march reviewed
sleepless in seattle (1993), you've got mail (1996), elvira, mistress of the dark (1988), the bride! (2026)
The Ephron-Verse: Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail
After watching When Harry Met Sally for (un)cultured vol. 1, I fell deathly ill and thought, what better way to spend my time than to complete the Ephron verse trio.
Surprisingly, I didn’t especially enjoy either of these films and their respective couples, but for very different reasons: Sam and Annie from Sleepless in Seattle are boring and bordering on insufferable, but very believable when they come together in the end, where Kathleen and Joe from You’ve Got Mail are charming and eccentric and could in theory be the perfect couple, the film just doesn’t do enough with their characters by the end for me to really buy it.
Sleepless in Seattle was my least favourite of the two, it looses me straight from the jump. The premise of a widower’s son trying to find his father love through a radio show just doesn’t strike me as romantic at all, and the fact that Sam and Annie don’t even really interact at all until the very end is deathly boring to me. It’s all very faux melancholy, somewhat insta-love-y and it doesn’t help that I don’t like the kid, Jonah, at all.
Plus, where When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail at least benefit from the gorgeous cinematic shots of New York City, this film is stuck with bleak, always blue tinted shots of Seattle and Baltimore. I have come to expect a really brilliant sense of place from Nora Ephron, and this film really didn’t deliver in that aspect either.
You’ve Got Mail on the other hand had me from the start and only lost me at the very end. I loved Kathleen and Joe’s mysterious internet correspondence, they are both so charming and funny, and I loved their antagonistic interactions every time they met in person.
They are a couple that clearly complement each other, but have a really believable obstacles to getting together. The issue is that Joe never really went through any character growth. While I admire Ephron’s choice to make him genuinely antagonistic instead of a sort of bumbling idiot just going along with his family’s wishes, that kind of character really needs a redemption arc. But he never seems to really learn anything and the conclusion of the story seems to be, yeah capitalism is bad, but whatever, Kathleen will definitely be happy in love with the man who made her mother’s bookstore close down!
I also honestly hated that Joe learned that Kathleen was his mysterious internet friend long before she knew who he was. It made for a weird dynamic that lasted way too long, and one that was never addressed!
Anyway, both these films were a real let down for me, but You’ve Got Mail especially. Oh also, Tom Hanks is a terrible romantic lead both times, I’m sorry, but he is just not meant for this genre.
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark
The dumbest stupidest thing I have ever watched (Rupaul voice). It was incredible. Immediately one of my favourite movies of all time. Had no idea that ‘How’s your head?’ ‘Haven’t had any complaints so far’ is from this movie, and boy does that make so much sense. I don’t have much to say other than that Elvira is hilarious and raunchy and campy, this movie literally has no faults.
The Bride!
I don’t know that this is the most salient film ever created, but I know it was strange and grotesque and funny and that I want to see more movies like it. There are four main narratives at play in this film: Frankenstein’s bumbling devotion and romantic relationship with The Bride, the Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque outlaws on the run story, the buddy cop narrative, and finally the part where The Bride is being sporadically possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley—this thread is almost entirely abandoned in the back half of the film.
While these narrative threads don’t ever entirely mesh to form something cohesive, I think what I enjoyed most about this film was its chaos. There are so many storylines, so many genres colliding and exploding on screen, so much violence and murder and bloodshed, multiple dance sequences, and amongst it all a vaudeville Jake Gyllenhaal bit that never ends.
I think Jessie Buckley describes it best:
The Bride is like having your hands in an electrical current, that's got petrol running through it, and you're just, like, soaring on acid. You're just in another stratosphere of life
Buckley’s performance as the bride of Frankenstein is what really makes this film, she is without inhibition: she is angry and horny and she just wants to dance. She turned the mind numbing ‘born sexy yesterday’ trope into something visceral and human. Christian Bale was good, if a little one note, as gentle monster Frankenstein, ‘Frank’ in this film.
This film’s one real coherent narrative thread is the idea of autonomy for women, and the suggestion that women should be angry and even vengeful when that autonomy is threatened or violated. It seems ridiculous to call that a revolutionary idea, but with the reality of the times we live in, it was really quite refreshing to see a story where a woman simply refused, repeatedly, to do anything other than exactly what she wanted, and refused to let anyone violate or possess her without consequence.
I left the theatre feeling electrified and confused and knowing that I will watch anything Maggie Gyllenhaal creates.
ta da!