Mystery Train

"A Japanese couple chases their idol, Elvis." So read Netflix's summary of my latest flick. Mystery Train sounded just excellent enough to end up in the queue, but threatening enough to keep this film in its sleeve above my television for 2+ months. Reader, do you ever find yourself in this situation? Are you ever overwhelmed by the pretentious shit you ask yourself to swallow? If you've learned anything about me through this blog, you know that I am a victim of my own desire to in some way maintain my edginess. But for whom? I suppose only you, dear reader.

So what finally convinced my to strip off the sleeve? Two things. Number one: I hate returning flicks unwatched--I'd rather sit down to dinner with Ryan Reynolds while High Art blares in the background than fail to "Rate What You've Watched." And two: the flu. I woke up with a migraine and spent my day as a pool of seasick vomit, too numb for homework, too caffeinated for sleep. So guilt-ridden, fever-fogger me sat down to fulfill my duty to you, faithful reader. And, as they usually do, 1989's Mystery Train paid off.

Mystery Train tells three different, yet intertwined stories of people who find themselves (purposely and not) tooling around Memphis.  There are the Elvis-obsessed tourists who find out how cool it is to be eighteen, Japanese and in Memphis at a shitty hotel waiting for Graceland.  There's the Italian woman, Luisa, trying unsuccessfully to get back to Rome to bury her husband--this death is never explained, nor was the corpse at the airport ever referred to beyond her first scene.  I found this immensely troubling, and I hoped throughout that the cadaver would reappear by the end of the flick.  It never did.  Wonder what they do with dead people when their flights get cancelled in the middle of July... Anyway, she shares a room in said establishment with a broke stranger who rambled her way out of love with an Irish greaser.  And finally, there's the makeshift trio of drunkards who accidentally shoot down the owner of the local, all-night, liquor emporium.  And all of these stories are connected. And all along you think there is no way this is going to end well. 

And I won't tell you either way.

While each of these merry-travelers is a joy in his/her own special way, the side characters had my heart all-aflutter for this flick.  The two men that man the inn in the middle of the night (one of which is the Screamin' Jay Hawkins) are hilarious!  And to hear Tom Waits' growl on the radio with every new story somehow soothed my growing anxiety about the fates of the characters I had become so fond of.  There's nothing quite as comforting as Mr. Waits's cadence, is there reader?  

And then of course, Mystery Train features the best pick-up line since ever.  A man that looks like Santino (Did she just reference season two of Project Runway? Yeah she did) ambles up to Luisa at a local diner. He plops down and informs her (in a much less direct way) that Elvis's ghost told him to give her his comb. Hilarious, no? I would have gone home with him in a second. Fortunately for me, I am not from Memphis, because this line is apparently as common as ye olde "fell from heaven" pass near Graceland, and I am not a fan of syphilis. Oh well.

Rule #1 for smart travelers: Never give back the drunk guy's gun! 

My comrade du ciné's summary: "It was pleasant, but there was no conflict or climax and nothing really happened." He would say that. Eye roll. Smiling emoticon. Jay-Kay!

Up

I can't say that I've been a monster fan of the Disney flick. After the vomit fiasco that followed Toy Story (projectile cotton candy chunks smattering the car, my family, and my best friend's leather jacket), I kind of lost my taste for The Magic Kingdom.  I never had a favorite princess; never insisted on dragging my love up to Space Mountain; never consumed my childhood favorite like comfort food. Just not my thing. However, the premise of Up promised too many creepy innuendoes to pass up--seriously, Old Guy locks Boy Scout in a house too far away for interference by the nosiest of neighbors? Awesome.

I must say I got smacked in the teeth by a shower that was never forecasted by any of the trailers forced upon me before every flick for the last year.  Even now, I have yet to find a review of Up that relates a reaction to it that was similar to my own: wracked sobs, hiccuping, near-vomit inducing, all-consuming sadness for days!  Carl meets Ellie who is as obsessed with explorer, Charles Muntz, as he is.  What follows is a silent depiction of their long life together montaging into Ellie's diagnosis and death, which occurs before Carl can fulfill his promise to take her to South America...(the ellipses represent me leaving to sob it out with my boy toy before resuming this review). I wept unabashedly by the end of this compilation, fearing that I'd have to leave to keep from disturbing my fellow, infantile moviegoers. Even my fellow-flick-fan, whom I've seen cry maybe three times in the four years since we partnered up, had to wipe his eyes on multiple occasions.  This intro is rough, reader!  But totally beautiful and totally worth it. Watch it!

What follows the heart-wrench is a heap of fun. Flying houses. Mediocre wilderness 'survivors' who win badges for 'Extreme Wilderness Survival Literature." Talking dogs--and you have to love those. Instead of falling prey to the usual Disney, schmoozey, doggy dialogue, we are introduced to a pack of killing machines rigged with collars that insufficiently translate their every thought: "I'm going to the bathroom" becomes "I will stride to the waste receptacle area and make use of it's facilities," etc.  While it has been said that the story that follows the saddest animated scene since ever is a collection of somewhat underdeveloped plotlines meant to capture the meandering attentions of five-year-olds everywhere, I thought these characters were surprisingly well developed, and that the events were as satiated as they needed to be.

My only complaint, realized long after the flick made me cry one last time before credits is that Pixar did not exploit the creepster potential of its premise. Not even little Russell's mother was skeeved by the idea that her son had spent days and hours and weeks alone with a lonely old man. Oh well. Maybe in the next one. For now, this flick is completely worth it.

Moral of the story: Life doesn't always work out as planned, but if you live well and are good to everyone you meet, you will not often be disappointed. AWE!

Point needing further emphasis: YOU WILL CRY! BRING A TISSUE...BRING A BOX OF TISSUES! AND SOME XANAX! AND SOME WHISKEY!