OLDIES!
Older films seen in 2025, continued from the 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 editions. Most of these are really quick comments - typically scribbled down in 10-15 minutes without benefit of notes - and any resulting wit or insight should be viewed as an accidental by-product. Slightly more thoughtful capsules may be found on the now-defunct old reviews page.
All films, both from this year and the 22 previous ones, can be accessed alphabetically. Most can be viewed ranked by rating as well, though I'm still not sure what that's all about.
[Addendum, February 2009: I've now stopped doing reviews of new movies, but I'll continue to update this page; however, this is purely for my own benefit - since I can't always remember when I watched an oldie, so it's handy being able to find them here - and I won't be going any deeper or writing any more than I used to (probably the opposite). I am not reinventing this as a classic-movie site, nor do I set myself up as an expert on oldies. Or anything, really...]
THE FUNHOUSE (68) (Tobe Hooper, 1981): Totally eccentric horror, full of unexpected touches esp. in the first half. The freakshow of animals (a two-headed cow, etc). The magician who talks like Walter Matthau. Our heroine, who comes off very prim and uptight on her first date with the jock-ish but sympathetic boy. (She hates that she's lying to her parents - but her home life is also unexpected, briefly-glimpsed Mom an alcoholic harridan.) The old crone - played for laughs - who keeps cackling "God's watching you". The funhouse itself, a carnival ride with everything from a giant eyeball to Humpty Dumpty. PSYCHO gives way to old Universal monsters, though the main event is a homicidal mutant family out of Hooper's most famous film plus also quite a lot of Joe Dante, that gleeful cartoonish nastiness of the 'childhood spent watching monster movies on TV' generation. (One shot seems to frame the entrance to the funhouse as an actual TV.) Second half sags a bit - having a single murderous monster is boring, as opposed to the whole carnival being malign in general - so it goes instead for pure sensation, all-out musical cues and spectacular Gothic images with rich, vivid colours (DP Andrew Laszlo shot THE WARRIORS, and it shows). Not remotely scary, but so what.
MAY 1, 2025
WHERE IS THE FRIEND'S HOUSE? (70) (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987): Second viewing, first in 34 years - and thereby hangs a tale, since I watched it (at the NFT in London) a few years after it came out, knowing nothing of Kiarostami or Iranian cinema, and didn't understand it or enjoy it much, slightly condescendingly calling it "a small insight... into what another film culture considers funny and/or cute". "Also sometimes very difficult to understand what's going on in terms of motivations," I added - and our hero does behave in ways that must've puzzled my younger self, e.g. asking for his friend at the house with the blue door when we've been told that's the cousin's house. (Also still unclear why he doesn't go in when he finally does (?) find the right house.) Fortunately I'm now able to appreciate things like Kiarostami's deadpan staging of the action on two floors, setting up the people like chess pieces - Ahmed negotiating his mom's instructions, the baby in the corner, Grandma adding yet another irrelevant adult rule ("Take your shoes off before going upstairs"), all while trying to figure out his plight and find an opening to talk about the exercise book - or repeated images like the zig-zag path up barren rock from Koker to Poshteh, or sidelong jokes like the dazed-looking kid who slides under the desk saying "My back hurts, sir" (echoes of Antoine's klutzy classmates in THE 400 BLOWS), or of course the door symbolism. The film opens on an image of a door, later there's the pushy man selling iron doors contrasted with the old craftsman who associates doors with people - the point being perhaps a negation of sturdy, rigid iron (like rigid rules) and a way-in for humanism and delicate beauty, like the door that gets blown open by the wind (not very sturdy!) to reveal an atmospheric image of billowing sheets. Then there's the ending - A Moment of Innocence indeed, like the seemingly throwaway, piercing final seconds of the Makhmalbaf film - which is totally lovely.
SWEPT AWAY (52) (Lina Wertmuller, 1974): Probably more fun (as the cliche goes) to discuss than actually watch - though the only real discussion would involve the 'offensive' sexual politics, and even they (esp. with a female director) are really just a throwback to caveman fantasy given a class-struggle twist (a sheik is briefly mentioned, and Rudolph Valentino as THE SHEIK lurks on the fringes). The psychology is wobbly, the film burying the irony that the woman - being a romantic who sees their love as a "miracle" - walks away in the end precisely as a romantic gesture, to preserve the island idyll (instead it goes for the cheap comic shot of the rich forever screwing you over), and Wertmuller's erratic sensibility doesn't help; there are cheerfully lame jokes - "Wash my underpants"; "Never!", cut to her washing the underpants, that kind of thing - Muzak on the soundtrack, a broad visual style tending to favour very wide and very close shots. Still quite fun, in a slapstick way (proletarian hero slapping rich bitch repeatedly as a form of political protest: "And this is for VAT!..."), shifting audience sympathies in the process. Also quite a year for women getting roughed up and deciding they quite enjoy it, what with this and GOING PLACES.
CITY GIRL (72) (F.W. Murnau, 1930): Vivid prose to SUNRISE's poetry, increasingly un-special when it comes to plot - but Murnau's on peak form here, in the rhythms, the spatial relations, the actors, the bits of business. The first half in the city (with a judicious cut to the folks back home, to establish that Pa is difficult but not entirely a villain) is masterly work, building a sense of material reality both stifling and forever shifting, unstable as the price of wheat, the heroine's apartment with the El passing almost right through it, the frantic choreography (and great urban faces) in the excellent diner scenes - and the country boy associated with freedom and space to breathe, like the breeze of fresh air from the fan (which becomes his "private breeze"), like the flower he brings with its echoes of wide open spaces. The heroine is seduced not just by a "two-fisted man" but also an idea of a rural idyll, vividly expressed in the still-exhilarating run through the fields - and of course both turn out to be disappointing but the film is right to make her strong-willed (Mary Duncan is superbly fiery), steering clear of pathos and making the plot (even) more elemental. Shame the narrative beats get a little stale, even for 1930.
MOVING (62) (Shinji Somai, 1993): Best anarchic little girl since Zazie (of Metro fame) - but the story is a trite thing about a child of divorce (actually separation) acting out before finally accepting her new fate, and the mixture is a bit oil-and-water. Ren (our expressively-played young heroine) carries an air of danger, she moves too fast and acts without thinking, rants at the rain ("I hate rain so much!") then immediately does a headstand before we even get to the opening title. Somai's staging is also expressive, contrasting her open spirit with the adults' sympathetic but narrow approach - made literal in the scene where two couples have a tussle in a narrow corridor, staged so everyone's crammed together in a long space, foreground-to-background (a later shot has a similar narrow axis, when Dad says "I love you" and Ren walks to him - we imagine to hug him - then past him, running straight to the back of frame) - but he can't do much about the arc, nor does he manage Alan Parker's trick in SHOOT THE MOON of keeping the hysteria tightly linked to the main situation. (It's no surprise when Ren finally withdraws altogether, finding her peace by roaming around in a kind of personal dream-space.) Undisciplined, mostly by design but it feels pretty slapdash - but then you start to imagine what a Kore-eda version might be like (it's right in his wheelhouse), and become more forgiving.
FEDORA (56) (Billy Wilder, 1978): Wilder updating SUNSET BOULEVARD for the fall of old Hollywood and the rise of the Movie Brats - "The kids with beards have taken over," and they've brought their zoom lens - and adding a dash of AVANTI!, in the lovely Med locations (specifically Corfu), some voluble comic relief and a general wryness of spirit. An old man's film about the struggle to deny getting old - at least till the halfway twist which, it must be said, makes no sense, neither thematically nor dramatically, upending the dynamic (but to what end?) to make youth the prisoner of old age, instead of vice versa. Fedora's identity is, in the end, a movie (a fake, a production), the film leaning hard on glamour and style, incl. the lush photography; it feels likeable but rickety, with some lame jokes - incl. a couple of gay digs: "Don't let this earring fool you" - and a general air of not-quite-there, right from the melodramatic opening. That said, I'm irrationally taken with the notion that Mike Myers watched this film, thought to himself, 'Michael York seems like such a good sport', and offered him Basil Exposition.
BANDITS OF ORGOSOLO (77) (Vittorio De Seta, 1961): My first De Seta, briefly wondered what his strengths might be - and the answer turns out to be 'Everything'. Performances (by non-pros) are strong, in a gruff implacable peasant register, De Seta's eye (he also did the photography) for landscape, proportion, composition is immaculate, bodies in motion dwarfed by cliffs and ravines, a magical shot of the boy's face quarter-lit by moonlight, the flock of sheep glimmering in darkness like a pool of water; it works as downbeat drama, ethnographic document, outdoor adventure and exciting, fugitive-on-the-run action thriller. Hard to find flaws, maybe it's a bit too mainstream, despite its independent roots (PADRE PADRONE is doubtless a more provocative take on the same milieu), there's some mildly awkward documentary V.O. at the beginning - "The souls of these men are still primitive..." - maybe there's cuteness in the BICYCLE THIEVES-ish relationship and such details as a tense conversation interrupted by the arrival of a toddler. Maybe there's no theme - yet there is, in the end, a theme, in the hopeless reaction of a shepherd asked why his sheep are all dying en masse: "That's their destiny, I guess".
WAIT UNTIL DARK (71) (Terence Young, 1967)
SCENES OF CITY LIFE (69) (Yuan Muzhi, 1935): Finally drifts too far into spottiness and incoherence, leaving mostly the novelty value - but what novelty! The glimpse of a pre-Revolutionary China is one thing, jarringly capitalist with its ads for cars ("If you're not in a car, you're not travelling in style"), wealth inequalities and everyone hustling for money - but it's also a Chinese version of a Rene Clair-ish musical comedy, packed with invention from mobile tracking shots to brief animation. Outfits in a fashion magazine come to life. There's a cut from a word on the page to the same word on a wall (the camera pulls back to show the close-up was achieved by writing it in giant-sized font). Peasants are invited to peek at an image of the city through a peephole, then the image explodes in a frantic montage of neon signs. The vibe is youthful, the humour wacky, thus e.g. shopworkers conversing entirely in gibberish ("Ugh-ah", according to the subtitles) or our hero writing a love letter with the help of a Guide to Writing Love Letters (a small dog gagged with a large handkerchief - looking like he's about to rob a stagecoach - observes the scene), but the plot stutters and the jokes start not working. Echoes Ozu's Western-inflected work (e.g. DRAGNET GIRL) of the early 30s, but also Clair and Weimar musicals; 'Modern Types', as a caption puts it.
APRIL 1, 2025
THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (68) (Harold Young, 1934): Probably second viewing, though I can't find any record of the first one - and you'd think I'd remember something so perverse, a film that's shockingly bad at what it's ostensibly doing yet so beguiling in other ways. An obvious dud as a swashbuckler, made clear by the scene where the titular hero is about to rescue aristos from the guillotine, a plan is suggested (it apparently involves distracting the guards) - but then the camera soars up to an overhead shot and we cut to the aftermath, the aristos already rescued, the action scene elided as if to say 'Not our department'. Its department is instead drawing-room drama, notes being passed and intrigues laid, a 'meet in the library at midnight'-type movie - and also satirical comedy, buffoonish Brits harrumphing ("Who, sir? You, sir?") while the Pimpernel acts foppish - the same dynamic as Zorro - and talks cravats, which is all quite delightful. Also potent in a whole other way, the French Terror carrying obvious echoes of what was going on in Europe circa 1934, the film lingering on mass executions and our hero musing on what happens "when a country goes mad"; if nothing else, it's poignant to see Leslie Howard already sensing the approach of the war that would eventually kill him. On the one hand, Merle Oberon looking unearthly-exotic and Howard wistfully regretting their estrangement ("So that's why you ceased to love her. What a tragedy.." "'Ceased'? I shall love her till I die. That's the tragedy"), on the other how does the excellent Raymond Massey (as the villain) even find out our hero's true identity, did I miss some connective tissue there? And wtf is going on with that weird accent - almost Yiddish, never mind French - he puts on for one (1) random scene at the climax? An adorable mess.
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (59) (Alain Resnais, 1959): Third viewing, though I barely remember the second one (in 2019). Didn't work so well this time, maybe because it was on the big screen and I was aware of people growing restless around me - but mostly because (a) it's much more a Duras film than a Resnais film, and both have gone on to more complete iterations of their respective styles (watching INDIA SONG recently didn't help), and above all (b) the film is fundamentally unbalanced in using Hiroshima (Hiroshima!) as a way-in to this one French woman's bad experience during the war, equating two things (personal and political, admittedly) that seem leagues apart in terms of significance, not to mention the Eurocentric aspect of viewing a Japanese tragedy through a Western filter; I basically spent much of the second half thinking 'Enough, we get it, can we get back to Hiroshima now?'. It's even more frustrating since the opening section is precisely about that solipsism, the hollowness of the Frenchwoman's claims to 'understand' Hiroshima - and that opening section is indeed magnificent, in fact quite a lot of it is magnificent, incl. the (very modern) nocturnal wanderings of the final section. Too bad Duras' poetic verbiage keeps getting in the way.
A BRUTAL GAME (66) (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 1983): At heart, a deeply romantic tale of how being alone is unhealthy and will turn one into a literal psycho, whereas love - even, or especially, with the heartbreak and suffering that inevitably accompany it - leads one to empathy, whether through appreciating art, stirring "violent and obscure emotions" (see the girl's very different, pre- and post-heartbreak reactions to Prevert's story of the injured horse and Baudelaire's poem about the effect music has), or the beauty of the world, birdsong and placid country landscapes, above all by appreciating suffering - as opposed not (just) to cruelty, but the scientist's coldly objective view of the world. "We're all alone. You have to cope with it," he says, the body itself (like the girl's crippled body) being a kind of prison - why am I me, and not you? the physical limits of the self form a literal barrier to empathy - life and death being "very particular states" of no particular import. (Why come to the funeral? "She's just an object," he says, looking down at his mother's corpse.) Brisseau's tone is unsentimental and un-judgmental, let down by a little too much plotting - there's some flat stuff, like the scenes with the teacher ('Annie', like Annie Sullivan in THE MIRACLE WORKER) - going mostly for Bressonian abruptness, performances built around affect more than dialogue, plus a mise-en-scene that's not meant to be realistic, hence some ridiculous detail like the psycho setting out his entire plan in a chart on the wall - though what seems like the most ridiculous part (the back-story with the dead kids) makes sense with hindsight; it'd be out of character to kill randomly, the point is the madness of perceiving some logical plan to murdering children - the ultimate in logic over empathy. Is the final farewell forgiveness, or an acknowledgment of the bond between them - as if to say 'That was me, before love rescued me'? A potent, if not very flowing movie.
FANTASTIC PLANET (63) (Rene Laloux, 1973): PLANET OF THE APES-ish, but more nuanced - the alien masters are meditative and (among themselves) non-violent; the humans are tribal, aggressive and rat-like - and of course way groovier, the lounge-music score, illustrated look (ranging from Terry Gilliam collage animation to spiny flora and fauna that recalls Dr. Seuss), blue aliens, beautiful costumes, detailed world-building and frequent shots of tiny figures lost in immense vistas adding to a sense of dreamy, lightly trippy otherworldliness. The Draags are Blue Mystics to counter YELLOW SUBMARINE's Blue Meanies but the sense of humour is similarly quirky, with details like the random dino baby hatching from an egg only to get promptly swallowed up by a three-nostrilled hippo creature. (Also some nightmare-fuel, like the corpse-strewn "de-om" sequence.) The ending seems to pluck a happy ending out of nowhere, but I guess a tragic one might've harshed the vibe.
THE FACE OF ANOTHER (55) (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1966): Echoes of classic horror, our hero bandaged and embittered - a monster - like the Invisible Man, mad-scientist visuals with a lab and beakers and so on, above all the mask "asserting itself" like e.g. the hands in MAD LOVE. Teshigahara adds more, modern alienation (aren't we all just wearing masks, one way or another?), a burst of Hiroshima imagery, flashy images in general (at one point there's a shot of what looks like a flying bed in the middle of back-projection), extreme close-ups, a crowd of faceless people - but in fact the script is talky and the rhythm bitty, so the flashiness feels like disguising a void (a mask, you might say). Def. a case of 'admired more than loved'; a lot going on, not always productively.
THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (68) (Robert Siodmak, 1946): Second viewing, first in about 30 years, def. appreciate it more now. Talk of 'proto-giallo' is on point - that extreme close-up of the psycho's peeping eye, followed by a Dutch-angle shot of his perverted POV (mute heroine viewed with no mouth), belongs in any history of slasher movies - but the film isn't actually a slasher movie (unsurprisingly, since the genre hadn't been invented yet), going instead for old-dark-house, dark-and-stormy-night whodunit and painting itself into a corner, since the killer is supposedly inside the house and there simply aren't enough male characters around to provide much of a mystery. (Guess it could be a killer in drag, PSYCHO-style; but that hadn't been invented yet either.) Some missteps, e.g. overdoing the wedding fantasy - it just needed a quick shock-cut to McGuire unable to say "I do" - but maybe it just over-explains due to being a little ahead of its time; otherwise rich and atmospheric, with a great kill (MVP Nicholas Musuraca) where the centre of frame goes dark and the victim's arms appear in shafts of light on either side, splayed as if crucified. The rare classic horror where damsel and villain are both severely emotionally traumatised, anyway.
MARCH 1, 2025
VIY (57) (Konstantin Ershov & Georgiy Kropachyov, 1967): Compared to e.g. THE EVE OF IVAN KUPALO, less visually dazzling/demented (except the last 10 minutes), more narratively solid, to the point of being stolid; it does take a long time to deliver its wisp of plot - which seems quite confusing in any case - not to mention being insanely back-loaded (see: the last 10 minutes). Technical skill is actually high, special effects are top-notch, the production is handsome (Kropachyov later became a distinguished production designer); also some Soviet-style digs at corrupt religion and horny seminarians, shots of animals (our animal nature?), some of the best (i.e. bushiest) moustaches in movies, plus a puzzling emphasis on not being scared - is there a suggestion that the demons are all in the mind, a product of fear and un-godliness? But the three-night structure feels like a shaggy-dog joke, given how little happens the first two nights, then the last night (the last 10 minutes) is admittedly a punchline but it's almost too much, an eruption of creatures to rival THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (or 'Night on the Bare Mountain', whatever). When Viy itself - the top monster, the Spirit of Evil - makes its appearance, it's a damp squib, like that one-climax-too-many in MCU movies.
THE SNAKE PIT (64) (Anatole Litvak, 1948): Pipe-smoking doctor Leo Genn is a stereotype, of course - and yes, modern audiences may chuckle at his Freudian diagnosis: "In a sense, that doll was your father" - but this is bold, in that terse post-war way, and also has the sense to be loosely plotted; we open in medias res, taking a while to register that our heroine is entirely mad. Olivia de Havilland is expressive though the character conception has a touch of Blanche du Bois, ladylike and fragile - acutely sensitive to cold, being touched, etc - Litvak walking a tightrope between women-in-prison-type lurid melodrama and responsible primer on a social issue (though the latter gives way to the former when we get to the actual loony ward); also note e.g. that the head nurse only becomes unpleasant when heroine (correctly) surmises that the nurse is secretly in love with Dr. Genn, and tells her so - the script likes to dig into psychology, even beyond the main plot. On the one hand, the overhead shot of the 'snake pit', looking like the Nth circle of hell; on the other, the graceful crane shots as the congregation sings 'Goin' Home', making for a lump-in-throat moment. Pretty good balance of nutso and Oscar-bait, tbh.
BOY (71) (Nagisa Oshima, 1969): Terribly bitty, a restless unsettledness that's perhaps an Oshima hallmark (see e.g. the editing in VIOLENCE AT NOON). The episodic plot never gathers momentum - but the colours are rich, the wide-screen compositions very beautiful (esp. when our hero wanders, eventually curling up on a rock by the sea), and the difference from other Oshimas I've seen is the presence of a fascinating character, the nameless lonely boy playing alone, dreaming of space aliens and something of an alien himself; "I don't feel or think anything," he says (shades of Pialat's L'ENFANCE NUE from the year before). A state-of-the-nation drama, going up and down Japan all the way to snowy Hokkaido (even the opening credits seem designed around a Japanese flag); big fish eat the little fish, small boys are bullied by bigger boys, the family unit is mired in mistrust and dishonesty; "Do what you want," says uncaring war-veteran Dad - his mind and body racked by the war - while making clear he wants Mom to have an abortion, the boy does his self-destructive "job" and finally destroys his own dreams, viz. the snowman. Oshima encases them in coolly magnificent wide-angles, and e.g. the shot with the family and their latest 'victim' all scrunched together in a corner of the frame. Wish the actual physical action (incl. the car accidents) were a bit more convincing, though.
PITFALL (66) (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1962): Odd little fable with a good deal of misdirection, the neo-realist vibe of the first half-hour turning out to be a red herring. Doesn't exactly hang together - the plan to literally pit the union men at each other's throats involves some less-than-plausible behaviour - then again it's supposed to be a bit theatrical, and e.g. the stylised staging of the murder by the lake is a spectacular set-piece, the victim's extravagant death throes seen from a distance ('figures in a landscape' shots are a specialty in general) then cut to the watching kid standing in a thicket of reeds. Some comedy, some ghost story, some upsetting real-life clips of post-war Japan in ruins (it's unclear, at least to me, what our heroes are deserting from); the motif of animal abuse - a frog is skinned; a bored woman picks up ants with chopsticks and drowns them in water - speaks to a steely worldview, ditto a dapper, ice-cool professional killer (a year before THE KILLERS) and the overall air of helpless impotence. "Next time I'd like to be born a devil."
1969 REVISITED: Second or third viewings:
FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES (69) (Toshio Matsumoto, 1969): Random girl, after watching some weird animation: "It's very 'underground', isn't it?". There's a bit of that here, Japanese bohemian life of the late 1960s - lots of Western influence, a guy named Guevara, Beatles poster on the wall, Jonas Mekas actually name-dropped - but any residual smugness is offset by the visual invention (big exception: the cheesy speeded-up action), the meta layer (incl. an interview with the lead actor about the movie we're watching) and the uncompromised, compassionate, almost matter-of-fact depiction of being trans in the 60s, albeit not "transsexual" which is mostly a pejorative; "They tell themselves they're girls," laughs a 'queen', speaking of the guys who go after guys. Lots of energy, shots of the city both staged and verite, an ending to remember (second film where I missed the 'Oedipus Rex' connection, after Schanelec's MUSIC; this one's on me, though) and a totally open take on our troubled protagonist: "I am what I am".
KATZELMACHER (74) (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969): Didn't realise Fassbinder started out doing Jarmusch-like deadpan comedy (I guess, in a way, they were all comedies), before the flamboyance and Queer Factor. Almost entirely static scenes - the one conspicuous moving-camera shot, the dolly-back with the girls walking, feels like it must've influenced the similar one in ATTENBERG - of snippets of brief conversations, a card game, a song, a repeated shot of multiple characters lined up on a bench with way too much head-room. The talk is desultory and cruel, the punchlines don't mind being silly - "So, was I right?" says one guy when his friend returns to where they were sitting; "Yeah... They're real, her boobs," comes the reply - the stasis channels Beckett but e.g. the men's awkward silence when informed that the Greek immigrant outshines them in the penis department could be Bavarian sex comedy. The arrival of the immigrant threatens to tip the whole thing into Message Movie (cf. the opening caption about repeating the mistakes of the past), but in fact there's a mordant aftermath - and where RWF also differs from Jarmusch is in his obsession with love, the masochistic yearning for love (as opposed - or not - to money) and various gradations of love adding heft to the slacker comedy. On the one hand: "Everyone needs a bit of love". On the other: "There's no love without pain". Terrific minor-key filmmaking.
FEBRUARY 1, 2025
MISCHIEF (56) (Mel Damski, 1985): More AMERICAN GRAFFITI than PORKY'S (should've been made five years earlier, probably), clearly autobiographical for writer-producer Noel Black of PRETTY POISON fame. The imperative to turn it into a teen comedy leads to some likeably lame gags - the 'polio shot' slapstick gag, the 'posing store mannequins in sexual positions for a prank' gag - not to mention the opening groaner, Ohio 1956 being "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away", but then the realistic impulse takes over in a candid sex scene that's incongruous, not played for prurience, and the film's undoubted highlight. Chris Nash is slightly miscast as dorky hero Doug McKeon's cool best friend (the actor is five years older, and looks it), though the only real misstep is the treatment of the teen goddess played by Kelly Preston, cast out as a bitch after the sex scene in a careless way that looks like her 'crime' was not having been a virgin - it's implied she was always Too Much for Doug (even kicking his ass at basketball), but not quite established - esp. since he himself behaves badly, 'forgetting' to pull out after promising that he will. (That part gets subsumed in the fumbling push-and-pull of adolescent sex, both parties struggling in vain to control their hormones.) Overall a clunky - but amusing - mix, veering from period-specific reminiscence (Chris opining that "girls don't put out in Studebakers") to 80s teen-comedy silliness, Chris telling Doug to shrink his jeans so he bulges out more: "Girls don't have nuts, so they're fascinated by them".
JANUARY 1, 2025