Video Store Rental Reviews #10: Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Conspiracy Theory (1997), Interview with the Vampire (1994)
DVD reviews in the year 2025.
Netflix holds roughly 6,500 titles.
Max and Peacock are about the same.
Hulu has a bit more, at just over 7,000.
My local video store has over 36,000 distinct titles that don’t disappear at the end of every month.
Here are reviews for three of them:
Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)
A dedicated schoolteacher spends her nights cruising bars, looking for abusive men with whom she can engage in progressively more violent sexual encounters.
section: new arrivals
On December 30th, I got a text from my mother: Have you ever watched looking for Mr. Goodbar?
I told her that I hadn't, and she directed me toward the copy (currently) available on YouTube. According to the settings on the video, it streams in 360p, but if I were to estimate, I would say they're off by about 340 of those p's. It looks terrible. Knowing that Vinegar Syndrome had just released a brand-new 4K restoration, I texted her back: I'm gonna get it from the video store lol
It's not usually the type of movie that mothers recommend to their sons, a psychosexual increasingly thrilling thriller of sexual self-sabotage and violent toxic masculinity, but (and this is totally true) as I'm writing this, she just texted me that she's watching American Gigolo, which is a great movie. I hope this doesn't become our thing...
Perverted cautionary tales, that is. I mean, I do love a good movie and this is a good movie! Diane Keaton is running on full steam, it features great early performances from Tom Berenger and Richard Gere (maybe she's just recommending Richard Gere movies? I don't know, I'll ask a therapist), and it's full of well-explored ideas. I do wish some of the top Letterboxd reviews didn't say something like, "Wow, what an ending!" because after a while, knowing that the ending is a knockout, you figure out that there's only one way for it to go.
I've featured a few Vinger Syndrome discs in this column and I'm thinking about more. Bang the Drum Slowly? Child's Play? Congo!
Conspiracy Theory (1997)
A man obsessed with conspiracy theories becomes a target after one of his theories turns out to be true. Unfortunately, in order to save himself, he has to figure out which theory it is.
section: thrillers
Conspiracy Theory starts with Mel Gibson's cab driver character spouting his crazy ideas to anyone who will listen - which is anyone unfortunate enough to flag him down for a ride. Richard Donner directs this cuckoo clock montage of Mel performing a conspiracy theory greatest hits, ride after ride after ride.
We don't have time to litigate the Mel Gibson irony at play here, but the scene still put a bad taste in my mouth regardless. I'd like to think it's because I watched the movie on Inauguration Day, the middle movie in a marathon that included London Has Fallen (I watched Olympus Has Fallen last Inauguration, plus I'm going to London in two weeks - lots of news and reviews coming soon!) and Civil War (I wanted to cement its place on my Best of 2024 List). Maybe watching it any other day would've made me laugh about how Mel's character was a wacko in the '90s, meanwhile in 2025, he's just a guy with internet access.
But last Monday, while Mel rambled about fluoride in the water and JFK assassination cover-ups, both of those topics appeared in my Musk and Zuckerburg-run newsfeeds later in the day. And when Mel turns out to be right about at least one conspiracy (the one that entangles him with Julia Roberts - a great actor with terrible taste in scripts), I didn't find it charming or endearing. I just found it scary.
Interview with the Vampire (1994)
A vampire relates his epic life story of love, betrayal, loneliness, and dark hunger to an over-curious reporter.
section: Neil Jordan
The bulk of the contemporary conversation regarding Interview with the Vampire is either about the television show of the same name (I liked the movie enough, should I try the show?) or the central performances since, in one way or another, all of these actors are still in our lives over three decades later.
Nowadays, the casting of Tom Cruise seems so curious. Actually, it's more odd to think that Tom would take the part. But as I've written about before in this column, Tom used to do shit that was kooky and kinky! Now he just holds on to airplanes as they fly away. (I say just as if it's not the single most impressive stunt I've ever seen an actor attempt.) In 1992, it was the casting - original novelist Anne Rice called him "no more my vampire Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler." Turns out, as she admits, she was wrong, and Tom is fantastically fangy.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, this was before Brad Pitt figured out that he was funny and silly. In the '90s, he was so goddamn drab. He did try out character parts, but movies like Meet Joe Black and A River Runs Through It and Legends of the Fall were his calling card. He just dryly mumbles everything. I suppose he thought it was serious business that required being really serious, but it's not - it's gay French vampires! Give me some of that, Brad!
The discovery, of course, was young Kirsten Dunst. Only ten years old at the time, she grew up to be one of our greatest actors. Even as a kid, she totally holds her own against these movie stars. She just had it from the jump. She won the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance that year, beating out the likes of Tim Allen (I know that The Santa Clause was his big break in motion pictures, but everybody knew who he was) and Cameron Diaz (for her performance in The Mask, which she is, uh, great in.)
Credit: Each plot synopsis from Letterboxd via TMDb.
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