563 Something Wild (1986)

[Tom Hagen]

And the winner for the most unfortunate post to ever be accidentially stripped of its context by starting a new page goes to . . .

[Tom Hagen]

You know what would be a cool supplement for this, since, you know, there aren't that many? The ten minute music video of New Order's epic studio performance of "The Perfect Kiss" that Demme directed circa 1985.

[jbeall]

Fuckin' A this was fun! Not ordinarily a Melanie Griffith fan, but in the first half of the film she's so sweet as someone looking for at least a slightly prolonged illusion of happiness and normality, and when the camera shows Lulu/Audrey enjoying the temporary infatuation she's got w/Driggs, it's hard not to have a major crush on her. (Seriously, had I seen this movie back in 1984, Melanie woulda competed w/Mary Lou Retton for my biggest crush of the early-mid-80s.)

And Ray Liotta is phenomenal here. I am a fan of him generally, but he's intense. The style of his acting seems a little dated (as does the film), but he's so good in his role. Also, kudos to Demme for not arbitrarily tattooing "love" and "hate" across his knuckles. When Ray is driving to NYC in hot pursuit of Driggs and Audrey, he's white-knuckling the steering wheel so much that it'd be almost too easy to throw some temp-tats on his fingers...

One last comment: did anybody notice around the 1:12:40 mark, Driggs goes into a gas station where unleaded is $.69 9/10 per gallon? Man does that make me nostalgic! Anyway, I enjoyed the hell out of Something Wild; definitely picking it up during the next B&N sale...

[kneelzod]

Fuckin' A this was fun! Not ordinarily a Melanie Griffith fan, but in the first half of the film she's so sweet as someone looking for at least a slightly prolonged illusion of happiness and normality, and when the camera shows Lulu/Audrey enjoying the temporary infatuation she's got w/Driggs, it's hard not to have a major crush on her. (Seriously, had I seen this movie back in 1984, Melanie woulda competed w/Mary Lou Retton for my biggest crush of the early-mid-80s.)

And Ray Liotta is phenomenal here. I am a fan of him generally, but he's intense. The style of his acting seems a little dated (as does the film), but he's so good in his role. Also, kudos to Demme for not arbitrarily tattooing "love" and "hate" across his knuckles. When Ray is driving to NYC in hot pursuit of Driggs and Audrey, he's white-knuckling the steering wheel so much that it'd be almost too easy to throw some temp-tats on his fingers...

One last comment: did anybody notice around the 1:12:40 mark, Driggs goes into a gas station where unleaded is $.69 9/10 per gallon? Man does that make me nostalgic! Anyway, I enjoyed the hell out of Something Wild; definitely picking it up during the next B&N sale...

Oh yeah, I've definitely noticed the gas station prices in that scene when watching the film in recent years! I am not normally a Griffith fan, either, but I'm agreed about her being absolutely crush-worthy in this film, which was filmed and released in '86 BTW. I just revisited her '84 hit, BODY DOUBLE, yesterday via a gorgeous 35mm print at BAM's De Palma retro. She's equally fetching in that film. As for SOMETHING WILD, I'm not normally a big Liotta fan, either, outside of GOODFELLAS, but for sheer impact and overall excitement, I'd say his Ray Sinclair trumps even Henry Hill. Jeff Daniels is pitch-perfect as Charles Driggs (in the top two of his film career along with Bernard Berkman in THE SQUID AND THE WHALE).

[jbeall]

D'oh! I knew that--I must've typed 1984 because that's when my then-eight-year-old self was crushing on Mary Lou Retton big time!

[ccfixx]

Three Reasons: Something Wild

[swo17]

To save you the trouble of following the link, the three reasons are:

1. We needed to release something
2. This is something

[ccfixx]

To save you the trouble of following the link, the three reasons are:

1. We needed to release something
2. This is something

3. Little to no extras, yet still priced as a feature-packed title.

[CSM126]

"Three Reasons That We Used To Care. And Then We Stopped and Just Shat This Out Because, Hey, We Already Licensed It".

[cdnchris]

Blu-ray

[Michael]

NY Times

[Michael Kerpan]

Last seen around 1987, I remembered it as being intriguing -- with three great lead performances (Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels and Ray Liotta). My memory, insofar as it went, was correct. But I did not remember that even the tiniest roles were perfectly done -- and I did not remember just how much (wonderful) music this featured. The new Criterion blu-ray looks superb and sounds good to me (despite complaints I've read about the sound quality). My kids (20-somethings, born after the film was made) were a bit dubious, but they agreed that my recommendation (based on ancient memories) was sound. ;~}

Demme's interview added a nice little bonus. Even with light extras, this is a release I am happy quite happy with.

[Cronenfly]

The whole movie, though? It's been a while since I've seen it, but it seems to me the zaniness of the first half is more than compensated for by Liotta's entrance into the proceedings. Even Griffith's character, at first seemingly as manic a pixie dream girl as ever graced the screen, is grounded/given depth by the film's fairly radical shift in tone. This is what made it so much more satisfying to me than Demme's Married to the Mob, in which similar stakes are flirted with but never fully established (or are almost too well integrated into that film's comedy, versus Something Wild's sharper juxtaposition of the same).

[Zot!]

Right, the movie is basically about how the Griffith character's zaniness is hiding a damaged person.

[Michael]

Something Wild is such a quintessential 1980s film populated with yuppies and bohemians, thrift and liqueur stores – what a gorgeous time capsule that makes along with Blue Velvet, Sixteen Candles, and Risky Business to name a few examples. Having come of age in that era, this film makes me feel exceptionally nostalgic.

I don't find the film all chirpy, zany, "It's Rainin' Men" fun. Sadness can be felt throughout the visit to mom's and the last third is brutal and upsetting.

Did anyone notice Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels wearing black and white shirts (but in different patterns) in the closing scene?

[Two Cent James]

"Something Wild" is probably one of the absolute worst movies to turn off half way through.

A few years ago, a friend of mine wrote an appreciation of "Something Wild" on his now-defunct website. It's pretty fun, though spoiler-heavy. Incidentally, he also wishes that criterion release it on DVD. This was back in 2007.

[Michael Kerpan]

Maybe because I am such a stick-in-the-mud myself, I even find the _first_ part of Something Wild a bit scary. ;~}

[Murdoch]

That's right before Liotta comes in, so yeah I'd say stick with it since Griffith takes a backseat to the interplay between Daniels and Liotta.

[Napier]

Finally watched this last night and was won over by it. Great performances and music. I too came of age in the 80's and can't believe how I missed this all these years. Man, Ray Liotta is freaking great here! It could have used some more supplements, but at $18 in the B&N sale it was hard to pass up.

[bjeggert82]

Has anyone noticed how the video on this title seems to vibrate, as if the camera was pulsating? It almost looks like Starz Play (through Netflix, for those unfamiliar). It's less obvious than that level of vibration, but it's still noticeable. My wife and I both noticed it. I checked all my settings on the Blu-ray player and TV, and tested other discs just to be sure. The image definitely pulsates. It was really distracting... A perfect example is at the beginning of Chapter 25, when the camera stops panning outside of the house, and then the next shot inside--you can clearly see a subtle pulse here.

I'm sure this is just a 1980s equipment issue, as opposed to a fault with the disc, but I was curious if anyone else had noticed...

[teddyleevin]

Despite the lack of features, I didn't feel bad about giving this a blind buy. The film was a lot of fun and I was so terrified by Ray Liotta that I had a nightmare where he chased me all the way to my Long Island home the evening after I watched the film. Though one wishes there could be more in the way of features, I loved both interviews on the disk. They (especially the one by Demme) gave an extra depth to the story telling and I appreciated the film much more as a result. The trailer is welcome and a nice example of poor advertising.

[Arthur House]

Picked this up yesterday in the B & N sale. Hadn't viewed since catching most of it on Comedy Central back in the late 90s. So much fun, and yeah, an easy high point for most of the players and one of the coolest 80s movies ever. Reminded me alot of a highly Americanized Pierrot le fou. I also loved the shout-out to Chip Taylor in the credits.

Adding to the list of "blown special features", how hard could it have been to license the two short films (the late Brian Hansen's Speed of Light & David Boone's Invasion of the Aluminum People) that Demme snuck in on TVs in the backgrounds of certain scenes? I found both on google video (Speed...here & Invasion... here), and I know for a fact that the former film has been restored, as it toured Texas earlier this year as part of this program.

The films--both of which Demme saw in Texas in the early 80s & subsequently presented to audiences in New York--clearly anticipate the lofi retro/modern style of Something Wild and really would have been welcome extras. Oh well.

[zedz]

Like many people here, I was unimpressed when I saw the meagre extras announced for this title, but having watched them last night, I must say they're of really good quality. Demme's interview is particularly animated and informative, and covers a lot of bases. It probably adds as much value, if not more, than a director commentary would, including lots of screen-specific stuff that's helpfully illustrated.

And I haven't watched the film yet, but judging by the extracts in these extras, it's a knockout transfer.

[domino harvey]

I am sympathetic to mfunk's resistance to the film's opening tone, but the totality of the film goes a long way towards explaining away my initial concerns with the first half hour or so's approach-- namely that it felt like porn for the middle aged white guy (in the sense of unrealistic gratification, not graphic sexuality). But given that once all facts come to light it becomes clear (to me, at least) that if anything, Griffith's pickup of Daniels was more about using him to gratify her self-destructiveness than "rescuing" Daniels. Indeed, she gives him his out as soon as they are finished sleeping together, and his attachment takes on the aura of a clingy puppy. She's bemused but not invested; perhaps they both are. And both probably would have went their separate ways had the due course of their interaction not been interrupted by aggressive forces outside their control. And then from there it's easier to appreciate what the film's doing and most importantly, not doing.

One thing I liked about the film, and I believe it's been alluded to already in this thread, is this grand sense of personality Demme imparts on the locals during these road trips. The film is populated with colorful extras and cameos, and the motif of fleeting interactions is underscored by the running gag of Daniels' bougie habit of calling a name-tagged employee by their name. This is played initially like the prelude to some future comedic embarrassment, but thankfully instead pays off with the very funny exchange of passive "read" roles with the helpful gas station attendant who reads "Charlie"'s nametag right back to him. As an audience-signaling device, I found it quite clever and more persuasive than his subsequent braggadocio in the diner.

[Gregory]

To me, the film still stuck too much to easy feel-good territory. If Demme had wanted to develop its darker side, the film would have to raise more troubling questions about Daniels' and Liotta's characters, for starters. Regarding Liotta, where does he come from, and what does he represent, other than a caricatured sociopath mugging his evil tendencies.

Spoiler

The way the question of Liotta's aggressiveness is dealt with at the climax seems like a copout, the way he's accidentally killed by walking into the knife, allowing viewers to keep an unspoiled view of Daniels as an innocent, a victim of circumstance, and so on.

(some more minor potential spoilers follow)
Daniels's character is quick to boast early on that he's really a rebel at heart, that he'd channeled his rebellion into the mainstream -- how exactly, by becoming a bond trader? The motivation for his change seems unclear and unconvincing. The impression is that an Ivy League education, a privileged upbringing, and upwardly mobile social aspirations make someone like him so sheltered that they're naive and pure, in a way. There's no clear sense anywhere in the film of what was wrong with his earlier trajectory, or with his fancying himself a rebel at heart. Nor, again, of how he'll suddenly transform into some more authentic and worldly person. Maybe we're not really supposed to care about any of that, just that he got the girl in the end.

I did like the change in tone midway through the film, but Griffith's personality recedes from view after that so much that it's difficult to have much of an idea who she really is when she appears in front of Daniels at the end.

There were quite a few things about it I did like, including many little touches that don't really affect my critique.