Tag: Guy Pearce

Dramas

Memento

LizLockeLeave a comment
Image credit: Memento, 2000

I don’t often think about how memory impacts my movie consumption, but this week’s pick Memento (Disc/Download) has brought it to the forefront of my mind. A film I saw twice in the theater during its initial release, but never again in all the years after, I thought I remembered its twists and turns. I thought I remembered the ending. I thought I knew who the good and bad guys were, but I was totally wrong. Turns out, when it comes to this movie, I have amnesia.

Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough film about a vengeful man who has lost his short-term memory asks a lot of its audience. It assumes we’re able to follow as the story is told out of sequence: backward in the color scenes, forward in the black & white scenes, with tattoos and injuries appearing in reverse, their causes unknown. If you make it through with even a vague understanding of the plot, then you might feel pretty smart. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much as a teen and still do now: Memento issues a challenge, and I enjoy being challenged. Technically a neo-noir, the film follows Guy Pearce’s Leonard as he searches for the man he thinks raped and murdered his wife. Characters come into his life (Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano), and you’re never sure if they’re heroes or villains. Ultimately, the whole world seems to be taking advantage of Leonard’s condition, even Leonard himself. There are things he doesn’t want to remember, and it’s easier to move forward if everything beyond the previous five minutes is a black hole.

The story takes place where most of the great noirs have thrived, in the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles. Lenny’s world is one of cheap motels, dive bars, and abandoned buildings, with keys to rooms and cars he doesn’t remember. Maybe you’ve had a night of heavy drinking where things got fuzzy after a certain point, or maybe you’re looking for one today. While watching Memento, I recommend drinking this Memory Loss cocktail.

Memory Loss

2 oz Rye

½ oz Fernet Branca

½ oz Bénédictine

1 barspoon Maraschino Liqueur

Orange Bitters

Dried Orange Slice

Combine rye, Fernet Branca, Bénédictine, Maraschino Liqueur, and bitters in a shaker with ice. Stir to chill, then strain into a glass filled with one large ice cube. Garnish with a dried orange slice.

Nolan would go on to have the kind of career most filmmakers dream of, delivering hit after hit both critically and commercially. He’s often played with our perception of reality and time, in films like The Prestige, Interstellar, Inception, etc., and in some ways, Memento seems like the forgotten film of his oeuvre . It’s gotten overshadowed, fading from our memories like one of Leonard’s Polaroids shot in reverse. Personally, I may have forgotten the plot, but I’ve never forgotten the unsettled way it makes me feel. Cheers!

Comedies

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

LizLockeLeave a comment
Image Credit: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, 1994

If you’re in need of a desert holiday, you could sweat it out in Palm Springs, or you could do what I did this week and watch The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Disc/Download) with a bottle of Stoli and your most outrageous outfit. I may not have a flip-flop dress, but the vodka is always in stock.

This Australian ode to friendship and being unapologetically outrageous is basically one big party in the outback. Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce are fantastic as Tick and Felicia, two drag queens on their way to a casino performance, but it’s Terence Stamp as their trans friend Bernadette who really steals the show. Bernadette has all the best lines, and I am very much into her Coastal Grandma aesthetic (which she rocked before such a term even existed). This film would deservedly win the Oscar for Best Costume, and truly, it takes a flamboyant wardrobe to even attempt to steal the spotlight from one of my all-time top cinematic heartthrobs, Guy Pearce. Somehow, the wig made out of bendy purple and turquoise plastic tubes frames his famous cheekbones perfectly.

As these friends are traveling through the desert in a broken-down pink bus, they naturally find themselves in need of a cocktail in the evenings. There’s usually an open bottle of Stolichnaya vodka, so let’s join in this party with a delightfully pink variation on the vodka tonic. While watching The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, I recommend drinking a Stoli & Grapefruit Tonic.

Stoli & Grapefruit Tonic

2 oz Stolichnaya vodka

5 oz Fentimans Pink Grapefruit Tonic Water

Juice from one lime wedge

Grapefruit wedge, twist of lime (garnish)

Fill a highball glass with ice, then add the vodka. Squeeze one lime wedge over the glass, and top with tonic water. Stir gently to combine, and garnish with a grapefruit wedge and twist of lime.

A road movie always makes me want a simple cocktail because when you’re on the go, you can’t always bring a lot of ingredients. Especially when you need to leave room for the giant stiletto set piece and approximately seventy-five different wigs! Let’s raise a toast to these ABBA-loving, wise-cracking, vodka swilling superstars, who for thirty years have been making our lives a little more colorful, and a little more fabulous. Cheers!

Top 5 Lists

Top 5 Andy Warhols

LizLocke2 Comments

My latest television obsession, HBO’s Vinyl, has gotten me thinking of all the great Andy Warhol portrayals in cinema. John Cameron Mitchell plays him on the TV show (unfortunately not very well), but throughout the years there have been some fantastic, creepy, and just plain weird versions of the eccentric pop artist. This week, I’m highlighting the Top 5 Andy Warhols, in ranking order.

1. Jared Harris, I Shot Andy Warhol

jared harris i shot andy warhol
Image Credit: I Shot Andy Warhol, 1996

This is by far the best Andy. Harris plays him as bored, lonely, and slightly naïve. Or is he? I want to check into the Chelsea Hotel and find out.

2.  Guy Pearce, Factory Girl

guy pearce factory girl
Image Credit: Factory Girl, 2006

Here we see Andy as part cinematic auteur, part heartless manipulator. Leave it to an Australian to nail the voice.

3.  David Bowie, Basquiat

David Bowie Basquiat
Image credit: Basquiat, 1996

I like to think of this as “Whimsical Warhol”. Bowie seems slightly stoned, like the looney old man down the street who wandered out without his nurse.

4.  Crispin Glover, The Doors

Crispin Glover The Doors
Image credit: The Doors, 1991

By far the creepiest Warhol. Do not let him put you in a movie Jim!! Walk away!!!!!!

5.  Bill Hader, Men in Black 3

Bill Hader Men in Black 3
Image credit: Men in Black 3, 2012

This one just makes me laugh.  I’d have believed it more if Hader played Warhol as an alien rather than a MIB agent, but still funny.

Dramas

L.A. Confidential

LizLocke2 Comments

la-confidential-1997-russell-crowe-kim-basinger-pic-1
Image Credit Warner Bros. 1997, L.A. Confidential

Gangsters and high-class prostitutes. 1950’s movie stars. Glamorous fashions. Russell Crowe when he was young and thin. That’s right, I’m talking about L.A. Confidential (DVD/Download). This 1997 film based on a James Ellroy novel and directed by Curtis Hanson is one of my all-time favorites, and an absolutely perfect movie to pair with a cocktail. L.A. Confidential deserves and needs your undivided attention, so put down the phones and laptops, and make your drink before you press Play because the plot has more twists and turns than a street in the Hollywood Hills.

L.A. Confidential centers on three LAPD cops iwho find their cases intersecting in one riveting vice/homicide mash-up. Guy Pearce plays bookish detective Edmund Exley, Russell Crowe plays the heavy-handed goon/good guy Bud White, and Kevin Spacey is the fun-loving Jack Vincennes who stumbles onto a vice case that was more than he bargained for. I love the way the script weaves back and forth between their cases, until eventually they are knotted together. Kim Basinger turns in a great performance as Lynn Bracken, the sex worker dolled up to look like Veronica Lake. I love movies that reference classic cinema, and it’s a lot of fun to see actresses/models cut to look like Lake, Ginger Rogers, and Rita Hayworth. Of course one of the best scenes comes at the hands of Vincennes and Exley interrogating Lana Turner and Johnny Stompanato. I laugh every time because it’s one of the rare comedic moments in this pulpy noir film (outside of any scene with Danny DeVito of course).

For my cocktail this week, I’m serving up a drink that would have been fashionable around the time this movie takes place. It was popularized by Raymond Chandler, another Noir writer, though I’m making it a little differently than he would have. In The Long Goodbye, he called for simply “half gin and half Rose’s lime juice,” but I like to add a little simple syrup to my gimlet. After all, Bud White is a sweetie at heart!

White Gimlet

2 oz gin

½ oz Lime Juice

½ oz Simple Syrup

Lime wedge for garnish

Mix gin, lime juice, and simple syrup together in a cocktail shaker over ice. Strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with lime.

White Gimlet

This film makes me so nostalgic for the glamour of Tinseltown, because even when they’re crawling around looking for dead bodies or roughing up a gangster at an abandoned motel, these cops still call each other by their full names and wear hats. Things were so civilized back then! Enjoy L.A.Confidential as you sip your gimlet, and try not to get so drunk that you end up whispering “Rollo Tomasi” in your husband’s ear for the millionth time while he tries not to become annoyed with you (not that I’m speaking from experience). Cheers!