I’m deeply conflicted about this one. I did enjoy the feminist approach to the coming-of-age tale and it does things that I haven’t seen done in the many male directed films of the same style. I also loved Laura Dern’s performance.

I found myself frustrated by its lax pacing in the first half only for any moments of consequence to be off-screen. It often focuses on the wrong details. It hammers home the mother-daughter relationship, but skims on the more interesting relationship with her sister. When it comes to the “sexual awakening” element, it’s all ambiguous. She has sexual encounters that in the next scene you’re unsure of her true feelings. I felt the movie needed to go further and…

Rarely do I feel so conflicted about a film. I suppose it's a symbolic film to discuss as I am about to reach 1,000 followers on here (I gain and lose some every day apparently!), something by which I am very flattered. Thank you for putting up with my odd rambles, here's another one for you, possibly made even worse by flu.

I joined Letterboxd, but only started properly using it about a year later. I was in the second year of my BA and tried to use reviews as practise, to develop runaway thoughts in my head into arguments.

No matter how much I love Letterboxd, how many wonderful people and films I've come into contact with as a…

An exceptionally observed portrait of emergent sexuality within the consumerist nightmare of the 1980s. Girls roam malls with no money hoping to glean the perfect image through some kind of osmosis, and Connie in particular flirts endlessly while simultaneously being terrified of any boy who shows interest. Chopra is a patient director, giving the characters distance to let them establish their relationships to each other, filling in Connie as much by the circumstances of her family life as her own internal sexual confusion. The aesthetic distance also takes in how men of all ages are forever lurking and gawking, meeting the slightest bit of confidence (however faked) in a young woman as an invitation, and so much of the film…

Smooth Talk has a somewhat bad reputation because it tones down the implied serial killer history of Arnold Friend in Joyce Carol Oates’ short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”. The author herself loves how the screenwriter Tom Cole and director Joyce Chopra instead chose to focus on elongating her prose about the young woman’s relationship with her friends, family, and body. Because something that was implied but never outright stated in her text (a serial murderer in town), is instead given the point of view of the young woman and not the monster. And by going that route, Cole and Chopra are able to explore the sisterly jealousies and a mother’s jealousies at her daughter’s burgeoning…

Criterion Challenge 2021
#8: Romance

Can’t believe I just typed this was a “romance” — kinda weird genre tag for this. I had already pre-ordered the Criterion release, so needed to find an excuse to slot it in the challenge. It was a blind pick, but I remember digging the Joyce Carol Oates short story when I was a lad. Not sure I remember it correctly, but no matter.

Strong female portrayal of a male dominated subgenre, the 80s teen coming of age flick. It’s leisurely paced, but in a way that enables more texture to Connie’s character and the binary characteristics that drive the story’s implicit story. There’s a fair interplay of reality and fantasy in Connie’s world, and…

“I look right in your eyes and all I see are a bunch of trashy daydreams”.

Smooth Talk has great mall scenes.

Stores like Tinder Box and Things Remembered, packs of soda-guzzling teens roaming the thoroughfares or perching like leering crows over mezzanine guardrails, incidental passing phrases like “nice buns” or “pop his bone”, the neon Penney’s logo hovering over a dark parking lot; the malls of my youth were exactly like this, and for extended moments I travelled back in time, lifted from my Jasper Mall despair.

I’m lurching towards fifty this year. I was fifteen in 1986, roughly the same age as Laura Dern’s character Connie, and lived in her same universe. I relied on land lines and…

Smooth Talk

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this one. It’s half a coming of age film, then it sort of ventured into a creepy stalker/terrorizer thriller film. And I have to admit the movie is fairly whatever and tame throughout. Almost all of the men in this are disgusting and creepy. Treat Williams does an amazing job or portraying a role in that manor. The star of the film is Laura Dern, who is as gorgeous as usual. Even at 18, she displays the sort of range she has. I wonder what other avenues this film could have went if Davis Lynch had taken over, because I feel as if it had some moments that could have…