It’s that time of year when my movie diary is filled with new releases, as I try to prepare for year-end voting. I’m in two film critics groups—the Critics Choice Association and the Washington Area Film Critics Association—and I take my responsibilities seriously. I try to see as many 2023 movies as I can, without driving me or my wife crazy. September is the month where I catch up on the films from earlier this year that I missed, while the rest of 2023 will be devoted to fall releases. Don’t worry—I snuck in some oldies, too.
Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?
I didn’t read the Judy Blume books when I was a kid. I read baseball books. For that reason, I wasn’t overly excited when Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? was released earlier this year. That was dumb of me. The adaptation of Blume’s breezily honest young adult book is pretty much a perfect film. It’s got that immaculate period detail that folks love, expertly recreating the clothes, cars, and furniture of ‘70s suburbia. But more importantly, it finds the universality of pre-pubescent life. I don’t know what it was like to be a 12-year-old girl in 1970 and want to get your period so bad that you could kill someone for it. But I do know what it was like to be afraid of being the last virgin in your friend group. I have never awkwardly bought tampons before I needed them. But I did awkwardly buy condoms that did nothing but sit in my wallet for years. I was never a 12-year-old girl, but Margaret’s desperation to fit in is a universal condition, and it’s perfectly rendered on screen.
Duel
If you’re a film nerd like me, you’ve probably read dozens of articles on Steven Spielberg’s life and career, and I bet at least one of them mentioned offhandedly that the great director has never made a western. Wrong! His 1971 debut film (it was made for TV, then released in theaters) concerns a businessman who battles a psychotic trucker on a California highway, but the filmmaking and iconography is lifted directly from classic westerns, which (and you’ll know if you’ve seen The Fabelmans) was Spielberg’s favorite genre as a kid. During Duel, I thought a lot about The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which we see young Spielberg watching in The Fabelmans. It was one of the first westerns with a villain who was pure evil. That’s the trucker in Duel, a man with no purpose but to cause chaos and mayhem.
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game
Pinball was once illegal in most major American cities, and it took a shy GQ writer with a hideous mustache to bring it back. That’s the true premise of Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, a slight but hugely entertaining historical comedy starring Mike Faist (West Side Story). I really liked this movie. The filmmakers offer up some info on the historical significance of pinball and why it was banned, but this is not a political film. It’s just about a guy who really loves pinball, and how his love for the game helps him figure his life out. If you read my recent piece on The Big Chill, you know that I’m a real follow-your-bliss kinda guy these days, so Pinball really hit my sweet spot. It’s sweet without being saccharine and funny without ever straining for a big laugh.
The Last American Hero
Currently playing on the Criterion Channel as part of their series of ‘70s car movies, The Last American Hero would make a great companion piece to the Tom Cruise-starrer Days of Thunder. Both are about cocky young race car drivers, but they are far apart in tone. Days of Thunder was made in the ‘90s, so it’s full of competitive optimism. The Last American Hero is imbued with Watergate Era defeatism, from its low stakes to its grimy aesthetic. Jeff Bridges plays Elroy Jackson, Jr., the son of a bootlegger, and the brother of Gary Busey—a tough lot in life. When his father is arrested, Junior, who has become a pretty good driver evading cops his whole adult life, decides to go pro, navigating the rural racing circuits with nothing but skill and a screw-you attitude. The racing scenes are solid, but what fascinated me was the film’s mournful tone in which even the victories feel like steps on the road towards a bigger loss.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Giving your film a title that people are afraid to google is a helluva marketing strategy, but it fits this particular film well. How to Blow Up a Pipeline is an eco-thriller about a group of radical activists from disparate background who come together to…well, it’s right there in the title. It’s a tense, propulsive story that could actually give budding activists a few tips, but its real achievement is in documenting the attitudes and philosophies of those who are willing to sacrifice their freedom to protect the environment. The film is brilliantly structured and diligently edited; the plot gives each member of the crew their moment, prompting director Daniel Goldhaber to bring us back to their past to see how they were radicalized. It humanizes the characters and, in a way, the whole movement, demystifying a class of activists often villainized by the mainstream media.
Worst Movie: Play Misty For Me
Clint Eastwood has made a few absolute masterpieces (Unforgiven, The Bridges of Madison County), but most of his directorial efforts frustrate me, featuring moments of transcendent lyricism undercut by icky reactionary politics. It was all there in his first film, Play Misty for Me, about a smooth-talking radio DJ dealing with a groupie (Jessica Walter) who slowly morphs into a murderous stalker. Strange thing about this movie: the word “stalker” is never used, and it almost feels like the concept hadn’t been identified yet. Eastwood’s character seemingly has no way to describe what’s happening to him. That’s not really my issue with the film. The problem is that this is a pretty standard blank-from-hell movie with a nasty attitude towards women, even if it almost gets saved by a beautifully-filmed romantic interlude and a lovely sequence where Eastwood just hangs out at a jazz festival. It’s the whole Eastwood experience, fully formed from the jump.
Biggest Jump: Neil Young: Heart of Gold
I reviewed the recent re-release of Stop Making Sense, which made me want to revisit that other, much lesser-known concert doc by Jonathan Demme. Neil Young wrote and recorded the album Prairie Wind when dealing with a brain aneurysm. After he recorded the album (and underwent a successful procedure), his father died. Death hangs over Prairie Wind, which is played in full in Neil Young: Heart of Gold. Songs about art, nature, love, and loss are played from the perspective of a man looking back at his life in appreciation of it all. Best yet, the concert itself is a celebration of life. Young constantly refers to the other musicians onstage as his “friends”; there are 35 people up there at one point, which makes it feel more like a large family than a friend group. In a sense, it’s not that different from Stop Making Sense, which is also imbued with a sense of joyful community. I just like these songs better, and I prefer this film’s elegiac tone. That probably says something about me, but I’ll save that discussion for another post.
Glad you were able to relate Are you There God It's Me Margaret to a male audience. I loved the movie but as a girl I wondered how boys would see the importance of it. Great content as usual :)
I've always loved that Monterey Jazz sequence in "Play Misty for Me."