Words Seem Out Of Place

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. Few actors scorched the screen with the sort of intensity that Ellen Barkin brought to movies during the 1980s and 1990s. In a string of memorable and excellent performances, across various genres—from Diner (1982) to The Big Easy (1987) to Sea of Love (1989) and more—Barkin blazed her own unique path through cinemas during those years. Some actors are interchangeable; swap one square-jawed heartthrob or petite ingénue  out for another and hardly anyone notices. Barkin is not one of those actors. With only an arched brow or a sly smirk, she can shoot daggers, make you break out in a smile, melt your heart, or do all of the above, all at once. She occupies her own unique orbit, doing what she does better than any imitator ever could. She's smarter, hotter, and funnier than all of you, so just stop it already. Blake Edwards's mostly forgotten yet wildly entertaining gender-bending farce Switch (1991) offers a beautiful...

Quick-hit movie reviews for the masses. Greydon Clark's teensploitation paean to video arcades,  Joysticks  (1983) has to be one of the raunchiest films in a genre—1980s teen sex comedies—that was hardly lacking in raunch. Even the title is a smutty double entendre. In the early '80s the burgeoning video arcade scene was frowned upon by square parents everywhere as a scummy din of inequity. That sleazy subculture is parodied with loving care in Joysticks —even if the arcade in the film has 100% more topless women than I ever remember from the arcades of my youth. This is the film that introduced the world to the old "hot dog in the cleavage" shot ( yes, as stupid as it sounds ), along with strip video gaming, the eight-bit update of the venerable strip poker sensation. A high class production, obviously. In a film with every conceivable '80s stereotype (bodacious babes, bumbling nerds, out of touch adults, preposterous punkers), Corinne Bohrer ( Police ...

"All my life I've been tossed in the garbage, except when men wanted to use my body." "Do you like to ride, Elaine?" ***** Released two years ago this month, writer-director-editor-producer Anna Biller's 2016 indie sensation The Love Witch remains one of my favorite films in recent memory. The story is elegant in its simplicity: Elaine (Samantha Robinson) is our titular Love Witch, using what she refers to as "sex magic" and "love magic" to make men love her. She's a beautiful, and beautifully symbolic, metaphor for both the male gaze in cinema and men's innate fear of womanhood, as well as embodying societal linkages between women, love, and sorcery. The film understands how men have historically viewed women as they wish to see them—beings of pure fantasy, there to serve male desires. The Love Witch  spins that reality on its head in wildly entertaining and deliciously subversive ways. The men are mos...