#just watched beverly hill cop for the first time in my film class today

[spacediddly]

New addition to Team Should’ve Been A Polycule:

[minghellafine]

Full interview below.

The first thing Max Minghella does when he joins our Zoom call is ask me about the weather. It wasn't just a conversational cliché though, he really wanted to know what it was like where I was. I tell him I'm in New York City, where spring can surprise you with a day that's colder or warmer than it looks. This particular day was chilly. "I'm always cold," he interjects, "I'm reptilian. My body finds a way to keep me cool." He shivered as he spoke, sitting in his sunny backyard in Los Angeles wearing a T-shirt. I checked the temperature right after our call. It was 80 degrees in L.A.

Despite any discomfort, Minghella is just really happy to be at home. Unlike the millions of people who spent 2020 in quarantine, he was working on season four of The Handmaid's Tale throughout the spring and summer."I'm sort of jealous of people who have this moment to pause and reflect," he says soberly. "Even with all of the trauma it's caused and all the things that obviously were detrimental, I know a lot of people who've had big life changes in the past year."

He acknowledged, however, that creating something in a time when everyone wished they could escape was ultimately a lucky thing. "There was a ubiquitous sense of gratitude," he adds.

Outside of the global pandemic, the dynamics on set had shifted — this season, his co-star Elisabeth Moss (or "Lizzie" as he affectionately calls her), was a director. "She was amazing on set," he explained. "Just very in control and it ran super smoothly. When I saw the episodes she directed, it just kind of blew me away. Her style — it's very cinematic and it really underlines the sci-fi elements of the show. It has a real kind of scope and confidence to it. I think she's a real filmmaker."

RELATED: Marvel's New Face Danny Ramirez Has the Range

Minghella's character Nick has an interesting arc this season too –  he's realizing his role as a senior member of the Gilead ruling class, but also still in love with June [Moss]. It's a complex character that challenges you as an audience member. He is the brooding love interest, and while you may root for him and June to be together, you also have to see him for what he is: an architect of a world that kidnaps women and uses them for childbearing.

What made the previous three seasons of the show even harder for viewers to digest was the fact that people so badly wanted to believe there could be a good guy defector — maybe even Nick — in a room full of bad guys. During those years, many people felt that the dystopian elements of the show were reflective of the nationalist agenda being put forth in the United States by the Trump Administration. So much so that a group of protesters famously wore Handmaid costumes to protest anti-abortion bills and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings. Without saying much about the parallels in the show — other than chalking them up to "pure coincidence," Minghella felt the Handmaid's Tale, whose protagonists are anti-Gilead, are "on the right side of history."  He added diplomatically, "Ultimately, I'm most proud because I think it's really great fiction."

I get the sense that the pursuit of "great fiction" is something that consumes Minghella. He's someone who appreciates art (he got his big break in 2006's Art School Confidential), and his parents are Anthony Minghella, the late award-winning director of The Talented Mr. Ripley, and actress Carolyn Choa. He loves details (see our earlier weather conversation). Even the way he talks about Los Angeles has a story-like quality. He tells me about how he knew when the city became his home after a feeling he got driving past the Silver Lake 7-Eleven. As he told it, I pictured it like a scene in an indie movie starring Zach Braff.

"I had this sort of pathological obsession with movies from birth. [My mother] worked for the British equivalent of the Motion Picture Association, so she would watch three films a day. By three or four years old, I was just kind of an obsessed movie person." It's his favorite movie, Beverly Hills Cop ("I think I saw 100 times by the time I was eight years old," he says) that inspired another big role he was working on during quarantine: Minghella stars as a detective opposite Chris Rock in the Saw franchise spin-off Spiral: From the Book of Saw.

"The movie was so serendipitous for me. I feel like I almost manifested it in my life," Minghella muses. "There's a line very early in the movie where we're investigating these crime scenes and we come to a grizzly one. My character looks nauseous. Chris's [character] says to me, 'Are you okay?' And my character says, 'Yeah. I mean I'd been dreaming about this since I was 12-years-old.' And that was a very kind of weird line because it's just true."

Now at 35 years old, Minghella is feeling settled. He is still a "film nerd" that gets giddy with each new opportunity, but he's less anxious about the results. Next thing on his list? Vacation.

"I'm hoping in May once the movie comes out I can run away somewhere."

Read on for his cheesy would-be campaign slogan, his fast-food weakness, and the time he escaped a tornado while working on a film with Blake Lively.

Who is your celebrity crush?

Mary Tyler Moore.

What's the last thing you do before you fall asleep?

I listen to 1950s radio shows. Usually Dragnet. I was researching a project in that period briefly and got sort of into the radio culture of that time. And now I find it incredibly soothing.

Favorite villain?

Hans Gruber.

Describe a memorable dream.

I had a recurring nightmare as a child in which my grandmother turned into a cat. So Tom Hooper's Cats was very traumatizing to me.

First album you ever owned?

My mother bought me the Top Gun soundtrack on audio cassette.

If you were required to spend $1,000 today, what would you buy and why?

I would do anything to help a distressed dog.

If you ran for office, what would your slogan be?

Some kind of tacky pun using my first name. "Take it to the Max," or maybe "Max on, Max off."

Name one place you've never been but have always wanted to go.

Easy. Japan. I went when I was one, but I don't think that counts.

What's the most uncomfortable outfit you've ever worn?

I did a film called Art School Confidential and I had to wear a beret and I found every moment of it truly humiliating. I remember being completely traumatized by it.

Describe your first kiss.

My first kiss was at a bus stop. I was 14 and I lied and told the girl that it wasn't my first kiss, but I think it was probably immediately evident that it was.

What's one dish you're always tempted to order if you see it on a menu?

There are so many things. That's the sad answer. French fries is the truth.

Favorite on-set memory?

I did a movie called Elvis and Anabelle with Blake Lively like 100 years ago and we shot in Texas. There was a tornado one night that forced us to evacuate the set and we had to sort of drive off in a hurry. I put on this song by The Knife called "Pass This On" in the car which is very dramatic and cinematic. The tornado was sort of in pursuit of the vehicle while we were speeding away. And it was just far enough that it wasn't life-threatening, but also a radical visual. That's one of my favorite life memories.

The Handmaid's Tale season 4 premieres on Hulu April 28, and Spiral: From the Book of Saw hits theaters on May 11.

Photographs by Emily Malan. Grooming by Sonia Lee for Exclusive Artists using La Mer. Polaroid Photos by Max Minghella. Special thanks to Polaroid. Production by Kelly Chiello.

[bibhabmishra]

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off The Impact of Social Class

The eighties, goes the general thinking, was the decade of venality. No one in America—heck, in the WORLD—had been interested in making money before the 1980s came along and corrupted us all. It was, apparently, the era in which everyone walked around in gold lamé and regarded Ivana Trump as the last word in understated chic. Seriously, you couldn’t take the dog for a walk in the eighties without tripping over a giant Versace gold logo. And a pair of giant shoulder pads. And a massive pile of cocaine. And cocaine plays absolute HAVOC with one’s Armani stilettos. Maybe it was—far be it from me to cast aspersions on lazy descriptions of an era—but a little-remarked-upon truth is that this is not, in fact, the mentality depicted in many mainstream eighties movies. Many Hollywood movies ar- gued for, if not actual class warfare, then certainly a suspicion of wealth. Re- peatedly, wealthy people are depicted as disgusting, shallow, and even mur- derous, while working-class people are noble and good-intentioned, such as in not exactly niche films like Wall Street,I Beverly Hills Cop, Ruthless People, Rais- ing Arizona, and Overboard.

Contrast this with today’s films like Iron Man, in which the billionaire is the superhero (and is inspired by actual billionaire Elon Musk), and the deeply, deeply weird The Dark Knight Rises, in which the villain advocates the redistribution of wealth—HE MUST BE DESTROYED. But the eighties films that were the most interested in issues of class were, of all things, the teen films. The motivating force of almost every single classic eighties teen film was not, in fact, selling soundtracks, watching an eighteen-year-old Tom Cruise try to get laid, or seeing what ridiculous hairdo Nicolas Cage would sport this time round. It was social class. There’s The Karate Kid, in which the son of a single mother unsuccessfully tries to hide his poverty from the cool kids at school who make fun of his mother’s car; Dirty Dancing, in which a middle- class girl dates a working-class boy, much to her liberal father’s horror; Can’t Buy Me Love, in which a school nerd gains popularity by paying for it; Valley Girl, in which an upper-middle-class girl dates a working-class boy; Say Anything, in which a privileged girl dates a lower-middle-class army brat and her father turns out to be a financial criminal; The Flamingo Kid, in which a working-class kid is dazzled by a wealthy country club and starts to break away from his blue-collar father; and all John Hughes’s teen films. Of course, issues of class can be found in the undercurrents of pretty much any American movie, from The Philadelphia Story to The Godfather. The differ- ence with eighties teen films is that they were completely overt in their treat- ment of it: class is the major motivator of plot, even if it’s easy to miss next to the pop songs and Eric Stoltz’s smile. All these films stress emphatically that the money your family has determines everything, from who your friends are, to who you date, your social standing in school, your parents’ happiness and aspirations, and your future. They, to varying degrees, rage against the failure of the American Dream. They stress that true class mobility is pretty much impossible, and certainly interclass friendships and romances are unlikely, for the simple reason that rich people are assholes and lower-middle-class and working-class people are good. Which was unfortunate because according to the vast majority of eighties teen movies, the only way a teenager could truly move up out of their socioeconomic group was if they dated someone wealth- ier than them, Cinderella-style. The one exception to this rule is Back to the Future, which definitely does

not rage against the American system; instead, it concludes that, yes, money does buy happiness and that’s just great. When Marty returns from 1955 to 1985, he realizes that he has inadvertently changed history so that now his par- ents, formerly poor and therefore miserable and barely on speaking terms, are now rich and therefore happy and cheerfully smack each other’s backsides: “I remember how upset Crispin [Glover, who played George McFly] and Eric [Stoltz, who was originally cast as Marty] were about the ending of Back to the Future: now that they have money they’re happy,” recalls Lea Thompson, who played Lorraine Baines McFly. “They thought it was really outrageous. It went right over my head, of course. Maybe because I was poor and when I got wealthy I was happy!” This is indeed a subject that still riles Glover enor- mously. For decades he has spoken out against what he describes as “corpo- rate movies”—that is, studio movies—that peddle “propaganda” and he is cur- rently writing a book on the subject addressing, he says, “the Back to the Future issue in great detail.” “The main idea was that the family was in love and I felt that if there was any indication that money equals happiness, that was a bad message to put out,” he says, the exasperation still palpable in his voice thirty years on. “I was not given the screenplay before we shot the film because Universal and Spielberg were at the time making it apparent that they needed to keep their movie under wraps. Which I understand but as an actor you have to investigate the psy- chology of the character, and you can’t do that until you’ve read it. Now I would be very insistent [about reading a script before committing to a film], but I was twenty years old at the time and it was a Universal movie; of course I was glad to be in it. So I wasn’t given the opportunity to read it before I was hired and so it was fair for me to be asking these questions but they did not think it was fair. When you raise questions people say ‘You’re crazy, you’re weird,’ because you’re questioning the authority that people have been brought up to think is the only correct way to think, when there are many correct ways to think.” Ultimately, Glover says, he was so disgusted with the message of Back to the Future he refused to be in the sequel.II, III “The point [of making the McFly family wealthy] was that self-confidence and the ability to stand up for yourself are qualities that lead to success,” says Bob Gale, cowriter of Back to the Future. “So we showed George and Lorraine had an improved standard of living, we showed them loving toward each other, and we showed that George was a successful author. It was the way to show the audience that George had indeed become a better man. And, of course, in the beginning, we depicted George as a loser, Lorraine as a drunk, with a ter- rible car and a house full of mismatched and worn-out furnishings.” Back to the Future is such a charming film that it’s easy to be swept along by it and not notice this equation of lower-middle-class status with being a “loser.” But it does echo precisely the same message that other eighties teen films sent: the class you are born into dictates every aspect of your life. “Class has always been the central story in America, not race—class,” says Eleanor Bergstein, the writer and producer of Dirty Dancing. “And when you’re a teenager you really start to notice this.” And there was no teen filmmaker who felt this as deeply as Hughes. David Thomson complains in his majestic Biographical Dictionary of Film that in Hughes’s teen films “the fidelity of observation, the wit and the tender- ness for kids never quite transcend the general air of problem solving and putting on a piously cheerful face. No one has yet dared in America to portray the boredom or hopelessness of many teenage lives—think of Mike Leigh’s pictures to see what could be done.” The first thing to say is that to complain that John Hughes isn’t enough like Mike Leigh is like getting annoyed that a chocolate cookie is not trying hard enough if it’s not a roast chicken. But it isn’t fair to dismiss Hughes’s movies as devoid of “hopelessness” since his repeated depiction of class issues in his films definitely shows the “hopelessness” in these American teenagers’ lives. Pretty in Pink (lower- middle-class girl falls for wealthy boy) and Some Kind of Wonderful (lower- middle-class boy falls for lower-middle-class girl who has gained acceptance among the rich kids through her looks) are the most obvious examples of Hughes’s teen films that were obsessed with class injustice and how difficult it is for kids from different classes to connect (Hughes, despite his inherently romantic nature, apparently thought they couldn’t, really). But it’s there in all his teen films, including Sixteen Candles (Jake’s house is notably bigger and flashier than Samantha’s) and The Breakfast Club (Bender’s somewhat implau- sible-sound-ing home lifeIV is compared to pampered Claire’s world, in which she can give out diamond earrings on a whim). But the film that really empha- sizes how unfair he thought the system is is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. There are many reasons to love Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and I’ve gone through all of them. As I said in the introduction, this was the first what I called REAL MOVIE (that is, neither animated nor a musical) I was allowed to see and it instantly became my first love and Ferris my first crush. It represented every- thing to me, everything I wasn’t and didn’t have and wanted: teenagehood, freedom, coolness, sexiness. Every day after school, for a whole year, I would come home, go straight to the TV room, carefully close the door to keep out my dorky parents and Jeanie-ish younger sister, and watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Every. Single. Day. I carefully transcribed the script into my diary, which I still have, and at some point I decided my sister was sufficiently acceptable to allow her to reenact scenes from the movie with me, using my transcribed script. That summer, I taught my sister about making out, using the scene in which Ferris makes out with Sloane in the museum as a guide, and the two of us would duly writhe around on the living room, making out with our imag- inary boyfriends (Ferris for me, Marty McFly for her), while our parents, watch- ing from the doorway, wondered what new game their innocent little nine- and seven-year-old daughters had invented. This is perhaps the only time in my sister’s and my lives that our parents underestimated us. As a kid, I loved the film and Ferris because I thought Ferris was so cool— he was cute, he was funny, and, most thrillingly of all, he could drive a car. I fantasized about him driving me to school, holding my hand all the way. (Yes, that was my sexual fantasy. Like I said, I had a pretty sheltered childhood.) When I finally, and contrary to all my expectations, became a teenager and realized driving a car wasn’t quite as rare a skill as I’d believed as a nine- year-old, I decided that the real reason to love this film was that it was so weird. Like all of Hughes’s teen films, it has a simple premise (boy skips school and brings his best friend, Cameron, and girlfriend, Sloane, along for the ride) and takes place over a tiny period of time (like The Breakfast Club, Fer- ris Bueller’s Day Off doesn’t even cover twenty-four hours). But it is a much stranger beast than anything else Hughes ever wrote. While all Hughes’s other teen films deal with the emotional minutiae of being a teenager, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off doesn’t make even the slightest pretense to realism. The characters are all surreal exaggerations of recognizable characters—the teenager, Ferris, is just that little bit too cocky, the principal, Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), is defi- nitely too demented—and the situations it depicts are, quite clearly, impos- sible.

[rob-blog1234]

WEEKEND TV HOT FILM PICKS!

Check out my guide to the top films on TV this weekend and the best of the rest. Enjoy!

LATE FRIDAY 3rd FEBRUARY

HOT PICKS!

Film4 @ 1815    Mud (2012) ****

McConaughey confirmed he was back in style and an actor to watch in recent years. This was 100% confirmed with Mud. He pays a fugitive who is living on a remote island in the Mississippi, after an encounter with two adventurous teenage boys, they strike up a tenuous friendship and they agree to help him escape the island. A quality, realistic drama which sticks you right in the centre of this very authentic time and place. Directed by Jeff Nichols who we have to thank for the equally good Take Shelter and has his most recent film Midnight Special was fantastic. Tackling some interesting issues with calibre and style. This is an all American drama not to be missed.

Best of the rest:

TCM @ 1500     Barry Lyndon (1975) *****

ITV2 @ 2000     Skyfall (2012) ****

E4 @ 2100         X-Men: First Class (2011) ****

5* @ 2200          Harry Brown (2009) ***

ITV3 @ 0035      Changeling (2008) ****

Horror @ 0045  The Dyatlov Pass Incident (2013) ***

Film4 @ 0100   Baskin (2015) ***

SATURDAY 4th FEBRUARY

HOT PICKS!

C5 @ 1030    Kelly's Heroes (1970) *****

Kelly’s Heroes is one of my most watched war films. Well, it’s more of a heist film that just so happens to be set slap bang in the middle of a war zone in WW2. It’s very funny and from the very start Telly Savalas’s rants put a smile on your face and you know exactly what you are in for. The cast are the main driver for this film’s success with a host of interesting and outrageous characters from Telly Savalas’s larger than life Big Joe to Donald Sutherland’s stoner hippy tank driver, Oddball. It certainly doesn’t scrimp on the action either and there are enough bullets and explosions to keep you action taste buds tingling. It’s not all fun and frolics and it still has a few satirical barbs thrown in for good measure. Kelly’s Heroes is a fantastically fun film. Watch this.

Horror @ 2300    Scanners (1981) ****

Michael Ironside is Revok - the head of an underground group of Scanners set on dominating the world. They have psychic powers that can control minds and even kill. When a doctor finds a Scanner that Revok hasn’t, they attempt to convert him to help them infiltrate and destroy the underground group. This is classic Cronenberg, packed full of gore and violence that still looks impressive today. This is Sci-Fi Horror at its best with detailed themes and quality story that keep this a success even 36 years on.

Film4 @ 0045     District 9 (2009) *****

The Sci-Fi genre is full of average films churning out the same old dross using the same old stories and ideas… but in a worse way. Fortunately District 9 is nothing like that. Yes it does pull numerous ideas from a number of Sci-Fi greats but it manages to do this in a fresh way proving there is still room in the genre yet.

Director Neil Blomkamp must have been very frustrated when the Halo film was side-lined but he certainly put the 30 million budget he was given for this film to good use. The CGI is ultra-realistic and we witness seamlessly integrated aliens into our world, there is never a moment it faltered or failed. It still has some of the best effects that I’ve ever seen. The action scenes spew obvious talent and the combination of filming styles works really well.

District 9 follows Sharlto Copley’s character - Wikus - the nervous, wet-behind-the-ears yet dedicated MNU agent with the task of coordinating the eviction and relocation of over a million aliens from the rather nasty gang ridden slum known as District 9. His performance is astonishing particularly after I found out that not only is this his first major roll but a hell of a lot of his dialogue was improvised. The film starts off with documentary style, shaky cam footage which works very well to force realism and credibility to the story which does soon change back to standard cinema which although sometimes noticeable doesn’t stop District 9 standing tall as one of 2009’s great Sci-Fi films alongside Moon and Watchmen. Watch this.

Best of the rest:

TCM @ 0900       Barry Lyndon (1975) *****

5* @ 1510           The Wizard of Oz (1939) *****

ITV4 @ 1600       Superman (1978) *****

TCM @ 1840       Bullitt (1968) ****

ITV2 @ 1935       The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) *****

Sky1 @ 2100      Beverly Hills Cop (1984) ***

W @ 2100           V for Vendetta (2005) ***

Syfy @ 2100       Paranormal Activity (2007) ***

5* @ 2100           Layer Cake (2004) ***

E4 @ 2100          X-Men (2000) ***

Horror @ 2100   The Signal (2014) ***

ITV4 @ 2105       Bullitt (1968) ****

ITV1 @ 2245      The Bourne Supremacy (2004) *****

Dave @ 2300     The Last Samurai (2003) ****

5* @ 2305           The Green Hornet (2011) ***

SUNDAY 5th FEBRUARY

HOT PICKS!

TCM @ 1240     Bullitt (1968) ****

This fantastic cop thriller has been somewhat overshadowed by its fame for the glorious car chase scene, but it really shouldn’t be, Bullitt is an intelligent, focused and realistic crime drama with well-placed action and suspense. With Steve McQueen pulling out an understated but wholly credible role as Lieutenant Frank Bullitt he lifts this already great film to higher ground. As I have filled my recent film viewing with CGI heavy spectaculars full of clunky exposition and sacrificing script for mass glitzy destruction sequences, it was an absolute pleasure to return to the films I love. Films with intelligence, perfect sound tracks, with tone and mood matched perfectly to the story they are telling, realism, impressive live action scenes with no CGI… Bullitt certainly fits the bill.

Horror @ 2250     Eden lake (2008) ****

I was surprised how horrible this film is to watch, I am surprised how uncomfortable it made me feel and I’m sure that’s exactly what they were hoping it to do. For many reasons including this one - I give this film a 4 star rating.  It is a bleak, brutal, unforgiving and more importantly a realistic horror that I never ever want to watch again.  No Fantastical beings - just the evil of people… and we are far more evil than any made up beast.  Pace picked up just when required and the story contains a few timely surprises. At the end of this film I was left sitting in stunned silence whilst the credits rolled.  This film really isn’t very nice… and really rather good.

Best of the rest:

Film4 @ 1650     The Jewel of the Nile (1985) ***

ITV4 @ 1700       Superman (1978) *****

Film4 @ 1900     Turner & Hooch (1989) ***

ITV4 @ 2205       Mars Attacks! (1996) ***

C4 @ 2300          Magic Mike (2012) ***