Thelma and Louise Redux … Sort Of
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
7/31/2024—I have medical procedures (kidney stones) scheduled for next Wednesday and Thursday (8/7-8/8/2024), so my next posting may well end up on Thursday afternoon or night.
Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass) rated R 105 min.
Here’s the trailer:
Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: (If you’re as dense as I am sometimes [if so, you have my deepest sympathy] you might not realize when first watching this movie how some of the crucial family connections exist so I’m going to just clarify them from the start rather than literally reciting events as the plot unfolds, because it took until close to the end of my viewing to understand clearly the Langston family structure as well as Daisy’s past affair with Lou. Even with that clarification, there’s a lot of plot to recall here, so let’s dive in.) We’re in some near-desolate area of New Mexico in 1989 where Louise “Lou” Langston (Kristen Stewart), a no-secrets lesbian, runs a gym. Into this bleak environment comes Jaqueline “Jackie” Cleaver (Katy O’Brian) from Oklahoma; she trains in the gym to pump herself up for a bodybuilders contest soon to be held in Las Vegas, NV. When Jackie first came into town, though, she needed a job, so to get a good word for her situation from randy JJ (Dave Franco), Lou’s brother-in-law, to hire her as a waitress in the bar that’s part of a shooting range owned by Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), father of Lou and JJ’s wife, Beth (Jena Malone)—see, I told you there are a lot of details to pick up on—Jackie has sex with JJ in his truck, soon leading to that needed job. At the gym, though, Lou turns her attention to Jackie, who reciprocates in some steamy sex scenes as well as accepting Lou’s offer of injected steroids in the butt to aid her rapid, ripped muscle-enhancement.
One night as Lou and Jackie are having dinner with JJ and Beth, the other women become aware of how abusive he is to his wife. Lou confronts JJ, but he counters by telling her about his tryst with Jackie which, as JJ intended, angers Lou. As she and Jackie are driving home Lou berates Jackie for having sex with a man, orders her out of the car but lets her back in when Lou notices a couple of FBI guys are nearby (we’ll get to why she’s concerned about them shortly). The next day Lou finds Beth's in the hospital after being badly beaten by JJ. Lou Sr. also comes to the hospital where his estrangement from daughter Lou is evident, although he promises to care for Beth. When Lou spouts off to Jackie how she wants revenge against JJ, Jackie—pumped up on steroids—rushes over to his house, literally beats him to a pulp, which horrifies Lou though she quickly acts to cover up the murder. They wrap JJ in a rug, haul him into the back of his pickup, which Jackie drives following Lou in her truck. Before they can get out of town, however, they’re stopped at a red light when up wanders Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), Lou’s former flame, who notices Jackie, oddly, in JJ’s truck while encouraging Lou to re-connect (to no avail). Out in the no-man's-land countryside Lou steers them to a ravine where in the past she’d helped Lou Sr. kill and dispose of his business rivals.
They push JJ’s truck into the ravine, douse it with gasoline, set it on fire. The next day Lou cleans up JJ’s place while Jackie continues with her muscle-building and steroid intake, with her growing agitation leading to a confrontation with Lou, after which Jackie walks out, hitches a ride to Vegas for the contest. During the event, though, she hallucinates vomiting up a full-size Lou as she actually vomits on the stage, ending her hopes of winning the event so she makes things worse by attacking one of the other contestants, sending her off to jail. Back in NM, Daisy gets enough circumstantial evidence against Lou and Jackie to force Lou back into a relationship with her. However, Lou Sr. bails out Jackie, sets her up to kill Daisy, which she seems to do just as Lou and Daisy are arriving at Lou’s place, but then, panicked, Jackie goes to see Lou Sr. but is knocked out from behind. Lou avoids saying much to those FBI guys, calls Dad who tells her he’s going to have Jackie sent to prison for a double homicide; however, she counters by telling Dad she’ll rat on him for his illegal operations if he turns on Jackie so he hangs up in anger. ⇒Lou cleans up Daisy’s body but is attacked by Office Mike (David DeLao), a guy on Lou Sr.’s payroll; nevertheless, she kills him, then goes to Dad’s manor where Beth’s recuperating but quickly turns on Lou for her involvement with JJ’s death. Still, Lou forces her to reveal Jackie’s location so she’s soon free, told to run by Lou. Then Lou Sr. shows up, shoots Lou in the leg, tells her Mom’s not dead after all, she just left him because of his criminal activities, with Lou’s cooperation. However, before he can do any further harm to Lou, Jackie comes back grown to enormous size (? Maybe this is a visual metaphor for how physically powerful she’s become on steroids?), pins down Lou Sr., almost kills him, but just leaves him for the cops to arrest. Lou and Jackie drive off but are shocked Daisy's still alive in the back of their truck so they stop, Lou strangles Daisy and dumps the body off the road while Jackie sleeps.⇐
So What? For the past several months (pretty close to a year, actually) I’ve found the number of unique hits to this blog have been in the 4,000-5,000 range while back in September of 2023 my monthly total was 57,916! I really have no idea what’s caused this steep drop-off. (Unless my occasional snide comments about Donald Trump pushed away readers, but, then again, I have a hard time imagining MAGA devotees would be perusing this blog anyway. Yes, I know that after the assassination attempt on Trump we’re all supposed to be more civil in our political commentary, but given how short-lived Trump’s “Unity” approach was as he’s now shifted his snarky commentary from Biden to Harris, I don’t think I owe him any more respect than I used to, which was a complete zero.)
Maybe back in last Sept. my choices of things to review, including going on the 5 stars-record with a couple of older classics, simply attracted more readers: Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987; review in our 9/7/2023 posting), Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966; review in our 9/14/23 posting),The Little Mermaid (Rob Marshall, 2023) and The Blackening (Tim Story, 2023; reviews in our 9/21/2023 posting), Inside (Vasilis Katsoupis, 2023; review in our 9/27/2023 posting). Lately (due to ongoing COVID concerns about sharing a theater with a large audience) I’m still focused on whatever I can get on streaming, which drew 5,692 unique hits in June 2024, based on these offerings: The Beach Boys (Thom Zimmy, Frank Marshall) and Challengers (Luca Guadagnino; review in our 6/5/2024 posting), The Fall Guy (David Leitch; review in our 6/12/2024 posting), Hit Man (Richard Linklater; review in our 6/19/2024 posting), The Great Jillian Hall (Michael Cristofer; review in our 6/26/2024 posting). Possibly, what I’ve been reviewing lately is too obscure for Internet surfers looking for commentary on current movies (although you’d think Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F [Frank Molloy; review in our July 10, 2024 posting] would have sparked some interest), but unknown (to me) factors seem crucial in what draws anyone to this blog in that for those Sept. 2023 reviews the hits to the actual postings ranged from 60 to 116, so it’s clear that an enormous number of Two Guys visitors were looking into older postings (a reality I see every week when I check my statistics), just as they continue to do recently, given that my June 2024 postings drew a range of only 34-57 unique hits, while this July’s review hits (not counting this one yet) range from a mere 24 to 46, so whatever in the recent past was drawing a hell of a lot more readers to this blog has, for now at least, faded away, although I still deeply appreciate those who’ve continued to find this seemingly-forlorn site, scattered around the world as you can explore with the last image at this posting's finish.
So, oh my, what to do to potentially increase readership? Well, how could I go wrong with a movie (streamed, of course) that features lesbian sex, illegal steroid use for a bulging-muscle contest, several deaths, and a seriously dysfunctional family which leads to even more dysfunctional relationships with previous/present partners? If that lineup of content doesn’t draw in the masses to pump up my readership, well I don’t know what else could. (Although when It was in domestic [U.S.-Canada] release, starting on March 8, 2024 [then a lot of other countries from April 11-July 16, 2024], it didn’t generate too much income [a bit more on that in this review’s next section].) Oh, sure, I could put on a mask for 2 hours, sit in the front row of a theater where no one else would go, watch and review Deadpool & Wolverine (Shawn Levy), but given that there are already 210 reviews of it on IMDb (as of tonight) I doubt seriously me tagging on to that box-office juggernaut (see far below) would truly enhance my readership, so for now let’s just celebrate the blood-thirsty lesbians of Love Lies Bleeding. Lou is certainly an interesting character (not that the others are anywhere near normal—whatever that is—but she’s quite complex), with one of her traits being a constant smoker while frequently listening to an audio cassette of a guy explaining how unhealthy this habit is which doesn’t appear to change her reliance on the smokes (she does finally quit, later in the story).
If what you want in a movie is just hot sex (mostly female on female here, except for that brief Jackie-JJ encounter early on), a sweaty woman pumping iron, horrid family relationships that could have been celebrated on TV’s syndicated The Jerry Springer Show (ran from 1991 to 2018 [if you really want to wallow in that sort of grunge see if you can ever find a theatre performance of Jerry Springer: The Opera {Richard Thomas, Stewart Lee; 2001} which I saw on stage in London but apparently was too raunchy to come to San Francisco {?} as once intended]), and cold-blooded killings, then this one’s for you. If not, don’t bother because you won’t find much else happening here. One last comment on its presentation: When I saw it on HBO cable (random scheduling one night, which I saw in the newspaper)—rather than on Max (where it always resides, but I have to punch in the title one letter at a time in Search)—the image looked a bit strangely stretched, so afterward I did check it on Max (via Search, although it popped up after just “L” so it wasn’t hard to find after all) to see that it’s widescreen (more so than the current 9x6 standard), yet not as stretched as the HBO version so if you happen to see it on that cable channel don’t be surprised that it looks a little weird there (which actually harmonizes with weirdness of the plot so it’s still all good ... maybe).
Bottom Line Final Comments: Love Lies Bleeding began its theatrical run last March, was gone by the end of April domestically, made only $8.3 million ($12.5 million worldwide), so if you’re interested now you’ll need to turn to streaming (unless, like me, you happen upon it on HBO) where you’ll find it for free on Max (if you have a subscription to that platform which I get along with my monthly $10 to Comcast for HBO, or Max is available on its own for $9.99 a month if you’re fabulously-frugal) or pay $5.99 to Apple TV+ for a rental. The CCAL encourages such interest with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at 94%, the Metacritic average score at 77% (it takes a lot to get them to 80% or above; only happened 9 times so far this year for 35 options both I and they reviewed [not counting 3 other very independent releases I reviewed that they didn’t address at all]). Certainly this is not a movie that appeals to all tastes—looks like the RT reviewers are considerably more impressed with the consistently-woven film noir attitude you’ll encounter in … Bleeding than the MC folks, so maybe you should skim over some of their positive and negative responses to get a better context of whether you’d be eager to see it or not. While you’re mulling it over, though, you can listen to my usual end-of-review Musical Metaphor which this time is Elton John’s “Love Lies Bleeding” (paired as it often is in concert with his “Funeral for a Friend,” the first 2 cuts on the 1973 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvcIborfG0Y (from a show at NYC’s Madison Square Garden), which, curiously enough, isn’t used in this movie’s soundtrack.* (Come on, production team, do I have to do everything for you?) Admittedly, the song’s about a romantic breakup which isn’t the main thrust of this cinematic story, but lyrics like “I wonder if those changes have left a scar on you / Like all the burnin’ hoops of fire that you and I passed through” seem to me to be quite relevant to the saga of Lou and Jackie (and there are more than enough funerals implied in Love Lies Bleeding to connect up with John’s instrumental piece as well).
*This odd omission reminds me of another mismatch of song and film concerning Gene Pitney’s 1962 hit (written by Burt Bacharach, Hal David; on Pitney’s 1962 Only Love Can Break a Heart album) "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence" referring to a fabulous film of that year (same title; directed by John Ford; starring James Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles, Andy Devine, Woody Strode, and John Carradine, among others) where the song’s lyrics refer to the film’s content, yet it’s not part of the soundtrack. I can’t encourage you enough to see this film’s exploration of the foundational American myth of wilderness vs. garden, contrasting individuality with community (shots from the film accompany Pitney’s song here). You can check out JustWatch for streaming options.
SHORT TAKES
First in this final segment, here's a quick follow-up to a comment I made last week in the process of meandering through my review of Memory (Michel Franco), noting Peter Sarsgaard (great in Memory) in the Apple TV+ streaming series Presumed Innocent where I said I’d be watching for comparison to the movie version of Scott Turow‘s novel (1987), based like the TV series, with the same title (Alan J. Pakula, 1990), as the older one focused on Harrison Ford’s character (played by Jake Gyllenhaal for Apple). While I’m not reviewing the older movie here, I’ll note it’s much truer to the book so current screenwriter (of most episodes, sometimes with a co-writer) David E. Kelly took the story in some different directions, with Sarsgaard’s prominent TV character barely a presence in the movie. I still lean a bit toward the Apple version, but you’d likely find the movie enjoyable also.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
(1) Deadpool & Wolverine pushes Marvel Cinematic Universe past $30 billion globally (for an historic first); (2) Deadpool & Wolverine contains a eulogy for 20th Century Fox, the former home of the X-Men franchise; (3) The latest Superman finishes filming; (4) Bob Dylan experts largely praise Timothée Chalamet's take on Dylan in the upcoming A Complete Unknown.
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Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 5,692—a huge drop-off from the marvelous 40-50K of some recent months; never overestimate yourself! (As always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with our hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers.) Below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (with appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guys’ site):
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