Biodome deserves its reputation as one of the worst comedies ever made. When I say that Pauly Shore plays his character like a mentally disabled person, I’m not using a cheap insult at the expense of disabled people – I mean, legitimately, if you showed me footage from this movie without me knowing anything about it and told me it was of a man with a mental handicap, I would believe you, and it makes the movie not so much funny as vaguely sad. This is a man who is trying to be funny but doesn’t even pass as a functional adult human; like, you compare him to his scene partner Stephen Baldwin, who is also playing a dumb guy and, while he doesn’t manage to save the jokes, he at least has the basic skills of an actor playing a character and conveying that character’s thoughts.
There’s one element of Biodome that, I think, sums up the movie’s sloppiness and lack of craft. The central concept of the film is simple; a biodome is set up to be run for a year, the two protagonists end up stuck in there when it seals up, and they cause chaos before showing how responsible they are by making the biodome work. This is a fairly typical 90’s comedy setup; engaging with the then-popular idea of the slacker, enjoying his laid-back attitude to life before ‘redeeming’ him by showing him mature and taking on responsibility. Biodome even includes a common part of the emotional arc in that the heroes are doing this to impress their girlfriends.
(The films of Judd Apatow would take this idea of a maturing slacker more seriously, for good and ill)
A time limit is an excellent plot device in a drama; Michael Moorcock advised this for churning out a book in three days, for example. Biodome partly sets up this time limit up with the image of a gigantic digital clock counting down until the biodome opens again. This is a fantastic expression of that – big, imposing, unfriendly numbers and letters. One would imagine the director constantly cutting back to this image as the movie goes on; something very similar to how Speed keeps cutting back to the speedometer of the bus, constantly reminding us of the threat even when it’s lowered by the bus speeding up.
One would imagine the protagonists gleefully setting fire to a bunch of plants and then cutting to that imposing clock, reminding us that every problem costs more and more in time and manpower for the inevitable cleanup. Naturally, this does not happen, and we never see the clock until the climactic reopening; if I were younger, I would attribute this to some desire from the creators to downplay the consequences to these idiots causing chaos, but now I’m more inclined to think this is just straightforward incompetence and lack of imagination from the creators.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Futurama, Season Twelve
I’ve been showing my partner Futurama, and we finally reached the seasons I haven’t seen. I skipped the second (and third) Hulu seasons, but I decided to keep going through. This picks up significantly from last season, I enjoyed it as much as any other. I think the buffalo episode was my favorite. That said: Billy West is very old and has lost his edge, to the point of it being a little depressing.
That’s some feat given that there have only been three Hulu seasons. And season 12 is the second Hulu season.
Let me rephrase: I didn’t watch the second and third Hulu seasons when they came out, and I’m watching them now.
Wuthering Heights
The 1939 version. This has moments where it approximates the intense pull of the book, and it even gives you a bit of Heathcliff as a chillingly domestic villain (the turnabout with the once-abusive Hindley is a kind of fair play, though Heathcliff makes it more skin-crawling by mixing it with a kind of indulgent faux-care; what he does to Isabella is certainly and obviously not). You do get a sense of the outsized passions of Cathy and Heathcliff and how they feel like they’re on a different and grander scale of reality than everyone else, sometimes for good but mostly for ill. But ultimately, this pulls back, soft-pedaling the novel’s horror to make for better romantic melodrama–not only are we very conveniently not getting a next generation here, Isabella in particular gets no closure here as we move on to some reunited ghosts. The latter part is what matters more; you can adapt a work badly but still make a great movie, but the loss of interest in Isabella is a problem in the film itself.
Anyway: a quite good, if not fully great, movie, and a decent enough adaptation of some aspects of a masterpiece.
He Walked by Night
For Movie Club. This is a fascinating meld of methodical and propagandistic procedural (the LAPD is shining a light into the city’s darkest corners!) and nightmarish existential noir (actually, the darkness of those corners and of man’s very soul is unknowable!), and accordingly, the two best scenes are a Brought to You by Identi-Kit assembling of a composite sketch, all rationality-infused process, and a bleak chase through the sewers that ends in violence. Incredible cinematography. Great discussion, as always.
Withnail and I
“We’ve gone on holiday by mistake” has to be one of the greatest lines in movies, and Richard E. Grant has to be one of the world’s most tragically affecting comedic leads: awful, doomed, weirdly brilliant, cowardly, callous about others’ feelings, sensitive about his own, and constantly drunk off his tits. And to top it all off, he’s joined by an exquisitely nervous but much more salvageable Paul McGann, a Richard Griffiths who proves that all Withnail’s traits run in the family, and Ralph Brown as a very delightful drug dealer. Fantastic stuff, and Withnail’s final Hamlet speech cuts to the bone.
Some more quotes for good measure: “I must go home at once and discuss his problems in depth.” “These are the sort of windows faces look in at!” “The only program I’m likely to get on is the fucking news!” “Maybe he fucks arses! Maybe he’s written this in some moment of drunken sincerity!” “I’ve got a bastard behind the eyes.” “That’s what you’d say, but that wouldn’t wash with Geoff.”
Shutter Island
Stirring, thunderous pulp, but it hits every note so heavily–until the last scene, which dials it back and is magnificent–that it leaves me feeling a little more tired than impressed, even though I think it’s a very good technical achievement on its own merits.
“How would you describe your therapy style?”
“I’d say it’s about 90% LARPing.”
I don’t think you’re wrong about Shutter Island hammering its notes, but to extend the metaphor its tempo and variation in chords if not tone (here’s Emily Mortimer! Now here’s Patricia Clarkson! RAINSTORM!) keeps the movie moving, especially with the reveal of why it has been moving like this and for whom. I think in that aspect and more importantly the secret history of American depravity (as well as DiCaprio of course) this twins with Killers Of The Flower Moon — Scorsese lifts that scene of DiCaprio walking into the room of conspirators in Moon directly from the one here.
Going off what you said about the “for whom” aspect, it’s a cool detail that DiCaprio is having migraines off and on throughout. “This feels like a migraine” sounds like an insult, but here it seems fully intentional and crafted for effect, so I don’t mean it as one at all; the ultimate reveal shows how thoroughly we were in DiCaprio’s shoes and does sell the tonal POV.
I’M GONNA BE A STAR! I remember the gay panic in Withnail not playing great but maybe I was being a bit oversensitive. (To be fair, sweaty, leering Richard Griffiths pawing at me would freak me out too.)
The gay panic is definitely there and even starts well before the pawing does, but it also feels pretty grounded in Marwood specifically and counterbalanced by Monty ultimately being about as sympathetic as an attempted rapist ever has been (to the point where even Marwood, once he’s out of grabbing range, feels bad for him): there’s some real pathos there, as there is to the subtext and to Withnail, who loves Marwood–in whatever way you choose–and loses him, and that helps a lot.
Utterly unsurprised and extremely pleased that this is apparently considered a queer classic, on that last note: my people know what they’re doing when it comes to selecting offbeat art to get attached to. I continue to relate to this stuff more than to official, approved, or even fully intentional rep.
Wake Up Dead Man – Where is the comma, Rian? Where is the comma?
Taken as the next entry in an entertaining set of mysteries that try to both subvert classic detective stories and pay homage, this one is probably my favorite. The mystery is somewhat overwrought, but no more so that most in the genre, and the goings-on are greatly shored up by the best PoV character yet, Josh O’Connor as an earnest but truly caring priest who balances out both Benoit Blanc and the usual cast of fairly (though this time not entirely) terrible suspects in our murder. And for once, I didn’t find the 2:30 run time that long (though I am sure things could have been tightened).
But taken as evangelical-turned-atheist-turned-neither Rian Johnson’s rumination on faith, using a branch of Christianity he’s not actually part of? I am just going to leave it at, my approach to faith is so different from that of any form of Christianity that I can’t really comment other than to wonder how much he got wrong and how much got right about Catholicism. This was not, however, actually intended to be a commentary about “evangelical” right wing Catholics, I think, so best to stop reading that into things.
Elementary, “Rat Race” – Holmes has not checked in with Watson, and she is worried and admits to Gregson that Holmes is an addict and that she is afraid he has relapsed. We then rewind to see what has happened that led to this, which includes a murder by heroin. Like I said above, mysteries are often convoluted and we just accept that. This one isn’t that convoluted, merely unlikely, but it does flow smoothly from point A to point B and also lets us peer into Holmes’s reactions to seeing his addiction, and also lets Holmes and Gregson have a moment. (And for the record, Gregson knew.)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “The Creeper” – A very solid suspense story with a good cast and an ending we see coming for a while and cannot stop. Too bad Hitch’s outro was so sexist.
There’s no comma in the title for U2’s song either, so why should Johnson add it to his movie?
Literally had no idea that is an U2 song.
So I need to file a complain with them.
Johnson cheekily has O’Connor quote the start of the song at a pivotal point in the movie. Got me doing the DiCaprio pointing meme.
Midsommar Murders — there has been a murder and the victim is ME! These shows just put me out like a light 15 minutes in, some cocktails prior may not have helped but this is also just not my cup of tea.
Arbitrage — financier Richard Gere deals with the fallout of a business scheme gone awry and an affair gone fatal, we used to make movies for adults in this country. And those movies used to suck! For a movie named after a financial term loaded with unsavory and intriguing dramatic implications there is no real chicanery here, much of the plot is straight up getting out from under an accidental killing and the finance stuff involves Gere’s idiot daughter Brit Marling, who works for his financial empire, realizing that her dad has Done Bad Stuff With Money. What a shock! You fucking dunce. The killing stuff is more interesting although it involves Tim Roth, playing what appears to be a combination financial crimes/homicide NYPD detective with a British accent that’s disguising itself with the sonic equivalent of Groucho glasses and who spends 80 percent of scenes slouched over at obtuse angles approaching 150 degrees. Meanwhile Susan Sarandon is wasted, at least the great Reg E. Cathey shows up as a lawyer. A real polished turd from Nicholas Jarecki, who seems to have not made much else and for good reason.
Wall Street — finally, some financial crimes! This also has some weak spots, Daryl Hannah is outright terrible and Charlie Sheen is pretty callow (him crying at the end is absolutely hilarious, boo hoo hoo you dip) and the version on Criterion has some appalling transfer issues, but Oliver Stone knows how to make a movie move and Michael Douglas knows how to be an evil charismatic yuppie. Interesting that some of the stuff here seems to be fairly straight corporate espionage (everything with Terence Stamp in the early going) as opposed to outright criminal activity, but there’s a good amount of that too and overall a solid balance of understanding the basics along with incomprehensible Wall Street shouting bits. The ending is ridiculous in its feint toward justice, but what the movie is about is Hannah’s interior decorator making over Sheen’s apartment with hideous Julian Schnabel art and atrocious design concepts and the two of them making dinner with every kitchen gadget available in 1985*. Yuppie porn and if Stone clearly dislikes this stuff (Martin Sheen is the Good Blue Collar Union Dad) along with corporate raiding he also understands its thrall.
*the movie was made in 1987 but very clearly states “1985” at the beginning, five minutes later John C. McGinley (lots of great Guys in this) makes a Challenger reference. Whoops!
Dunno why but I distinctly remember Douglas’ nasty laugh when Hannah says she’s falling for Bud, he knows how to make Gekko’s cynicism so slick and appealing. On the interior decorating front, there’s also dancing to Talking Heads in your yuppie porn apartment!
There is a ton of Byrne/Eno on the soundtrack too! Very interesting music here.
Stone was drunk at an ACLU party once and embarrassed my auntle and their partner at the time by exhorting them to kiss, but he has good taste.
The main reason that I have a soft spot for WALL STREET is how it channels the whip-sharp dialogue (and pacing) of a thirties newspaper comedy with a Capra-esque populism that grew out of that genre. It feels like a throwback to a retrograde kind of Hollywood impression of New York urbanism that was out of style when SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS came out in 1957. In retrospect, McKendrick’s film feels even tougher, and less sentimental than Stone’s, and a lot less glamorously fetishistic.
I was thinking of a 30s gangster film — the brash young guy who takes on the world but then falls hard and learns the error of his ways. But yeah, it definitely feels of an older mode in a lot of respects. It’s funny how Stone really emphasizes the “good guys” winning and justice being served in terms of the feds/legal system cracking down at the end and not very subtly emphasizes various homeless folks throughout the movie, lots of people not doing well in this go-go economy — there’s an indignant liberalism at play that is entirely absent from something as bleak and vicious as Sweet Smell of Success.
There is something resiliently traditional, even conservative, in Stone’s American chronicles. As a director he is often quite experimental, exploring, through juxtaposition, documentary and fictional footage and colliding varying photographic textures that add a particularly jarring rhythm to his narratives, particularly from JFK to NIXON, but his moral sensibility are, like the film brat generation to which he is a spiritual kid brother, pretty much ripped from the liberal screenplays of Dudley Nichols and Robert Riskin. WALL STREET feels less divided between abstraction and treacly social realism, but I do really enjoy how it both fetishizes 80s style materialism and its inevitable come-uppence, like in the Depression era gangster films you cite.
The Ugly Stepsister The message is clear – the self infliction of harm on the body for the sake of patriarchal norms. (For guys who SUCK.) Easy enough to grasp even as a clueless dude. What makes this so powerful is the sheer punishment and degradation of Elvira’s “treatments”, never leaving her POV and desperate NEED, combined with an eerie, Bava-like quality to the color and look of the movie that I wanted even more of. The movie also doesn’t work without Lea Myren committing to the pain and horror. A disgusting film with a quality of mercy that is never strained by tapeworms or nasal bone surgeries.
V/H/S – How many boring/annoying/awful twenty-something douchebags can be tolerated in a horror movie? I’d say three or four and this has, oh, twelve or thirteen. First segment is solid but I mostly didn’t dig this too much, the third even has a tantalizingly good premise that *actually* connects to the medium (a killer that only appears via glitches) and it still trips over itself with bad dialogue and acting.
I’d defend the use of the douchebags in “Amateur Night,” where their qualities are significant to the plot, and then at least collective groups of roving young men redeem themselves somewhat by trying to do the right thing in the Halloween segment, but those frame story assholes are hard to take and I don’t even get to watch them being gorily murdered.
Still, I should probably watch all of these movies at some point, for my sins and because the ones I have fully seen generally have at least a couple segments I like. Though to be fair, that’s just this, V/H/S 2, and V/H/S Beyond, and I think 2 is overrated, so on second thought, maybe just the “for my sins” part.
Agreed on “Amateur Night”, but this points to part of the problem where I got mixed up on when that segment even began because all the roving assholes look the same. I was pleasantly surprised when the last group of young men decided to something right and wasn’t shocked Radio Silence directed that segment, cool effects!
What did we play?
More Slay the Spire II. After several runs with the Ironclad, where I never got where I needed to go, I decided to unlock more potions/relics by playing as the Silent for a while, and then of course I immediately won my first run as her with a deck build that I’m going to call “oops, all Shivs.” It was incredibly satisfying to amp up my Shiv accuracy early on in a battle and then replace my hand with all Shivs (sometimes after having strategically added more cards to it first), hitting enemies with a wave of powered-up zero-cost cards. And I got very lucky on relics on that run, too: I shall probably never see its like again. Now trying a more poison-heavy build, but I miss my shivs.
Hollow Knight on Nintendo Switch
Got a tip from Nath for the Watcher Knight(s), which resulted in having to beat one less of them then originally intended, which was quite useful and nice. After I beat them, I got the final ghost mask needed to go into what I presume is the endgame. I didn’t go for it yet, because there’s a lot of stuff I marked on my map that I still haven’t figured out yet, so I started tracking those down. One of those led to an item that lets me swim in acid, which already has opened a few more areas and new stuff. The most remarkable of those so far is a huge, scary slug that looked like a boss, but actually just gave me a new item and swam away. I’ll keep combing through the map this week, and move to the endgame after I’m done.
F-Zero 99 on Nintendo Switch
Played a few races, won one on Classic. Still got it, both the game and myself.
Sonic Spinball – Sega Genesis Classics on Nintendo Switch
I had a hankering for old Sega games, and I really wanted to play Beyond Oasis, but I didn’t want to commit to another action-adventure game while I’m still doing Hollow Knight, so I put it off and started this one instead. I made it past the first table for the first time, then finished the second. There’s actually some light platform and puzzle elements to this game, which would be a hassle to figure out on original hardware, but some light rewind is very helpful not to lose the thread and rhythm of the game. Also helpful is that you can move the ball (read: Sonic) in the air (so to speak), which is a real help on certain situations that otherwise would be an instant life lost. Made it to the start of the third level and saved the state to pick up late. Very fun, light, well-made pinball game so far.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on Nintendo Switch
Our niece stayed over and I played two-out-of-three against her. She picked her main, Pyra/Mythra, and, to even the field, I picked my three fighters at random: in order, I got Snake, Pac-Man, and Daisy. I won the first two and she took the last one, but they were all close, and I didn’t let up to let her win or everything, so it was a lot of fun. It had been a while.
I presume you know who Mitzi Shore is, yes?
I’m vaguely aware of Paulie Shore being a nepo baby, but don’t know anything about Mitzi Shore, no.
She ran The Comedy Store for decades.
Have only now had the epiphany that I’ve never seen a Pauly Shore movie.
Encino Man is dumb fun though putting Shore as the moral center was a real miscalculation (to the point where it sounds like a joke).
Biodome actually makes me ill just thinking about it. I remember watching it at the age of 15 and even at that age I had my regrets. God awful. I imagine it would be on constant repeat in hell.
It’s such an ugly movie, in so many ways.