Another marathon. Buckle in.
Y Tu Mama Tambien - Wow. Raw, explicit, fierce. It would be easy to pass this off as modern taboo sexploitation or even raunchy teen wish fulfillment, like a Spanish-language Fast Times at Ridgemont High or American Pie, and in fact that’s kind of where my mind had settled to start.
A pair of aggressively sophomoric teenagers - interested in drugs, sex, and not much else - ask the prodigal, unobtainable older hot woman on an out of town beach adventure, and for seemingly semi-flimsy excuse-plot reasons, she accepts. One might expect crude gross-out humor and typical teen comedy tropes to follow. And you would be right, at least in the beginning.
Yet by the end, the boys’ machismo world-view has been striped to the studs, their understanding of their friendship and themselves shuttered, and in a twist so rare in modern film it deserves particular accolades, rather than being further objectified, the woman ends up legitimately empowered through sex.
The acting is brilliant: Diego and Bernal are both great, and Verdu is phenomenal as the emotional and philosophical fulcrum on which the narrative centers and whole plot turns. What I thought was going to be the story of two teen dirtbags getting lucky with a vulnerable, fantasy woman, ended up being a profound deconstruction of that very concept.
Groundhog Day - Hard to believe this movie is almost 30 years old. Yet outside of obscure short stories and Japanese manga / anime, this is the quintessential pop culture icon of the ubiquitous time loop gimmick. That’s quite a cultural impact for a cutesy rom-com from the early 90s.
Of course, “cutesy rom-com” is truly underselling it. This is golden age Bill Murray bringing his outlandish, snarky, understated Everyman schtick to an adept and simple thought experiment via concept art: Q: What would you do if trapped in a 24 hour time loop in Anytown USA? Murray and Ramis give us what I think is still the definitive answer.
Wedding Crashers - Slightly more grounded than other Frat Pack vehicles like Old School, Anchorman, or Zoolander giving it a a tad more staying power for me. Vince Vaughn’s peak with the quick-talking wise guy schtick he’d been trying to perfect since Swingers. Ferrell has a fun cameo role, which is about the appropriate amount of tolerable screen time for him. It’s impressive how big of a tool Cooper has to play just so the audience can buy into rooting for our scummy heroes. Ironically this has become our go-to “unobtrusive” comedy to play in the background when we need a brain break.
The Great Gatsby - The Luhrmann version, and I unironcially enjoy this one. I know this received mixed reviews, and justifiably so - being a distractingly frenetic and choppy deluge of sound and color. But I have a soft spot for the equally schlocky Romeo + Juliet for similar reasons: the over-the-top theatrics, dramatic visuals, anachronistic jazz/hip hop fusion score all add to the style-over-substance fun.
Besides, it honestly fits Fitzgerald’s work - not the stuffy “Great American Novel” cautionary tale of the American dream kids are forced to read in high school (a reading that’s more anachronistic than Luhrmann’s score), but rather the blistering-paced jazz age adventure about a guy who becomes a millionaire and throws spectacular parties every week, just to impress a married woman he hooked up with 5 years prior.
