beavis and butt-head do america" might be one of the most iconic movies which represent the 90s iconclast slacker subculture among the youth of generation x who celebrates the brazen apathy on addictive distractions on riotic rock music and prefering things that are "cool"...

it parodies on pop cultures, such as the outset sequence of king-kong and "starsky & hutch"...it also mocks americanism by degrading its patriotic enthusiast (the vetern southerer whose van they're "whacking" at...ha.) into the lethal terrorist while he's paying respect to lincoln's portrait in white house, same as the caricature of fbi lead who demands "full capital search" upon every possible national-threat suspect, and the policeowman who helps to perform that with her plastic glove. lol. a comical contempt to the pseudo maccathyism fanatic. it sneers at education, government institution and nationalism, and it dismisses the 60s misanthropic student activities by its comment on the teacher of beavis and butthead as "what a dork" while he's lecturing on the spirituality they might regain by the void of tv. then the teacher gets arrested and assaulted by fbi while he's playing guitar and singing "lesbian seagull"..ha. that means you 60s idealists or 70s ecologist hippies, your government disregards you despite whatever activist passion you might have.

the odyssey of beavis and butthead is just a tv-quest which threads their whole life which is being lazy on the couch, humming a bunch of rock tunes, pretending they could play rock instruments, fancying how they could "score" some chics, shamelessly cheering for their never-do-well life philosophy if they have any brain to think of it as philosophy. it unrelentingly panders the audience's pleasure on adolescent indulgement which is criticizing everything without self-reflection even themselves are the worst degenerates.

btw, it also introduces the tales of how beavis and butthead's birth: two former mutley crue roadie geeks whack up to semen donation while daydreaming they seperately score two "slots". ha.

"a life less ordinary" is danny boyle's primary attempt to hit into american market after his smashing success of countercultural revolt in 1995's junkie cult "transpotting"...it was shot when ewan mcgregor still belonged to the trio of boyle/hodge/mcgregor screen team since "shallow grave", the art-house british channel 4 independent production before boyle sold him out in "the beach" by casting leonardo dicaprio in the role he was supposed to play, long before mcgregor's become commericialized star-war prop..it took place also when cameron diaz still played sassy hard-boiled femme fatale before "something about mary" sweetens and softens her screen persona as romantic lead..

the scenario is goofy. it's about a stupid janitor who kidnaps his boss' daughter in a rage after he's fired and dumped by his live-in girlfriend..then these two fall in love absurdly. of course, even angels in the heaven are their guidances to the journey of celestial bliss despite the course involves mayhem and bloodshed. it's generally a mixed genre of romantic comeday and neo-noir. don't expect rationality and sensible plot-developments because the essence of this movie is a brazen cheer of slacker's hashish daydreaming and mcgregor's presented as a character of proteriat outrage in the oblivion of the generation x, a mutant divergence from his trainspotting persona. he fantasizes about writing a blatant trash-novel to redeem his miserable existence of ephemerality, and his ideal romance is a game-show called "perfect love", favored by a pampered brat who appreciates such weakling demeanors and even aids him to get the ransom from her abrasive father who insists on cutting off her allowances. they pretend they're pop-stars and cabret dancers along the melody of bob darin's "beyond the sea"...in spite of their slacker narcissism, they do have a naively sacred respect over the bond arranged by fate but their deterministic conventionalism's got to be rendered in their deviant imaginations like angels act like noir villains to help the course of destiny, blah blah blah...oh, bank-robbery could be a pleasant stimulus of passionate kiss..

basically "a life less ordinary" is a celebration of "style over substance"..the costumes and location shots are particularly elaborated with a boyle trademark, such as mcgregor's mullet hairdo and floral shirt, diaz's bob-headed siren who high-hats men around..as for the location, i bet it's around the borderline of nevada and california where i've driven for several times while heading for las vegas, or it's around the woods in colorado??(i would be happy if anyone tells me where it's shot)...the valley cabin as the hideaway spot and the desolate driveway within the desert hills are well-selected and they all give you a otherworldly feeling of american universalism due to the unique perspective of a british director shooting america..

audience might neglect it's neo-noir trying to act like romantic comedy, or the other way around, holly hunter and cameron diaz are the neo-femme-fatales who conduct themselves rough and ruthless like avenging fury with a pistol in well-tailored suit..diaz coaches mcgregor how to perform lethal dialogue to ask for ransom while hunter orders delroy lindo to murder mcgregor in the corder of dark woods digging a hole beforehand for the burial...the deliberate gender-reversal's gonna make you giggle..but eventually it's less a romantic comeday than dark farce since our hero only concedes his emotions to our heroine after someone persuades him with words "she's a glamorous pussy in heaven and you're a two-dime worker cleaning floor in hell, why bother to think too much over whether she's your type or not??" this movie has so many colors on its palette that it's too distractive to enjoy..but ain't the life-style of lovelorn slacker so? also, it has one of the coolest soundtracks ever like trainspotting since the soundtracks of danny boyle's movies always have a it chicness before he reached international fame by 28 days and slum millionaire.

(ps) around the same year, alicia silverstone made a stupid comedy about love in the course of kidnapping with benicio del toro, called "excessive baggage"....the sketch of storyline does have a parallel but it's much less creative and much more mundanely melodramtic(should i just say cheesy?)...don't get mistaken by that.

"feeling minnesota" is keanu reeves' attempt to prove his calibre as an actor after his success at the "speed" which catapults his clean-shaved heartthrobber status. whether reeves is a good actor or not, he definitely strives to be one by the iconclastic diverse roles he has taken. perhaps this movie is neglected due to audience's disaproval of his maverick ambition. but in spite of reeves, "feeling minnesota" is an underrated neo-noir meshed with road movie gendre as well as slapstick black-humor.

reeves plays jjacks, a ex-con whose brother blackmails a trashy blonde(cameron diaz) into marrying him. then this sappy never-do-good shows up at his brother's wedding and steals the bride's heart away. so these two intend to flee for vegas by thieving the cuckold's stashed money. unfortunately the couple is short-witted enough to be backstabbed by the cuckold...what ensues is phony death as well as posthumous resurrection, and the process involves someone's ear gets chewed off ghastly.

the subject matter of this flick could hardly attract keanu reeves' usual fans who adore his neatly wholesome boyish charm, and low-life debauchery doesn't seem an adequate dish for keanu. but keanu's guileless innocence is also what diverges this flick from sleazy melodrama, transcending it into an unusual romance of absurdity, a strange kind of love affair.

cameron diaz builds her early career with a series of spunky dirty blonde roles, and gender-reversal is a common theme in diaz's beurgeoning days. diaz was often the manipulative woman who takes the wheel, sort of edgy controlling freak type in movies like "a life less ordinary", "very bad things" and "any given sunday"...her best talent was being seductively feminine but insidiously domineering with a deviant paranoic drive until her success in "something about mary" and "charles' angels" sink her into commercialized movie star who gains quick bucks by cheesy chic flicks.

it has attention-gripping cameos from punk-goddess courtney love as the waitress who gives sassy murder advices, and the last performance from old-time classic starlet tuesday weld, who was once steven macqueen leading girl in "cincinati kid" and cult-noir "pretty poison"(it was later adapted into "poison ivy" with drew barrymore in the 80s) as keanu reeves' un-affectionate mother. vincent d'onofrio, keanu's cuckolded bro, later would incarnates into the pervert child-molester in thriller "the cell".

the movie also shows a realistic side of minnesota, the spontaneous angles from minnesota highways, cheap motel in slums, car-wagon with driver wearing hillbilly hat and the road-side forest with autumn leaves. it feels cozy with tangible affinity while its characters at the wrong-side of track merely dream to live in vegas just to enjoy a four-dollar buffet and the incessant glitters of neon-signs that sounds sympathetically petite but earthily endearing.

one admirable quality would be the movie is still dialogue-driven with dimensions for each character. it's neo-noir without the pretentious flatulency to boast the circumstance by excessive violence and gruesomely inhuman femme fatale like "romeo is bleeding" or "reservoir dogs"...perhaps it's inappropriate to deem it as neo-noir since it still preserves the simplistic human aspect of noir with nostalgic country songs like "ring of fire" as well as its sly contemporary sense of black humor, experimentally hybridized with road movie and farce of ridicule.

the ending was origionally plotted as a tradegy but altered as comedy with pleasant blossom of love due to reeves' stardom. so which would be better? you may never know.

"true romance" is another hallmark of 90s neo-noir subculture since tarantino rises up with "pulp fiction"...the story of "true romance" is the creation of tarantino's slacker reveries, and the result squeaks outloud as the memoir of a screwy geek's phallic fantasies as well as a naively twisted american dream with good sense of obscene humor. despite it's helmed by director tony scott, the tarantino spirit is reeking relentlessly.

an elvis presley fanatic who indulges himself in comics and cantonese kung-fu flicks discovers true love from a hooker (who insists calling herself "call girl") working for only 4 days with 3 clients. the hooker doesn't get tedious with the geek's endless chattering on elvis but feels amused instead. then the geek decides to kill the hooker's pimp to do her justice but accidentally elopes with a suitcase of cocaine. so they attempt to make a fortune for themselves out of it by heading hollywood for a whole big sale in spite of the involvement of ferocious mobsters.

tarantino once remarks in an interview, if he shows a girl the things he loves, she better f***ing like it! same goes for the scenarios of "true romance"...christian slater's character even wears a leather jacket with the flag of "repubic of china"(which is my country) on his back in the prologue of performing his chivalry while his ex-hooker wife is staring at the tv with early hong kong flick starring Yun-Fat Chow (that i've seen in childhood as well) as if he was the bruce lee reclaiming the pride of china with his magnificent kung-fu as well as his elvis-styled sun glasses. an abitrary don quixote lives in his fantasyland.

one element of the taratino formuli would be the pastiche of postmodern orientalism resulted from watching too many cantonese movies in adolescence, he devolpes an everlasting juvenile fetish over some oriental formalities without absorbing the meaning or he just misuses them willfully as his peculiar sort of humor, such as the jap samurai sword appears in "kill bill" and "pulp fiction". one cannot help but wonder he's just a deviant westerner over-obssessed on such matters with self-abandoned narcissism.

the pinnacle of hilarious brass would probably be the confrontation between dennis hopper and christopher walken, and the abusive joke is on sicillions being half-black (but it seems funnier to use the "ni" word) since their female ancestors have been ravished by the moors so much.

the aspect of its deranged american dream would probably the protagonists' careless naivete to sell the coke then get rich, and apparently the flick is more in a romancist's angle since they make it and it also gratifies the audience's testerone with enough provovations of violence, profanity and a titilating blonde bombshell who seems dumb enough to utter "you're so cool!" all the time to stimulate your libido. wouldn't that be an ideal boyish dreamland? being a never-do-good then suddenly, boom! you get everything and a hot chic! but who would say it's no fun despite it's obviously impractical and far from reality? ha.

"boogie nights" is mark walhberg's breakthru into the caliber of a actors, and it might be paul thomas anderson's best work by far as well as a good enclosure among the 90s. walhberg used to be the calvin klein model for underwear so the size of his private thing has been nicely anchored before,and his "marky marky" white rapper image is highly helpful for the audience to lead into the imaginary ground of dirk diggler.

walhberg palys eddie, an astray teenager who gets one special talent, his 13 inches phallis, then he gets spoted by the porn director, john horner(burt reynolds), so he re-incarnates into the legendary stud in porn cinema, dirk diggler. but the movie centers not merely on dirk but also the people around this pornography circle, such as roller girl (heather gramham) and the maternal porn actress(julianne moore) as well as various sub-cast like philip hoffman and don cheadle..etc. you may view these people frivolously wasted as social scums, but they do sincerely deem porn flicks as a form of cinema with sincere enthusiasm.

even in the degenerated role like that, mark walhberg does emite some lovable boyish innocence in this character, for example, dirk often inquires his co-woman-star's feelings in the sex scenes, for instance, he askes julianne moore in the firse scene of their intercourse, "where you want me to shoot? are you all right?" and she also shows some affectionate encouragements back in return. there's no misogynism in its female characters, and men do show some respect of equality to women even in a seemingly rotten bussiness like porn cinema. they consider lovemaking an exhibitionistic enjoyment, and they do care about the works they've done. and also, there's some strange ethics among this group of people, burt reynold's like a proper paternal figure, in the scene he kisses moore on the shoulder then remark "i stare at the foxiest bitch in the world". vice versa, julianne moore is the maternal figure who is a gentle nuturer while joanna gleason is the opposite as dirk's judgementally harsh mother who deems him as forever loser and dirk's father is a meek quiet man without opinions. and dirk's life is like an elongated adolescence while he's eternally obsessed with oriental kung-fu, various subcultural items and flashy roadsters. but i must say, walhberg really gets the poise and the moves!

the course of american dream would be the earnest naivete of its dreamers, and even sex workers also have their american dream in spite of the outrageous notoriety they receive from drug abuse and promiscuity. "boogie nights" has the capacity of humanity and pathos for its characters, but it also bares the price these people have to pay for such self-abandoned lifestyle. they're bittersweet tales of porn industry's idealistic narcissism and its sour mistreatment from social prejudices. it's like an obscene american dream awaken in the end with corrosive disillusion while walhberg demonstrates kung-fu to his 13 inches dildo.

1995 "a walk in the clouds" is a remake of 1942 italian movie "four steps in the clouds" which is about a henpacked chocolate-seller's temporal acquisition of love from a woman who needs his help to pretend as her husband to disguise her illicit pregnancy by another man. the original story ends tragically with the man back to the shrewish wife as well as the emptiness of his trapped miserable existence. his mere solace would be his upcoming son whom he could fantasize as the crystallization with the one woman he truly loves. BUT the american version gives another kind of optimistic tone blended with overflown romanticism to render mexico as the redeeming heaven for the wounded american man broken by wwii just like the stereotyped mexican dreams for americans who fancy to escape into another primitive land in oblivion of industrialized trivia within various american pop cultures.

apparently "a walk in the clouds" is highly idealized by re-carnating the man as honorable war time hero who condescends to rescue the troubled mexican woman from the moral condemnation of her prestiged family. the man also has no past due to his orphanage, so he could freely abandon his american heritage to surrender over the allure of mexican vineyard except his marriage during the typical wartime redenzvous (that sort of date on saturday, married on sunday wedlock)..thus the audience could identify with the man's moral stance. later his materialistic wife even cheats on him so the man's qualified licitly to gallope toward the mexican fairy who could enliven his soul among the clouds.

the cinematography feels like a dreamy commercial to lure you into a one or two-week vacation treat in mexican countryside, and the music is idyllically composed (it even won an oscar), and the people under the circumstance are all pleasant endearing grandma/grandpa type to draw an cozy picture of home. keanu reeves delivers every line most/every woman likes to hear in certain conditions of crises, he sings downstairs with a band to swoon you, and he's pure, handsome and gallant despite at most of time he's wooden and slow. it's a picture you don't have to think but dream. perfect merchandize for the consumption of fantasies.

as i reminiscence, i watched this movie at 13 when every teenage girl around that age went into a feverish craze for it. i used to enjoy that sort of drama when i didn't need to think or frown, but as i gaze my life in reality, i doubt, disbelieve and deny by myself. now i look upon this movie, i automatically examine its ideology at once without a bit of girlish delight i used to blindly feel. but still i wouldn't defame it just becuz my life ain't so glamorous but amazed by how time has roughend me with a degree of detached rationality which sustains me thru the odds. i cannot help but wonder: maybe movie itself is an apparatus to narcotize you into a mode of inner utopia of self-indulgence, whether your aim is at mushy romances or gritty testicle-driven violences or sultry erotica, we shall always seek something to entertain oursevles by any age. i suppose a good movie makes you think; the rest just drives you to buy. what you've gotta learn is to transcend such manipulation to stand on your own to probe.

"a walk in the clouds" is filled with flat characters but at least they're persuasive stereotypes who look and behave right in their parts under picturesque sceneries. by gazing keanu in fedora, i cannot help but envision this movie made in 1940s with gary cooper and dolores del rio in a better script to bare more scopes of human complexities, maybe it would have been a masterpiece if it's directed by fritz lang in a dialogue-driven method like lang's "clash by night" or jean renoir's "toni".