Last Movie You Watched.

I somehow have never seen Firefox ... odd, given that I lapped up the likes of Knight Rider, Blue Thunder, Airwolf (and Street Hawk, a single-season-only one about a high-tech mo'bike) at the time.

It's amazing the things that can slip through the cracks when it comes to viewing movies ... I still don't know how I have managed to miss CHARLEY VARRICK completely, especially given how big a fan I am of John Vernon and (most of the time) Siegel.

I actually rented it at least twice; once, the night my old girlfriend poured a pot of hot water into our VCR, and the other time, the same day my Sony MDP laserdisc player locked shut with WOLF inside. In the second case, it was actually a MADIGAN/CHARLEY VARRICK double bill LD, I guess from the same Universal genius who packaged SILENT RUNNING and THE FORBIN PROJECT together. When I lived in the Palo Alto / Sunnyvale area, there were actually multiple video stores that rented laserdiscs, and one that was exclusively LD. Gotta love the early 90s for that, widescreen available within driving distance!

The only streaming I have right now is Amazon Prime and BritBox, so until Prime adds it into their roster, CHARLEY will probably remain a miss for me, in spite of its rep. I blind-bought a used DVD at work of Siegel's THE BLACK WINDMILL and haven't been able to get through even half of it, got bogged down on a lengthy scene shot with a static camera that made me feel Edward D. Wood Jr. had stolen his way into the director's chair.

The hot water into the VCR, I'm intrigued ... accident or the outcome of an argument?

Blunt Instrument wrote:

The hot water into the VCR, I'm intrigued ... accident or the outcome of an argument?  

It would have been a really interesting accident to have reached that high up, since we had the VCR on top of an armoire, with the TV inside. So it was by Argument, definitely. I didn't find out for the first couple years we were together (though I should have guessed), but she was supposed to be on anti-psychotic meds the whole while. She also destroyed both copies of the first screenplay I ever wrote and two drafts of one that I actually later managed to get read by a development VP at Silver Pictures. I think the only reason that serious felony mayhem didn't occur was because the six-day-a-week Grave shift and one bitch of a commute left me too tuckered out to kill.

Definitely a low point in my existence, though she was a dead ringer for Greta Scacchi, to the point that sometimes in video stores she would turn the display box of A MAN IN LOVE around -- it is Greta and Peter Coyote in profile if I remember correctly -- so people wouldn't come up to her. Scacchi sounded a little weird too, wound up marrying her second cousin, so maybe she and Abby had more in common than looks.

The really amazing part of the story was that this VCR ... a really terrible Montgomery Ward model, very bad picture quality, already about 7 years old ... was good as new (as in, not that good) within 48hrs. I plugged it in just to confirm it was dead, and instead it was just fine. It actually kept going well into the 90s, though I really wished it would die (always had a terrible freeze frame.)

Actually, I just remembered that there is an evening stranger coda ... 30 years after I last laid eyes on her while moving out, we got a voicemail message from some business guy early in the pandemic, asking if I could give her a reference. Was tempted to say she'd make a great next wife for Trump, but instead just ignored the call.

I can see why you'd put up with the 'crazy' if she was identical to Scacchi ... ah, hot actresses with whom you were virtually guaranteed nekkid scenes. Those were the days.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

I can see why you'd put up with the 'crazy' if she was identical to Scacchi ... ah, hot actresses with whom you were virtually guaranteed nekkid scenes. Those were the days.

Yeah man, THE COCA-COLA KID, that was something ... but I don't know that is an excuse for behaving stupidly. I should have taken an early hint from her that in high school, after she got busted for phoning in a bomb threat, kids were calling Her AbbyNormal.

I remember having to tell my stepdad off at one point, because he and my mom had gone to see WHITE MISCHIEF and afterward he dropped by and couldn't stop staring at her. I think dating a gorgeous woman is kind of like having a hot sports car ... it's something you crave, but the drawbacks (in my case anyway) far outstrip the pleasures. My first car was a red 1966 Mustang, the kind with those really elaborate multispoke hubcaps. It already had 110,000 miles on it, along with an engine device I didn't know about that limited its acceleration as well as its top speed, but I really did love it at first. After a couple months, somebody stole three of the four hubcaps, and after I priced the cost of replacing them, my interest in the car dropped off rapidly (never did replace them.)

Just realized I was inadvertently paraphrasing Spock above in that line about wanting vs. having ... old/real TREK must live deep in my subconscious at this point.

STOP MAKING SENSE (1984)


Never tire of it. Always walk away feeling full of energy and life, joie de vivre. No hesitation in citing a concert movie as an all-time favorite. It’s got that amazing thing that the Buster Keaton pics had, where they’ve managed to bottle up the “live” energy (athleticism) and capture it such that no matter how often you watch, you still feel that “liveness” not only as though you were there in person but like you are continually seeing it for the first time.

Demme gets one of my favorite shots in all movies. Right as “Burning Down the House” ends there’s this marvelous sort of tracking shot that sweeps down across the front of the stage where Byrne is pacing, taking a moment to himself to catch his breathe and get into the rhythm while “Life During Wartime” builds up in the background.

Great, great film. Fills you with emotion and awe like the best of them.

Young Guns - enjoyable Brat Pack Western (which is now a somewhat disconcerting 34 years old). Veterans Terence Stamp and Jack Palance make sure that the likes of Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips don't have it all their own way.

Devil - imagine being trapped in an elevator with strangers, only for one of them to turn out to be Old Nick himself ... that's the sort of thing that could ruin your whole day, and so it proves with this reasonably effective chiller that clocks in at a tight 80 minutes.

Uncharted - whilst we await Indy 5, this videogame adap action-adventure with Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg and Antonio Banderas will do nicely. Admittedly it may have helped that I'm a big fan of the games in question, but I thought this was great fun.

Knives Out - this twistily-plotted celebration/sly send-up (with a slice of socio-political commentary to boot) of 'all-star cast' whodunnits is very enjoyable ... a lot of this is down to Daniel Craig as 'Southern gentleman' private investigator Benoit Blanc, clearly having the sort of fun you wish he'd had a bit more of as Bond.

Pity that the 2 sequels are going to be Netflix jobs. Oh well.

I really need to see this, as it involves Plummer, but a stellar cast too.

Plenty of promise, great supporting cast etc. but ended up a completely predicable letdown IMO.

Craig... eh, I don't know. Doesn't thrill. Yeah, I guess he's having more fun than he ever did as Bond.

Good thing the sequels will be made the Netflix, I thought the "fuck whitey" message of the first one was way too subtle.

It's probably on All4 now, Hilly.

lol, I guess we disagree on this one CJB ... I get what you're saying about that aspect of it, but I didn't feel like I was 'being hit over the head' with it anywhere near as much as in other things.

Studio 666 - in much the same way that in the first 'summer of Covid' the movie we needed was the goofily good-natured Bill And Ted Face The Music as opposed to the pretentious Tenet, this comedy-horror starring the Foo Fighters is a far more welcome slice of escapism from the unfolding situation in Ukraine than the 3-hour Batman gloom-fest.

It's a little overlong sure, but there's still plenty of splattery fun to be had as the band decamp to a house to record their 10th album only to find that the place is beset by eeeeevil.

The Missionary - Eighties British comedy starring Michael Palin (who also wrote the screenplay) as the Rev Charles Fortescue, who in 1906 returns to England after 10 years of missionary work in Africa to be given a new assignment by the Bishop Of London (Denholm Elliott) - to set up a mission for the 'fallen women' who ply their trade in London's Docklands. It's not long before the Rev Fortescue is finding the pleasures of the flesh difficult to resist ...

As you'd expect from something written by Palin, reliably chucklesome with a supporting cast full of stalwart British character actors (Maggie Smith, Trevor Howard, Michael Hordern, Graham Crowden, David Suchet).

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood - sure, like everything Tarantino's done for a while now this is overlong (and like Inglourious Basterds, also has a wish-fulfilment rewriting of history). But DiCaprio and Pitt make a great double-act as a washed-up actor and his best-buddy stunt double, Margot Robbie is a delight as Sharon Tate, Damian Lewis' cameo as Steve McQueen is a hoot and QT's affection for Tinseltown in the late Sixties shines through.

Bringing Up Baby is the funniest movie I have ever seen in my life. I don't see anything topping that.

The Zucker Abrahams Zucker comedies from the 80's/early 90's might get up there.

had to look that up but I have had Airplane recommended before

making my way through Score Say See movies too

Raging Bull seems like an odd movie to be so popular. What a boring and unpleasant character to make a movie about and I feel like I am really missing the point on this one. It's ten minutes of boxing and another 2 hours asking everyone if they fucked his wife.

Sarai wrote:

had to look that up but I have had Airplane recommended before

AIRPLANE has a lot of laughs, but for sheer volume of gags and weirdness (plus very well executed parody songs), the makers' TOP SECRET with Val Kilmer absolutely rules. The French Underground Resistance in the film is made up of people with names like Deja Vu, Montage and Chocolate Mousse (the black guy, who you'll recognize as a crewmember from the tramp steamer in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK) and in one fairly subtle bit of insanity, we see a POV through binoculars, and the cows they are watching in the distance jump over the binocular-view-shaped matte and continue on through frame. They riff on GOLDFINGER's crushed car by having Omar Sharif trapped inside the cube shaped remains of a vehicle, suffering further indignity as the windshield wipers smack his face.

There's also an underwater saloon fight. Something for everyone.

Sarai wrote:

making my way through Score Say See movies too

Raging Bull seems like an odd movie to be so popular. What a boring and unpleasant character to make a movie about and I feel like I am really missing the point on this one. It's ten minutes of boxing and another 2 hours asking everyone if they fucked his wife.  

Part of how revered it is is down to DeNiro 'going Method' to play LaMotta post-boxing career ... gotta say, getting to pile on the pounds by eating lots of Italian food sounds like heaven to me .

Is it wrong for me to admit my favorite DeNiro performance is in MIDNIGHT RUN? They basically hired him to, in my mom's words, play Harrison Ford, but I think he went a step or two past that.

I'm not trying to take anything away from his accomplishments in GFII or TAXI DRIVER, just that I usually feel a tad distanced from him in his better-known and better-acclaimed roles (I'm not going to include BULL in here because I didn't like the film ... even its technical accomplishments were lost on me.) Jack Walsh was real to me ... even if he did have extraordinary luck when it came to shooting down a helicopter with a pistol. The scene with his daughter trying to give him her babysitting money gets me every time ... I was going to say every time I watch the movie, but actually, it gets me every time I even think about it. And that's coming from somebody who doesn't have children or siblings.

I have heard you mention that movie a few times but still haven't seen it. I'm only about a quarter the way through his films and would put King of Comedy up there. New York, New York was quite good too and more than enough plot for me. as a purely sound and vision experience it was excellent. DeNiro's antics when he first meets Liza had me in tears. 
 Raging Bull only confuses me due to it's success and popularity. I did think it looked that good even to the point of making me want to see it again. I want to know what I am missing because Jake as portrayed in this movie is a seriously annoying moron. It's not even the abuse that's so bad as just how low and boring he is in general and how much of a drag it is to be stuck with this guy for two hours. Yet Scorcese knows this, it's all very deliberate and the movie was a success and considered a classic. So I can't come to any other conclusion other than I am just not getting it.

The popularity of Taxi Driver makes sense. Excellent direction, perfect score, the atmosphere...it's got it all going on technically. But then on top of that you have Travis who is actually likeable. It's really mellow and relaxing in the back of that cab listening to jazz while he drives you around.  He doesn't seem highly intelligent but street smart and kindhearted and someone interesting to hang out with. I don't know for how long but I like him.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood - sure, like everything Tarantino's done for a while now this is overlong (and like Inglourious Basterds, also has a wish-fulfilment rewriting of history). But DiCaprio and Pitt make a great double-act as a washed-up actor and his best-buddy stunt double, Margot Robbie is a delight as Sharon Tate, Damian Lewis' cameo as Steve McQueen is a hoot and QT's affection for  Tinseltown in the late Sixties shines through.  

you forgot the puppy who should have taken the Oscar

Breakfast at Tiffany's

this one is going to get many repeat viewings