POP CULTURE and GREEN STYLE

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Catching up with James Spader's body of work--and what a body!

Since I only fell in love with Jimmy recently (where was I all those years?), I've been renting or buying his movies and catching up with them.

So far I've seen:

White Palace
I found the storyline unbelievable, not because of the age difference between Jimmy's and Susan Sarandon's characters but because of their class difference. Also I didn't feel there was much chemistry between them.

Alien Hunter
(I happened upon this TV one night) I liked what Jimmy did with the role, although it's not my favorite film genre. Plus, I found the visuals too dark (color-wise, not thematically)

Secretary
I really enjoyed this, in spite of the strange subject matter. Jimmy did a great job, and so did Maggie Gyllenhaal. They were perfectly cast. I was surprised to see that the screenplay was based on a novella by someone I once worked with when I lived in NYC (Mary Gaitskill), only because I hadn't heard that her writing had turned into a big deal film. She and I were freelance legal proofreaders on the midnight shift, when she became a famous and critically acclaimed writer.

Pretty in Pink
Although there's not enough Jimmy in this film for me, I loved what there was, and really enjoyed the movie. Molly Ringwald is excellent and so is Jon Cryer, especially his lip-synch dance. The film also features the cute Andrew McCarthy.

Stargate
A woman who works in the local Blockbuster raved about this one. Jimmy plays a shy, good-hearted linguist. I loved Jimmy in it--I love him in anything--but this Star Wars clone was not the type of movie I can sink my teeth into.

[By this point, having watched all of the above films plus TV's Boston Legal, I was seeing how incredibly versatile Jimmy is from one role to the next. Unlike some actors who are the same from role to role, basically playing themselves, Jimmy's always a different character.]

Sex Lies & Videotape
I had seen this ages ago when it first came out in theaters and had forgotten much of it. It was quite wonderful seeing it now. And the screenplay was brilliant. I

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Since posting the above mini-reviews (and inexplicably not finishing the Sex Lies one), I have found out that my very own cousin (the son of my mother's first cousin's daughter) was the producer of Secretary! This means that I'm closer to Jimmy (in terms of degrees of separation) than I had thought!