She Almost Ruined A League of Their Own, for God's Sake!
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all life's problems! - Homer Simpson
Central Cinema wants you to drink, Seattle. It wants you to drink a lot. Which, we can only assume, is why the folks at Central are spending December presenting movies that can only be properly enjoyed while drunk, in a large dark room full of drunks so that audiences will a) have an excuse to shout the most vivid curses you can imagine at the screen and b) be able to hide their shame from each other.
We're aware that that is a strong statement, but we also have the evidence at hand to back it up. Let's take a look, shall we?
Item A) Later this week, Central Cinema hosts The Room by filmmaker and subhuman Tommy Wiseau. There will be more on this later, as it is a transgression against basic human decency that merits further discussion, because that movie is like punishment from an angry God.
Item B) That is not the worst thing taking the screen at Central Cinema this month. That dubious honor belongs to Almost Human, a collection of Madonna's cinematic achievements, which include being in movies way more frequently than is explicable and being TERIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE. Almost Human, which is curated by local schlock cinema scholar David Schmader, starts tonight with Shanghai Surprise. It continues for the next four Monday nights with Who's That Girl, Body of Evidence, The Next Best Thing, and Swept Away. Taken separately, these films are merely bad. (Okay, they're truly awful, every single one of them.) But taken together, as a cinematic event, they are basically a war crime on celluloid.
Unless...
There is one well known way to render a movie that is bad enough into a thing of truly sublime wonder. That way, of course, is the above mentioned method, by which one drinks an ugly movie pretty. Booze can make a movie that should be awful a transcendent comic experience. Watching a film drunk builds a bond between friends, not unlike that which exists between soldiers who have shared a foxhole.
Yes, consuming alcohol and watching terrible films is a great American pastime, but not one undertaken by the faint of heart or weak of liver. And above all else, it is a social activity. We cannot stress this strongly enough! Friends do not let friends watch Madonna movies alone. They go to the theater with them and keep pouring drinks until those movies are good. It can be done, Seattle. Go and do your forefathers proud.
