Urine Couch AM Movie Club: Girl 6

1996 Spike Lee joint

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A wannabe actress struggles to find work because she refuses to show her boobs. She needs money and takes a job as a phone sex operator. She ends up being a natural, and the job starts to take over all aspects of her life.

So in this installment of the Urine Couch AM Movie Club, yours truly risks his part-time job by watching something a little raunchy. It was a busy night at Indianapolis's dumpiest motel, and I'm lucky that all of our customers are shady drifters, randy truckers, and filthy whores, I'm sure somebody would have complained that I was watching the sex on the television. Speaking of that, this venue isn't the best place to watch sex on the television. There are a lot of lights in the lobby, and I'm not sure how to turn all of them off. I also don't know how to mop or wash windows or take a reservation. This movie has its moments, including a plethora of quirky cameos and a versatile performance from the titular girl herself, Theresa Randle. Susan Batson's performance as an acting coach is a real wowsers moment while John Turturro's hair gets a chance to sleaze things up. There's a Texan who gets to utter a wonderful bit of poetry about "tits like Hakeem Olajuwon," and there's King Creeper Richard Belzer who goes on and on about linoleum or something. Unfortunately, you've got some stinkers in there, too. Tarantino embarrasses himself in his attempts to prove, apparently, that he should never appear on film. Spike Lee butchers a few lines, including a monologue about autographed baseball cards that could have been nice. This movie just meanders too much with a hodgepodge of the perverse and sidebars about girls falling down elevator shafts. And the biggest question I was left with? How the hell did Prince have enough time to write the five thousand songs featured in this movie? Oh, and Madonna is in this movie, an appearance which, believe it or not, actually managed to make the urine couch even dirtier than it already was.

Weird product placement for Pepsi made me smile and steal a Pepsi from the vending machine stash.

Movie Club Selection for April: Do the Right Thing

1989 joint

Rating: 19/20

Plot: A day in the lives of a handful of Brooklynites on Stuyvesant Street. It's so hot. How hot is it? It's so hot that it can melt the melting pot! Racial tensions burble.

A recipe for disaster--an Italian-run pizzeria with no pictures of black people on the walls, some old-school blacks who have been there and done that several times over, some new-school disillusioned punks, a guy with a boom box and only one song, Korean grocers, a sprinkling of Hispanics. Mix all ingredients in a large pepper pot with two quarts of water over intense heat. Season with Chuck D. and Flavor Flav screaming things about Elvis at you.

Speaking of Public Enemy, I wonder if "Fight the Power" won or was at least nominated for Best Song. And speaking of the songs, here's some interesting trivia: I noticed that left-handed pitcher Bill "Spaceman" Lee did the musical score for Do the Right Thing. Unless (and this is doubtful) there's another Bill Lee out there.

This movie has an infectious energy that is impossible not to love, from the Rosie Perez dance off against herself during the opening credits to the powerful and devastating denouement. It's alive, alive in a refreshing way. The amount of color rivals Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and I'm not just referring to Samuel L. Jackson's array of hatwear. The neighborhood's drenched in color, like some little kids got a hold of a box of Crayolas (the bulbous 900 crayon box) and just went nuts. The characters are colorful, too. Stuttering Smiley, weirdly contrasting with the backdrops in almost every shot he's in. Ossie Davis's Da Mayor brings his street wisdom and contradictions. Sal and his sons, Sister Mama, Mookie, Radio Raheem. The latter, by the way, reminds me of a young me actually. When I was in middle school, I carried around a boom box and blasted my Spike Jones and the City Slickers "Best Of" cassette. Also, my peers used to call me Sweet Dick, so this movie brings back all kinds of memories for me. But I digress. Such colorful characters, and the actors who bring them to life are terrific. For three-fourths of the film, we're treated (and it is a treat!) to comic vignettes, the story bouncing rapidly from character to character. I loved seeing the characters roaming about in the background when it wasn't their turn to be the center of attention, too. But there's this building, underlying intensity, this anger bubbling beneath all those colors, so the climax, even though it successfully shocks and disturbs, isn't totally surprising. Finally, I was impressed with the deft camerawork in this one. There were some really creative camera angles, and I liked how smoothly the camera maneuvered through the characters on Stuyvesant Street. It slides with grace, especially impressive when showing conflict. The scene with Smiley hanging up that picture borders on "Too Much," but I think it's powerful, leaving things wonderfully foggy. This movie is stupid fresh!

I'll save discussions about the movie's message for the comments.

Inside Man

2006 Spike Lee joint

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A super smart criminal matches wits with a super smart cop after taking some hostages in a New York bank. Somehow, Jodie Foster is involved.

Cool heist movie with enough twists and turns and folds to keep me interested all the way to the end. It's not always totally believable, and the story may be so brittle that you don't want to start poking at it, but it's well acted, and I like how it all unfurls. This is one of those movies that gets better and better as it goes along, as it effectively creates tension and intrigue. Lee tells his heist tale with grace and without cliche, and even though a lot of the ingredients are the same as the ones you'd find in any heist thriller director's kitchen, this still manages to be an original. Do the right thing, and give Inside Man a chance!