I ♥ Geena Davis Circa 1986-1996

You know what's sad? What's sad is that you don't see much of Geena Davis these days. What's also sad is that she made less than twenty films in her career as a massive-mouthed, doe-eyed, phenomenally leggy, heartbreakingly beautiful actress.

In honour of Geena's 55th birthday, which was exactly four months and eleven days ago, I decided it was time to take a long, dreamy look at her in six of her greatest films from the undeniable purple patch that emerged from a telepod with The Fly in 1986 and died screaming with The Long Kiss Goodnight ten years later.

*FAIR WARNING: CONTAINS LOVE FOR CUTTHROAT ISLAND*

The Fly (1986)

Geena plays massive-mouthed, doe-eyed, phenomenally leggy, heartbreakingly beautiful, spectacularly-monikered science journalist Veronica Quaife in this cautionary tale about the dangers of two people with identical hairstyles falling in love. She may not be as memorable as the inside-out baboon or the pickled todger in the bathroom cabinet, but The Fly brought Geena to the attention of Hollywood, and as a result she owned the next decade. And when I say "owned", I mean "starred in some more films during".


Moment Of Geenius: The heartbreaking finale in which Geena forces herself to shoot a giant rubber special effect lent pathos to what could have been one of cinema's most ludicrous scenes.

Beetle Juice (1988)

Geena plays massive-mouthed, doe-eyed, phenomenally leggy, heartbreakingly beautiful but tragically deceased housewife and useless ghost Barbara Maitland in Tim Burton's 'spooktacular' (kill me now) comedy. As if that wasn't bad enough, she's also married to Alec Baldwin and is trapped in the afterlife in the world's frumpiest dress. Still gorgeous though, even at the end when she becomes a shrivelled, crumbling cadaver. Yeah, I dig corpses. I suppose that's frowned upon these days, is it?


Moment Of Geenius: I bet Helena Bonham Carter couldn't do this:

Thelma & Louise (1991)

Geena plays massive-mouthed, doe-eyed, phenomenally leggy, heartbreakingly beautiful put-upon housewife Thelma in this Ridley Scott masterpiece. From frilly doormat to gun-toting convenience store-holder-upper, Geena is completely believable as she careers further along the road trip from hell, and was bastard unlucky to be up against Jodie Foster for the Best Actress Oscar. Still, it was this role that meant she got equal billing to Tom Hanks, Matthew Modine and Samuel L Jackson in the future, such was the value of her stock. Plus! She wears some really small pants.

Moment of Geenius: Having spent most of the film being more of a hindrance than a help, Thelma finally takes charge of the situation by pointing a revolver at a particularly wet cop. Which isn't to say this is how one should prove that one is in control, but if you're Geena Davis you can lock me in my boot any day.

A League Of Their Own (1992)

Geena plays massive-mouthed, doe-eyed, phenomenally leggy, heartbreakingly beautiful baseball playeress Dottie Hinson in this perfectly adequate chick flick slash sports movie that I absolutely did not cry at whilst watching recently. With her carefully applied dirt make up and glorious auburn locks tumbling playfully over her sculpted shoulders, Geena is officially the sexiest female baseball player in movie history. Although her nearest competition is Madonna, and I wouldn't touch her with yours. 


Moment of Geenius: The splits catch. If I lived with Geena I'd constantly throw valuable breakables at her so she did this all the time.

Cutthroat Island (1995)

Geena plays massive-mouthed, doe-eyed, phenomenally leggy, heartbreakingly beautiful "notorious lady pyrate" Morgan Adams in this tragically underrated swashbuckler that beat Pirates Of The Caribbean to the screen by eight years and (controversy alert) is more enjoyable than any instalments of The Jack Sparrow Show. Geena's hubby Renny Harlin directs, ensuring plenty of slow-motion close-ups of his missus, and the film is all the better for it. What's more, she does plenty of her own stunts and fights, and she's bloody good at it.

Moment Of Geenius: The amazing climactic half-hour battle features some choice Geena action as she buckles her swash and rogers her jolly, or whatever you have to say in blog posts about pirate films these days. Whatever, she'd kick Keira Knightley's skinny ass right off the plank.

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

Geena plays massive-mouthed, doe-eyed, phenomenally leggy, heartbreakingly beautiful amnesia chick Samantha Caine - and her alter-ego, assassinatrix Charly Baltimore - in this rollicking action flick from Renny Harlin, by now known as 'Mr Geena Davis'. As the cuddly and lovable housewife Geena's hardly stretching it, but by the time she's bleached her hair, gone mental with the eyeliner and shot everyone in sight she's completely convincing despite playing against type. If I could swap my parents for anyone in the movies, I'd have Charly Baltimore and Mitch Henessey.

Moment Of Geenius: There are so many: firing a gun while leaping out of a building; firing a gun while ice skating; firing a gun while hanging from fairy lights and yelling "DIE SCREAMING MOTHERFUCKER!!". But the moment Samantha finally 'becomes' Charly, firing a gun while strapped to a water wheel and being dunked in near-freezing water, is Geena's greatest moment in this film, and probably ever.

Tragically Geena's post-'96 screen future held little more than Stuart Little films and TV shows, but I think she'd be comforted to know that there will always be a small corner of the internet devoted to her greatest work. And, of course, a small shrine made of some of her hair, toenail clippings and possibly some sanitary items in a cupboard somewhere in North London.

The Incredible Suit's 30-Minute Freeze-Frame Challenge #8: The Fly

The 30-Minute Freeze-Frame Challenge is a futile, inane experiment which judges a film's merits entirely on how good it looks at 30-minute intervals according to arbitrary and indistinct criteria applied by The Incredible Suit. For previous challenges, click the links on the right.

The Incredible Suit viewer Lowrezolushun suggested that David Cronenberg might be a likely candidate for the 30MFFC, and I agreed. After all, your average Cronenberg is so chock-full of inspired grotesquery that it couldn't possibly feature without spuking up a violently detached or mutilated appendage or some bloke's head detonating in an eruption of dog food and rabbit livers.

So I chose my favourite gobbet of fleshy Cronenbergism, The Fly, in the hope that it might put somebody off their lunch by giving us a pickled todger or an inside-out monkey. And what did I get?

0:30:00 Here's Veronica "well it's better than Smith" Quaife, looking all doe-eyed and gorgeous in a blue-backlit '80s kind of way. In this scene she and Jeff Goldblum are having a perm-off. Jeff's winning.

1:00:00 Here's Veronica, erm, closing a door. Haven't seen anything gruesome enough to make me vomit my falafel wrap everywhere yet.

1:30:00 Oh dear. Still, good to know there'll always be work for you on a David Cronenberg film if by some amazing coincidence you share his surname, eh?

Result (obviously):

The first shot was lovely, very lovely indeed in fact, but you can't submit a picture of a woman shutting a door or a list of names and expect it to meet the rigorous criteria of a 30-Minute Freeze-Frame Challenge Pass.

I think we've learned an important lesson here, apart from the obvious one about the sheer mind-boggling futility of the 30MFFC. And that is, not only is a very long film (The Godfather, for example) likely to fail, but a very short one probably will too. So The Incredible Suit is introducing a new rule:

Keep those suggestions trickling in, I can't be expected to think of ideas myself you know. In the meantime, for those of you hoping for something a bit more, well, Cronenbergy, hold on to your lunch:

WARNING!

The following clip is rated

for graphic scenes of Michael Ironside acting.

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The Back To The Future Birthday Bonanzagasm

I recently celebrated the anniversary of the day I emerged into this world, screaming and yelling because I’d just missed the release of The Man With The Golden Gun and would have to wait another three years for The Spy Who Loved Me, by having a Back To The Futurethon at my favourite cinema, the Joeyplex.

By crikey I love Back To The Future. It’s a perfect film in every way. Each time I watch it I find something I hadn’t noticed before. Today I realised how sad it was that George McFly’s lifelong bullying at the hands of Biff Tannen had completely stifled his creative urges. At 17 years old he wrote science fiction stories that he was too shy to show anyone because he couldn’t stand to be rejected, and by 47 he was wedged in some crappy job doing Biff’s work for him. Marty’s fannying about with the space-time continuum may have given George all the material rewards a 1980s family could hope for, but it’s the fact that he’s a published author, living his dream, that brings a lump to my throat. I’m just not sure why it took 30 years for his first book to be released.

Part II is slightly less lovable because Biff, in his various incarnations, crosses the line from great movie villain to completely unsympathetic idiot hole, and also because everyone shouts all the way through it. However I’ve never seen a sequel before or since that goes back into the original and turns it inside out like Seth Brundle’s telepod does to his baboon in The Fly.

Since I first saw Part II I’ve been perplexed by the backwards ‘99’ that appears at the end when the DeLorean is struck by lightning, but it was so enigmatic I just thought it was too brilliant to question. Received wisdom on the interwebs suggests it’s the flame trails, created by the time machine disappearing, spinning off into the distance. I suppose that could be true but I think it’s better left unexplained, like Marty’s failure to notice that his girlfriend and Dad have been replaced by lesser actors. Although I did have a big thing* for Elisabeth Shue at the time, due to a combination of unruly teenage hormones and Adventures In Babysitting.

Part III rediscover’s the trilogy’s heart and perfectly balances the race to get back to the future with a beautiful love story for Doc Brown. And the new time machine appearing at the end is such a “Yess!!” moment – which makes it even more brilliant that it’s topped when it takes to the skies and continues the adventure in a whole other story we’ll never see.

So here’s to the Back To The Future trilogy - a magnificent way to spend a birthday - and to its unsung hero Alan Silvestri, who composed a perfect theme for it that he never bettered. Great Scott!



*You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking what you’re thinking.

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