Drug Movie Reviews

In keeping with our general theme lately of sex, drugs and what used to be called rock n' roll but is now going by some new name, like Elmer, we've been watching lots of dysfunctional drug movies. Sometimes this is a good thing, because I guess it was high time I finally saw Requiem for a Dream, and then I made it all the way through Naked Lunch this time and actually enjoyed it and we got to see Gothic again, which is just as odd as I remembered, but sometimes it is a very, very bad thing.

A terribly bad thing indeed. Yes. Party Monster is about the worst damn thing I've ever seen and if anyone was in any kind of doubt whether Macaulay Culkin can, in fact, act or do anything much except pose for those vaguely remembered iconic posters with the open mouth and the hands and such that always made me so grateful to god that he wasn't one of my kids, on whom that expression would have earned either a swift slap or a trip to the DNA lab to figure out their actual parentage, well, the question has been answered. He cannot. No, he cannot act his way out of the proverbial paper bag (what the hell does that mean, by the way? How would you act your way out of a paper bag? Emote a la William Shatner all over the place and say LET. ME. OUT. OF. HERE. with great feeling? Take it off your head very slowly with tortured arm motions like interpretive dance? Well, however you would do it, rest assured that it would be better than Macauley Culkin doing it.) and, while he's not acting, the script is busy not making much sense, the club scenes are badly realized and the movie just sucks.

How do I know that the club kid thing is badly done? I know this because I was there. Well, kinda/sorta I was there, inasmuch as I wasn't really a fabulous club kid but instead a) poor, b) female, and c) as always, more interested in cheap booze and good music than fabulousness. I went to Limelight once but I was more a CBGBs performance space/Danceteria before it closed/Max Fish/various dive bars girl than a fabulous club kid party girl. But I could have been. If I had wanted to. Well, okay, I mean, I lived in the East Village and went to gallery openings - it's how I fed my kid once a week - and was friendly with Red Ed, who was this weird guy always dressed completely in red leather who also hung out at gallery openings, and people often gave me invitations which I promptly scrunched into my purse and then threw away weeks later. There may still be some down in there. So I was tangentially a club kid and I totally know that the movie was full of remarkable shit.

Unfortunately, the movie happens to be one of N's favorites. Usually we're in complete accordance on movies except in the horror genre, where his tastes run to psycho slasher gorefests like Saw, which I will not watch, and my tastes run to campy over the top things like Lair of the White Worm, which he will not watch, but there we were, watching a movie he's been bugging me to see for weeks and I hated it. Always an awkward moment: not quite as bad as when your new boyfriend's band sucks, but close. Actually, I'm really surprised that he liked it, given his usual casual homophobia "That is so GAY" commentary, but he says he's secure enough in his own masculinity to watch it. Secure humbug; I think he just wants to put on makeup. I told him this and he kicked me, heh. Therefore it must be true. Still, he was pretty cool about me hating it and now in payback I'm going to get him to watch The Coca Cola Kid which is my personal "nobody else likes it but for some inexplicable reason I always have loved it go figure now you must watch it as well to prove that you do love me" movie.

Also, in other drug movie news, we watched part of Tideland last night, but thank the gods the DVD was all messed up and we only got to see about the first 40 minutes, which I think was quite enough horrific depression for one evening. I'm not even going to ask Orbit for another copy.