Horror filmmaker Ti West steps out of the blackness behind the Bates Motel hours after the last tourist tram has made it to safety. Behind him looms the “Psycho” house where Mrs. Bates lurked in the window monitoring the movements of Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane — a shot West references in his 2022 slasher “X,” set in 1979, about an elderly farm wife named Pearl who becomes murderously inflamed by a troupe of adult actors shooting a skin flick in her barn. Pearl, an aspiring performer herself, got her own movie the following year in West’s eponymous prequel that rewinds to 1918, when the psychotic failed starlet fed her rival to an alligator named Theda Bara.
Now, West is releasing the third chiller in the series, “MaXXXine,” which finds Maxine Minx, the sole survivor of the first film’s “Texas porn star massacre,” hellbent on becoming a legitimate movie star in 1980s Los Angeles. After six years of sex work, Maxine, played ferociously by Mia Goth, has finally landed her first mainstream role in a sequel called “The Puritan 2.” But her past is still in pursuit, with one chase scene sending Maxine fleeing for her life across the Universal Studios backlot, through the Old West facades to the New York stoops, eventually scampering up the jagged “Psycho” stairs right behind him.
“It’s a weird thing to point a camera at if you’re not making ‘Psycho,’” says West, 43, as he heads farther into the darkness, lighted only by a handful of eerie red lanterns. He calls his trilogy “movie-flavored movies” — artifice and dreams are the top notes. “X” is about scrappy strivers trying to break into the business; “Pearl,” about the dangers of buying into the fantasies onscreen. “MaXXXine,” the highest-profile film of West’s career, wrestles with accepting that Hollywood isn’t quite what one hopes.
Mia Goth in the movie “MaXXXine,” her third with West. “It was the first time I had that dynamic between me and a director where it felt there was something really intimate to it,” she says.
(A24)
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“He was ready to deal with this kind of scale, and it’s definitely something he was hungry for,” Goth says, chiming in over Zoom. In addition to playing multiple roles across this mini-franchise, Goth co-wrote “Pearl” and executive-produced the last two films. “We just kind of manifested it,” she continues, “built this entire trilogy into existence. And it’s been incredible to see it unfold.”
West, however, tends to be scrupulously anti-hype. “It is not lost on me that there is a meta thing happening with these movies and me and Mia, and that’s gratifying and strange,” he says. “And it’s also something that we’ve never taken any time to stop and talk about. We were too busy making movies.”
While the marketing team at A24 is all in on “MaXXXine” — “I’ve never had a billboard before,” the director beams — West has been a legitimate filmmaker for well over a decade. His resume of well-regarded independent movies includes the 2016 cowboy vengeance drama “In a Valley of Violence” with Ethan Hawke and John Travolta, plus a string of festival hits like 2009’s “The House of the Devil,” which disposed of a pre-celeb Greta Gerwig early on in a marvelously nasty Hitchcock-esque shock.
“It hasn’t lost its mystique,” West says of the “Psycho” house, a “MaXXXine” location. “Even tonight it’s still like: What a rare opportunity to actually walk up the steps.”
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
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Still, he’s come a long way since his first trip to the Bates Motel. When he was in middle school, he and his family vacationed at Universal Studios Florida, which had just wrapped “Psycho IV” on its own copy of the set. As a promotional tie-in, the park launched an attraction that taught fans the camera tricks behind the famous shower scene. One volunteer got to brandish a rubber knife and learn how to stab a Marion Crane scream-a-like. West wasn’t chosen, but he went back home with a pair of Bates Motel souvenir slippers and an appreciation for film craft.
“Now that’s all gone, and it’s a Shrek ride or something,” he shrugs. “No offense to Shrek.”
West spent the rest of his youth in Wilmington, Del., renting five VHS tapes for $5 on Fridays at his local video store. One weekend, he rented “Habit,” a grungy but brilliant microbudget vampire flick made by filmmaker Larry Fessenden. Shortly after, he moved to New York and took a film class taught by director Kelly Reichardt, who’d played a cameo in the film. Reichardt introduced the two and Fessenden became West’s mentor, eventually producing his debut feature, “The Roost,” shot exactly 20 years ago with more moxie than money.
“Apparently, now we’re mentioned on the tour,” West adds of his upgraded circumstances, in mild disbelief. “I feel a little bit like I’ve made it.” Filming on the lot took Herculean coordination. Some theme-park trams were rerouted, others couldn’t be. Shots were hastily filmed in the gaps between gawkers. Once, the timing went awry and a few dozen tourists interrupted a take. Cameras out, the visitors snapped away at Goth and Elizabeth Debicki like they were tigers in a zoo.
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West and his dog, Molly, visit Hollywood Forever Cemetery, one of the filming locations for “MaXXXine.”
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
If West is now a Hollywood animal himself, the only affectation he’s adopted is a tiny 12-pound black dog named Molly who accompanies him everywhere. During this night stroll, she’s quietly tucked into a sling around his hips. On set, Molly had her own chair that read “Executive Paw-ducer.” The next morning, as our personal tour of “MaXXXine’s” locations continues, she’s wearing an A24-branded leash and trying to sneak sips of West’s iced oat-milk latte.
Today, he and Molly and a photographer are piled into an SUV that stops at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the location where two of the film’s detectives, played by Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale, make a grisly discovery. (Molly insists on relieving herself in a spot without any graves — she’s a professional.) The fictional corpses planted here by the production were mutilated in the manner of Richard Ramirez, popularly known as the Night Stalker, the real-life L.A. serial killer who murdered at least 13 people during the ’80s. That paranoia is the film’s terrifying backdrop, just as the Spanish flu pandemic leaves scars on “Pearl.”
But this isn’t a Night Stalker story — there’s already half a dozen of those. “MaXXXine,” like West’s “The House of the Devil” before it, vibrates with the tension of Reagan-era Satanic panic, a moment of media-hyped conspiracy that manages to feel both old-fashioned and contemporary.
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“When I was growing up, you could get arrested for skateboarding, and now it’s going to be in the Olympics,” West says. But grandstanding moralists stay the same, even if A24 had to hire faux protesters to wave placards that read, “Honor God, End Smut.”
“I’m hopeful that this October there are people that are going to dress up as her from all three movies,” West says of Goth’s many incarnations, including “MaXXXine,” pictured. “That’ll be really strange.”
(A24)
West puts a lot of emphasis on making the past look real, not cartoonish. No ridiculous zebra prints, no suburban mall pastels. Authenticity is baked into everything, from the camera techniques and practical effects to Maxine’s fried split ends.
The “MaXXXine” review embargo has just broken as our car arrives at Hollywood Boulevard and Wilcox Avenue, but West barely glances at his phone. “It’ll be the appropriate mixture of ‘best movie of the three,’ ‘worst movie ever,’” he says calmly. So far, the critics like it, but West seems more fulfilled by the act of making, promoting and releasing three films in four years with barely a day off. During that same time span, he also met his fiancée, DJ Alison Wonderland, and welcomed his first child, who was born two weeks after the trilogy wrapped. (Wonderland, nine months pregnant at the time, cameos in the film spinning records at a nightclub.)
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“Weirdly enough, my first place in Los Angeles was also on Hollywood Boulevard,” West says, crossing the street toward Maxine’s second-story dump, which usually houses overstock from the Hollywood Suit Outlet next door.
He moved to L.A. in 2005 after wrapping “The Roost,” figuring the natural progression of things was to head west and write another script. Relocation was daunting. “There’s no real sense of where you’re supposed to live and who to send the script to,” he laughs. His first spot was quieter — “a little garden apartment, very L.A.” — but it amused him to get mail addressed to Ti West, Hollywood Blvd.
“I didn’t have an interest in telling that ‘Hollywood chews you up and spits you out’ story,” says West, on Hollywood Boulevard where the movie was shot.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Nearly two decades later, he’s lived and worked here for so long that he pokes fun at being that naive kid who hoped he’d be instantly handed the keys to the city. In truth, his ascent has been a grind. West kept at it, as did colleagues Joe Swanberg and Andrew Bujalski and the Duplass Brothers, who also premiered films alongside “The Roost” at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, the year that mumblecore became a movement.
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They were all “making very tiny movies,” West remembers. “I think that’s where the chip on your shoulder comes from: Why doesn’t someone just realize all the work I’ve been putting in? Why don’t they know that I’m up 19 hours a day, seven days a week, working on this thing?” He describes those lean, exhausting years like someone who’s scaled his share of mountains.
“But I came of age in the ’90s, when making independent movies was cool,” he continues. “Are the 25-year-olds sleeping on floors doing that now? Or do they want to be making influencer content? Probably I would have wanted to do that too because if it goes viral, you just jump ahead. If you’re trying to change your life, that’s a quicker path.”
“We were in the Old West town and I was like, ‘Ti, this is the coolest job in the world,’” says Goth. “And he looked at me like, ‘I know.’ And we were just so giddy.”
(A24)
West’s first climb when he arrived in town was a hike up to the Hollywood sign before more fences and alarms were erected around it. “I had to do it,” he recalls. “I just thought, ‘Are they really going to arrest me?’” He hesitates, then chuckles. “Maybe the answer’s yes.” But he got away with it and was permitted to legally return while scouting for “MaXXXine” as he wanted to stage a showdown under the letters. For practical reasons, he was forced to rebuild the sign nearly to scale in Santa Clarita. Even so, the shoot was so tight on time and money that he had just eight hours to film at the duplicate site, including a lunch break and the commute up and down the hill.
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“PTSD,” West mutters, flashing back to the hectic pace as he continues down Hollywood Boulevard and turns into the alleyway where Maxine gets menaced by a Buster Keaton clone. Every scene shot on the busy street — and there are a lot of them — had to be completed in four days, with the vintage store fronts mostly erected the morning-of to make sure the sets weren’t destroyed. When the film’s phony video shop went up, West’s phone buzzed with texts from friends who’d happened to drive by. A few asked if he was behind the fake signage; others mistakenly celebrated it as real.
“It’s just a circus at all times and nobody really cares that you’re shooting a movie,” says West, in front of the Hollywood Theatre.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“To turn this all into an X-rated area was a very big project, lots of neon,” West says. As he gestures toward the marquees of the Déjà Vu gentlemen’s club and the Vine Theatre (both seen in “MaXXXine”), a bus pulls up and unloads 50 or so Scientologists in matching navy skirts and trousers who politely ignore his descriptions of sin as they head into the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition. West is also unfazed. “We had to be out here in the chaos of it all. It shows in the movie.”
Some days, he got lucky. West wanted an insert shot of Theda Bara’s star on the Walk of Fame as a nod to Pearl’s pet gator, and, magically, it was just steps from the Déjà Vu. Kevin Bacon, playing one of “MaXXXine’s” heavies, has his own star across the intersection, while Giancarlo Esposito, cast in a memorable role as Maxine’s agent, is embedded three streets to the east.
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But this is also the block where an angry driver smashed through the barricades and crashed into a parked car in the middle of filming. The cops who were hired to guard the set had to abandon their posts in pursuit. West and the cast and crew held their positions and finished the scene.
“From making a movie here, I realize it’s difficult to get permits because the neighborhoods just don’t want movies shooting,” West says. “But it’s Hollywood. If there’s ever a reason to be in traffic, it should be because Will Smith is flipping a car in the middle of the street. Every other reason to be stuck in traffic sucks.”
West hopes to stage his next movie in a more controlled environment. He’s 40 pages into that script — “It will not be a trilogy, I assure you of that” — and already imagining the comforts of constructing a set that’s “meticulous and complicated.” He’s challenging himself to surprise audiences and top all three Maxine films combined. “That’s the goal: You put in the reps and you keep getting better.”
“She’s not trying to work for UNICEF,” West says of Goth’s Maxine Minx, “but I’m just trying to put you on her side in the movie so that by the end of ‘MaXXXine,’ you’re like, ‘I’m just glad she made it.’”
(A24)
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But for now, he’s focused on getting people to root for the trials and tribulations of his marvelously wicked Maxine Minx. Right after the car crash, West and Goth hustled to film a scene of Maxine strutting the red carpet at Mann’s Chinese.
Eventually, “MaXXXine” itself will debut there too: an ’80s-chic world premiere with Angelyne parked outside in her pink Corvette and attendees dressed like Gordon Gekko and Sunset Strip metal heads. West wears a white suit jacket — “very ‘Miami Vice,’” he says — while his toddler sports “Risky Business”-style sunglasses and charms paparazzi by giving them a let’s-do-lunch-babe finger point.
That was a couple days ago and West is back with us at the Chinese’s autographed concrete, still finding his footing in the surreality of it all. He nods approvingly that the town hasn’t swapped out its shoe prints of classic stars for, well, Shrek.
“The movies aren’t going anywhere, because telling stories is how people communicate,” he says. Tenacious creatives like Maxine and Pearl and yes, even he and Goth, are now part of Hollywood lore. West exhales. “Maybe someday, someone will say, ‘I really like those old movies — like ‘MaXXXine.’”
In cinema logic, sharks, especially great whites, make excellent characters in animation. From Bruce in Finding Nemo to Mr Shark, the master of disguise in The Bad Guys, these apex predators turn their great gummy mouths with many pointy teeth into jolly good fellows.
In Hoppers, the 30th animation film from Pixar, there is a great white called Diane (Vanessa Bayer), who, despite being a scary assassin, has such sweet, shining eyes and a warm smile that one cannot help but grinning back.
Hoppers (English)
Director: Daniel Chong
Voice cast: Piper Curda, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy, Dave Franco
Storyline: A fierce animal lover uses a new technology to converse with animals and save their habitat from greedy, self-serving humans
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Runtime: 104 minutes
We first meet Mabel (Piper Curda) as a little girl trying to set all the animals in school free and being sent home for her pains (and also because she bites one of the teachers trying to stop her). Her busy mother drops Mabel with her grandmother (Karen Huie) who shows her the peace and quiet that can be hers if she only stops to listen.
The glade where grandmother Tanaka teaches her this valuable life lesson becomes a special place for Mabel. Years later, after her grandmother has passed, 19-year-old Mabel is a college student and still fighting for animal rights.
Matters come to a head when the mayor of Beaverton, Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm) plans to blow up the glade to build a freeway. Mabel tries to get signatures from the citizenry to stop the freeway plans, but that comes to naught as people quickly turn away from the zealous Mabel.
Frustrated, with no recourse in sight, Mabel chances upon a beaver making its way to her university’s biology lab. First worried that her biology professor Sam (Kathy Najimy) is doing some unspeakable animal experiments, Mabel is nonplussed to find that Sam, with her colleague Nisha (Aparna Nancherla) and graduate student Conner (Sam Richardson), have developed a revolutionary technology to transfer human consciousness to robot animal.
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Mabel uploads her consciousness into a robot beaver and sets off to thwart the mayor. Seeing the world from the animals’ perspective gives Mabel a unique point of view. Hoppers has jokes, chases, largeness of heart and solid science — not consciousness-switching with robot animals or flying shark assassins but the fact that beavers are the environmental engineers of the natural world.
The voice cast is wonderful, from Bobby Moynihan as the beaver king, George to Dave Franco as Titus, the prickly butterfly who becomes the insect king after Mabel accidentally kills his mum — the Insect Queen, played with terrifying grandeur by Meryl Streep.
The animals are delightfully delineated, from the spaced-out beaver, Loaf (Eduardo Franco) to Ellen (Melissa Villaseñor) the grumpy bear. The animation is lovely, with each of the animal and human characteristics clearly outlined. From the mayor’s grasping to Sam’s brilliance, Mabel’s fervour to Loaf’s stillness, and the different animal monarchs’ regality, it is all given marvellous life.
ALSO READ: ‘The Bride!’ movie review: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s glam-goth Frankenstein can’t hold its stitches
The “pond rules” ensure that the animals are not completely anthropomorphised — a sticky point in animation films where carnivores and herbivores hang together without even a sneaky licking of lips!
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Smart, funny, exciting, honest, and touching, Hoppers is the kind of film you can watch with the bachcha party and elders alike, with a happy grin. And then there is Diane of the red, red lips and sparkly white rotating teeth — yes, Hoppers boasts that level of detailing.
A moment of silence for all the comedians, late-night-show writers, political satirists, memers, animators and random influencers who just lost a wealth of inspiration.
Kristi Noem, Homeland Security secretary, was fired Thursday by President Trump, ending the 13-month tenure of a political figure whose bravado, cruelty, incompetence and commando cosplay inspired more wickedly funny material than Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin and Sean Spicer combined.
Social media’s so-called ICE Barbie, the first Cabinet secretary to leave the Trump administration during the president’s second term, was a font of material for “South Park,” “SNL,” late night and thousands more sketch artists, impersonators, musicians and everyday trash posters. She never disappointed, unless you were looking to her for feasible, humane immigration policy enforcement.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)
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Drama and spectacle marked her brief career, from posing in front of a packed holding cell at El Salvador’s maximum security prison CECOT, where the DHS had shipped and detained deportees, to casting herself as an agent of action in multiple ICE raid videos. Donning a big gun and long, flowing locks of hair, she insinuated herself into operations, vamping for the camera in a bulletproof vest while masked agents rounded up fellow humans like cattle.
Grim, to be sure, but at least she contributed a shred of comic relief (unintended, of course) to our new, sad reality of federal agents invading American cities and abducting people off the streets, out of their cars and from their homes.
“South Park” skewered Noem in unprintable ways. “SNL” brought back Tina Fey to play Noem. Dressed in a lavender pantsuit, too much makeup and brandishing a massive firearm, she introduced herself as “the rarest type of person in Washington, D.C.: a brunette that Donald Trump listens to.”
The endless stream of memes across social media date back to 2024, when in her memoir Noem recalled shooting and killing her 14‑month‑old dog, a wirehaired pointer named Cricket, after deciding the dog was “untrainable.” Gov. Gavin Newsom later trolled the DHS and Noem with a meme captioned “Kristi Noem’s Dog Obedience School: She’ll Treat Them As Good As She Treats Brown People.” The mock ad featured a smiling woman holding a gun and kneeling beside a dog.
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If it seems cruel, consider that the DHS posted holiday-themed deportation memes around Christmas, proclaiming that federal agents were stepping up removals “for the holidays,” with a “holiday deal” offering a free flight and $1,000 to those who self-deport. One X post featured an AI-generated image of federal agents in Santa hats with the caption, “YOU’RE GOING HO HO HOME.”
Noem’s dismissal comes on the heels of two congressional hearings this week where she was questioned about her response to the ICE killings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis (she incorrectly called Good a domestic terrorist and claimed Pretti was involved in an act of domestic terrorism). She was grilled about the department spending $172 million for the purchase of two jets, the nature of her relationship with top DHS adviser Corey Lewandowski, and her $220-million DHS ad campaign starring none other than Kristi Noem. She testified in the hearings that Trump approved the ads. He said he knew nothing about them.
Her firing triggered an immediate rush of snarky content across social media, and a sharp a comment or two from prominent politicians. “Shouldn’t let the door hit her on the way out,” said Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker.
But all is not lost for those needing a laugh at Noem’s expense, or at the expense of the DHS, for that matter. The president said Thursday that Noem would take on a new, freshly invented role: Envoy for The Shield of the Americas. He described the position as one that will lead “our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere.” The job title and description already sound like the basis for a villainous political satire, without even trying.
And for the new guy taking the post? He’s Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a former MMA fighter. Let the memes begin …
The satirical romp Josie and the Pussycats (2001) is a fun movie. But is it a great rock ‘n’ roll movie? Eh, not so fast on that second one. Welcome back to Glide’s quest for what makes a good rock ‘n’ roll movie. Last month, we looked at Almost Famous, a great launching pad because it gets so much right. And every first Friday, we’ll take another look at a rock ‘n’ movie and ask what it means in the larger pantheon. This month, the Glide’s screening room brings you Josie and the Pussycahttps://glidemagazine.com/322100/almost-perfect-why-almost-famous-sets-the-gold-standard-for-rock-movies/ts. The film is a live-action take on the classic comic-and-cartoon property of a sugary, all-girl rock trio that exists in the world of Riverdale, a.k.a. fictional home of the iconic Archie Andrews.
But this Josie has next to nothing to do with Riverdale and is instead a satire of consumerism and ’00s boy bands. A worthy target, and a topic that has stayed worthy in the quarter-century since Josie dropped. The film was not a hit, but it has become something of a cult classic (like many movies featured in this series).
The plot is fairly simple. Wyatt Frame, an evil corporate type, is making piles of money off boy band Du Jour. They start to wise up to his evil scheme and have to be… taken care of. Frame needs a new group to front his plot, which revolves around mind control to push consumer culture. Enter Josie and the Pussycats, who are about to have a whirlwind ride to the top. And along the way, foil a plot with tentacles so far-reaching they have ensnared… Carson Daly?
Josie is a fun, clever movie, but it doesn’t have a whole lot to say about real rock ‘n’ roll, unless you want to simply accept a perspective that it’s just another cynical consumer-driven product. Even that is an argument that can be made, as long as you’re willing to ignore underground and indie scenes and passionate artists making amazing music.
And it is true that this is a theme of Josie. The band triumphs at the end via their authentic music. But it somehow doesn’t feel authentic, which makes it something of a hollow victory. Let’s consider the criteria already established for a good rock ‘n’ roll movie, and how Josie delivers on that front. The first is in the characters department. The film dodges the previously established Buckethead Paradox, which states that “The real-life rock stars are so much larger than life that you can’t make up credible fictional versions. There is no way someone like Buckethead would come out of a writer’s room and make it to a screen.”
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For better or worse, Josie dodges the Paradox by essentially embracing it. The characters themselves are cartoons, and there’s no effort at realism. Given that intent is a huge part of art, it seems unfair to call these characters “cartoons” as a criticism, and it should probably be a compliment. At the same time, they aren’t particularly memorable, which is not a great quality.
And—as a bonus—Tara Reid is perfectly cast as drummer Melody Valentine. Josie was a few years after her turn in Around the Fire (1998), an unintentionally hilarious classic that plays like a jam band afterschool special from the producers of Reefer Madness (look for this amazing film in an upcoming piece). The acting in general is good, with Rachel Leigh Cook as Josie McCoy and Rosario Dawson as bassist Valerie Brown rounding out the band. And Alan Cumming almost steals the show as sleazy corporate weasel Wyatt Frame.
The character of Wyatt is the film’s funniest riff on a rock ‘n’ roll archetype: the sleazy, corporate manager accompanied by assorted crooked accountants. From Colonel Tom Parker to Albert Grossman to The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. It’s all about the benjamins. Which is where the music comes in. If the music is good, that’s what makes it worth it. And Josie’s music has aged particularly well. It’s well-recorded, produced and executed. The songs are particularly catchy. The vocals are by Kay Hanley of Letters to Cleo. Much of the soundtrack sounds like a lost album from The Muffs, and one wonders why Kim Shattuck wasn’t involved.
There’s an argument that power pop was never supposed to be dangerous, and that the Muffs aren’t dangerous either. Fair on the surface, but they played real punk clubs and came from a real scene. There’s not even a hint of that in Josie. So an argument that they play pop punk (which they kinda do) is really lacking the punk part. And it was produced by Babyface, of all people. While that doesn’t seem like it should lead to great rock ‘n’ roll, sometimes preconceptions are wrong.
That said, this is a very commercial product and sound—as catchy as it is—so maybe it’s not a misconception. Maybe the right question to ask is whether it’s all too perfect? And that’s what gives this ostensibly rock ‘n’ film a smoothed-down edge? After all, the basic ingredients are there. But part of what makes good rock good is that it feels actually dangerous. Maybe there are some actual subversive messages, or a genuine counterculture scene. And Josie simply isn’t that film. The soundtrack is fondly remembered enough that Hanley appeared live and performed the songs at a screening in 2017. That appearance also included the film’s stars Cook, Dawson and Reid.
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It’s worth noting that while Cook and company obviously lip sync to the songs in the film, their performances are credible. They went through instrument boot camp, so they pull off the parts.
In the end, the film is primarily a satire of consumer culture. And even more strangely, is loaded with actual product placement. Clearly, the joke was intended to “hit harder” with real products, but having Target in the film constantly makes it feel like more of what it is parodying than a parody. Where’s the joke if the viewer actually pushes to shop at Target while watching the film? And if the filmmakers actually took money (which they almost certainly did)?
And perhaps that is the lesson for this month: a great rock ‘n’ roll movie needs to have something to say about the larger meaning or culture of the music. And while Josie may have a lot to say about culture in general, and it may say it in a fun and likeable way, it’s just not very rock ‘n’ roll. There’s no grit. Now, does it have some things to say about being in a band? Yes, though they are arguably true of most collaborations.
If someone in a hundred years wanted to understand early 21st century rock, Josie and the Pussycats is a bad choice. It doesn’t show the sweat of a performance or the smell of beer. But it’s a great choice for anyone looking for a light-hearted, fun watch with a great soundtrack. We could all use some sugar in our lives these days. Join us again next month, when we’ll look at one of the inspirations for Josie, A Hard Day’s Night, the legendary first film from The Beatles
