Just a Friend You Haven't Met

 

If you had asked me two days ago what my life was missing, I might have said something silly like "world peace."

Now that I've watched Never Talk to Strangers, it's clear that the answer was in front of me all along (or at least since 1995):

a slow motion montage of sex and trust falls

Quick Plot: Dr. Sarah Taylor is a criminal psychologist currently in the middle of evaluating an accused rapist murderer Max Cheski (the always welcome Harry Dean Stanton). Following the disappearance of her fiance one year earlier, Sarah's personal life mostly involves gently fighting off neighbor Dennis Miller, until one fateful evening when she meet-cutes Tony Ramirez in the wine aisle.

This is a man who knows his cabernet and looks and sounds like Antonio Banderas. How can she resist?

Sarah and Tony begin a steamy relationship that quickly fizzles out when she reacts weirdly to him shooting a moving clown target at a carnival. It only takes one reminder of Tony's luscious body hair to send her straight back to his industrial loft, because it's the 1990s and every sexy mysterious man lives in an industrial loft. 

While her personal life is on the ups, her work days are a bit scratchy. Sarah's estranged father shows up in his Willy Loman drag to restart their rocky relationship. Cheski makes a few veiled threats. Then she gets a few presents: a bouquet of dead flowers, her own published obituary, and her precious orange tabby Sabrina cut up in a gift box.

The police give the super helpful and comforting advice that they can't do anything about this, and that Sarah's best bet is hire a private detective (the more things change...). He reports some unpleasant details about her new beau, but this being a '90s erotic thriller, there's always a whole lot more to the story.

And whoa boy there is! I would never dream of spoiling this oddball slice of Snackwell's era junk food. Director Peter Hall had a long career in theater, and he doesn't quite seem to know how to make Jordan Rush and Lewis A. Green's messy script come together (would anyone?). But then there's Rebecca DeMornay's steely blue eyes running down Antonio Banderas's bare chest, while slow motion flashbacks, and the kind of twist ending that sings like a soap opera aria. 

High Points

The world has never fully appreciated just how sexy a screen presence Antonio Banderas has. Never Talk to Strangers gets it

Low Points

I think it simply has to be a tradition that anytime Dennis Miller plays an ex-boyfriend in a '90s thriller, he comes off as the kind of scummy toxic male who would whine about being in the friend zone and is easily the worst part of his respective film

Lessons Learned

We're all just animals with beepers

There's no such thing as a good domestic pinot noir

Electric heaters are always dangerous, even more so when INSTALLED OVER A BATHTUB 

Rent/Bury/Buy

Never Talk to Strangers is a terrible exploration of mental health, and a damn fun watching experience. You can find it streaming on Tubi in all its sexy saxophone-scored glory. 

Dial It Up

Pizza.

Dot. 

Net.

Quick Plot: Meet Angela Bennett, a pretty but introverted computer genius who spends the majority of her time on the internet in her home office. Despite looking like Sandra Bullock, Angela doesn't get out much or socialize. She's far more comfortable conversing in chat rooms than face-to-face, and her hottest date of recent seems to be a medium pie from pizza.net.

Ahh, the '90s. To those born in a tragically dark world before the convenience of seamless or grubhub, ordering your pepperoni from a website was once considered both futuristic and weird. Today, I see Angela's experience with pizza.net as a tragedy in itself not because it demonstrates her fear of people, but because poor little Angie was robbed of the wonder that is Domino's rather amazing, if a tad racist interactive interface that involves a talking Caribbean toucan.

Back to The Net, Angela is just about to take a Mexican beach vacation (sadly lacking pizza-talking toucans) when one of her web pals sends her a mysterious floppy disc (think USB sticks but shaped like toast) that seems to have a flaw. What should be a simple music program somehow grants savvy hackers access to government records, banking databases, and much much more.  

Angela puts the disc out of her mind to soak up the sun, drink what sounds like the worst cocktail ever known to man (WHO PUTS ONIONS IN ANYTHING THAT DOESN'T NEED ONIONS??), and flirting with a dashingly handsome Brit named Jack Deviln who seems to be painstakingly made for her. Naturally, he proves to be a creepy hitman whose job is to steal the disc and leave Angie swimming with the pescados.

Thankfully, Devlin turns out to be absolutely terrible at his job. Maybe it's all the Gibsons he drinks, but the man is woefully unprofessional. For a company that later proves to be manipulating major banks, corporations, and the federal government, they ultimately show some rather large holes in their hiring practices.

That doesn't make life any easier for Angela, or as the evil web company has now renamed her, Ruth. Though she manages to get back to the States, her ID has been swapped for an ex-con drug addict whose name sends red flags to all police officers or other professionals she tries to enlist for help. Her only friend/ex-lover/ex-therapist/ex-yes-that's-very-icky-and-the-movie-doesn't-really-seem-to-care Dennis Miller tries to help, but it doesn't take longer than a Weekend Update for him to fall prey to the evil corporate website killers. It's up to Angela herself, with no resources other than her own moxie and fast typing skills, to save herself and a whole lot of urls.

As an unabashed fan of '90s cinema, I was excited to revisit Irwin Winkler's film with the giggles of nostalgia. Imagine my shock/slight disappointment to discover that mom jeans and floppy discs aside, The Net really hadn't aged poorly. Sure, we've come a long way from ordering your dinner online being a sign that you are one cat away from sad spinsterhood, but the actual depiction of the world wide web doesn't necessarily feel like a relic from a time long past. Our lives ARE in the hands of those better at manipulating technology, a fact that some people fear and lazy ones like me simply accept.

The real strength of The Net, however, isn't its adorably quaint internet graphics but its adorably lovable Sandra Bullock.

Yes, it's me. The same person who wrote over a thousand words about how The Blind Side was one of the worst movies of the post-Jim Crow world. See, I contrary to what some people may think, I love Sandra Bullock. She's a delight. 

But The Blind Side really is a terrible excuse for white people feeling good.

Back to Bullock, she really is the heart of this film and it's easy to suspect any other actress would not have made The Net such a watchable movie. Fairly fresh off her star-making supporting part in Speed and romcom debut While You Where Sleeping, Bullock proved here that she had that natural charisma to keep viewers engaged in virtually any material. It's impossible not to care about Angela. Part of it is that the character makes fairly smart choices throughout the screenplay, but the bigger part is that Bullock never overdoes the character.

There are certainly drawbacks to The Net. At just under two hours, it's longer than it should be but paced intensely enough to where you don't necessarily notice. Angela's agoraphobia or social anxiety or what exactly isn't particularly well defined. Nearly all the scenes of tension end with one of those "free at the last possible minute" kind of tricks that hardly seems possible the first time, let alone the fifth time around. Still, twenty years after its debut, this remains an involving and entertaining watch.

High Points

While Angela isn't exactly Rosie the Riveter, it's a huge relief to see the film wisely avoid some potentially unsteady gender ground. The movie doesn't judge Angela for sleeping with Devlin, and while the Dennis Miller character is problematic due to the icky/unethical doctor/patient boundaries, it also doesn't tack him or anyone else on as a love interest. The men in Angela's life aren't right for her, and by the end of the film, that seems to be just okay.

Low Points

Seriously, how many times can a character turn his head only to turn back and find you have vanished? 

Lessons Learned

In Colorado you grow up with guns

In the mid '90s, one could always count on a perfectly timed street parade to commence just as you might need a giant crowd to escape into

Hotel televisions have a remarkable ability to turn to just the right news station that has a shred of a story relevant to your current affairs

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, it's not a treasure of its time, but I really enjoyed The Net. Angela's Cassandra-like warnings of the internet's borg-like assimilation knowledge have essentially proven true, and we didn't even have to kill Dennis Miller to get there. Fans of this type of movie--especially from this era--might be surprised at how a dial-up tone aside, this has saged surprisingly well. For the others, enjoy some pizza.net