*Not Ready For Prime Time Class Struggle - John Water's "Cry Baby"- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip from the movie,"Cry Baby", of the sultry, sexy, saucy song "Please, Mr. Jailer". Whee!



Cry Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby

DVD Review

Cry Baby, starring Johnny Depp, directed by John Waters, 1990



I would argue that the work of director John Waters and his Baltimore teen mania, circa 1955, type works are an acquired taste. And I have acquired the taste, having first gotten interested in his work through “Hairspray” that was revived on screen a couple of years ago. Of course, part of the draw is that the demographic territory that Waters surveys, circa 1955 teens, is very familiar turf to me. So when dear John spoofs a certain fashion, or a certain crowd, or a certain way of looking at things that were alienating to the average teen back then he is giving off signals that I am attuned to. And that is the key; to know what is being spoofed, because the music is easy, very easy to figure out, the fight to get rock and roll to "youth nation".

Of course, as is inevitable in a teen-based film, spoof or not, there is the central theme of sex. Here that theme centers on the orphan bad boy, Cry Baby played by Johnny Depp, who deep down inside really has a heart of gold matched up with an upscale orphan good girl, Amy Locane, who deep down inside want to be bad. No, that last phrase won’t work here, deep down wants to redeem Johnny-bad boy. Along the way to this inevitable happy-ending everything not nailed down gets spooked from 1950s suburban cookie cutter lifestyles to seemingly odd-ball teen fetishes like- French kissing and, oh no, the love of rock and roll. For my money the best spoof though, and it must have been hard to do with a straight face, are the musical performances of the quartet of pre-roll and rock teen singers(one of them, good/bad girl’s beau, for a while) doing the cutesy songs made famous by male groups like The Letterman that were squeaky clean but upon hearing sounded like scratching on a chalk board. And, incidentally, drove me to blues, rock, and folk music in nothing flat.

Note: I haven’t mentioned much about the performances here but for a long time now anything Johnny Depp appears in will get a look see, although it does not always turn out to be worthwhile. He has had a string of great roles, like in "Ed Wood", and some that it is better left unspoken like, "Sweeney Todd", but in this early film role (1990)as Cry Baby he gives a glimpse of why I will take a chance on any of his efforts. He does a beautiful parody of the James Dean/Elvis/Marlon Brando "rebel without a cause" style that the Cry Baby role calls for. Well done, Johnny.

Out In The Thriller Night- Johnny Depp’s The Tourist (And That Woman With The Big Lips Too)

DVD Review

The Tourist, starring Johnny Depp, Angela Joie

For starters I am almost always willing to take a chance on anything, any film that the madcap actor (and my muse the late Hunter Thompson’s friend) Johnny Depp puts his name to. With rare exceptions (the big one being his role as that self-same Hunter Thompson in the film adaptation of his book Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas) I have not been disappointed. And while I was not disappointed here the story line, and the antic –laden thriller did not do justice to his, or co-star Angela Joie’s (she of the big lips in the title), talents.

After all how hot and bothered is one to get over the whereabouts of a crackerjack thief, dough thief, big dough, billions and that is big dough even today, from a British gangster, and from the British tax boys looking for their graft, named Alexander Pearce anyway. And also constantly following a beautiful woman with big luscious red lips and a quaky English accent and who is filled to the brim, filled I tell you, with ennui looking to meet her man. And of course that gangster, that nasty gangster full of hubris and quirky habits. The problem though, and this may have to do with the nature of star power and Hollywood’s take on it, is how far into the movie will it take to figure out who that Mister Pearce really is. Guess?

Films To While The Time By- American Psycho- Part 253-Johnny Depp’s “The Secret Window”

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novella, The Secret Window, The Secret Garden.

DVD Review

The Secret Window, starring Johnny Depp, based on a novella by Stephen King, Columbia Pictures, 2004

Writers are different from you and me, very different if you can suspend your disbelieve long enough in this film under review, The Secret Garden. Apparently the rather simple act of divorce, simple at least for most people if we are to believe the statistics, was enough to throw one famous mystery writer, Mort (played by Johnny Depp), over the edge, way over the edge.

Perhaps it was finding his wife, Amy, in bed with another man; although event that traumatic experience can be accounted for since she has charged him with “statutory neglect” due to his writing fog mania withdrawal. Perhaps it was spending those ill-advised lonely months up in a secluded cabin where he was left to brood (and sleep) away his life. Perhaps it was just the cigarette withdrawal struggle that more than one of us has had troubles overcoming. In any case dear Mort (played by Depp with his usual odd-ball character pizzazz) has gone over the edge. And plans to do something about it. Nothing good.

As if to prove that life is stranger than fiction Mort makes up a scenario worthy, well, worthy of a Mort Rainey short story. He creates a savage alternative universe in order to get even with his wife, her lover, and anybody else who gets in the way of his godly intervention. And he gets away with it, for now. For how he does so watch the film, or read Stephen King’s’ novella. Creepy, Johnny Depp creepy.

***In The Matter Of The Zen Western- Johnny Depp’s Dead Man- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Johnny Depp’s Dead Man.

DVD Review

Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp, Robert Mitchum, eerily edgy music by Neil Young, Miramax 1995

Sure, I have taken plenty of shots at variations on the great American West, past and present, from Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove to The Last Picture Show from The Wild Bunch to Crazy Hearts and everything in between. As well, I have always been glad, glad as hell, to review any movie starring Johnny Depp that might come my way. So here we have the combination of Johnny Depp as, well, Johnny Depp as usual (except maybe for those seemingly endless Pirate sequels) taking on an edgy role that less talented or more timid male actors would have walked away from, way a way from.

No one doubts that the old Hollywood (and dime store novel) vision of the old John Wayne "howdy, partner" American West is long gone. And with the ground-breaking work of The Wild Bunch back in the 1970d we have seen, well we have seen, more plausibly views of that old time West, including some pretty unsavory characters in search of fame and fortune around the edges of the great frontier before it melted at the turn of the 20th century. That pasting of the frontier, of course, did not stop anybody with the least carefree spirit or who was just plain tired of the “civilized” East from heading by anyway they could to the great expanses of the old-time West. And that is where William Blake (played by Johnny Depp), no not the 18th century mad man English poet and supporter of the ideals of the French Revolution (although that mistake plays a part in the plot), but an accountant, for god’s sake, enters the story.

William Blake’s transformation into a man of the West complete with notches on his revolver, seemingly in slow-motion at times and all in black and white, is what drives this curious film. We have an educated “savage," Native American, savage white man bounty-hunters, a twisted rich land-owners (played by the late Robert Mitchum) and every mangy "old dog" who made it, or did not make it in the West. And every pathology known to humankind showed its face in this fierce portrayal of the West but also, a very surprising positive portrayal of Native American culture and its demise with the advance of the white man. William Blake, accountant, is one of Johnny Depp’s edgier performances, no question, and if you can stay with the zen aspect of the thing a very well done performance. Not for everyone, and certainly not for those who might still be clinging to some John Wayne idea of the West.