BRATS

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel. Punk heart still beating.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

 

Andrew McCarthy crafts an exquisitely satisfying base-touching expedition with his Generation Jones comrades, whose careers suffered as a result of a New York Magazine article, written by David Blum. The article was published on June 10, 1985.

Generation Jones got fucked, once again.

Jealousy plays a hand in the situation. Roughly seven years senior to the actors he wrote disparagingly about in his article, David Blum clearly had a personal agenda to take down a peg the six actors whose success he resented.

For the record, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, and Andrew McCarthy are the actors considered to populate Blum's fictional club of actors assembled by auteur filmmaker John Hughes and Joel Schumacher.

For his part, John Hughes was deeply invested in telling truthful coming-of-age stories for the time. For Schumacher, it was a lark.

Related movies to watch are: Joel Schumacher's "St. Elmo's Fire," John Hughes's "Pretty In Pink," "16 Candles," and "The Breakfast Club."

If you haven't yet seen "The Breakfast Club," you're in for a rare treat.

It ain't pretty when Andrew McCarthy interviews David Blum in Blum's NYC apartment. Unwilling to take one iota of blame for his mean-spirited attack on a group of young actors trying to succeed in the business, David Blum comes across as something less appealing than, well, pond scum.

Nevermind that Blum's editor at New York Magazine also shares blame for not doing his or her job on the "Brat Pack" hit piece. Just because something sounds like a clever play on words, does not make it suitable.

Editorial oversight, people.

David Blum's insincerity eviscerated the sincerity of young actors who deserved to be treated much better.  

I'm personally familiar with New York Magazine's proclivity for hatchet jobs.

NY Mag's "Vulture" site (how apropos) writer Hunter Harris took her best shot at me over my review of "Lady Bird." Sadly, Ms. Harris did not have the sand to address my revisited review of "Lady Bird," where I did a deep dive on Greta Gerwig's attempt to normalize unethical behavior.

Evidently, such truth was beyond he scope of Ms. Harris's "investigation."

The media is not your friend — never was, never will be.

That the OG Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop), were a bunch of wealthy show biz veterans, as opposed to a generation of young actors trying to make it, got lost in the social consciousness of the day.

One of this film's rich theme lines comes from Time Magazine's film critic Richard Schickel, speaking on stage for The Phil Donahue television show with Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe, and Judd Nelson seated beside him.

"Can I apologize for my profession for that? I really thought that was a scurrilous article."

Andrew McCarthy is eight months older than me.

I had the good fortune of having this group of actors as generational touchstones to keep track of shifts in American society.

I'll never forget walking out of the cinema at the end of "The Breakfast Club" during its opening run. Here was a modern-day "400 Blows," except now we had an oddball mix of young individuals dealing directly with self-identity in the Regan era.

Dig the new breed.

So it is that I come to "Brats" with more than an ounce of "Blank Generation" ideology at hand, "I can take it or leave it each time."

Richard Hell wrote that line.

Richard Hell (of NYC's Voidoids punk band) could easily have played opposite Emilio Estevez in "Repo Man," Alex Cox's ode to L.A.'s '80s era youth culture.

There are many life lessons to be learned from this very polished documentary about a generation of actors who didn't have the proper tools at the time to deal with a cloaked attack from the media. If only the right publicist had stepped in to make lemonade from lemons.

Gen J lives!

Not Rated. 92 mins.

GASLIGHT — CLASSIC FILM PICK

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

 

George Cukor's masterful adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's 1938 stage play is a cinematic feast of noir suspense. Gleefully dark, seamlessly directed, and packed with surprising plot twists, "Gaslight" is truly a masterpiece of Cinema.

Glory!

Ingrid Bergman won a much deserved Best Actress Oscar in 1944 for her nuanced portrayal of famed opera singer Paula Alquist.

Stunning!

Retired Paula returns to London (circa 1880) to live with her new husband Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer) in the house where her late aunt lived before she was murdered ten years earlier. 

Gregory is a skilled technician in the practice of gaslighting. Convincing Paula that she is losing control of her mental faculties is just a smokescreen to cover up Gregory's criminal activities. 

Joseph Cotton's Scotland Yard detective Brian Cameron becomes suspicious of Gregory, whose refusal to let his wife go out in public raises a red flag.

Ingrid Bergman's flawless performance is endlessly watchable.

The late, great Angela Lansbury steals every scene she's in as Nancy, the flirtatious maid that Gregory hires to keep an eye on Paula while he's busy with his skullduggery.

This is much more than a solid period drama from one of Hollywood's most revered directors.

If you haven't yet seen "Gaslight," you are in for a rare treat. You'll certainly be keenly aware of other's attempts at leading you down a path of self-doubt after watching this amazing film.

Repeated viewings are in order.

If you discover that someone is attempting to gaslight you, you'll know what to do; exit the relationship on the spot.

"Gaslight" remains remarkably topical for its relevance in the modern world. This Cinema classic is essential viewing if only for its clear definition of the now-popular term.

Not Rated. 114 mins.

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

 

Alexander Mackendrick (director of “The Ladykillers”) may have been of British descent, but his quick-paced 1957 sardonic drama — about the symbiotic relationship between a decadent Manhattan newspaper showbiz columnist and a hungry press agent — captures America’s indulgence in greed, corruption, and aggression like none other. Drawing on the noir style and subject matter of Billy Wilder’s perfect “Ace in the Hole” (1952) “black political drama” would be a suitable moniker for the dark pitch of cynical social satire that “Sweet Smell of Success” examines, rather than the “film noir” attribution that it frequently attracts. Here lies the defective foundation of the American Dream as viewed from an American viewpoint (Burt Lancaster’s company produced the film).

The story takes place during a day and a half in the life of its New York City characters. Fey toady press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) is in the doghouse with his Walter Winchell-type gossip columnist mentor-and-abuser JJ Hunsecker (emphasis on the second “J”). Mackendrick’s ravenous camera moves through Manhattan’s late '50s Broadway theater district on a nocturnal quest for truth.

According to JJ, the frequently groveling Sidney is not responding quickly enough to JJ’s orders to rev up the rumor mill to break up a hot romance brewing between Hunsecker’s adult sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and a bland jazz guitarist named Steve Dallas (Martin Milner). Steve Dallas isn’t exactly the next Tal Farlow on guitar, but he’s earned Susan’s romantic devotion. JJ wants to shut the whole thing down with a smear-job on Steve Dallas that sticks. “Communist” is a convenient accusation. JJ’s incestuous emotions seethe in his sexually impotent [or bound] mind. Sidney is working through an imagined apprenticeship with JJ that he hopes will eventually lead to his mentor’s place. The latent homosexual dominant/submissive subtext that exists between the two men underscores JJ’s impotent but nonetheless incestuous desires for his sister. Trouble in mind; trouble in action.

Neither man has an ounce of ethics but both fake morals to mask their true devotion — to power and money. Sidney calls everybody “baby” or “sweetheart” to get what he wants for his master. He sees though JJ regardless of how beholden to him he is. Sidney tells his de facto boss, “JJ, you’ve got such contempt for people it makes you stupid.”

Based on a novella by former press agent Ernest Lehman (“Sabrina”) and adapted by Clifford Odets, the great leftist poet of Harold Clurman Group Theatre — “Sweet Smell of Success” exists in a self-loathing urban bourgeois stratosphere where a gossip columnist like JJ Hunsecker can make or break a career depending on whether or not he mentioned it in his column.

Burt Lancaster’s JJ Hunsecker is a nasty master manipulator, but he doesn’t know his limits — and he doesn’t care because he’s been rewarded so much and so long for his ruthless tactics. He’s irresponsible. JJ’s capacious power has blinded everyone, including him. Still, his days are numbered.

Neither the antagonist (JJ) nor the film’s (purposefully) falsely represented protagonist (Sidney) has any redeeming traits. They suffer ongoing degrees of retribution, but each will carry on in the prescribed despicable methods to which each is accustomed.

“ColeSmithey.com” flopped at the box office. It is in Time Magazine’s list as one of the top movies of all time.

Not Rated. 96 mins.