I’m sure I won’t be the only person to name The Crying Game. You think you’re watching an IRA movie, then you’re watching a movie about gender fluidity and the broad spectrum of human sexual orientation, then you realize you’re watching a movie about moral redemption. Brilliant.
My girlfriend insisted we see Pirates of the Caribbean and I went in expecting to see a cynical and boring Disney cash grab. Instead, after starting a bit slow, the movie surprised me at almost every turn. Jack Sparrow’s crappy sinking dinghy at the beginning? Good bit! Orlando Bloom as a lovesick doofus? Also funny! Even that parrot shitting on someone at the end was a good joke. And everyone takes it seriously, despite the absurd material.
I can see the holes now when I watch it, but it’s still a lot of fun. And I’ve got the memory of being surprised and delighted for almost all of it way back in 2003.
Oddly enough, Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven was one of those movies that had the lightbulb scene for me. When The Scofield Kid shows up to talk Bill Munny into going to kill the cowboys and Munny says "I ain't like that no more," it was clear this was going to be a very different kind of Western.
The other end of the spectrum: Jacksons' The Hobbit. After seeing what he'd accomplished with Lord of the Rings, I went in with great expectations of what The Hobbit would be. Saying the movie was based loosely on the book is far too generous--Jackson decided that Tolkein not only needed rewriting, but needed all kinds of bullshit additions to pad the thing out. Didn't even make it a third of the way through the first movie before it was clear to me the entire enterprise had gone completely off the rails.
Dec 23, 2021·edited Dec 23, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso
When Kubrick changes everything with the click sound of a walk-in cooler door unlocking in The Shining -
One of my favorite film moments is in one of the seemingly endless series of hyper- violent yakuza movies by Takashi Miike, Dead or Alive. These are formula programmers - as predictable as a Rocky Jones western. Gangster kills Good Cop's family. Cop goes on hyper violent rampage. In the ending- cop and head gangster face of in a showdown. One or both die in bloody slow motion. There are I bet hundreds of these films. The showdown in Dead or Alive goes as expected. Then both protagonists stand, they face off and keep shooting one another in the chest, to no apparent effect. Then the cop pulls out a rather large rocket launcher,(from who knows where) and shoots the gangster. This results in a nuclear explosion which destroys Japan. You see it from space. A pretty great effect, actually. Fin.
Poor Margaux... Sort of one episode of family dysfunction too many for a single family that isn't the Kennedys (although maybe JFK Jr's death was that one too many, and now the RFK Jr anti-vax thing is beyond the pale...).
But as to the question of the day, best I can do -- because slippery, erratic memory -- first scene of No Time to Die gave me a bad feeling and had I but the time of the interest I could detail how completely awful it is. Once scene and a supporting performance encompasses all the good stuff. OTOH, I expect in my pulp entertainments that the bad guys get punished and well...
“…that moment in a movie when everything changes.” I confess I immediately went to a moment in a movie theater when everything changed, but you’re not here to hear about teenage sexual awakening, so I’ll say, instead, the botched ambush in “The Wild Bunch,” which I saw at a private showing in college with Sam Peckinpah which he introduced by talking about making an antiviolence film and I watched the paraders being shot down and thought, “Sam Peckinpah is full of shit.”
This movie is wack af -- but weirdest, most dizzing ending to a movie I remember was in Big Man Japan (2007, dir & starring Hitoshi Matsumoto). I dunno -- I saw it pre-medical MJ days & just... sat with it. Hard to explain.
When Elsa Lanchester appears about halfway through The Big Clock, and the whole things turns from noir thriller to comedy. I can't think of another example where a character actor so completely hijacks a film. Lanchester even gets the last line and the movie ends on a "Leave 'em laughing" note when we just saw Charles Laughton fall to his death down an elevator shaft. I suppose the fact that Laughton, the director, was also Lanchester's husband may have something to do with that?
Also, I was watching Winchester '73 a couple of nights ago, and man does Dan Duryea come out of nowhere and totally capture every bit of interest and attention you can give. Sorry, what was this about again, because could we just make it all about the story of Waco Johnny Dean instead?
Two that caused me to say holy fuck in a good way: in Palm Springs, the first arrow shots by JK Simmons, and in Sorry to Bother You, the bathroom hybrid reveal.
"Z" made me go out and paint a great big Z on the garage door – somebody else's garage door – I was painting houses that high school summer...but when our film club chose it as the movie of the month last month I looked the thing up online and found a free version on google. That allowed me to watch it over and over again, stop rewind to freeze frame and look at details, that sort of thing, and dig the choreography of action scenes (and I discovered Costa-Gavras was a ballet dancer and producer!)
But what really got me was the interrogations scene at the end, when the Magistrate is grilling the cops, and the assistant is typing away frantically on one of those machines with the selectric ball, and the clatter of the machine dominates the room, and occasionally the typing stops for a moment and the camera rests on the works for maybe a second. That happens 2 or 3 times, and is so suggestive that I had to freeze frame and enlarge the image to see why C-G did that. Well, here's the deal – the ball stops EVERY time with the same letter right in the center of the screen – I bet I do not need to tell you what that letter is.
Made me think about movies and directors on another dimension entirely.
I’m sure I won’t be the only person to name The Crying Game. You think you’re watching an IRA movie, then you’re watching a movie about gender fluidity and the broad spectrum of human sexual orientation, then you realize you’re watching a movie about moral redemption. Brilliant.
I can't pinpoint a scene, but I found "At Eternity's Gate" transcendent.
My girlfriend insisted we see Pirates of the Caribbean and I went in expecting to see a cynical and boring Disney cash grab. Instead, after starting a bit slow, the movie surprised me at almost every turn. Jack Sparrow’s crappy sinking dinghy at the beginning? Good bit! Orlando Bloom as a lovesick doofus? Also funny! Even that parrot shitting on someone at the end was a good joke. And everyone takes it seriously, despite the absurd material.
I can see the holes now when I watch it, but it’s still a lot of fun. And I’ve got the memory of being surprised and delighted for almost all of it way back in 2003.
Oddly enough, Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven was one of those movies that had the lightbulb scene for me. When The Scofield Kid shows up to talk Bill Munny into going to kill the cowboys and Munny says "I ain't like that no more," it was clear this was going to be a very different kind of Western.
The other end of the spectrum: Jacksons' The Hobbit. After seeing what he'd accomplished with Lord of the Rings, I went in with great expectations of what The Hobbit would be. Saying the movie was based loosely on the book is far too generous--Jackson decided that Tolkein not only needed rewriting, but needed all kinds of bullshit additions to pad the thing out. Didn't even make it a third of the way through the first movie before it was clear to me the entire enterprise had gone completely off the rails.
When Kubrick changes everything with the click sound of a walk-in cooler door unlocking in The Shining -
One of my favorite film moments is in one of the seemingly endless series of hyper- violent yakuza movies by Takashi Miike, Dead or Alive. These are formula programmers - as predictable as a Rocky Jones western. Gangster kills Good Cop's family. Cop goes on hyper violent rampage. In the ending- cop and head gangster face of in a showdown. One or both die in bloody slow motion. There are I bet hundreds of these films. The showdown in Dead or Alive goes as expected. Then both protagonists stand, they face off and keep shooting one another in the chest, to no apparent effect. Then the cop pulls out a rather large rocket launcher,(from who knows where) and shoots the gangster. This results in a nuclear explosion which destroys Japan. You see it from space. A pretty great effect, actually. Fin.
W.T.F.
Poor Margaux... Sort of one episode of family dysfunction too many for a single family that isn't the Kennedys (although maybe JFK Jr's death was that one too many, and now the RFK Jr anti-vax thing is beyond the pale...).
But as to the question of the day, best I can do -- because slippery, erratic memory -- first scene of No Time to Die gave me a bad feeling and had I but the time of the interest I could detail how completely awful it is. Once scene and a supporting performance encompasses all the good stuff. OTOH, I expect in my pulp entertainments that the bad guys get punished and well...
“…that moment in a movie when everything changes.” I confess I immediately went to a moment in a movie theater when everything changed, but you’re not here to hear about teenage sexual awakening, so I’ll say, instead, the botched ambush in “The Wild Bunch,” which I saw at a private showing in college with Sam Peckinpah which he introduced by talking about making an antiviolence film and I watched the paraders being shot down and thought, “Sam Peckinpah is full of shit.”
When they ate the rabbit in "Local Hero"
This movie is wack af -- but weirdest, most dizzing ending to a movie I remember was in Big Man Japan (2007, dir & starring Hitoshi Matsumoto). I dunno -- I saw it pre-medical MJ days & just... sat with it. Hard to explain.
The Walken-Hopper dialogue in True Romance really sent things over the top for me.
When Elsa Lanchester appears about halfway through The Big Clock, and the whole things turns from noir thriller to comedy. I can't think of another example where a character actor so completely hijacks a film. Lanchester even gets the last line and the movie ends on a "Leave 'em laughing" note when we just saw Charles Laughton fall to his death down an elevator shaft. I suppose the fact that Laughton, the director, was also Lanchester's husband may have something to do with that?
Also, I was watching Winchester '73 a couple of nights ago, and man does Dan Duryea come out of nowhere and totally capture every bit of interest and attention you can give. Sorry, what was this about again, because could we just make it all about the story of Waco Johnny Dean instead?
Granddaughter.
Two that caused me to say holy fuck in a good way: in Palm Springs, the first arrow shots by JK Simmons, and in Sorry to Bother You, the bathroom hybrid reveal.
Well maybe...
"Z" made me go out and paint a great big Z on the garage door – somebody else's garage door – I was painting houses that high school summer...but when our film club chose it as the movie of the month last month I looked the thing up online and found a free version on google. That allowed me to watch it over and over again, stop rewind to freeze frame and look at details, that sort of thing, and dig the choreography of action scenes (and I discovered Costa-Gavras was a ballet dancer and producer!)
But what really got me was the interrogations scene at the end, when the Magistrate is grilling the cops, and the assistant is typing away frantically on one of those machines with the selectric ball, and the clatter of the machine dominates the room, and occasionally the typing stops for a moment and the camera rests on the works for maybe a second. That happens 2 or 3 times, and is so suggestive that I had to freeze frame and enlarge the image to see why C-G did that. Well, here's the deal – the ball stops EVERY time with the same letter right in the center of the screen – I bet I do not need to tell you what that letter is.
Made me think about movies and directors on another dimension entirely.
You should ask what movies had an ending that spoiled it all?
Like Matt Damon imitating an old man at the cemetery in Saving Private Ryan.