Werth: Hello, Doctor Lecter.
Wise: Did I eat someone and not know it?
Werth: I'm practicing my Jodie Foster imitation for this week's Film Gab.
Wise: She and Matt Damon headline one of the most-hyped releases this week, Elysium. Looking at her, it's hard to believe she's been a movie star for over forty years.
Werth: One of her earliest successes was 1976's The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. Foster plays the ultimate latch-key kid, Rynn, a bright 13 yr. old who doesn't seem to have any parental supervision. She spends her time combing the beach, doing the NY Times crossword puzzle, learning Hebrew, and reading Emily Dickinson.
Wise: That sounds like my perfect summer vacation.
Werth: Soon uppity landlord Mrs. Hallett (the domineering Alexis Smith) begins to suspect that Rynn's poet father is not taking a nap or working in his office and confronts the self-reliant, Rynn.
Rynn has an ace up her sleeve, however, in that Mrs. Hallett's son Frank (Martin Sheen keeping it creepy) is a suspected pedophile, and he's been stopping by to compliment Rynn's hair a little too often.
Wise: I love a good hair compliment.
Werth: The film is a great slow-burn thriller that unfolds as we find out what Rynn is hiding, and how she's going to continue to hide it. A little romantic spark is added by Mario (Scott Jacoby before he played Dorothy's son Michael Zbornak on the Golden Girls) a crippled magician who seems overeager both as a character and an actor.
What really makes this film watchable is 15 yr. old Foster, who plays Rynn as a little adult—wise beyond her years and more clever than the grown-ups around her. '76 was a big year for Foster. She starred in Disney hit Freaky Friday and got an Oscar nom for Taxi Driver, cementing her image as a young actress who wasn't afraid of a challenge.
And she courted controversy in Little Girl by getting naked on camera before sliding into bed with her boyfriend. It's shocking to see someone so young take that kind of risk, but it wasn't really Foster. Her nude scenes in both Little Girl and Taxi Driver were performed by her body double, older sister Connie Foster.
Wise: Strong family resemblances also inform one of Foster's later movies Panic Room (2002). She stars as Meg Altman, a recently divorced woman who buys a brownstone on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where she and her daughter Sarah (a pre-Twilight Kristen Stewart) hope to reside in peace. The house previously belonged to a reclusive millionaire whose grandson, Junior (Jared Leto), believes that the old man had millions of dollars hidden in the titular safe room. He assembles a crew—Forest Whitaker as Burnham and Dwight Yoakam as Raoul—to break into the house and steal back the money. His plans are disrupted by the presence of Meg and Sarah, and what was planned as a simple breaking and entering erupts into an all-out war.
Werth: Breaking and entering: the gateway drug to crime.
Wise: The film is David Fincher's follow-up to Fight Club (1999), and he uses some of the same visual tricks—sinuous
camera moves, jump cuts, and off-kilter angles—to keep the tensions rising, although Panic Room lacks some of the humor of its predecessor. Leto has some amusing bits as a spoiled rich kid, but once the action gets going, almost all sense of lightness is lost. He and his henchmen gradually become more and more bloodthirsty as Meg prevents them from getting the money and eventually they devolve into chaos. There's something deeply horrifying about these bad guys that taints the rest of the movie, and no matter how righteous Meg's revenge, their depravity lingers like a bad aroma.
Werth: I'm still trying to get over the corn rows.
Wise: Some critics have hailed Panic Room as a feminist breakthrough; instead of being a victim of home invaders, Meg fights back. It makes sense with Foster in the part, although the film could have turned out very differently. Nicole
Kidman was originally cast as Meg, but she had to drop out of the
production because of an injury, prompting a major rewrite of the script
to reflect the change from Kidman's glamorous and fragile
characterization to Foster's more stouthearted one. Foster is
always best when her characters are driven into some untenable situation and she has to assert her own powers to claw her way back to normalcy. Panic Room seems to provide the perfect opportunity for that, although the movie never quite gels. Foster's kick-assery will have you cheering even if she doesn't quite save the rest of the film.
Werth: Chicka chicka chickabee.
Wise: Maybe you better save your Nell impersonation for next week's Film Gab.
Werth: Hi, Wise. Would you mind grabbing this jumper cable?
Wise: It depends on what you plan on doing next.
Werth: The Jason Bateman/Ryan Reynolds comedy The Change Up opens today and I thought we could have a little fun if we switched bodies for the day and learned valuable lessons about each others' lives.
Wise: You mean you want me to spend the day loving Joan instead of Bette?
Werth: Exactly.
Wise: Why don't we just discuss our favorite body swapping comedies instead?
Werth: But just think how much more fun Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? would be.
Wise: Freaky Friday (1976) is the granddaddy of the life switch comedies and stars Jodie Foster as teenage tomboy Annabel and Barbara Harris as her frazzled mother. After a quarrel, they both wish they had the other's life, and suddenly (and with no explanation), they do. Annabel spends the day contending with all the frustrations of running a house, while her mother has madcap adventures adjusting to the complexities of being a teenager. Of course, this being a late 70's Disney film, the action devolves into chaos, a car chase of unlikely vehicles erupts and lessons are learned.
Werth: Disney always wanted you to learn something. Look at That Darn Cat! (1965).
Wise: Right, but Freaky Friday does have a lot of charm. Based on the book of the same name, it was adapted by its author Mary Rodgers, daughter of legendary Broadway composer Richard Rodgers, who also had a successful career writing music for the stage.
Werth: Nepotism, I say. Nepotism.
Wise: Released the same year as Taxi Driver, Foster eschews the adolescent sexpot routine in favor of a fresh-faced earnestness that's sharpened by coming of age in a post-Betty Friedan world. She's a star of the field hockey team and an ace in her photography class, but she still has time to indulge her crush on her neighbor Boris (Marc McClure).
Werth: Who later played Jimmy Olsen in the Christopher Reeve Superman films.
Wise: While Annabel is the central role in the movie, Barbara Harris makes the most of what could have been a dowdy hausfrau. An early member of Chicago's The Second City comedy troupe, Harris had a successful career on Broadway before turning to film. In Friday, she plays something of a stereotypical homemaker, caught up in housework and certain that Annabel would be much happier if she ditched dungarees for dresses.
But the transformation has a subtle effect on her—at the least the way Harris plays it—because it liberates her perspective and she blossoms not just into a better mother, but a better human being.
Werth: There are no better human beings in my favorite switch movie, which should please you because it stars Bette Davis.
Wise: She's always the tonic for what ails me.
Werth: Dead Ringer (1964) showcases the aging actress as not one, but two greedy ladies. In what was hoped to be a triumph of mid-60's technical and acting achievement, Davis played identical twin sisters Edith and Margaret.
Wise: I just hope the Olsen twins never hear about this.
Werth: Edith is a down-on-her-luck bar-owner who runs into her well-to-do twin sister at the funeral of Margaret's husband. Of course, Margaret stole her now-dead hubby from Edith 18 years ago, and, of course, Edith is still sore about it.
Wise: Of course.
Werth: So, of course, Edith takes this opportunity to murder Margaret and switch identities.
Wise: Um, of course?
Werth: This whole movie is full of weird plot points. But what makes it truly watchable is Davis. After her comeback turn in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Davis seemed to relish roles where she could be ugly. In this film she plays not only the greedy, spoiled sister, but also the greedy sister who wants to be spoiled.
With a plethora of state-of-the-art '60's film tricks like doubles, voice-overs, reverse over-the-shoulder shots and split-screens, Davis smokes and vamps her way through this Doublemint feature. With total abandon, she screeches, pops her eyes, laughs grainily, and says lines like,"a wino" in her legendary patois, "a why-no!"
Wise: Careers have been made on a lot less.
Werth: Davis was never known for subtlety, but some of her post-Baby Jane movies took her performance to the level of camp, with only a few moments of genuine regret for murdering her sister visible in this performance. Despite that, Davis' iconic mannerisms are worth the watch—like when Edith creatively uses a red-hot firepoker to solve the quandary of how to sign documents like her dead sister.
Wise: I'm assuming that doesn't involve taking a penmanship class.
Werth: Dead Ringer is one of those films that you can't help laughing at, unintentionally. Still, you wonder if, while Davis was cashing the paychecks, she knew what she was doing—slyly winking at the audience as she took yet another drag from her cigarette. So you're sure you don't want to attempt my jumper cables idea?
Wise: Why don't we just plan a double feature of Burnt Offerings and Trog?
Werth: Fine, as long as we're back next week for more Film Gab.
