My 10 Favorite Cinematic Madwomen

I don't know how this blog passer-on'ers work, but I've been noticing a handful of the blogs I read picking out their 10 favorite film characters, and a whore for lists, I'm going to post mine anyway (though I think you're supposed to be tagged). But instead of my 10 favorite film characters, of which I could never begin to narrow down, I've chosen my 10 Favorite Cinematic Madwomen. That sounds a lot more fun than the other idea. And, yes, some of these ladies suffer from a higher form of neurosis than others, but they'll always have a soft spot in my black heart. Note: I should mention that these are not ranked.

1. Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley) - Showgirls

"I used to love Doggy Chow too!" Beware of her flailing arms and legs. She's a kicker and, as seen in her pool "love making" with Kyle Maclachlan, a flopper too, and she storms out of rooms like no other.. Hailing from "different places," Nomi lights the Vegas scene on fire; I don't think the town has ever been the same since.

2. Dawn Davenport (Divine) - Female Trouble

"I've done everything a mother can do: I've locked her in her room, I've beat her with the car aerial. Nothing changes her. It's hard being a loving mother." The parents of Dawn Davenport, shit-kicker/supermodel/burglar/high school drop-out/"loving mother," were right: nice girls don't wear cha cha heels. And her best friend Concetta (Cookie Mueller) was also right: we're just jealous 'cos they're so pretty.

3. Ramona Lutz (Amanda Plummer) - Freeway

"I bet you like havin' your wierner sucked." It's hard to choose from Freeway's cornucopia of eccentric characters, all of which make Reese Witherspoon's Vanessa Lutz look normal by comparison, but I've always had a fondness for her hooker/methhead mother. Ramona's just under a lot of stress; her sister died three months ago and she's tryin' to get off Methadone. A special mention for Vanessa's lesbian cell mate Rhonda (Brittany Murphy) and the queen of the prison Mesquita (Alanna Ubach). John Waters approves.

4. Minnie Castevet (Ruth Gordon) - Rosemary's Baby

Politely refuse if Minnie offers you something she refers to as, "snips and snails and puppy dog's tails." That's the best advice I can offer.

5. Ashley St. Ives (Edy Williams) - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

"You're a groovy boy, I'd like to strap you on some time." I unofficially decided to choose only one character per director, and it was awfully hard to pick between fab porn actress Ashley St. Ives and Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!'s Varla (Tura Satana). In case you didn't know, there's nothing like a Rolls, and she'll be happy to show you (around the 9 minute mark).

6. Ruth Stoops (Laura Dern) - Citizen Ruth

"Suck the shit out of my ass, you fucker." When Ruth finds out she's pregnant (again), that doesn't stop her from hittin' the hardware store for some grade-A huffin' material. I'm still searching for the best opportunity to tell someone what she tells the guy who impregnanted her.

7. Margaret White (Piper Laurie) - Carrie

Margaret was right in telling her daughter Carrie (Sissy Spacek) that they all were going to laugh at her.

8. Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) - Mommie Dearest

Don't fuck with her, fellas. There's that famous scene, but I always loved it when her daughter Christina (Diana Scarwid) tells the frantic Joan that she isn't "one of her fans."

9. Anna (Isabelle Adjani) - Possession

Whether placing the meat carver up to her neck or making "love" to a demon, Anna commands the screen, much more so than her limp husband played by Sam Neill. Arguably one of the greatest moments in cinema history (and film acting) occurs when she exits the subway car and goes into a frenzy in the terminal.

10. Neisha (Macy Gray) - Shadowboxer

She'll take five drinks and something strong, bartender. Just when you thought asking Denzel Washington to see the warrant would be Macy's only explosion on the film screen (aside from playing herself in Spider-Man), she tops that with every one of her (two, maybe three) scenes in Shadowboxer. The best is when we finally get to see the "Ladies' Night" she was telling Vanessa Ferlito about, where the only other bar patron is a frightening drag queen she gets Cuba Gooding Jr. to buy a drink for. If only I had the skills to rip that scene from my DVD onto YouTube. Read more here.

I strayed away from the more sympathetic of the crazies, like Ashley Judd's Agnes in Bug, Faye's Evelyn Mulwray in Chinatown, Bibi Andersson's Alma from Persona and Margit Carstensen's Petra von Kant from The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. And I couldn't justify calling Kelly (Constance Towers) in The Naked Kiss "crazy."

You're a whore, darlin'

Because you know they just love doing it, Entertainment Weekly made another list... this time counting down the 50 Sexiest Movies of All Time (you can find 1-25 here, and 26-50 here), most of which is pretty asinine, although I (sort of) applaud their choice of Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight at the number one, even though I'm not sure it's "sexiness" resonates throughout the whole film enough for it to be the sexiest.

Shame, however, should be brought onto the mag for even mentioning 300 (which falls at number 50), which I will always lovingly refer to as gay porn for soccer moms (I didn't coin that, and forgive me for forgetting who coined it), a slice of ham like The Notebook, a cheese-fest like Dirty Dancing, an unsalted cracker like Cruel Intentions and a turd like Ghost. Shakespeare in Love and Mr. & Mrs. Smith could have also been omitted, and don't get me started on their ridiculous placement of fucking Once at #11. But props of course are to be given for the inclusion of In the Mood for Love, Mulholland Drive (duh) and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (and, of course, that impossibly sexy scene in Don't Look Now between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland)... If EW was so intent on choosing so many non-traditional "sexy" movies, where was Persona, which contains easily the hottest, fully-clothed, non-sex scene ever?

For a more inspired list, you can check out their 25 Least Sexy Movies of All Time, which goes from Showgirls to Batteries Not Included to Requiem for a Dream to Gone Fishin'.

Iced nipples

So, it's taken me about a week to post this, but better late than never. Ulrich Mühe, one of Germany's finest actors, passed away from stomach cancer this past weekend. Mühe starred in The Lives of Others as well as three Michael Haneke films (Funny Games, Benny's Video, and The Castle). He was truly be missed.

On a happier note, the day has come again... Nomi Malone's birthday! I will be spending the finer part of the evening with her and a bottle of the finest champagne I can find at the 24 hour grocery store. Do a couple of lines and ice them nipples up for what's sure to be a good time tonight.

Starfucker

I’ve always been opposed to the grading of films on any scale you can throw at me, whether it be on a star- or academic-scale. My mind changes too often, and frequently my grade/rating changes within the day or so. I can’t do the A/B/C/D/F scale, because technically an F is 69 out of 100 or lower, and most films fall under that category for me. I was only half-impressed with Breathless, so does it deserve the same rating as The Hills Have Eyes remake? I’d say no. With this said, I do rate films on my Netflix account, more to allow my friends to see what I’ve seen and whether it was shit or not. Often there, ratings are changed like crazy. Is The Departed a four- or three-star film? Can’t I have halves? However, since I rate the films I see on a five-star scale, I have begun to wonder about what is it that makes a five-star film for me? As my friend Tom has said, there are certain films that cannot fall between the 1 or 5 star, citing The Devil’s Rejects as one example. You could probably add Showgirls and Pink Flamingos to that list, though I may have rated Pink Flamingos three (whoops). So what is a five-star film and what does it mean for me?

My friend Mike rated the French Hitchcockian thriller La moustache, starring Vincent Lindon and Emmanuelle Devos, five stars the other day, which got me pumped to watch it. I did, and I was rather impressed… but was I five-star impressed? It’s thoroughly uncompromising and satisfyingly unsatisfying as only the French can do, yet I wonder. Will La moustache be sitting in my mind a year from now when the subject of Hitchcock comes up? Will I feel like I need to revisit the film in a year’s time? The answers are “probably not.” Does that make La moustache a shitty movie? Of course not, I rated it four out of five stars, but its significance to me appears, a day after viewing, to be fleeting. I encounter films like this all the time: exquisitely constructed, intellectually stimulating motion pictures that fade from memory like an aged Polaroid.

Take for instance The Science of Sleep (La science des rêves), Michel Gondry’s first credit as both writer and director. I found myself charmed, inspired, and beautifully frustrated with the film in all the right ways. After Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, I’ve gotten over my snobbish Gondry-hating, even finding a decent, if detached, appreciation for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. However, much of my appreciation for The Science of Sleep came from the exact time I viewed the film. My doctor has prescribed new medication, which has produced some of the most lucid dreams I’ve ever had, often blurring the lines of my own reality. I quickly snap out of these dream hallucinations, but that the main character of the film, Gael García Bernal, also has trouble with this distinction made me that more smitten with the film itself. Of course, it helps that Gondry has beautifully weaved his music video experimentation into a cinematic realm. It also helps that my romantic cynicism was perfectly matched with The Science of Sleep’s cryptic ending. So the question remains: will The Science of Sleep become for me what Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind has for slews of hip college kids? I want to say no; I want to say that my considerable appreciation for the film was because of the timing of its arrival in my life, not because it was of five-star quality.

With all this said, what qualifies as a five-star film for me? There’s the typical ones that everyone should rate five stars, like L’avventura, Double Indemnity, La dolce vita, Manhattan, Chinatown, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and that heap of garbage Citizen Kane (I kid). Then there’s the ones that, if you know me, are essential Joe Bowman classics: Showgirls, 3 Women, Blue Velvet, The Naked Kiss, Fat Girl, Freeway, and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. Then falls the tricky ones, the ones that I will never forget, even if they’ve already been forgotten by everyone else. Those would include Morvern Callar, My Summer of Love, Exotica, The Passion of Anna, Come Undone, Safe, and Before Sunset. For better or worse, these films also arrived at the opportune time in my life and have always stayed there. Some are hard to defend to others--I don’t even remember why I loved Exotica so much, but I still think about it a lot. I’m well-aware that these films in the third category are quality pictures, but they’ve become more than just films to me. Perhaps they serve as preserved memories of mine, or maybe I find something new every time I watch them. And maybe The Science of Sleep will fool me, as Morvern Callar once did. I dismissed Morvern’s hidden power over me just as I may be doing with The Science of Sleep. Only time will tell; the only thing you can be sure of is change… at least the change in my Netflix ratings.

And, by the way, if you want to be my Netflix friend to see what I’ve been watching and not writing about, or what Walerian Borowcyzk smut film I currently have at home, click this link to befriend me.

Birthday Girl!

I just wanted to wish a blessed birthday to one of my favorite screen goddesses, Nomi Malone... I mean, Elizabeth Berkley. She turns 34 today, and here's hoping that she gets back on the screen soon. At least her birthday list is easy: someone buy that bitch a dress from Ver-sayce... or just a bag of chips.

And, though Showgirls is certainly her masterpiece, we can't forget that she provided the best moment in all of the seasons of Saved by the Bell. Found here: