Movies You Should See: The Creative Frustration Of “Chasing Amy”

Movies You Should See is a new weekly series of essays covering movies that aren’t recommended but everyone should see if they are serious about seeing great films. Some of these films you likely heard of, some may have been before your time but can easily be found on physical media or streaming and some are more obscure than they deserve to be. Either way, these are films I feel you very much should see if you are serious about being a viewer of film as both a artform and a important medium. That doesn’t mean there won’t be films on here that aim to be nothing more than entertainment, but the films like that in this series aim to be great entertainment, and not just a time killer on a screen. With the current situation concerning the COVID virus, and my ability to go to the theaters cut short, I will start this series. However, I plan to continue it even after I get vaccinated.

Before Maximax fell apart, way back in the 90s, the studio was a powerhouse of independent films. Maximax discovered a lot of great filmmakers, including such icons as Quentin Tarantino and documentary juggernaut Michael Moore. One of their most iconic discoveries was a guy from New Jersey named Kevin Smith, who made a low budget but ground breaking indie film on a very low budget, called “Clerks” in 1994. A movie anchored by dialogue and mostly one setting, the film evolved around Dante Hicks (Brian O’ Halloran), Randal (Jeff Anderson), their girlfriends, their consumers, and two mysterious drug dealers who hung outside the convenience store they worked at, Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith, himself). The following year in 1995, Smith made a higher budget follow up that was released by a bigger studio, Universal, called “Mallrats”. These movies were tied together by the presence of Jay and Silent Bob and the universe Smith had created of his characters running into each other in the state of New Jersey. The name of Smith’s cinematic universe is called the View Askewniverse. It wasn’t until his third film, however, that people started to see deeper issues than smart slackers and working-class joes talking “Star Wars”, smut and comic books, and that 1997’s “Chasing Amy”, again going back to a release by Miramax.

“Chasing Amy”, like most of Smith’s films during this era, has a unique way of capturing the counterculture of the time. Punk music and comic books were very much considered counterculture in the 90s. It didn’t quite have that mainstream appeal yet that we saw later on. It existed, but it wasn’t quite billion movie franchises or the basis for a whole hit sitcom like “The Big Bang Theory”. However, Smith added an extra element of this kind of culture in this film, which plays a role in the doomed love story. Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck), and his friend, Banky Edwards (Jason Lee), are comic book artists, and best friends, working in a rented space above a record store in New Jersey. The film opens with them at a comic book convention, pushing their publication. While there, they meet up with a friend of theirs, a African American comic book artist named Hooper (Dwight Ewell), who sells his comic books by pushing a fake persona of being a black revolutionary. In reality, he is a gay man who just wants to sell his comic books, and turns off the act when potential readers aren’t around. They also meet a young woman and fellow comic book writer named Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams) and her partner, as they are pushing their own comic book series at the convention in New York City.

While Holden and Alyssa start to spend more and more time together as friends, with Holden having the knowledge she’s unavailable from the get go, he can’t help but have feelings for her. Now a lesser movie would have not played up the gay angle, and found a more convental reason standing in front of Holden. Smith also adds an extra layer to his movie which plays up with the fact Holden is also in a way, jealous of her history, which is more active than he ever was. It’s a double sword, and they even at some point, do try to be a couple, sorting through confusion of the whole situation. Add to the fact that Banky is showing hints that this whole relationship he is having with her will ruin their friendship. However, there’s also pauses in the film that makes us think Banky feels even more than friendship for Holden. Smith is a really good dialogue writer, and Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel took note of that in their 90s review of the film on their TV show, commenting that Hollywood screenwriters should study this film for a basis of how people talk, instead of the fake way they write people as talking.

 Another thing that is noticed, and Roger Ebert pointed this out in his print review, is this film also shows the major flaw in a lot of standard romantic comedies. The idea that love isn’t a serious business. Ebert says Kevin Smith knows it is. We’ve seen so many romantic comedies with whacky and artificial setups of a guy having things in his way to get the girl of his dreams, but Smith turns that on his head, in two ways. One is the girl isn’t sure of who she’s attracted to, and second, the guy isn’t only confused about her orientation but is also concerned that if she does turn out to be straight, her history will make him not good enough to be with her. This is where Jay and Silent Bob come in. One of the great things about Silent Bob as a character is he often only talks if he has something profound to say, and he and Jay meet up with Holden in a diner, delivering a monologue about how he knew a girl named Amy, and how her experiences led her to want a guy as a person instead of a big past history, but the fact he couldn’t of gotten over that ended up being his problem and not hers, as she was ready to move on herself. Thus, he’s spent his whole life chasing a girl named Amy. This is a pretty head of the curve monologue for a movie in the 90s, which at the time treated romance as more whacky, and guy versus girl type humour. However, this also highlights the importance of independent film as a counterbalance at the time of mainstream film and humour.

Ben Affleck, Jason Lee and Joey Lauren Adams all give funny yet also pained performances in this film. The scene where Holden, Blanky, and Alyssa sit down in his apartment to try to dish this out is a memorable scene, with lots of hints about more complicated emotions than just simply fragile friendships and relationships, blurring the lines. However, in the end, they deal with this the only way they know how. They all make their experiences into comic books, and the fewer words spoken the better. Smith has credited this film with the one that showed he can write more than simply jokes. Smith’s films at times can be a mixed bag, but the best of his films are placed in the 90s, as they define the counterculture of that era, and leave us with great characters along the way who simply knew how to turn their frustration into their medium, just like their creator.

 

Movies You Should See: “Paprika” Is A Dream Exploring The Deeper Meaning Of Dreams

Movies You Should See is a new weekly series of essays covering movies that aren’t just recommended but everyone should see if they are serious about seeing great films. Some of these films you likely heard of, some may have been before your time but can easily be found on physical media or streaming and some are more obscure than they deserve to be. Either way, these are films I feel you very much should see if you are serious about being a viewer of film as both an artform and an important medium. That doesn’t mean there won’t be films on here that aim to be nothing more than entertainment, but the films like that in this series aim to be great entertainment, and not just a time killer on a screen. With the current situation concerning the COVID virus, and my ability to go to the theaters cut short, I will start this series. However, I plan to continue it even after I get vaccinated.

Very slight spoiler warning It’s no secret among movie snobs and anime nerds, Christopher Nolen’s beloved 2010 thriller “Inception” is arguably a rip off of the 2006 anime film “Paprika” from Japan. However, I will not be the first to say this, but “Paprika” is so much better, and handles the same themes as “Inception” with so much more depth, as it moves away from simply being a thriller about a detective running through dreams, and becomes partly a story about a detective whose life is a thin line between the nature of dreams and the reality he deals with. “Paprika” becomes a fiction about the discomfort and effect of fiction on very real people. The story takes place in the near future, where a newly created device called “DC Mini” is created by a team of scientists to help people in a psych ward with problematic dreams. Dr. Atsuko Chiba starts to use the machine to illegally help patients, by entering their dreams, and enlist her alter ego, Paprika, a young woman who is a dream of hers, to help her, help them. To test out the machines, she enters the dreams of the chair of the department, Doctor Shima, who’s dreams she finds nonsensical, a parade of colourful random oddballs and questionable human figures, in lush awe inspiring animation that is both beautiful to look at and frightening to ponder. When Paprika is captured, and can’t escape the dream, a detective Toshimi Kanazawa is enlisted by her, who himself is plagued by reoccurring dream, mostly with the recurring image of his deceased friend who dreamed of making movies with him, about ironically, cops and robbers, and mysteries, instead of the real version he became of it. The real version isn’t nearly as exciting but just as haunting. Kanazawa is asked to solve the case of Shima, who killed herself in her dream, and ironically asked by Paprika in a dream, creating a vortex where no one can escape their dreams. The movie becomes something of a fever dream itself, with a brilliant script co-written by the director of the film, Satoshi Kon, based on the 1993 novel by Japanese science fiction author Yasutaka Tsutsui. The animation is beautiful and the film itself seems like it should be more confusing than it is, but it isn't and has a story you can actually follow. Various YouTube compilations will compare scenes side by side of “Paprika” and “Inception” and while I think Christopher Nolan is a great filmmaker, and his “Dark Knight” trilogy is the best of all Batman movies, I wasn’t to into “Inception”, finally it overstuffed, but I was very into “Paprika” when I saw it years later. “Paprika” has the thing that “Inception” missed, I felt, that the dream setting was more then a twist, but the very nature of dreams is worth exploring, and who this detective feels like he is, unfiltered and, unlike Leonard DiCaprio’s character, in “Inception” has a less clichéd motivation. He isn’t dreaming of seeing his kids again, but of the life he wanted to lead, in a dream factory like film. The film ends, though, on a similar but much more simple note that has something to do with kids in a different way. After years of not being able to go to the movies, he simply decides to give himself a break and do so, bringing up an old love of his, and quietly buys a ticket to a children’s film.