Nov. 12--The first thing you see in 1993's "Matinee," filmmaker Joe Dante's affectionate satire of B-movie madness, is a coming attraction starring John Goodman (playing a producer/carnival barker type whose stock-in-trade is schlocky horror flicks) hawking his latest picture.
The year is 1962, and the Cuban missile crisis is on the horizon. "Yes, the atomic bomb is terrible," he says. "But more terrible still are the effects of atomic mutation." Goodman, clutching a cigar, lets that sink in for a moment. "Hello, I'm Lawrence Woolsey and I want to warn you about something that could happen. Something that does happen in my newest motion picture: If a man and an ant were exposed to radiation simultaneously the result would be terrible indeed! For the result would be -- dramatic pause -- 'Mant!'"
Dante is poking fun at a genre that gave us "The Fly" and other nutso stories -- a genre that doesn't quite exist anymore. But there's some deep irony here: The premise of his intentionally cheesy movie within a movie is, hilariously, not dissimilar to that of Marvel's forthcoming, decidedly upmarket, fat-budget comic book blockbuster "Ant-Man."
Goodman's character is based on William Castle (the man of thousand of gimmicks, known to install vibrating motors under theater seats to zap their occupants) and all I could think watching him was this: Why don't they make trailers like this anymore? With a winking, larger-than-life figure imploring audiences that this movie has to be seen? Has to be experienced?
Funny thing about "Matinee" (which screens Friday and Tuesday at the Siskel Film Center) -- I don't recall it coming out in theaters. Released by Universal, it only made $9.5 million at the time and has mostly disappeared from our collective memory.
Yet: "It's a movie that's just as relevant today as when it was made," longtime film writer Jonathan Rosenbaum told me. He selected the film for his series at the Siskel called "The Unquiet American: Transgressive Comedies from the U.S." (Rosenbaum will discuss "Matinee" in depth after Tuesday's screening.)
The series wraps up next week with "Down With Love" from 2003 (Nov. 21 and 25), an exuberant parody of Doris Day-Rock Hudson movies.
"About four years ago I was invited to program a slate of films for an entire month at the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna," Rosenbaum said, "and I was asked to do something on American comedy. I decided to try to show that sometimes American cinema was best in its excesses and I called it 'The Unquiet American' as a kind of joke -- the whole idea that nowadays Americans are not so quiet. The idea for this series is to see America as if viewing it from the outside."
With its focus on mid-century preteens -- driven by churning hormones and a craving to spend all day at the movies -- "Matinee" feels like pure Americana, verging on kitsch. It even looks a bit fake -- the interiors are so obviously constructed, they look like sitcom sets.
"It's the 'Leave It to Beaver' world, which is kind of a specialty of Joe Dante," Rosenbaum said. "That crops up in a lot of his films -- like 'The 'Burbs,' he literally had the set designed to resemble 'Leave It to Beaver.' It's this fantasy of America that we share with the rest of the world, because they have that fantasy about us too."
The movie's resilience lies in its social satire. "It's an especially good movie about war nerves," Rosenbaum said. (The Cuban missile crisis occurs in the background but the anxiety of it is very much underscoring the action.) "There's a relation between war nerves and this taste for horror movies."
It's also one of Goodman's more underrated performances. He's played variations on the seen-it-all Hollywood player over the years ("The Artist" and "Argo") but here he's given enough room to be both showman and salesman, a guy with a decent core who gets a kick out of the handmade spectacle, forever hustling and jaded but never bitter.
"Matinee" screens 6 p.m. Friday and 6 p.m. Tuesday (after which longtime film writer Jonathan Rosenbaum will talk about the film) at the Siskel. Go to siskelfilmcenter.org/matinee.
Shopping center or farm?
The documentary "Occupy the Farm" from filmmaker Todd Darling chronicles the fate of a particular slice of open farmland owned by the University of California at Berkeley and scheduled for redevelopment. Instead, 200 people collectively planted "15,000 seedlings to feed the community and disrupt plans to build a shopping center," according to producer Steve Brown. The film screens this week at the Regal Lincolnshire Stadium 21 Imax. Go to regmovies.com or occupythefarmfilm.com.
UK life and rock 'n' roll
The documentary "Pulp: A Film About Life, Death Supermarkets" tells the story of the band of the title playing their last show in their hometown of Sheffield, England. Director Florian Habicht interviews the band and drops in on various other folks in working-class Sheffield, bringing to life the everyday texture of the place. It screens at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Music Box Theatre. Go to musicboxtheatre.com.
1930 blockbuster
Jean Harlow stars in 1930's "Hell's Angels," which went way over budget (nearly $4 million in total, including reshoots to accommodate the transition from silent films to talkies) but the story of World War I combat pilots was a hit with audiences regardless. Directed by Howard Hughes, the film is "remarkable mainly for the raw sensuality of 19-year-old Jean Harlow as the free-loving floozy" (in the words of Siskel programmer Marty Rubin) and includes a "spooky nighttime bombing raid by a mile-long German dirigible that anticipates steam punk and 'Star Wars.'" It screens at 4:45 p.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Wednesday. Go to siskelfilmcenter.org/hells_angel.
nmetz@tribune.com
