New Year, Old Me[dia]

For years now my go-to New Year's Eve ritual has been to throw on some loud movies and try to soothe the nerves of whichever dog is most bothered by the insane barrage of fireworks Southern Californians love to set off throughout the night and next morning. Last year before the 4th of July, we approached our new vet about what she recommended to curb their anxiety, and she suggested an old folk remedy: Trazadone and Xanax. It has worked pretty well, as the endless pacing and feverish panting that we were worried would escalate into canine cardiac arrest has been tamped down to less alarming symptoms, though it's clear that we're only tolerating the chaotic din from outdoors and overhead through the miracle of modern chemistry.

Tess is the more sensitive of our two dogs, so she's the one that really requires the chemical straitjacket. Oswald's chihuahua heritage makes him more angry than frightened at all the explosions, but having a 13-pound furry rocket of rage use your lap as a launching pad to bark ferociously at every boom is not the ideal way to celebrate another flip of the global chronometer. So he gets a smaller dose of alazopram and is content to shuffle between cushions on the couch with me while his sister snoozes in our walk-in closet with my partner keeping her as calm as possible.

The upside is that our entertainment selection is less limited as we don't have to try to find the loudest, most explosion-heavy action flicks to try to compete with our neighbors; a situation improved by this year's wet weather putting a damper on the local pyrotechnics displays. In years past we've watched a fair number of fun films, including but not limited to:

Freed from the need to drown out the outside and feeling guilty about the Kino Lorber Sale shopping spree I'd indulged in right before Christmas, I decided to go with a horror film that I'd picked up on the sale, and seen many years ago but had next to no memory of, beyond a glowing write-up in Roger Ebert's Movie Guide - 1995 Edition, which I read and re-read a lot as a teen because I am weird. The film was I, Madman, about an imaginative young actress and bookstore clerk who gets so wrapped up in the pulp novel she's picked up that the lines between reality and fiction start to blur, and she finds herself facing a phantasmagoric serial killer obsessed with remaking himself into a man she could love by taking the best bits and pieces from the people around her. The movie leans into its conceit and weaves smartly between stylish visions of the action in the book and elaborate set pieces that it's impossible to imagine being made today, in part because the locations used either no longer exist or would be prohibitively expensive to shoot on the budget they had.

Part of the joy of watching older films — and like it or not, a movie released in 1990 must now be considered at least older if not "classic" — is seeing how they solved technical problems in the pre-CGI era. There's a particularly great chase sequence mid-film where the victim has been drugged and starts running through her apartment only to find the distances have become impossibly cavernous as she succumbs to the tranquilzer. It only lasts 30 seconds or so, but it was exciting to see some thought and care put into a series of shots that could easily have been routine.

Growing up in and around LA, you start recognizing frequently used locales that double for exotic destinations, like the Huntington Gardens for much of HBO's Westworld, or the streets of downtown for almost every other metropolis ever committed to film. I, Madman takes place in LA in 1990, and in addition to the joy of spotting RTD buses in the background on Hollywood Blvd., I got a little misty-eyed at just how well they used both the interior of the bookstore and the main branch of the Pasadena Public Library, which I was astonished to discover I still held a mental map of in my head from the countless hours I spent there in my youth.

So I rang in the new year with a full-to-the-brim glass of sparkling nostalgia, pining more than a little for the lost world of the past in the midst of such a dark present and ominous future. I pet my dozing dog, wrapped in throw blankets and a fuzzy benzo cocoon and tried to enjoy the moment as much as I could. Then I watched the fireworks show in my Animal Crossing village and drifted off myself.

While I watched the Kino Cult blu-ray edition of the film, I, Madman also became available to stream on Tubi on January 1, 2026.