The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen (6 page)

Cherish
is one of those films that people like to call quirky. It is an odd little story about a fantasy-prone woman named Zoe who winds up under house arrest for a crime she didn't commit. Robin Tunney plays Zoe as a hapless 29-year-old computer animator hopelessly in lust with a co-worker named Andrew (Jason Priestly). Many drinks later at an after work party in a nightclub, Zoe finally gets Andrew's attention. Before accepting a ride home with him she checks her car, only to be hijacked by a mysterious man in a mask who forces her to drive drunk and steps on the accelerator as a cop stands in front of the car trying to flag them down. The police officer is killed, the strange man disappears, and Zoe is arrested for vehicular manslaughter.

To avoid hard jail time while waiting for trial, Zoe cuts a deal to live under house arrest, wearing an ankle bracelet that sets off an alarm if she strays from her loft. At the beginning of her sentence her living situation doesn't seem that bad — there are worse ways to do your time than in a huge Ikea-filled loft in San Francisco — but the limitations of movement soon become obvious, and you realize that any place can become a prison if you aren't allowed to leave.

Despite not being allowed to set foot outside her front door she forges relationships with several people — a pizza delivery man, her wheelchair-bound downstairs neighbor, and a gawky local deputy played by Tim Blake Nelson. Through her confinement and the friendship of outsiders Zoe sheds her emotional handicaps and blossoms into a confident, resourceful, self-reliant woman. She's innocent, and since no one believes her, she must find the proof that will set her free. At this point the movie breaks loose of its claustrophobic feel as Zoe takes control of her destiny and hunts down the obsessive man who ruined her life.

Robin Tunney rises above the occasionally messy script to actually give Zoe an interesting screen life. She's spirited, likeable, and delivers a heroine with a bit of edge. She's the offbeat girl you see at the coffee shop, the brainiac with a secret inner life. She makes interesting choices that her more mainstream contemporaries might have avoided. Jennifer Connelly might have played Zoe with steely determination, while Kirsten Dunst would have brought a veneer of sweetness to the role that would undermine the character's natural anxiety. Instead Tunney plays Zoe as a subtle oddball, a woman just slightly out-of-step with everyone else. It is this very quality that makes her transformation so much more interesting and believable. Few recent Hollywood movies have strong central female characters, so it is refreshing to see a film in which the female lead is in virtually every scene.

Tim Blake Nelson's lovesick deputy is an understated gem of a performance. At first he's all business, but he slowly warms to Zoe and finds his well-ordered life slowly turned upside down as he develops decidedly unprofessional feelings for her. His is a key character, on the one hand representing authority and incarceration, and on the other Zoe's ticket to freedom. It's a finely layered act without any of the showy aspects of his work in
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
or
Minority Report
.

Other well-known names pop up in small supporting roles. Alternative rocker Liz Phair fares well enough in the bland part of Brynn, one of Zoe's co-workers, but doesn't make much of an impression. Nora Dunn, best known for her five-year stint on
Saturday Night Live
, plays a no-nonsense attorney with gusto, but it is Jason Priestly as the object of Zoe's affections who steals the show. Age has rounded his handsome face somewhat, which makes him less a teen idol and more the good-looking guy who could actually work in the next cubicle to yours. It's a self-deprecating portrayal that slyly pokes fun at his former cheesecake status.

The pop music of the 1970s and '80s propels the movie, and is used to illustrate Zoe's inner life. The themes of stalking and unrequited love are underscored by radio hits by Hall & Oates and The Association. The songs may sound familiar, but in this context the lyrics to “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell or 10 CC's “I'm Not in Love” resonate with creepy undertones.

Cherish
isn't a perfect movie. The basic plot is implausible. Anyone who has watched
Law and Order
can tell you that people who are suspected of killing police officers are not treated to house arrest, and certainly no cop would treat Zoe the way that Blake's character does. If you can ignore the movie's key flaw, there is a great deal here to appreciate.

You probably haven't seen one of the best movies about rock and roll ever made, and Mick Jagger wants to make sure that you never do.
Cocksucker Blues
, the legendary documentary about the Rolling Stones, is so raunchy it even made the Fab Five blush. Although it was produced with the full co-operation of the band, they still took director Robert Frank to court to block its distribution.

The Rolling Stones first met the Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank at a mansion in Los Angeles during the sessions for
Exile on Main Street
. As Europeans they shared a common fascination with American culture. The Stones were walking encyclopedias of Southern blues, while Frank had traveled the States in the mid-'50s snapping a series of photographs that would be released as a book titled
The Americans
. By the time of their meeting in 1972 the Stones were the biggest rock band in the world, and
The Americans
was already regarded as one of the classic photography books of the century.

After their initial meeting Frank was hired to provide the cover art for
Exile on Main Street
. He gave them a photo he had taken in 1950 of a collage of circus freaks from the wall of a tattoo parlor on Route 66. The cover photo was met with such critical acclaim that the Stones decided to expand their working relationship with Frank, and hired him to shoot a no-holds-barred documentary of their 1972 American tour, to be produced by the legendary owner of Chess Records, Marshall Chess.

The Stones had not performed in the U.S. since the December 1969 debacle at the Altamont Racetrack, the final date on a tour that was filmed by Albert and David Maysles and released as a full-length feature film titled
Gimme Shelter
. Shot in the waning moments of the 1960s,
Gimme Shelter
not only documents the actual end of the decade, but its ideological end as well. During the Altamont concert the Hell's Angels, hired by the Stones to act as security, used pool cues and knives to beat an 18-year-old African-American audience member to death. As the Stones played “Under My Thumb” and Meredith Hunter lay dying on the ground, the image profoundly signaled the end of the era of peace and love. It was an historical moment, and the Rolling Stones had it on film.

Gimme Shelter
is an above-average rockumentary, and the inclusion of the controversial Altamont footage assured that it would be successful. Three years later, it was time for a follow-up. Jagger decided to call the new movie
Cocksucker Blues
after a raunchy tune he had written about a gay hooker in London, and gave Frank an all-access pass to shoot wherever and whatever he wanted. That was a decision that would later come back to haunt the band.

Frank chose to shoot the film
cinema verité
style in crisp black and white, which lends a stark newsreel feel to the movie. His dispassionate eye neither judges nor comments, preferring to let viewers draw their own conclusions as he films Keith Richard's descent into heroin addiction, or a battered woman trying to hide her face from the camera. There are many outrageous sequences in the film: saxophonist Bobby Keyes and Keith Richard indulge in one of the great rites of passage for any rock star — throwing a television out of a hotel window; Keith advises Mick on the best way to snort cocaine; naked groupies masturbate for the camera — and one gets the feeling that they are genuine, despite the Stones' later claim that Frank staged some of the more decadent scenarios. As part of a legal settlement with the band Frank was forced to add a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie stating, “all scenes except the musical performances are fictitious.”

To my mind the thing that makes this documentary special, setting it heads above the other anything-that-is-worth-doing-is-worth-overdoing music movies is not the sensational sex, drugs, and rock and roll footage, but the shots of the band in the downtime between concerts. This, I suspect, is the side that the myth-hungry Rolling Stones didn't want you to see.

Frank unblinkingly shows us the tedium of life on the road, and allows the real lives of the band members to be revealed. Mick, the ultimate rock star, for example, is seen trying to deal with his high- maintenance wife Bianca, who is often seen crying and playing with a small music box. The band is shown killing time between gigs by ordering room service, engaging in inconsequential conversations, or simply by not speaking at all. This was hardly the high glam life that would be expected from the “World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band,” although these are the scenes that humanize the group and put a pinprick in the bubble of fame that surrounded the Stones in their glory days. Director Jim Jarmusch called
Cocksucker Blues
“definitely one of the best movies about rock and roll I've ever seen. It makes you think that being a rock star is one of the last things you'd ever want to do.”

There are also some great in-concert moments, although
Cocksucker Blues
is by no means a concert flick. In one memorable sequence Frank intercuts backstage antics of roadies snorting coke with the Stones on-stage performing “Midnight Rambler.” The images pile up on one another, creating a hypnotic tableau that shows both the public and private faces of the band. In those frames Frank captures the true dichotomy of the group and life on the road. Other standout performances include an “Uptight”/”Satisfaction” medley (with Stevie Wonder), “Happy,” and “Street Fighting Man.”

The era when it would be possible to make a film like this showing a band at this level is over. Now publicists would run interference at every stop, and every media-savvy groupie would demand a release form and a fee.
Cocksucker Blues
may represent our last truly unfettered look into the lives of rock gods at the peak of their fame. The practice of celebrity journalism has been dealt a mortal blow by overzealous celebrity minders whose purpose in life is to sanitize their client's images and make sure that compromising situations like the ones in this movie never see the light of day.

Not everyone agrees with my assessment of
Cocksucker Blues
as the greatest (and most revealing) rock movie ever, least of all the Rolling Stones. “I thought it was a piece of shit actually,” Bill Wyman, the Stones' original bass player, told
Reel to Real
in September 2001. “I thought it was so amateur and so poorly done, I just couldn't relate to it. [Robert Frank] was obviously just looking for anything sensational. That's why me and Charlie are hardly in it, because we weren't sensational. All the good bits, I thought, were cut out. It was just like a poor home movie, shot badly. I couldn't relate to it. I had no interest in it really.”

The film has had very few public screenings. Frank's vision of rock-and-roll superstardom may have been too raw for the Stones, who sued to have the film shelved. Instead of suppressing the film completely, they reached a complicated settlement that allows Frank to show the film once a year, as long as he is in attendance. Bootleg copies — with a picture quality that “sucks as much as the groupies” as one critic has joked — have been widely distributed, and are available for rent in many cities.

Roman Coppola has worked on his father's films since he was a teenager, doing sound on
The Outsiders
and directing the second unit and special effects for
Bram Stoker's Dracula
.
CQ
is his feature film debut, although he is already well known for directing music videos.

The action takes place in Paris in 1968 and involves a character named Paul (Jeremy Davies), an idealistic American film student who ends up directing a sci-fi B-movie called
Dragonfly
. The movie within the movie has notes of Jane Fonda's
Barbarella
, featuring a sexy, butt-kicking heroine who embodies the late-'60s ideal of female empowerment. Paul is hired by a flamboyant Dino De Laurentiis-esque character (Giancarlo Giannini) to finish directing the movie after the original director (Gérard Depardieu) was fired for not providing a satisfying conclusion to the story. Paul feels pressure to wrap up the film, while fielding advances from his sultry American leading lady (Angela Lindvall), and fighting with his Parisian political activist girlfriend (Elodie Bouchez).
CQ
is an incredibly layered and stylistic film, maybe too much so. There are two films within the film, and Coppola cuts back and forth randomly, using Paul's black-and-white experimental film to provide the emotional core of the story, while the science-fiction film propels the action.

“During the writing process, I'd put music on and look through magazines and watch movies and get receptive to things that impressed me one way or the other,” Coppola told
Hollywood Bitchslap
. “It was fun. You just collect all these ingredients and then start to weave them together and try to make some sense of things.” It's a valiant try, and while it's not completely successful, I really liked
CQ
. Coppola has nailed the time and place perfectly — Paris in 1968 looks like the hippest spot on earth — and coaxed good performances from his actors. Another bonus is the groovy soundtrack by über-hipsters Mellow that actually adds to the movie, rather than just support it.