To ‘b’ or not to ‘b’

Rachel McAdams and the secret Asian man

I just caught up with Wes Craven’s Red Eye, a compact little thriller released in 2005, and a nice change of pace from the director’s hit-and-miss horror films. It stars the lovely and undemanding Rachel McAdams as a hotel concierge in the process of being blackmailed by a slippery terrorist (Cillian Murphy) onboard a flight from Dallas to Miami. As we eventually discover, someone high on the political food chain will be snuffed out unless Rachel complies to certain demands. It’s not a particularly deep film — the terrorists are undefined and the political angle goes unexplored — but it’s a momentarily satisfying one, the kind of popcorn muncher that once rounded out the bottom half of a double feature back when such things played daily at local Bijous. Props to Mr. Craven for shaping it so tightly.

    As it did not grab me intellectually, the film did have me bemoaning the death of the everyday double feature, so long out of our lives with no chance of resurrection. I’m not talking about the carefully arranged double features that play in rep houses, but the ones that once tied current mainstream ‘a’ movies with current ‘b’ ones like Red Eye at neighborhood screens. I don’t believe television is directly responsible for the death of the double feature, because they were still going strong in the 1970s, twenty years after TVs became common household appliances. But they were fewer and farther between when VCRs arrived in the ‘80s, and now, with instant online viewing, virtually extinct. But another factor that intrigues me is time: why does it seem that we simply had more time to go to the movies back then, as opposed to now when the thought of sitting in a theatre for four hours to see two pictures seems excessive and exotic? I don’t believe this is my age talking, because the young folks I know would be highly unlikely to engage in such things outside of the home, especially routinely as I once did, two or three times a week. Any thoughts?


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