I have a theory that just about every movie with kickass opening credits winds up being kickass overall.
On the flip side, if a movie starts with that same tired helicopter shot of a big city skyline set to a rousing pop song, you’re probably not in for anything special.
Certainly there are exceptions to both of those generalizations, but they’re few and far between.
I have a deep and abiding affection for Dusty Springfield that is based on just one album (her most famous — Dusty in Memphis) and a handful of singles.
Springfield did her best work in the mid- to late-60s but for some reason her music transports me mentally to the 50s, with visions of poodle skirts and bobby socks and slow dances in a high school gym. There is an innocence in the grandiosity of these songs, a sense that music really can heal the world (or your broken heart).
I first heard this song, and about this band, when I worked for a production company in South Florida. One of the cameramen was a young married guy who was clearly infatuated with my fellow production assistant, a pretty blonde punk type. He played this song for us in his car on the way to a shoot. He was into really weird, loud music so I was surprised that this song was listenable, let alone so addictively creepy-sexy.
I always felt sort of sorry for him, the way he kept his home life so separate from his work life (for months I didn’t even know he was married) and the way he so obviously lusted after this friend of his. I don’t know if the attraction was mutual, but she did seem to enjoy playing with his emotions. This is definitely a tangent, but in a way it ties into what I find so appealing about Garbage and Shirley Manson in particular.
The Shins will probably forever be known as the band Natalie Portman, in the film Garden State, claimed would “change your life.” Just the thought of somebody as irresistibly adorable as Portman flirting with you in a doctor’s office and sharing a “moment” over music is pretty great.
There’s a reason writer-director-star Zach Braff chose The Shins for that scene, and a couple others, in his Gen-X pseudo-masterpiece. Their music is quaint, weird and other-worldly in a way that makes moments like that seem possible. Does it change your life? I’d argue that no song can, but it can sure make your life feel a little brighter for awhile.
If I had to come up with a list of my all-time top ten movies, I think I can safely say Moonstruck would be on it. Movies come and go and grow and recede in my estimation, but this one has never felt less than perfect.
I’ve never seen The Last Emperor, which won the Best Picture Oscar over Moonstruck in 1988, but is there any chance it lives on in people’s hearts and minds two decades later the way this film does? No way.
Meet Me In Montauk 