This is another film that I’ve been hearing in reference for basically my entire life. In this case, I had zero idea what it was about going in. I actually thought it was going to be similar to either Animal Farm or Animal House (I always forget which one is about the crazy college party and which is an allegory detailing the fall of all mankind) but it turns out that Cuckoo’s nest is a little of both. Continue reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Some movies stand out due to stellar acting, others stand out due to unexpected plot twists, some even stand out for bringing taboo subjects to the fore. There are a number or festivals and awards shows to celebrate the achievements of those films. On the other side of the spectrum, there are festivals that celebrate the worst in film every year, such as The Razzies. However, there isn’t a single festival to celebrate movies that are almost that horrible, yet either so expensive to produce or involving people far too famous to flop, that they skate by just under the radar of the Razzies (or over the radar?). The result is comedy gold!
Unfortunately, the comedy is almost exclusively unintentional.
Such was the case with the Movie Fair Game (1995). Cindy Crawford and Alec, Daniel, Stephen, William Baldwin really nailed it just barely completed it. Continue reading Fair Game (1995)
For forty-five years people have been saying that The Godfather is the gold standard in cinema by which all other -lesser- films should be judged. I’d never seen it. A few weeks back I finally set aside three hours of my life to see what all the fuss was about. I was sorely disappointed. At first I thought maybe I was just being contrarian, but I really liked Taxi Driver, which is another film from the same era which was critically very well received, so I’d like to think my opinion is objective.
I won’t go into details of the plot since I’m sure anyone who stumbled across this is already quite familiar with the work. Instead I’m just going to detail why I thought it just wasn’t very good. Continue reading The Godfather
Soylent Green was made in 1973, and stars Charlton Heston and a bunch of other people that are way out of my generation, but that my mother will probably flay me for not mentioning here. I have been hearing references made to this movie my entire life, and as such decided I had better go ahead and watch it. This one was not available on Netflix when I watched it though; I happened to see it in a 3/$10 bargain movie bin, and I dropped 3 large (and 33 1/3 small) to buy it. I knew literally nothing about the movie going in except that it was often used in references to cannibalism. I didn’t know who was in it or what it was about, but I mistakenly thought that Soylent Green was a chemical similar to the Agent Orange that was put to use during the Vietnam War. Which didn’t turn out to be the case. Continue reading Soylent Green
Taxi Driver is one of those classic movies that I’ve always heard about, but never taken the time to watch. Whenever I would hear references to it, I would think to myself ‘gosh, I really should watch that’, but by the time I was near a television it would be forgotten. This changed, however, when I began watching Orange is the New Black. For reasons that I can’t properly explain, Natasha Lyonne‘s Nicky Nichols character always makes me think of a young Jodie Foster.
I say for reasons that I can’t properly explain because she really doesn’t look anything like her. Her hair is maybe kind of the same color, but aside from that, the resemblance is slight at best. I think it’s the whole streetwise sassy girl thing that Lyonne delivers in OitNB that makes me think of Jodie Foster. I’ve absorbed through cultural osmosis that Foster’s character in Taxi Driver had that same persona. Regardless of the reason, I happened to be thinking about Taxi Driver at the same time as it happened to be on the Starz Add-on
