Critical Mess

In Sugar & Spice (2001) Australian director Francine McDougall brings us a wholesome and smart comedy heist movie set around a highschool cheer squad who stage a robbery to raise money for their pregnant captain. Remarkably, most of the jokes stand up after almost two decades, although the film's homophobia has certainly aged badly. We swoon over goofy young James Marsden and universal heart-throb Conan O'Brien and analyse the marketing mishaps that caused this film to sink into the abyss.

We watch the original version of one of Annie's favourite 90s films, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) directed by Norman Jewison. A sad rich man (Steve McQueen) orchestrates a bank robbery and the insurance company send in the big buns (Faye Dunaway) to set a honeytrap for him. The filmography is quite experimental but the flat dialogue, meandering plotline and complete lack of sexual chemistry let it down. We talk about zoetropes, maniacal laughing, sexy chess and the giddy heyday of spa phones. 

We are two halves of a horse-human hybrid this week, as we gallop along with Boots Riley's 2018 comedy/dark satire Sorry to Bother You - a film about code switching, toxic corporate culture, activism and class inequalities. We stay remarkably on task this week because there is so much to pick apart in this film, not least HORSE SYMBOLISM, violence on screen, reality TV, scumbag billionaires, the power of absurdist comedy and the difficulties of navigating late-stage capitalist society. We certainly do NOT Stick To The Script!

We have found the perfect mix of whimsy and heist for Annie Waters to lose her tiny mind in The Castle of Cagliostro, the 1979 directorial debut of Hayao Miyazaki. However, Aimee thinks it lacks the Supreme Cuteness™ of her fav Ghibli films and is more of a prototype for their future success. The plot is a madcap heist-cum-rescue as master thief Lupin attempts to gain access to Castle Cagliostro and free Princess Clarisse. It had strong 90s resonances with many of our childhood classics, demonstrating Miyazaki's influence on animators around the world. Perhaps a bit simplistic, but if you want to be taken back to childhood this is your film.

Annie and Aimee go down a deep wormhole after watching the 2008 documentary (?!) Catfish. What is real? What is fake? How many numbers of your credit card should you give to strangers on the internet?! We discuss internet safety and trust, unfulfilled dreams and the role of the film maker in documenting real people's lives. It turns out we both have an endless fascination with other people's fantasies and Aimee admits to her Catfish catnip probbofave. We also talk about other tales of subterfuge including Stephanie Wood's memoir Fake, Dirty John & the convoluted story behind author AJ Finn's deceptions. 

Who loves to laugh at poor folk from the American South?! Not Annie and Aimee! Bad news: they decided to watch the Coen brothers' 1987 Raising Arizona, in which the one and only note is to mock stereotypes of down-at-heel country folk as Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter steal a child. A disproportionate amount of screaming just tops off this gaudy hick wedding cake made of diapers. Thankfully, no babies were harmed in the making of this film (we really really hope). 

...What? WHAT!? David Lynch's 2001 Mulholland Drive sends the Critical Mess crew into a tailspin. We try to unravel the puzzle of what the director is going for here and talk about the bananas themes which include fame, identity and the circular nature of time. He dips into multiple genres to present this otherworldly critique of the grotesquerie and fakery of Hollywood in high-Lynchian style. 

What big eyes you have, Margaret D. H. Keane! Aimee and Annie jump back in time to the 1960s as Tim Burton attempts to explain how women get involved in coercive relationships in 2014's Big Eyes. Based on the life of a painter whose husband takes credit for her work, we chat about art, fraud, integrity, criticism, Walter Benjamin and Rumpelstilstkin. But is Burton really the best person to tell this story of plagiarism and domestic abuse? Probably not, hey.

Hey John Travolta, don't touch my face! We're back into a new season of thievery, abduction, stolen hearts and broken dreams. And what better film to kick off with than John Woo's 1997 Face/Off? Annie and Aimee struggle to differentiate between whose heart is in whose body, discuss all the genres that have been mashed up into this body swap high octane crime film and become sad about the representation of the prison system. The pace is set at 110% from about 5 minutes in and it doesn't let up, so strap yourself in for a real wild ride. 

Welcome to 1988 family favourite (TM) Mac and Me: Baby Mac gets separated from his alien family after they get kidnapped by the US government and gets co-opted into a feature-length ad for fast-food chain McDonalds. It is possibly even more awful than it sounds. Annie and Aimee take the chance to dig into where the money came from to finance this atrocity and then spin out into discussions about the blurry line between charity and product placement, the ethics of marketing fast food to children and how to make the ultimate copy pasta film. If you enjoy listening to a movie get shredded finer than a Big Mac's lettuce, this is the episode for you.