The Reflecting Skin / ***1/2 (1990)

“The Reflecting Skin” begins with a scene of startling cruelty, in which three young boys mutilate a bullfrog on the road while a woman from town wanders nearby. Their goal: to use a slingshot on the amphibian and soak her dress in blood as she comes close to investigate. What exactly sets off this alarming “prank” is uncertain, but the events that follow offer startling clues that cast their behavior in a broader, more ominous light. Later, two of the boys taunt the third of the group, whose mother is dead; they make light of his misfortune until he bursts into tears. The mother of the primary observer is overheard in an obsessive compulsive rant that regards her own child as a disposable slob. Death (usually without explanation) begins to overtake their small community, and the arrival of a car carrying suspicious men – one who inappropriately caresses the side of one of the boy's faces – is viewed with stark foreshadowing by… well, no one other than the one child watching it happen. Slowly but surely the movie advances these cold realities into the most striking of tragedies, showing us the extremes of human misfortune (or mental illness, if you want to go that route) from eyes that may or may not be reliable in painting an accurate portrait of the truth. The movie speaks fervently of the “nightmare of childhood,” and perhaps a few long and painful minutes in the company of these characters are all one needs in reminding oneself of the luck we carry in living much simpler and joyous lives.

Home Alone / *** (1990)

A holiday movie that encourages us to recognize details as nostalgic projections is a priceless commodity, but an endeavor that embellishes them into blatant absurdity can carry a charm all its own. One could charge Chris Columbus of understanding that prospect with clairvoyant accuracy when he made the notorious “Home Alone,” especially considering how it has endured for so long in public favor. Though it was clearly made and released with cynical intentions on part of a money hungry movie studio, the eyes of overzealous young dreamers are drawn incessantly to its simplistic values even now, and as one generation of mischievous kids grows beyond the cartoonish frame of reference of the material, another simply arrives to replace them. Two decades after it dominated the international box office, the idea continues to carry an almost parasitic charm, as if the underlying subtext of young Kevin McCallister’s military-style antics are like narrative devices of adamant rebellion that refuse to fade quietly into the night. That doesn’t place it beyond the restriction of its narrow intentions, but it does give it an edge that holds certain nostalgia over us today, especially as the awareness becomes clearer that good holiday films tend to have no meaningful shelf life.

Lambada / ** (1990)

The obscure Lambada craze was never as big as its creators probably would have desired, but imagine telling that to the impulsive minds of Hollywood. In the early months of 1990 and amid impending wonder of what new trend would sweep pop culture, movie studios greenlit not one but two films about said dance – a combination of salsa and dirty dancing that depended on hips swinging seductively to Latin-fueled rhythms – and eagerly awaited their opportunistic conviction to pan out into something of a financial success. Their gamble, much like the notion of Lambada itself, puttered out too quickly to garner much notice, and both pictures were rush-released on the exact same weekend in order to avoid prolonged post-production losses. Thirty years later, their footnote of an existence is notable in the sense that they are among some of the most dumbfounding bad movies of their time, often held up as the most absurd examples of how knee-jerk the movie system can be when it comes to anticipating trends. Seeing them so many years after they barely registered a blip on theatrical radar, one marvels that our cinema is so capable of housing just as many silly agendas as they do the thoughtful sensibilities of more talented artists.

The Forbidden Dance / 1/2* (1990)

“The Forbidden Dance” is the most unpleasant dance movie ever assembled, a film that defies all sense of merit by intercutting an endless array of pelvis gyrations and Latin-inspired grooves with a tone so inconsistent and downtrodden that it left me wincing in discomfort. As an experiment of genre sensibilities that follows the successes of “Dirty Dancing” and “Footloose,” the movie also undercuts the formula with even more offensive impulses – namely, the opportunity to use the one-note setup as a mask for pushing a shameless political agenda, and a rather flimsy defense of one at that. What were these filmmakers thinking? Were they genuinely concerned about the issues they raised beyond the ordinary dance movie clichés, or were they (as I suspect) simply using them to add phony dimensions to a premise of stunning simplicity? Their antics seem to be orchestrated by a hand of fate that constantly keeps one of its fingers on the bad taste trigger, and when the movie reaches a point where it forces us to endure a scene in which a scared South American native is leered over by a switchblade-wielding woman who encourages her to undress in a hallway while feigning voyeuristic pleasure, I wanted to scream out in protest.