If you had asked me two days ago what my life was missing, I might have said something silly like "world peace."
Now that I've watched Never Talk to Strangers, it's clear that the answer was in front of me all along (or at least since 1995):
a slow motion montage of sex and trust falls
Quick Plot: Dr. Sarah Taylor is a criminal psychologist currently in the middle of evaluating an accused rapist murderer Max Cheski (the always welcome Harry Dean Stanton). Following the disappearance of her fiance one year earlier, Sarah's personal life mostly involves gently fighting off neighbor Dennis Miller, until one fateful evening when she meet-cutes Tony Ramirez in the wine aisle.
This is a man who knows his cabernet and looks and sounds like Antonio Banderas. How can she resist?
Sarah and Tony begin a steamy relationship that quickly fizzles out when she reacts weirdly to him shooting a moving clown target at a carnival. It only takes one reminder of Tony's luscious body hair to send her straight back to his industrial loft, because it's the 1990s and every sexy mysterious man lives in an industrial loft.
While her personal life is on the ups, her work days are a bit scratchy. Sarah's estranged father shows up in his Willy Loman drag to restart their rocky relationship. Cheski makes a few veiled threats. Then she gets a few presents: a bouquet of dead flowers, her own published obituary, and her precious orange tabby Sabrina cut up in a gift box.
The police give the super helpful and comforting advice that they can't do anything about this, and that Sarah's best bet is hire a private detective (the more things change...). He reports some unpleasant details about her new beau, but this being a '90s erotic thriller, there's always a whole lot more to the story.
And whoa boy there is! I would never dream of spoiling this oddball slice of Snackwell's era junk food. Director Peter Hall had a long career in theater, and he doesn't quite seem to know how to make Jordan Rush and Lewis A. Green's messy script come together (would anyone?). But then there's Rebecca DeMornay's steely blue eyes running down Antonio Banderas's bare chest, while slow motion flashbacks, and the kind of twist ending that sings like a soap opera aria.
High Points
The world has never fully appreciated just how sexy a screen presence Antonio Banderas has. Never Talk to Strangers gets it
Low Points
I think it simply has to be a tradition that anytime Dennis Miller plays an ex-boyfriend in a '90s thriller, he comes off as the kind of scummy toxic male who would whine about being in the friend zone and is easily the worst part of his respective film
Lessons Learned
We're all just animals with beepers
There's no such thing as a good domestic pinot noir
Electric heaters are always dangerous, even more so when INSTALLED OVER A BATHTUB
Rent/Bury/Buy
Never Talk to Strangers is a terrible exploration of mental health, and a damn fun watching experience. You can find it streaming on Tubi in all its sexy saxophone-scored glory.
Posts
Hi there, Im a lover of your blog and have read it for years now, but I have a quandry. Everytime i check the films you have listed as being on tubi-i go check and they are not there! Not a timing issue because for instance with this one,NTTS- you posted this yesterday and I checked their search mode today one day later and -zip! What's happening? Is it a regional thing? Does tubi have different content for different regions? Thats the only thing I can figure it could be. This is not the firtst time ive checked this issue promptly. Love your writing!
ReplyDeleteArgh! That makes me sad! There's definitely a regional aspect to any streaming service (I'm in New York) so that's one factor, and the other is that I usually have posts done about a month ahead of posting. So tubi, in particular, seems to gain and lose titles REALLY quickly. But the flip side of that is that the kind of movies that end up on tubi are USUALLY the kind of movies that will just move to another streamer, especially the library-based ones (Kanopy and Hoopla, words that sound like Disney sidekicks but are indeed useful streamers). When in doubt, I use a website called JustWatch to figure out if and where something is available...although often THAT's incomplete, since they don't always note some of the library streamers. I've yet to find a good resource where you can keep a running list of movies you want to watch that can have some kind of syncing/linking to a site that tells you when they become available. Hulu and Amazon will keep a record on your streamlist of items that you've added that have left the service, so if and when they come back, they're still there. But it's a pickle. Lately, I've also been piling up on Amazon digital rewards by choosing slower delivery options so that the 99 cent bonuses can quickly add up to renting movies. Most titles are on Amazon to rent, and considering the, you know, quality/popularity of the kinds I watch, they're usually pretty cheap!
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