If #metoo existed back when “Hurlyburly” (1998) was being filmed, a mob of anarchist feminists would have descended on the set and murdered all the male characters. Historians can debate whether we’d be better off. Anyway, this is probably the worst of those 1990s movies that tried to portray the vacuousness of Hollywood wheeling-dealing. It’s definitely the most misogynistic. And to think, 15 years later, Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey would team up again for “House of Cards.” And by the time she negotiated an equally inflated salary, he’d get me-tooed and she’d ultimately lose her job. It’s next-level karma.
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In the 1980s, high school was actually more boring than we remember, but “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982) has been adopted as one of the definitive stories of my generation. So many scenes have been permanently absorbed into pop culture, they are too numerous to list (everyone my age has their favorites). The abortion and stoner subplots made it a controversial film at the time – and not worth an argument with my mom – so I didn’t see it in its entirety until several years after it came out. By then, I’d heard all the spoilers, but it didn’t matter.
I presume Alejandro González Iñárritu was trying to make an artistic statement about the randomness of life by scrambling the timeline in “21 Grams” (2003), but it just didn’t work for me. Maybe it was punishment for my habit of trying to guess what’s going to happen next – it’s hard when next isn’t really next. Usually these kinds of movies sort themselves out and you can catch on. But in this unsatisfying rendition, where three families cross paths at a tragically metaphorical intersection, I was still stuck at the stoplight, blinker on, trying to figure out which way to turn.
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