STREAMING WARS

Your Weekly Film Queue

BY BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON @thobennett

INDIE PICK:

To most moviegoers, Justin Lin is the director who refashioned the Fast & Furious series, originally a scrappy street racing saga, as a winking epic of 007 proportions. Yet he got his start with Shopping for Fangs (1997), a minor masterpiece about love, sex, Asian American stereotypes, and proper hair care for werewolves.

Co-directed by Quentin Lee, the film stars Radmar Agana Jao as Phil, a payroll clerk troubled by his rapidly growing beard (in order to comply with his office’s ban on facial hair, he has to shave every hour). Phil is also craving raw meat, but even his sister’s werewolf-researching boyfriend dismisses his fear of a full moon as paranoia.

In another strand of the story, a demure wife named Katherine (Jeanne Chinn) adopts an alternate personality: a lesbian waitress named Trinh, whose poofy blond wig and ever-present sunglasses mark her as a cinematic descendant of Brigitte Lin in Chungking Express (1994) and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944).

Like Lin’s breakout feature Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), Shopping attacks the racist myth that Asian Americans are the “model minority.” The more Phil and Katherine are urged to be stoic and submissive, the more they rebel (as does Phil’s mane, which eventually grows to his shoulders, making him look like a slacker Jesus).

After his Bruce Lee-inspired mockumentary Finishing the Game (2007), Lin became a Trojan horse filmmaker, smuggling subversive ideas into the Fast films and Star Trek Beyond (2016). I’m glad he did, but the beauty of Shopping, Better Luck and Finishing is that they allow him to sink his fangs into some unambiguous truth. Tubi.

Gods and Monsters (1998)

To hear pioneering horror director James Whale (Ian McKellen) tell it in Gods and Monsters, he prefers much of his oeuvre to his Frankenstein pictures. The Invisible Man (1933) is better, he argues, and he directed Showboat (1936) for God’s sake. That’s a serious film, in Whale’s mind.

So why does every person the retired director encounters in this snapshot biopic want to talk about Frankenstein? Pathos, pliability, costume design—you name it. In fact, Gods and Monsters finds its heartbeat when it just makes every character sit down and watch The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Upon viewing, Whale is both delighted and touched. His loyal caretaker Hanna (Lynn Redgrave) recoils in moralist fear. Across town, Whale’s gardener-turned-confidant Clay (Brendan Fraser) is upset that his barfly friends find Bride funny.

These responses speak to the many valid reactions to and intentions within great horror movies, but it’s the perilous quest for connection that resounds through both Frankenstein and Gods and Monsters. The dynamic between the ill, exiled director (Whale) and the wayward, boozy gardener (Clay) is complicated by exploitation and homophobia, but more powerful is their desire to be understood before it’s too late.

None of us ask to be created, but the monster’s guttural grumble of “friend” cuts to the core of what we need afterward. Hollywood, May 22.

ALSO PLAYING:

5th Avenue: Canoa: A Shameful Memory (1976), May 19-21. Academy: Mulholland Drive (2001), May 19-25. Wayne’s World (1992), May 19-25. Cinema 21: Blue Collar (1978), May 20. Clinton: Dead Ringer (1964), May 20. School of the Holy Beast (1974), May 20. Embrace the Serpent (2015), May 23. Hollywood: Dog Day Afternoon (1975), May 18. La Haine (1995), May 22. The Hidden (1987), May 23.