THE PRINCE OF TIDES (1991)

Nick Nolte is a fully grown man who still talks to the horrible and abusive family that he grew up with. (Hint: he should have dumped them completely 35 years ago.) So now, because he’s still wrapped up with these human life-anchors, he must go to New York City to talk to his sister’s psychiatrist (Barbara Streisand) instead of spending time with his own wife and three daughters. Once in NYC, Nolte is a grumpy bear (Grrrrr!) but eventually realizes that instead of bumping heads with the doctor, he should be bumping uglies! Ahhh, yes, the old Hollywood movie logic of cheating on your wife to fix your problems routine.

As far as early 1990’s American dramas go, THE PRINCE OF TIDES is alright. I think it might even be a good example of “Oscar bait”. I’m not 100% sure about this since I don’t have any friends who like movies (or for that matter even know what the medium is since I still live on Io and time-blog back to 21st Century Earth from 3955), but I’ve heard the term in historical Earth documents and find it interesting. And it was successful as Oscar bait because TPOT did receive 7 nominations. Even one for Best Picture! What the hell? Wisely though, THE PRINCE OF TIDES got crushed at the 64th Academy Awards by the far superior THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and didn't win a goddamn thing.

Okay pace, lots of Nick Nolte’s voice, zero nudity, some cool NYC locations, Nick Nolte mowing an entire football field with a push lawnmower, IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955) on TV, a hardback copy of Stephen King’s “The Tommyknockers” moving on its own, a lackluster ending that really didn’t seem like his life had changed much at all from the beginning of the movie (you know, besides cheating on his wife), cleaning up the room by moving the Chinese food leftovers from the table to a bar and then leaving the room, okay photography, mid-level direction, no real emotional ups or downs, movie posters for THE FRESHMAN (1990) and FLATLINERS (1990), a dude that seems to be too small for football trying out for a football team.

As far as entertainment goes THE PRINCE OF TIDES is still watchable. I doubt it will change your life or anything, but it's an okay lazy afternoon time-waster. I gotta few solid chuckles out of it. (Full disclosure: I actually woke up my cat, Charlie, by singing too loud towards the end of the movie. True story.]

TONGUES UNTIED (1989)

“I was mute, tongue-tied, burdened by shadows and silence. Now I speak, and my burden is lightened, lifted, free.”

TONGUES UNTIED originally broadcast on PBS stations across America on July 16, 1991, as part of their “POV” (Point of View) series. It is an experimental documentary by Marlon Riggs talking about the alienation of gay people in American society, specifically gay Black men. And the subject of gay people being silenced is ironic because while reading old newspaper articles about TU’s original release I came across multiple sources saying that 18 of the 50 largest television PBS stations (markets) refused to air the film. And others didn’t show it until late at night. Including one that didn’t show it until midnight! But let’s not go off into the weeds about dim-witted program directors in 1991…is TONGUES UNTIED a good film? Yes, it’s quite good.

As mentioned earlier: TONGUES UNTIED is an experimental film and it did take my perfectly chiseled honky buttcheeks a few minutes to get into the rhythm of the free-style, poetic, street rapping approach the film used, but once I caught on, I dug it and even wished the film had been longer. At 54 minutes I felt like Marlon really only scratched the surface of his story. (Maybe this has already happened), but I would love to see much longer different documentary about Marlon Riggs and the subject matter and events talked about in TONGUES UNTIED. For example: he briefly talks about having full on anal sex with other boys at age 6! Like holy shit, that could be a full doc all to itself! And don't even get me started on the breakdown of different kinds of snaps! I could watch a 12-hour film about that.

I don’t want to give away too much, you should just see the movie for yourself, but there was one segment that I want to talk about. They’re talking about how gays are openly mocked and ridiculed in society and during this segment, there is a close-up shot of poet and activist Essex Hemphill simply looking into the camera. At the same time, they play clips of popular movies of the time using the f-word. It was very simply done and yeah, it’s kinda like that one scene from South Park, but I personally found it very upsetting because I remember seeing all of those movies back in the 1980’s and it never even crossed my adolescent mind at how hurtful it was. And now as I’m going back and re-visiting and reviewing older movies, I’m straight up shocked at how fucked up some of these mainstream films are. I’m talking about you, CROCODILE DUNDEE. Anyway, I just found that segment to be heartbreaking.

Sadly, TONGUES UNTIED is not for all audiences, but it deserves to be seen by all (adult) audiences.

Double-feature with PARIS IS BURNING.

[Update: It is not part of the film, but I included a screen capture of Marlon Riggs' obituary. He died in 1994 at age 37. It's sad to think about the positive impact he could have had if he had lived longer. We were all robbed.]