In search of a watchable companion to Little Village’s May cover story, which details the many bad kinds of history made by Gov. Kim Reynolds over the past eight years, I went to Reynolds’ IMDb page. Who knows, maybe she got a kickback producer credit on a Mel Gibson movie?
Nope, nothing but news shows. Rather than rewatch the NBC Nightly News interview she did with Ron DeSantis to endorse his pie-in-the-face campaign for president, exactly one month after the internet discovered he had turned his cowboy boots into five-inch stilettos, Little Big Screen is turning the channel to streaming movies starring Kims who aren’t Reynolds.
Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
“Fix that, in the back, the bun is twisted wrong,” Hitchcock would call to the hairdresser, again and again. The wig had been designed, no different than Vertigo’s dizzying opening titles, to get lost in. Hitchcock knew this better than anybody and still couldn’t help himself. He was just as obsessed on set as Jimmy Stewart’s detective was on screen.
Vertigo is now known as maybe, probably the best movie, if you had to pick just one. It wouldn’t be looking down from the top of all-time lists without Novak, whose head was heavy with that blonde wig, and whose hair is never seen on a carousel of performances. She inhabits, then embodies, then inhabits, going from gossamer dream girl to flesh-and-blood brunette and back — but it’s always important to note that the Hitchcock blonde wasn’t Hitchcock’s first choice for the role. Hitchcock had to make Novak into his image. Or at least he tried to, again and again. This head-on collision, director’s ideal vs. actress’s identity, helped turn a twisty thriller into the bottomless phenomena that is Vertigo.
Rent it on Apple TV and Prime Video.
Kim Min-hee and Kim Tai-ri in The Handmaiden (2016)
Directed by Park Chan-wook
They don’t make erotic thrillers like they used to, and really, even in the 80s/90s heyday, they didn’t make erotic thrillers like The Handmaiden anyway. Set in 1930s Korea, it’s as pervy as it is painterly, and as smutty as it is stately. The criss- and double-crossing plot is full of roles played and reversed, with high society acted out one moment, then hentai the next, until the sleights of hand and handsy are totally intertwined.
During the film’s press tour, Park said he decided to become a filmmaker while watching Vertigo. That’s not to say The Handmaiden is an outright riff like Body Double or Basic Instinct, or even Park’s own Decision to Leave, but man, do the two films make for a head-spinning double feature. And for the purposes of this programming, both of the leads having the surname Kim was simply too good to ignore.
Stream it on Prime Video. Rent it on Apple TV.
Kim Cattrall in Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
Directed by John Carpenter
“God, aren’t you even gonna kiss her goodbye?” “No.”
Carpenter described Big Trouble in Little China as an action/adventure/comedy/kung fu/ghost story/monster movie. This is only nearly thorough. Carpenter forgot the romance, the honest-to-goodness Casablanca shit he squeezes into this goofy, overstuffed odyssey through a Chinatown underworld both literal and filled with gooey subterranean ghouls.
The joke of the film’s setup is that Kurt Russell — peak hunk, even in a boardwalk tank top — plays a sidekick with a bad case of main character syndrome. But he’s more than punchline and punching bag, and Big Trouble more than teen-boy touchstone, because of the love-hate connection with Cattrall’s distressing damsel. It’s the kind of fling that can only be made forever in the movies.
Stream it on Prime Video. Rent it on Apple TV.
Kim Basinger in 9½ Weeks (1986)
Directed by Adrian Lyne
Lyne made commercials before he made movies — skipping across the pond around the same time as other British ad men like Ridley and Tony Scott — and it shows in the barely there narrative of 9½ Weeks. The feature-length affair, which could now be seen as an unofficial crossover of Bravo’s “Gallery Girls” and Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, passes by in commercial-length snapshots. The punchiness of this ad-adjacent form, with little dialogue and lots of pop music, like the fast-acting Americana of Lyne’s work for Levi’s, gives the film the feel of a remembered relationship. You’re right there with Kim Basinger’s kink-curious curator as the bitter and sweet pieces of her dalliance with a very Mickey Rourke-ian man (played by Mickey Rourke) surface and recede.
Rent it on Apple TV and Prime Video.
