MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > A letterboxd list with Psycho at the top...

A letterboxd list with Psycho at the top....

posted 3 months ago by swanstep (2769)
60 replies | jump to latest

Letterboxd is possibly *the* movie-centric place online these days. I belong to it (and did originally try to tell it most every film I'd ever seen) but I don't use it that often, and mainly just to read things. Letterbox makes list-making very easy but in a way the proliferation of lists there drops the enticingness of adding lists of one's own to near-zero I find!

Anyhow, on my latest visit to letterboxd I came across this list:
https://letterboxd.com/fcbarcelona/list/movies-everyone-should-watch-at-least-once/

which was constructed by polling Reddit users. Psycho, 2001, Schindler's List, Goodlellas, Back to the Future make up the top line of the first screen, so I gather they came first to mind for Reddit users... with somehow Psycho as the *very* first film to mind (so it becomes the visual background for the list as a whole) Anyhow, the list as a whole gives an interesting snapshot of what the popular film canon really is these days, so, e.g. I never would have guessed that the animated Prince of Egypt or Kung Fu Panda had enough broad appeal or sufficient basic power to appear on a list of this kind!

If you join and tell Letterbox in detail about yourself the way I have, one of the perks is that it tells you things about yourself with respect to each new list you consult. With respect to this 'Movies everyone should watch' list it tells me that I've watched 81% (655 out of 800) of the films on the list (Prince of Egypt, A Silent Voice, an anime I'd never heard of, and Kung fu Panda were my first three misses).

[–] roger1 (4046) 3 months ago

Anyhow, on my latest visit to letterboxd I came across this list:
https://letterboxd.com/fcbarcelona/list/movies-everyone-should-watch-at-least-once/

which was constructed by polling Reddit users. Psycho, 2001, Schindler's List, Goodlellas, Back to the Future make up the top line of the first screen, so I gather they came first to mind for Reddit users... with somehow Psycho as the *very* first film to mind (so it becomes the visual background for the list as a whole)

---

Well, there you go. I do notice that Psycho tends often to be the "oldest" movie on any of these lists...they don't always go back and capture Casablanca and Citizen Kane as they once did. I guess its not only its now perhaps too-celebrated "landmark status" (an American Studio film that showed all sorts of things -- and SAID all sorts of things -- that were supposedly forbidden) but also that it is a film from 1960 that plays pretty darn modern "today" -- when today is 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020..)..

That "horror free" first 30 minutes is in some ways an odd watch today. "Jaws" from a mere 15 years later kicks off with its first "murder"(meal?) in the opening five minutes but ol' Hitch made everybody wait and watch Marion Crane and the weird thing is...that 30 minutes is VERY compelling(a study in post-theft paranoia), and its almost an ART FILM its so weird...the "air pockets of silence," Herrmann's intense music, all that detail and assembly of shots and angles and abstract things like the cop's face.

But once that one-of-a-kind opening is over and Marion makes her first silent drive up to the darkened Bates Motel and house in the rain...the movie is super-competitive with ANY thriller made after it.

---
CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 3 months ago

with somehow Psycho as the *very* first film to mind

--

I've said this:

A Time magazine critic called Psycho (decades after its release): "The Citizen Kane of horror movies." I say Psycho IS Citizen Kane. It has rather taken over for Kane as a matter of "a black and white noir Expressionistic lesson in cinematic legerdemain " while BESTING Kane as...a scary story, tightly told.

Psycho seems to be popping up at the top of any number of movie lists these decades(hah.) I also think it gets shown a lot in high schools and college classes...keeps a lot of young people watching it each generation.

---
(so it becomes the visual background for the list as a whole)

Yes, I noted that the Bates Motel, sign,and house frame the entire page -- so that gives it primacy. What's interesting is that THIS version of all three -- particularly streetlights dotting the steps to the top of the hill and the house -- in no way resembles how the place looks in the 1960 original. I've found lots of "representations" of the classic basic visual set-up of the movie -- horizontal motel down the hill from vertical house -- and folks really go to town doing different versions of that basic composition. Usually, the steps to the house are wrong -- too many levels, too many steps, too many "turns."

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 3 months ago

Psycho, 2001, Schindler's List, Goodlellas, Back to the Future make up the top line of the first screen, so I gather they came first to mind for Reddit users...

---

Some usual suspects there - and I would like to pause a bit on Back to the Future.

It often pops into my head on this Psycho board for a few reasons:

In the late 80s and 90s, Universal would promote its "new classics." Psycho made it -- as the oldest movie shown via clips. And then the others(as I recall) were American Graffiti, The Sting, Jaws, Fast Times a Ridgemont High...and Back to the Future. And I would always look at that and think -- "well, Fast Times at Ridgemont High maybe wasn't a classic, but it captured 80's teens pretty well and with a nice dose of teenage sex that was refreshing in its honesty. Plus -- SPICOLI." That movie felt "lived in."

But Back to the Future? It was a surprise to me when it hit so big in the summer of 1985 -- a surprise it shouldn't have been, but then it had Spielberg as the producer and Robert Zemeckis (maker of my fave of 1980, Used Cars) and played "sweeter" than Used Cars.

And...I've never really much warmed to the movie.

I have a vivid memory of seeing Back to the Future opening night(a Friday) and seeing it early enough that my significant other and I drove about 30 miles to a nearby town near a river to have a late night outdoor dinner in the hot breezy summer air...the sun had only recently set. (My strongest -- and really UPLIFTING memory of "Back to the Future" wasn't the movie itself, but the late dinner on a warm summer night that folllowed it -- the ESSENCE of summer relaxation on a night following a long day of daylight. )

We sat and talked about the movie we had just seen -- Back to the Future -- and my whole take was "well it was sort of clever, but not much of a summer blockbuster."

And then it BECAME one.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 3 months ago

And I've watched it a few times since and I always felt the main issue to me was: I didn't like a lot of the characters. Fox's dad was wimpy AND strange; Biff was a bad guy with no real charisma(he was a chump, a lug), the brother and sister were mopey as "poor people" and then just irritating as "rich people." Indeed, the entire FAMILY seemed just as weird as "successful rich people" as they had been as "unsuccessful poor people." And the servile and whipped version of Biff at the end seemed as anti-entertaining as the bad guy he had been.

And even Fox's mom was strange in all incarnations (especially as the alcoholic poor person) and..yes, the near-edge of incest when "Young mom" crushed on her own yet-to-be-born did rather creep me out as a plot point.

Michael J. Fox was certainly a funny young anchor to the film, and there was that always-satisfying moment when he CONVINCED the younger Professor Christopher Lloyd that he really WAS from the future.

I liked the idea that a shopping mall in 1985 was open farmland(complete with farm) in 1955. I must admit that time travel movies(starting with Rod Taylor in George Pal's The Time Machine in Psycho 1960) DO have great imagination when one ends up in the same place 30 years earlier...or 100s or years later(The Time Machine.)

But...but...but...there just will always seem to be something slight and poorly cast and a bit Disneyish about Back to the Future to me...and its presence in the "line up of Universal classics" shown with clips on VHS and DVD-- however earned by box office in the summer of 1985..always seems ill-earned to me. It just doesn't fit with ....Psycho.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 3 months ago

I never would have guessed that the animated Prince of Egypt or Kung Fu Panda had enough broad appeal or sufficient basic power to appear on a list of this kind!

---

The role of animated films -- whether standard cartoon-style or today's computerized CGI -- is always interesting in these lists. Because animated films make billiions playing to...children. Not all of whom have formed brains sophisticated enough to "take on" the movies that adults enjoy. Oh, there are breakouts that appeal to an older crowd -- the original cartoon version Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid -- but, for the most part, these films still seem to me like they should be on a separate list. (Except, from my long ago 1961 childhood, the original 101 Dalamations, which played for gruesome, high stakes - Cruella wanted to make a coat out of puppy hides -- and was most Hitchcockian in the playout.)

---

If you join and tell Letterbox in detail about yourself the way I have, one of the perks is that it tells you things about yourself with respect to each new list you consult.

---

I'm not sure I want to be told about myself...hah.

---

With respect to this 'Movies everyone should watch' list it tells me that I've watched 81% (655 out of 800)

---

You are a better buff than I am, swanstep!

---of the films on the list (Prince of Egypt, A Silent Voice, an anime I'd never heard of, and Kung fu Panda were my first three misses).

---

Well, I've missed those too. But there's time. And I really should warm to animation...

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

Oh, there are breakouts that appeal to an older crowd -- the original cartoon version Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid -- but, for the most part, these films still seem to me like they should be on a separate list.

I guess my own sense is that plenty of animated&CGI&claymation&puppets movies are of sufficiently high-quality to register among the best films of their years period. Here are the ones since 2000 that have made my end-of-year lists
2001: Spirited Away
2003: The Triplets of Belleville
2004: The Incredibles, Team America:World Police
2006: Paprika
2007: Ratatouille, Persepolis
2008: Wall-E
2009: Fantastic Mr Fox

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

[Cont'd]
and slowing down a bit in recent years
2015: Inside Out
2016: Zootopia
2018: Spider-man Into The Spider-verse
and most recently and uncertainly
2024: The Wild Robot
This has been a funny old year movie-wise for me... and things like Dune Part 2 and Thelma and The Wild Robot (and even The Substance, which has grown on me) have entertained me enough so that I'm not sure that any of the end-of-year Oscar bait (Anora, Hard Truths, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Sing Sing, Nosferatu, Last Summer, Green Border, and so on) is going to improve on them!

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

This has been a funny old year movie-wise for me... and things like Dune Part 2 and Thelma and The Wild Robot (and even The Substance, which has grown on me) have entertained me enough so that I'm not sure that any of the end-of-year Oscar bait (Anora, Hard Truths, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Sing Sing, Nosferatu, Last Summer, Green Border, and so on) is going to improve on them!

---

I do believe, swanstep, that this board (which IS read, even if not responded to) could use some reportage from you as to what kind of movies Oscar will be lookin' at this year.) The sad truth for me is that, I think I actually went to the movie theater this year only to see these films:

The Fall Guy
Twisters
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice
Saturday Night

I had a reason in each case:

The Fall Guy: Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt just promoted the HELL out of that thing and its "early summer" appearance reminded me of how "the summer movie season" started to creep up (in the 80s and 90s) to a "May start and a first week in August finish." And I would go to AT LEAST one summer movie every weekend(usually with someone) from start to finish.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

I just flashed back to the summer of 1983, where I kicked off the summer(with a group) seeing Return of the Jedi and then just continued on through:

Psycho II(a June hit, a big disappointment to me but hey...Anthony Perkins was saved. Good enough.)
War Games (An 80's take on Fail Safe and Strangelove, Hollywood felt that Reagan required it.)
Octopussy (Roger Moore as James Bond -- Connery would come back in the fall with Never Say Never Again.)
Something Wicked This Way Comes -- a FAVORITE novel of my young adulthood, I ALWAYS saw it as a movie, but that movie was made by the Disney organization in its death throes before Eister and Katzenberg took over and...it just didn't do the fantastical novel justice.
Twilight Zone -- The Movie. The production killed Vic Morrow and two children on set in 1982...the movie arrived with all the air sucked out of it. The Morrow sequence was cut down to nothing(John Landis was the writer-director of this "original" TZ story.) Spielberg bumbled his "sweet" story and somehow damaged his ET superstardom (supposedly once the fatal accident occurred, Spielberg lost all interest in his episode.) Joe Dante made his a nightmarish cartoon; and George Miller took the famous William Shatner sees a Gremlin on a plane wing in a storm to a helluva a high pitched level(except...John Lithgow...what OF that actor?) I linger on Twilight Zone because MAYBE it could have been big and led to more TZ movies, but what a flop with such a sad history.
Trading Places: But John Landis got to make this , with Dan Ackroyd top billed and Eddie Murphy second. THAT wouldn't last. I found the movie just OK. However, this is the film that proved Jamie Lee Curtis had inherited Mama Janet Leigh's big Psycho bra breasts ...and was willing to show them off, briefly.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

The Star Chamber: One of those pulpy plot-holed Peter Hyams thrillers I ate up like peanuts in the 70's and 80s. The hook to me in this one was the third act:

Young Judge Michael Douglas has -- under great mental duress -- electred to join a secret "star chamber" of judges who sentence killlers who "got off on a technicality" to execution by hit man. Douglas joins in the vote to execute two criminals who were IN HIS COURT, and let off by HIM -- but he finds out they were INNOCENT for real. So he races to warn them that the assassin is coming for them. And its a great scene. The two thugs -- who had to "behave" in chains in Douglas' courtroom, realize that they have HIM as THEIR prisoner now, and it doesn't MATTER that Douglas is trying to save their lives. They start beating him up immediately and intend to kill him. Chases follows. Within this "potbolier," a "RealPolitick" scene. I loved it.
Strange Brew: Before Rick Moranis did Ghostbusters and Honey I Shrunk the Kids, he paired up with fellow SCTV comic Dave Thomas as a couple of Canadian idiot brothers named Doug and Bob McKenzie(they WERE both Canadians and were spoofing stereotypes.) "Take off, you hoser!" was their catchprase -- and they got a movie. With Max Von Sydow in it. Based on Shakespeare.
National Lampoon's Vacation. The first one was the funniest one(with Lindsey Buckinham's infectious rocker "Holiday Road.") Its the Christmas one that gets played every year now. Like RIGHT now. Chevy Chase saved himself for posterity with Vacation movies.

That's enough, but my point: The Fall Guy kicking off the summer of 2024 reminded me of the kind of summers we had where there was "something for everybody" May to August, and 1983 is as good an example as any. One mega-blockbuster(Return of the Jedi) one Bond movie and....and...just a bunch of hit and miss comedies and action films, plus horror(Psycho II), every weekend, for me and friends and dates to catch one right after another.

Summer of 2024? I can't remember much of it at all except...

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Twisters. I saw that in IMAX to "take a ride" more than to see a movie. And it delivered.

The kicker: in the original Twister of 1996, a key sequence mid-film had a twister -- at NIGHT, its shape unseen -- tear apart a drive-in movie screen where The Shining was on a double bill with...Psycho. (So said the marquee.) But it was The Shining that took the brunt of the twister. Jack Nicholson's close-up yelling "Here's Johnny!" tore apart into a hundred shredded pieces and disappeared in the blackness.

I think the makers of TwisterS knew THAT sequence (mid-film) was the BEST sequence in Twister, so they re-did it as the CLIMAX of this one.

An "indoor theater." With a solid crowd there to watch a revival of ...Frankenstein(1931.) The "It's Alive!" sequence with lightning bolts and electricity is slowly blown apart like like Big Jack's face had been in Twister and -- our heroes and others hung onto their theater seats as the walls of the theater collapsed and some got sucked out while others held on.

A lotta fun. But not my favorite movie of the year.

I'm giving that to "Saturday Night" unless and until something better turns up.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

I'm not sure that any of the end-of-year Oscar bait (Anora, Hard Truths, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Sing Sing, Nosferatu, Last Summer, Green Border, and so on) is going to improve on them!

--

I'm gonna have to look most of those up. Nosferatu is a known commodity. I'm interested in "A Complete Unknown" first of all for the TITLE -- you wonder what it means and then the old song lyric kicks right up: "How does it feel...to be on your own? A complete unknown..like a Rolling Stone."

Bob Dylan.

I had a close male relative who adopted Dylan as his muse for many years and I listened to a lot of Dylan on that guy's tape deck and "record player". It became rather funny. Dylan was ALL HE PLAYED . And I've alerted him to this film. I guess the superhot waifish Timothy Challee (UPDATE: Timothee Chalamet) has a good chance at the "biopic Oscar win" this year, yes?

Well, that's all from me. The "sudden swerve" into the summer of 1983 amused even myself. Return of the Jedi(a rather perfunctory end to the original Star Wars trilogy) dominated. Its not like that summer had classics in it(Psycho II was NOT Psycho). Roger Moore's outing as Bond OUTPERFOMED Connery's return, and it was a bit "beefed up for competition." I was personally disappointed by how both Psycho II AND Something Wicked This Way Comes dishonored the original material. Anyway, it was the NEXT summer(1984) that was a bigger deal: Robert Redford's return in The Natural in May kicked it off, followed by: Ghostbusters, Temple of Doom, Star Trek III, Gremlins..and more.

And again, 50 years later, the summer of 2024 just didn't play out that way. I guess it couldn't. Wolverine and Deadpool was the big hit. Yet again, a "sadly dead" character was brought back to life in a parallel universe to undo all emotion in favor of ...yuks?

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

Bob Dylan.... I guess the superhot waifish Timothy Challee has a good chance at the "biopic Oscar win" this year, yes?

The trailer's worth watching on youtube...it's got a very good vibe - seemingly right for our discontented time. Chalamet seems to be nailing Dylan's early magnetism in it (including doing his own singing amazingly), the thing just looks good, and *those songs* still really pop. So, yeah, if it's as good as it looks and sounds and hits big, Chalamet may well end up the easiest Oscar to pick.

I didn't see Twisters or the original Twister. The Twisters Female lead, Daisy Edgar-Jones was co-lead with Paul Mescal on a show called 'Normal People' a few years ago. NP wasn't perfect but it was still intense and utterly heart-breaking, also star-making for both of them. Highly recommended.

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Bob Dylan.... I guess the superhot waifish Timothy Challee has a good chance at the "biopic Oscar win" this year, yes?

---

The trailer's worth watching on youtube...it's got a very good vibe - seemingly right for our discontented time. Chalamet seems to be nailing Dylan's early magnetism in it (including doing his own singing amazingly),

--

And now a side bar apologee, with frustration(as you shall see) duly shared to the outside world.

I put the name "Timothy Challee" into my post basically as a "placeholder name." Problem was it is only NOW that I am able to return to this board, days later to correct the name. I would have looked up his real name and made the fix but, swanstep...you beat me to it and I thank you. (But hey, that guy's got a HARD name to spell and pronounce: its even got an accent on the first e in Timothee. Pretty fancy name...the parents PICKED his first name.

But wait, there's more, apology-wise. Upon reentering this board today, I found all sorts of errors -- some in spelling but some in "spell check corrections" that really mangled a lot of words.

Here's the problem: if I leave the board for some days -- unable to get back on the desktop -- I USED to be able to make grammatical corrections from my CELL PHONE, on the road so to speak. So I could write a "misspelled paragraph" knowing I could clean in up in a matter of hours from my phone.

No more. The same computer issues that took "ecarle" away took away cell phone access to the Boards.

Yes, I could/should proofread and correct all posts before making them but..sometimes I'm in a hurry and there's no time to proofread before posting and shutdown of the computer..

So, bear with me. I usually make the fixes eventually. (To those who say "I won't read your posts if they aren't proofread" I say "but you don't read them anyway." Ha.)

Plus, the posts are MOSTLY spelled right with the right words and one can figure out what I meant.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

The trailer's worth watching on youtube...it's got a very good vibe - seemingly right for our discontented time.

---

I'm reminded that however discontented we are today -- "political polarization" and other issues...the 60s was a lollapalooza of upheaval. Politics. Race. Assassination.
Music. Eventual elimination of censorship "at the movies." And Vietnam was the worst of it for my generation of young men because...the draft awaited to mess with everybody's lives, possibly ending them young.

Dylan played in two categories -- Music(mainly) and "social messaging." The times they are a changin'" (about which: check out the use of that song -- Dylan's original -- in the opening titles of "Watchmen" the original movie from 2009.You can feel the full political force of the song.")

I remember being in a personally disconnected time -- "What do I do with my life? Where do I LIVE?" and "Like a Rolling Stone" came on the car radio and he reached the words "How does it feel? To be on your own, with no direction home, a complete unknown...like a rolling stone?" My girlfriend was in the car as the song played on the radio and she smiled and said to me"Yeah...how DOES it feel?" So now, whenever I hear that song..I remember THAT moment...and THAT girl. Its bittersweet. And I will assume that Mr. Dylan's message spoke to, like, everybody, personally. Still does.

---

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Chalamet seems to be nailing Dylan's early magnetism in it (including doing his own singing amazingly),

--

You get an "edge" with a biopic usually with the character..but if you can SING well too -- good work.

--

the thing just looks good, and *those songs* still really pop.

---

I understand it only covers a certain time in his life. I do hope its the time that includes "The Times They Are a Changin'" and "Like a Rolling Stone." Which reminds me: this movie sounds like the Coens "Inside Llewyn Davis" which, as I recall(I have not seen it) followed a fictional guy LIKE Dylan who loses out TO Dylan(or so I read?)

--

So, yeah, if it's as good as it looks and sounds and hits big, Chalamet may well end up the easiest Oscar to pick.

---

Very possibly. And I do want to see the film. (Remember that relative I had...Dylan on his speakers ALL the time and I recall him experiencing (with me along) "Blood on the Tracks" in REAL TIME in 1975 when it came out. Tangled Up in Blue was the radio hit).

Not to mention in 1973, Dylan was cast in a weird, amusing part in Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" and contributed the hit song "Knockin on Heaven's Door" which played instrumentally over the great scene in which Katy Jurado watches her husband Slim Pickens die slowly from a gut wound with a gorgeous gleaming river behind him. Yeah -- Dylan stayed relevant in the 70's.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Chalamet may well end up the easiest Oscar to pick.

---

I've been watching this Chalamet guy with bemused interest. He's not MY kind of male movie star...waifish, wispy..I mean I was a Lee Marvin/Steve McQueen kind of guy.

But chicks certainly dig him (even as one of his key early roles was...gay, yes?)
and he keeps scoring hits. Dune. Yet ANOTHER Willy Wonka -- when THAT hit, I knew he was bankable. (Gee, we've had as many Willy Wonkas as Norman Bateses.) So now he looks to be a big movie star AND an Oscar winner early on. That's the Jennifer Lawrence story. But Paul Newman had to wait decades for his Oscar. So we will see.

Side-bar: there was a Netflix movie of a few years ago(still available there) with pretty much "the all star cast of all star casts for our time." It was called Don't Look Up and it starred Leo DiCaprio AND Jennifer Lawrence AND Meryl Streep AND Cate Blanchett AND Tyler Perry AND Jonah Hill(the funniest player in it) AND...I only slowly learned at the time: Timothee Chalamet (he ends up as love interest for J-Law.) Watching him I felt, "I don't know this guy, but they are acting like he's a star." Turns out, he was.

That's a weird movie by the way -- I think Leo and J-Law got those Netflix-style 30-50 million paychecks, but all that star power and a huge "climate message" (Its like On the Beach with a meteor instead of nukes) and...its "two star rating" movie. The Netflix curse. I did find it funny though. Especially Jonah Hill.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

I didn't see Twisters or the original Twister.

---

Probably not your type of movies, swanstep. The scripts are a bit weak -- Spielberg is connected with both films but they reflect that era when HIS name ended up on OTHER people's movies that were...passable entertainments at best. (Though Michael Crichton had something to do with the script of the first one.)

Funny gossip on the original Twisters. The Director was Jan De Bont, a DP given a promotion to director. But evidently he was a raging tyrant, literally pushing his actors around when not yelling at them.

So "producer" Spielberg was flown out alone in a private jet to the isolated midwest location, landed near the actual filming location, NEVER LEFT THE PARKED JET, called De Bont aboard and evidently -- chewed De Bont's ass for about a half hour and promised no more work in Hollywood.

De Bont became a pussycat with cast and crew after that.

---

The Twisters Female lead, Daisy Edgar-Jones was co-lead with Paul Mescal on a show called 'Normal People' a few years ago. NP wasn't perfect but it was still intense and utterly heart-breaking, also star-making for both of them. Highly recommended.

--

OK...good recommendation. I expect that's where she was found for Twisters. They have been pushing the film's male star, Glenn Powell, superhard for stardom. Maybe he gets it. And here's Timothee Chalet getting it easy looking quite different and less macho.

---

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

I swear I went to Twisters -- and picked IMAX -- simply for the ride. I wanted to have a little fun.

I'm reminded back in 1974. the Universal disaster movie Earthquake was, on balance, AWFUL. Lousy characters(except George Kennedy's cop), lousy dialogue, cheapjack Universal City backlot production.

But I saw Earthquake TWICE in a movie theater. The first time to "experience Sensurround in the theater" and then the second time because i LOVED Sesurround in the theater. It was during the earthquake scenes, natch. Any of you can experience Sensurround TODAY, if uou can get into a Jacuzzi hot tub. Get in the tub, turn on the Jacuzzi jets, lower your head underwater until the jets are pouring directly into your ears and...you will hear and FEEL the rumbling effect of Sensurround. (Which was discontinued after three more movies because it was wrecking theaters.)

Anyway, I went to both Twister films to get "Earthquake" action just like when I was young.

Sidebar: In Twister 1, heroes Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt are driving down a highway in a twister as things fly AT them, including a COW and an entire HOUSE(which they drive through to get out the other side.)

Immediate cut to Paxon next to Hunt:

Paxton: We gotta get off this road.

I flashbacked:

Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot.

Heroes Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris are driving a sabotaged car with no brakes and a stuck accelerator as cars and an entire motorcycle gang come flying at them..

Immediate cut to Dern next to Harris:

Dern: We gotta get off this road.

Got a big laugh in BOTH movies. Imitation: Flattery.

CONT

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

OK...good recommendation. I expect that's where she was found for Twisters. They have been pushing the film's male star, Glenn Powell, superhard for stardom.

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

LIke most people, I first saw Powell as the young-Tom-Cruisey 'Hangman' in Top Gun Maverick. He was definitely going to be given his shot as a leading man star after that... and so it has transpired..... it's now up to the public as to whether they really want him.

---

Some irony there. As Maverick Top Gun went into production -- either in 2019 or 2020 -- the "new young male star" being promoted to come out of it was...Miles Teller...who had had a few good roles in movies like War Dogs and the Oscar winning (for JK Simmons) drummer movie, Whiplash. Teller played himself as the young movie star willing to attend a teenage debauch in the hilarous "found footage comedy" Project X.

But Top Gun Maverick was supposed to take Teller up to stardom. And he had to wait two years(through COVID) for it to get the theatrical release that Tom Cruise demanded.

And Teller is IN it (with the key role of "the son of the tragic Goose" from the first one), but it turned out THIS OTHER GUY (Glen Powell) got the cockier role (he even performs a Han Solo-like last minute aerial rescue of Teller) and the more macho look. Teller became Mark Hamill to Powell's Harrison Ford, or Peter Strauss to Powell's Nick Nolte(Rich Man Poor Man.)

I think Teller is still working plenty (he got the sexy macho lead as producer Al Ruddy in The Offer, about making The Godfather), but Powell is getting the heat. They put him in a Rom Com with fellow Hot New Thing(female division) Sydney Sweeney and then Twisters.

Nice joke: Powell's very normal looking mom and dad appeared at a premiere this year holding up signs saying something like "We are Glen Powell's mom and dad...hope he breaks through."

I daresay that at least HIGH EARNINGS can come Glen Powell's way if he makes a name for himself. I'm sure Netflix will pay him $30 million to be in one of their "pseudo movies." Any more major movie stars are pretty much about making the big bucks, the quality of the movie is an afterthought.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Note that another Maverick supporting player who jumped out a bit - the cutie female pilot, Phoenix, played by Monica Barbaro - has a big supporting, semi-lead part as Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown and seems very likely to get an Oscar nom.

---

I remember her from Maverick Top Gun, but I didn't know THAT. I don't think it was Oscar-worthy but recall that I liked that actress (I looked her up) Rachel Senott, who played real-life writer-producer Rosie Shuster in this year's "Saturday Night" -- which was probably seen in theaters by one one-hundredth of the theatrical viewers of Maverick Top Gun. Still, Hollywood PRODUCERS AND EXECUTIVES saw "Saturday Night" so -- maybe Senott gets a shot, too. At stardom, not at an Oscar for Saturday Night.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Maverick was *such* a big cultural event - a movie almost everybody has ended up seeing.

---

Well, on my personal list of "favorite movie of the year," it got the slot for 2022. Which is interesting to me, because when it pops up on my streaming screen, I really don't much feel like watching even some of it. Not so with Licorice Pizza(my favorite of 2021), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood or The Irishman(my tie for favorite -- not best -- of 2019.) Or even Molly's Game(my favorite of 2017), I ALWAYS turn that one on for awhile if it shows up.

Maverick: Top Gun made my top of the list for 2022 because in addition to being an event "for the world" (we FINALLY came out of COVID restrictions and could go to the theater and feel safe), it was an event in my personal circle.

A friend of mine holds Top Gun as his favorite movie much as I hold Psycho as my favorite movie(and his is 26 more years recent THAN Psycho.) On topic: Top Gun was the biggest hit of the summer of 1986(and the year?) and Psycho III was also released in the summer of 1986.on the Fourth of July weekend!--.to considerably less box office...less than Psycho II, which was worse than Psycho III.

So he organized a "viewing party" of the original Top Gun on his wide screen TV and many friends showed up and in my case, I brought some visiting family from out of state. We got FULLY reacquainted with the plot of the original Top Gun(poor Goose and hey look -- Meg Ryan!) and then traipsed over(with reserved seat tickets) in a large group to attend sold out full house showing of Maverick Top Gun that felt like some sort of personal emergence from the Dark Ages of COVID.

Why don't I watch Top Gun Maverick that much even if it got my top of 2022? I dunno...perhaps because the film IS rather "pre-fab" with, as I recall , a mix of the original Star Wars AND The Guns of Navarone(but who remembers THAT?) in the plot.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

I did like Jon Hamm -- always charismatic -- playing to his mean, antagonist side in his role.

The slow off-screen build-up of Val Kilmer (Iceman from the original) and on-screen payoff was...emotional. The audience fell silent and then murmured approval. Note: Glen Powell actually rather has the "Iceman" role in Maverick to Miles Teller's "Maverick" role except -- in THIS one, Iceman is...the Tom Cruise part.

---

It's the sort of thing that should lift all boats, help seed extended careers in Hollywood and so it's proving.

---

Yes. It gave Tom Cruise a very ironic "save." His career has pretty much dwindled down to 20 years of Mission:Impossible movies -- its like he's a TV series star -- and he broke that curse with a throwback to his EARLIER big hit. And now he can "alternate" Mission Impossibles with Top Guns.

Funny seeing the eternally boyish Cruise lord over some new young male stars, too. He's aged in a strange way -- the boy is still there, with a somewhat new man's face grafted on(by whatever means he is usiing.)

A shout out here to my two favorite Tom Cruise performances: as bad guys. One non-lethal bad(Magnolia), one murderously bad(the hitman in Collateral.) Cruise brilliantly re-fitted his trademark intensity and "cool" low voice to create truly nightmarish men.

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

I understand it only covers a certain time in his life. I do hope its the time that includes "The Times They Are a Changin'" and "Like a Rolling Stone."

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Yep, it covers from the moment Dylan first arrives in NYC (1961) to his 'going electric' moment at the Newport Folk Festival (1965) where he debuted 'Like a Rolling Stone'. That is, the whole almost mythological, almost incomprehensibly great part of Dylan's career.

--

Kinda sorta superimposed on the Beatles launch, I suppose, and gee(on topic), it starts the year after Psycho made its own contribution to Change in the Sixties.

I mentioned a relative who played nothing but Dylan records in the 70's. (He would LISTEN to other records on the radio or from friends, but he only PLAYED Dylan.) He's an age peer -- and he is still alive. (That's a rule of mine: EVERYONE you ever knew -- relatives, childhood friends, ex romantic partners -- is still alive out there, somewhere. Unless they are dead of course.)

Well, I found him and alerted him to this Dylan movie and he is very happy to hear about it.

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

I just flashed back to the summer of 1983

I was probably my most into music and my least into film in 1983... so I barely saw anything in real time that year. I remember seeing and really liking Rumble Fish (artsy teen angst Coppola with incredible sound and visuals), King of Comedy, also Monty Python's Meaning of Life was gross and hilarious. The doc. Koyannisquatsi with Philip Glass music was big around me too. I did see Return of the Jedi and remember thinking that I could see Harrison Ford's boredom and that he'd checked out of the series and that I'd aged out of it with him (the Ewoks were strictly for little kids).

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

I just flashed back to the summer of 1983

---

I was probably my most into music and my least into film in 1983... so I barely saw anything in real time that year.

---

One reason I DID flashback to that summer of 1983 is that -- in the 80s -- I had started making enough income(and movies were still cheap enough) that it was not only EASY for me to go to each weekend's new release, it became a "game" TO go to each weekend's new release. Usually with a woman, sometimes with male friends.

In the 70s as a "starving student" I had to WAIT a while to see movies in third-run theaters or on "the Z channel" in Los Angeles. I rarely could spend on opening weekend of ANY movie, unless I really, really wanted to see it. (Like Jaws -- opening MATINEE.)

And the thing of it was, was: most of those 1983 summer movies were...no big deal. Only "Jedi" was a true event. I do remember that "Octopussy" (with the ever-aging rake Roger Moore) was bigger than usual(a GREAT pre-credits chase), evidently to compete with Sean Connery's rather overlong and dull fall return as Bond. (Recall: for legal reasons, Connery could ONLY return in a remake of Thunderball -- some guy held those rights for remake.)

As I recall, Psycho II and War Games ran rather neck and neck in grosses -- and War Games was the smarter movie. My favorite line in WarGames came from veteran character guy Barry Corbin as a top General when asked how to avert nuclear war in a sudden crisis of a malfunctioning warmaking computer: "Hell, I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it would do any good." Funny line. Well delivered. BIG laughs in a crisis scene(reminds me of Thelma Ritter's wisecracks during the tense third act of Rear Window -- ALWAYS got laughs. That was a Hitchocck ploy: relieve suspense through PLANNED laughs.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

I remember seeing and really liking Rumble Fish (artsy teen angst Coppola with incredible sound and visuals),

---

I had to go to Coppola's IMdb page to check out how MANY of those SE Hinton novels he made into movies. Two it turns out -- The Outsiders(which gave us a crop of new young male stars and asked us to guess who would end up the biggest -- CRUISE), and Rumble Fish (Matt Dillon is in both movies --HE was a star for awhile.)

Brief Psycho reference for Matt Dillon.

When Gus Van Sant started casting his Psycho remake in 1998, he announced attempts to cast two stars from his film "To Die For" in the roles of Marion Crane and Norman Bates: Nicole Kidman for Marion(she had a conflict, declined), and Joaquin Phoenix for Norman(he said he could do it but not right away, a conflict.) Neither Kidman nor Phoenix ended up in the roles, but...as the casting of Sam Loomis was held for last of "the Psycho Five" I figured that ...Matt Dillon -- who was also in To Die For -- would get the Sam role. Nope. Viggo Mortensen(not as good as Gavin, ASAP.)

--

Returning to Coppola's two "male juvie delinquent movies." I read the reviews and for some reason I just didn't want to see those movies. (While I went to movies every weekend, I didn't see EVERY movie in release.) They felt like Coppola was betraying his Godfather roots AND the epic scale of Apocalypse Now. So I never saw them, and I suppose I should put them on my "catch up list" now, decades later.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

King of Comedy,

---

A fine movie. The idea of Robert DeNiro playing a New York nutter again after Taxi Driver(and for Scorsese) was given the twist that this guy was a nerd, not a killer. Except one kept wondering if he might TURN INTO a killer. Johnny Carson turned down the "Johnny Carson role," Jerry Lewis took it and exposed that "unloveable arrogance" for which he was so famous, though toned down here.

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I guess here's a good place, too.

I've always felt that Scorsese had a big "70's period" (Mean Streets, Alice, Taxi Driver) and then "rebirthed himself" with GoodFellas in the 90s(which he followed wiht a Cape Fear thriller remake and Goodfellas 2-- Casino.) But Scorsese was sort of a wandering waif in the 80's. Raging Bull was a critical hit but a box office miss and it didn't get Best Picture.

Raging Bull and New York, New York(rather SPOILED by DeNiro) were flops to underperformers, so Marty spent the 80's rather struggling for projects. We find King of Comedy, After Hours(both small NYC movies), The Color of Money(Newman FINALLY wins Best Actor Oscar, but for a sequel less than the classic that spawned it) and the ill-fated "Last Temptation of Christ." I don't think ANY of Scorsese's 80's movies made much money except the COLOR of Money.

But came the 90's, that one-two crime thriller punch of GoodFellas and Cape Fear launched Scorsese as a reborn star director --- came the 2000s, he used Leo to keep him green-lightable.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Speaking of Cape Fear, I see where Spielberg is turning it into a streaming SERIES. I'd be outraged but, hey..Bates Motel. (Hey, wait -- I AM outraged.) Oscar-winning Psycho with the cool voice Javier Bardem (who has been a baddie in No Country For Old Men, Collateral, a Bond movie and the current movie about the Mendezez Bros) will be a fine Max Cady (or some name) I'm sure (now we have multiple Cadys to go with our multiplle Normans and Wonkas.) But jeez..that was a suspense story. It fit -- both times -- perfectly into a supertense two hours with a "releasing climax." Who wants to watch Cape Fear for 10 hours or so...and a possible second season.

Which reminds me: I'm watching multiple streaming series now and I just started "Mr. Mercedes," which debuted back in 2017 but not on a network I wanted to subscribe to. Its from a Stephen King trilogy of which I've only read the first book(Mr. Mercedes.) and its the same problem I suggest for a Cape Fear series(or a Norman Bates series for that matter): why turn a short book thriller read OR a two-hour movie into a "mini-series." Mr. Mercedes puts an overweight old retired cop(Brendon Gleeson) against a superthin young psycho and...its got a long ways to go hours to go to solve the mystery(and though I read the first book, King wrote TWO MORE, which will be dramatized here.).

About that psycho -- we get to see and know him early on and I was intrigued at how literally colorless and uninteresting he is. I flashed back to Hitchcock's handsome, suave, FLAMBOYANT psychos -- Uncle Charlie, Bruno Anthony, Norman Bates, Bob Rusk and realized: if you don't make your psycho "fun," you are losing an opportunity. Also, THIS psycho is rigged up with a domineering mother, too -- except she's sexy looking for her age(she's Kelly Lynch) and incestuously interested in her son.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

also Monty Python's Meaning of Life was gross and hilarious.

---

Both in equal measure but ...damn!.. GROSS.

Mr Creosote -- the hugely fat man who projectile vomits for about two minutes, until he is thin.

And a medical team turning up at a man's front door and this dialogue ensues:

Medical team leader: You have donated your liver to science, yes? We've come to take it out.
Man: But...I'm not done with it yet.
(Nevertheless, they enter and carve the liver out of the living man..I think he dies?)

"Monty Python at the Movies" was short-lived. In my circles EVERYBODY knew Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- the lines BY HEART -- and its the classic.

Everybody can choose their favorite lines, but here is mine.

Round table knights have come to "rescue" Sir Galahad(Michael Palin) from a castle filled with nothing but beautiful women.

Leader knight: We've come to rescue you, Sir Galahad. Come with us.
Beautiful woman to Galahad: But we were about to partake with you of oral sex.
Palin: Well...I could stay a BIT longer.

I've used that line for years ("Well...I could stay a BIT longer.")

Monty Python and the Life of Brian(with its Jesus-mockery) was controversial but not terribly funny as I recall.

But they were "back on track" with the episodic "Meaning of Life" and it closed them out well.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

The doc. Koyannisquatsi with Philip Glass music was big around me too.

---

Missed that one.

---

I did see Return of the Jedi and remember thinking that I could see Harrison Ford's boredom and that he'd checked out of the series

---

Yes, that was clear. His 80's history ran like this, per summer:

Summer of 1980: Empire Strikes Back. Han Solo frozen in carbon.
Summer of 1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark gives Harrison Ford a new Lucas character and the LEAD. Blockbuster box office, too.
Summer of 1982: Blade Runner shows Ford's "serious actor chops" and felt like a instant classic even without big box office.
Summer of 1983: "Big superstar Harrison Ford" didn't even want to come back for Jedi. I think he parks himself outside some fortress and shoots at bad guys for most of the movie...his scenes at that fortress were probably shot in a few days.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

--and that I'd aged out of it with him (the Ewoks were strictly for little kids).

--
Yes, the Ewoks contributed to the Lucas/Spielberg team as "infantilzing the movies" after the 70s.

Look, I feel quite clearly that the very first Star Wars -- the one called Star Wars ("Star Wars" dominated the summer culture of 1977 just as "Jaws" did the summer culture of 1975; no sequels on the table -- one event was called Jaws and the other event was called Star Wars) and not "Episode IV: A New Hope" is really the ONLY classic and ONLY fully entertaining movie in the series. In a perfect world there would NOT a series, and Star Wars would be IT.

Empire Strikes Back is like Godfather II -- some critics prefer it but it lacks the entertainment value of I. Return of the Jedi was, as I've written, perfunctory.

Everything after Jedi is just not very fun, or good.

CONT

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

Coppola's two "male juvie delinquent movies." I read the reviews and for some reason I just didn't want to see those movies....They felt like Coppola was betraying his Godfather roots AND the epic scale of Apocalypse Now.

Coppola's post-Apocalypse output is quite patchy and eccentric but Rumble Finish is possibly his best after 1980. It's very revealing in a way - it's *highly* influenced by Welles and Bergman and Godard and Pasolini and Antonioni and experimental US film like Maya Deren's more generally, and it's the prototype for the small, little seen films Coppola has made in the 21C like Youth after Youth and Twixt. It's funny, *both* Coppola and Lucas have at various points said that that all they *really* wanted to do was make small, film-schooly, euro-chic, experimental films, but only Coppola has actually lived out this aspiration starting with Rumble Fish, which remains his best effort in this direction.

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

roger 1 wrote:

Coppola's two "male juvie delinquent movies." I read the reviews and for some reason I just didn't want to see those movies....They felt like Coppola was betraying his Godfather roots AND the epic scale of Apocalypse Now.
---
swanstep wrote:

Coppola's post-Apocalypse output is quite patchy and eccentric but Rumble Finish is possibly his best after 1980.

---

I will take your praise for that film with respect. In what years I have left -- hopefully quite a few -- I'm looking to "catch up" on movies I never saw, and books I never read. Also...I am going to go outside a lot. Ha. Anyway, Rumble Fish goes on the list. Remember something else I've mentioned about me: I haven't SEEN all the movies made in my lifetime, but I've usually and often READ about them. Hence, I read about Coppola's reasons for making The Outsiders and Rumble Fish.

---

It's very revealing in a way - it's *highly* influenced by Welles and Bergman and Godard and Pasolini and Antonioni

---

I think people tend to forget that the "school film filmmakers" created in the 60s were very rebellious AGAINST Hollywood studio films(at least the fakery of Doris Day movies and Matt Helm spy movies and other silly stuff) and rather SLAVISHLY out to copycat "Eurofilm" (even more than indiefilm.)

In its own way, this was as slavish and "copycatting" as those who wanted to remake Hitchcock films(ol' Hitch was one of the few to be allowed a Eurofilm prestige by the young guys -- but hey he was FROM Europe -- England -- and the French loved him. Isn't England Europe, btw?)

So outside of the Hitchcock copycatting, we ended up with a lot of movies that LOOKED and SOUNDED and were just as non-narrative and fragmented as Eurofilm.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Among the Eurofilm American copycats -- sometimes writing their own material sometimes bringing counteculture screenwriters along with them were:

Coppola (with You're a Big Boy Now and The Rain People)
Lucas(with THX-1138)
Bob Rafelson(with Five Easy Pieces and The King of Marvin Gardens)
Paul Mazursky(with Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice and Alex in Wonderland)
Dennis Hopper(with Easy Rider and The Last Movie)
Robert Altman(with Brewster McCloud and Images, and other things)
Woody Allen(spoofing Bergman in Love and Death; copycatting Bergman in Interiors)
And guys who didn't really go anywhere like Ulu Grosbard and Jerry Schatzberg..

...and of course, Hollywood BROUGHT OVER some noteable foreigners:

Roman Polanski(Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and...OUT. Alas: The American movies we lost from him...
Milos Forman(One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.)
Michelangelo Antonioni (Zabriskie Point.)

I would also like to note that Hitchcock himself -- inspired by Blow Out and Bunuel films..followed his All-American thriilers with a period of "Hitchcock Internationale" -- Torn Curtain, Topaz, Frenzy. (Of the three, Topaz was chock-a-block full of actors who had worked for Bergman and Truffaut and Godard.) And Hitchcock WANTED , with the unmade First Frenzy, to REALLY go Eurofilm...but in NYC.

Note: after his "homecoming to England" with Frenzy, Hitchocck made a "homecoming back to America" with Family Plot...made over 10 years since his last purely American film, Marnie. And then he died.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

(Rumble Fish) is the prototype for the small, little seen films Coppola has made in the 21C like Youth after Youth and Twixt.

---

Yes, a quick skim of Coppola's IMDb list shows that he REALLY stuck by his guns, evidently content to make very small films, little seen(but forever on streaming?) This Megalopolis thing was rather a spectacular attempt to "go really big" during this indiefilm period. I havent seen it, I wlll see it(on streaming) but the reviews suggest ol' Francis has lost his ability to write a good story and to make a "real" movie (involving the audience.)

--- It's funny, *both* Coppola and Lucas have at various points said that that all they *really* wanted to do was make small, film-schooly, euro-chic, experimental films, but only Coppola has actually lived out this aspiration starting with Rumble Fish, which remains his best effort in this direction.

---

Only Coppola. Yep. I recall when Martin Scorsese was pretty much a "dead cert" to finally win the Best Director Oscar(for the all-star sure thing The Departed), Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg took the stage as presenters. (Boy it would have been embarrassing if Scorsese DIDN'T win.

There was a good joke in the presentation: while Coppola and Spielberg did have Best Director Oscars...George Lucas did not. Mainly because he rarely directed. Anyway, yeah..that "Four Horsemen" line-up from the 70s(Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese) felt very historic that night -- much as "The Four Horsemen of the Golden Era" might well have been Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks and Capra. And Wilder. Er, Five.

But OF that line-up, only Spielberg and Scorsese have truly remained commercial, and Lucas pretty much sold out his catalog for billions and retired. Leaving Coppola to experiment.

CONT

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

I do believe, swanstep, that this board (which IS read, even if not responded to) could use some reportage from you as to what kind of movies Oscar will be lookin' at this year.)

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

This 'best of' list from the rogerebert website covers most of the big ones I think:
https://www.rogerebert.com/features/the-best-films-of-2024

It's always exasperating around this time each year when it's utterly clear to insiders what the most important and still destined to be broadly appealing films are and yet almost nobody else has seen or had a chance to see *any* of them.

AND:

I'm not sure that any of the end-of-year Oscar bait (Anora, Hard Truths, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Sing Sing, Nosferatu, Last Summer, Green Border, and so on) is going to improve on them!

--

Well, swanstep...a look at the list above AND the link to other films as well...again tells us that there are moviegoers out there who "get into every release and often with an artistic and narritive prestige to them (you) and moviegoers who just sort of show up (me.) Though I will continue to clam an interest in QUALITY mainstream entertainment(Psycho, The Godfather, The Untouchables, LA Confidential. Licorice Pizza.)

I've made this decision already: last year I had no interest in seeing Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein. This year I have no interest in seeing Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas. They look like the same movie to me.

Your comment:

It's always exasperating around this time each year when it's utterly clear to insiders what the most important and still destined to be broadly appealing films are and yet almost nobody else has seen or had a chance to see *any* of them.

---

remains interesting to me. I've joked before: "Have you really made a movie if you only show it to 100 people, mainly your friends and family?" My answer is: "Yes you have. If youve made a good movie with something to say."

But that kind of movie does NOT reach the masses and generate big box office.

I always like to name these Best Picture winners of the 70s, in order;

Patton
The French Connection
The Godfather
The Sting
The Godfather Part II
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Rocky
Annie Hall
The Deer Hunter
Kramer verus Kramer.

Popular hits all. I think The Godfather, Rocky and Kramer vs Kramer were Number One box office for the year. The Sting was Number Two for 1973, behind The Exorcist.

Oscar winners are rarely THAT popular now. But they are all well reviewed.

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

swanstep wrote:

I'm not sure that any of the end-of-year Oscar bait (Anora, Hard Truths, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Sing Sing, Nosferatu, Last Summer, Green Border, and so on) is going to improve on them!

--
I've since skimmed that list a bit closer and one movie stands out for a particular reason(and then a back-up reason).

The movie: Anora.
The particular reason: the female star: Mikey Madison.
The back-up reason: Sex and nudity.

But first: Mikey Madison.

I read a review or two of Anora; they praised this Mikey Madison and one of the reviews mentioned that she had been in QT's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood!

I researched further: She played one of the Manson girls who actually come to Leo's house to kill the inhabitants(as opposed to the rather larger group out at Spahnn Ranch.)

The character's name is Sadie. Based on the murderous Susan Atkins, who took on the name Sadie in honor of The Beatles' White Album song, "Sexy Sadie."

In the movie, Sadie is dispatched via full dog food can slammed into her face(by Brad Pitt), multiple dog bites (by Pitt's dog "Brandy") and finally, flame thrower(by Leo.)

And Sadie had it coming: she suggested to her fellow killers(Tex Watson and the redhead) with regard to the male victims: "Let's cut their cocks off and make them eat them!" Charming.

Mikey Madison had a rather comical, cartoonish face as Sadie, and put her voice into full "stoner hippie mush-mouth mode" ("Man" became "Mehhhnn..") and made quite an impression on me in that movie, in that role.

And here she is NOW, getting her big break(an Oscar nom, maybe? ) as "a sex worker from Brooklyn who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch." Director: Sean Baker(The Florida Project, Red Rocket.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

In accord with promotion of her stardom and her role as a "sex worker"(the new and polite term that, while nice, confuses the issue as to whether the character is a stripper or a hooker or both), Mickey Madison is cleaning up real nice with make-up and professional beauty treatments.

So maybe..stardom?

In which case, QT sure knew how to pick 'em for OATIH:

With Leo, Brad, Margot, Al and Kurt at the top of the star list, QT brought in "new hot stars" Austin Butler(as Tex Watson), Sydney Sweeney(as the Manson girl lookout up at the house) and now Mickey Madison.

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

QT brought in "new hot stars" Austin Butler(as Tex Watson), Sydney Sweeney(as the Manson girl lookout up at the house) and now Mickey Madison.

Don't forget QT also had The Substance's Margaret Qualley as his hitch-hiking Manson gal (whose feet were prominently featured).

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

Don't forget QT also had The Substance's Margaret Qualley as his hitch-hiking Manson gal

---

Wow...I forgot all about her. She's in The Substance right now so "remaining a hot property."

Again, QT -- or his casting director -- sure knew how to pick 'em for OAITIH.

Perhaps decades from now, a future critic can note how many big NEW stars came out of that film, with Leo and Pitt (not to mention Al and Kurt)..."old guard." Margot Robbie was almost a special case -- "the hot young female thing"(now HOTTER thanks to Barbie) who already has some company.

This is a good time and place to summon up Cary Grant's old analogy for Hollywood MALE stars in Grant's era. A streetcar filled with men. New male stars jump aboard and become stars(like Brando.) Old male stars fall off. Grant found himself precarious but noted, "and Gary Cooper sits in the middle with his long legs stretched out...nobody will move HIM out."

So who's on that Hollywood streetcar NOW? New women's division: Jennifer Lawrence (fading fast), Margot Robbie, Sydney Sweeney, Margaret Quilley, Mickey Madision.I suppose there is room for everybody. Dakota Johnson may have lost her seat.

How mercenary.

---

Margaret Qualley(whose feet were prominently featured).

--
As were Margot Robbie's in the same film. I now think that QT puts those feet shots in ON PURPOSE, and they are like Hitchcock cameos(except QT cameos -- in long roles) in his movies, too.

Also I think a grungy Manson MALE shows off his bare feet in OAITH.

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

her role as a "sex worker"(the new and polite term that, while nice, confuses the issue as to whether the character is a stripper or a hooker or both)

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 months ago

She's both in the film.... her main job is as an exotic dancer giving private shows in VIP rooms at a strip club but we learn right away that she bends the rules about what she's allowed to do in those rooms to get bigger tips and that, later, her and the other girls from the club are very comfortable doing actual hooker dates after the club finishes.

---

Interesting. One hears things. Clubs and dancers SWEAR in public that they don't do anything more than dance but..in private?

Well, Ms. Madison has a "hook" for her film, following in an honored tradition among female and male stars(Richard Gere in American Gigolo.)

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

Well, Ms. Madison has a "hook" for her film, following in an honored tradition among female and male stars(Richard Gere in American Gigolo.)

I'm not sure myself whether Madison is going to get such a great boost from this film. The near-documentary style of the film together with the fact that it principally reads as yet another Sean Baker near-doc about people on the margins of society/usually with a gritty sex-work angle. None of the stars of Baker's previous films in this vein have gone on to big careers... rather it's Baker's own star that's gradually risen. The first film of his that I heard about and saw, Tangerine, was made for almost nothing and got press for being shot on Iphone 5s, and now, with Anora he's winning the Palme D'Or at Cannes! On one level, Madison does an amazing job in Anora, she just *is* a simple-minded stripper from a certain class, but that sort of performance is easy to kind of condescend to as someone playing themselves. I suspect that if Madison wants to get awards she needs to do lots of talk-shows immediately where she puts distance between herself and her character. There's something wrong with her character too - she doesn't change at all until almost the end of the film... and she ends up seeming a bit thick for not having reaching the obvious conclusion about her situation earlier. In general, for someone as street-tough as her to fall so completely for the trust-fund rich kid she marries is hard to swallow.

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

Mikey Madison makes a sure-footed appearance in the Criterion Closet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AUc5BfebCM
Good move.

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Mikey Madison makes a sure-footed appearance in the Criterion Closet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AUc5BfebCM
Good move.

---

Now that you've turned us on to those segments, swanstep, they certainly have their cool appeal.

But perhaps its a bigger boost for a "newbie" like Mikey Madison to get into that closet than an established actor like Willem Dafoe or Winona Ryder. (About Winona: she seems in such fine fitness these days that I doubly regret she had to quit Godfather III over exhaustion, thus forcing Sofia Coppola's performance on us.)

I have noted all the "new young actors" in QT's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but I must note that among them, I REALLY noticed Mikey Madison in her part as a Manson girl(based on killer Susan Atknis.) Madison really got the "vocal fry" of a 1969 hippie chick down ("Now, DIIIIGG THIS, MAAAN!!") and sealed the deal as a Manson Monster iin urging her fellow killers to help her chop off male members and feed them to the male victims. Those were QT's lines...but Madison SOLD them and I truly felt the chill as the Mansons confronted Brad Pitt...thanks more to her than to Austin Butler's Tex.

Mikey Madison Made Her Mark with that Manson chick. Let's see if Anora advances her or just helps Sean Baker some more. (I did see his Florida Project, which was about as despressing a Reality Show as one gets, set against the tuquoise and pink fantasy land of Florida near Disney.)

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

I'm not sure that any of the end-of-year Oscar bait (Anora, Hard Truths, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Sing Sing, Nosferatu, Last Summer, Green Border, and so on) is going to improve on them!

The Brutalist is one I'm definitely looking forward to... I've been very intrigued by how it's possible to make a 3.5 hour, VistaVision epic without a large studio etc. backing it... The director (or his wife perhaps) simply had to be a big trust-fund kid I thought. While I'm sure that there's family support in the mix allowing for all the long lead-time, the following article from Slate clarified a lot for me.

https://bit.ly/3VNo2kn

So they prepped the film for seven years to within an inch of its life with various people attached at various times keeping the dream alive, but then finally shot for only 33 days. Total budget = $10 mill.. That's incredible. The power of a single-minded, sure-of-itself dream. Wow. Good for them!

Oh, btw, The Brutalist finally opened this weekend on 4 screens in NYC and L.A. (3 are 70mm projections and 1 of the L.A. screens is Imax) and made $250K for a good start. It will be fascinating to see how it goes from here.

[–] swanstep (2769) 2 months ago

A Jan 3 update on how all the recently-released (and other) Oscar hopefuls are doing box office-wise:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/date/2025-01-03/?ref_=bo_hm_rd

A Complete Unknown has been a bit of a disappointment so far. It opened on Xmas Day on 2800 screens and has never been above 4th and has mostly been 6th in daily grosses, raking in $36 million by Jan 3. Nosferatu with the same release frame and pattern has grossed $60 million. I would have predicted the reverse grosses for those two... and, really, the slow response to ACU makes me question Chalamet's star power, which I'd thought was solidifying.

The Brutalist and Nickel Boys are still in very limited release (8 and 18 screens max so far respectively for 15 and 22 days). Both have strong per screen daily averages but their overall grosses are still minimal with The Brutalist grossing $1 mill and Nickel boys only $300K.

Anora which opened back in October (and did ultimately go wide-ish to over a thousand screens) is doing very little business now and appears to be on track to make around $15 million domestic.
Sing Sing which opened in limited release back in July has grossed $2 mill so far, but appears to have been slotted in for a wide release on Jan 17 to take advantage of Awards season.
The Subtance got a wide release in September but has topped out at about $16 mill.

Last Summer, Green Border, Hard Truths have barely had US releases. And Emilia Perez has been Netflix only in the US.

Sheesh, what a motley crew.

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Sheesh, what a motley crew.

---

And here we are elsewhere noting that in 1965, the Best Picture winner was the Highest Grossing Movie of all time to that year(The Sound of Music), in competition with a movie that (rather inexplicably to me) had its own "billion dollar gross" that year(inflation adjusted -- Doctor Zhivago.)

Sometimes, almost accidentally, high grossing movies seen by many end up winning Oscars in the 21st Century, but this current list suggests...not nearly enough.

And then the usual debate is begged: "But we are awarding the best movies of the year, and grosses shouldn't matter."

To which I add: "If you made a great movie that was only shown in one room to 100 people, should THAT be considered a success?"

Meanwhile: A Complete Unknown. I went and saw it at the theater and I'm grappling with a little something, "just for me."

On my "personal favorite movie of the year" list, its now between Saturday Night and A Complete Unknown for that slot. I enjoyed them both, very much EVEN AS they are clearly BOTH "biopics" which clearly switch things around, compress them, meke things up or flat out lie. That's how it was with "Hitchocck"(about the making of Psycho) back in 2012(and that was NOT one of my favorites of 2012) and that's how it is with these two.

But I think at the end of the day, both the 1970s nostalgia of Saturday Night and the 1960s nostalgia of A Complete Unknown won out for my emotional connection(these are movies I would love to watch again, and I will) and with A Complete Unknown, I'm simply not familiar enough with Dylan's career to know what was real and what was fake.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Note in passing: Bob Dylan is still alive (unlike as with Hitchocck when "Hitchcock" was made) and evidently not only approved the script, he ACTED IT OUT, line by line , page by page, with the makers before signing off on the film. (And why did he NEED to sign off on it? To avoid the "Hitchcock" problem of not allowing anything from Psycho -- scenes, dialogue, clips -- to be used? ) So A Complete Unknown is pretty sympathetic to ol' Bob.

A further personal "hook" to A Complete Unknown: the movie begins with an unknown Dylan visiting the hospital room of the dying Woody Guthrie(who cannot speak) and his friend, folk singer Pete Seeger (played in his edgy milquetoast manner by Edward Norton.) As the film goes on , Pete Seeger will be "the man in the middle" between the "hard core folk music people" and Dylan as a "folk rocker ready with electric guitar to change everything.")

Well, in my 60's elementary school days, I had a female teacher who brought in Pete Seeger records and played them a LOT for the class. You could say I was a Pete Seeger expert before my time. As the years went on, I learned that Pete Seeger was rather a "left wing hero" and that my teacher may well have been "indoctrinating" our class but -- hell, if one keeps one's own counsel in this life NOBODY can "indoctrinate you" -- you make your own decisions. I recall thinking Pete Seegar was tuneful in a "New Christy Minstrels/Peter Paul and Mary" sort of way. I LOVED folk music as a kid and I LAUGHED at Christopher Guest's send up of "old folk singers" in A Mighty Wind and...

...so this Dylan movie delivered a "double dose of nostalgia." I loved the Pete Seeger stuff as much as the Bob Dylan stuff. And Edward Norton's Seeger is in the movie from start to finish.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

But the strongest two scenes for me WERE strong(and the movie knew it) because they were great Dylan songs, used to maximum effect:

"The Times They Are A Changin'." Sung about mid-way through the film and Dylan brings his concert crowd to their feet in a standing ovation and sing-a-long that reflects, of course, that the times they WERE a 'changin.

(Note in passing: The 2009 psychotic superhero movie 'Watchmen' opens with a spectacular fight scene and then segues to a spectacular credit sequence cut to Dylan's "Times They Are a Changin"" and the song in THAT movie is just as powerful as it is in THIS movie.)

The second big Dylan hit starts to emerge in bits and pieces as he doodles on his guitar with it over the course of the film, and you end up just DYING to hear the full thing: "Like A Rolling Stone," of course ("How does it FEEEEEL?") But when Dylan sings THIS one at the end -- electric -- the folk crowd turns on him and throws tomatoes at him and...well, you get the picture.)

I also liked the scene where -- as his first album takes off and people are lined up to buy it at a record store -- Dylan is walking by the window and young women start chasing after him down the street into a taxi -- must be quite the mix of ego boost and shock to ANY newborn star. (Harrison Ford said that after Star Wars hit, he went into Tower Records to shop and got his clothes torn by fans trying to escape them; ditto Robert Redford trying to shop after Butch Cassidy.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Not to lose the lede:

"A Complete Unknown" sealed the deal with me almost SOLELY on the basis of the "Times They Are a Changin'" scene and the "Rolling Stone" scene. Great, powerful emotion came over me and it felt very uplifting and when movies DO that to me...they get my allegiance.

That said, I felt pretty good through "Saturday Night," too, so I guess I'm going to have to give one of my rare TIES for a favorite of 2024.

Here's the 2020s so far:

2020: Psycho: The German Version Director's Cut(one of only two movies I saw in a movie theater in COVID year 2020; the other was Unhinged. Well, I saw The Invisible Man before COVID hit, but not good enough.)
2021: Licorice Pizza
2022: Top Gun II: Maverick
2023: The Holdovers
2024: Saturday Night/A Complete Unknown

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

A little bit more on "A Complete Unknown."

It joins in with Mad Men and other 1960s stories to "capture that era" with two specific scenes accompanied by TV images of the time:

"The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962." We see footage of JFK talking about the missiles. As in the "Mad Men" episode about this event, we see New Yorkers running every which way and jumping in their cars to try to "escape" New York City because they think it will DEFINITELY get hit by nukes. Dylan chooses this night to play in a club, get some applause, and advise everybody to go get laid if the bombs are coming. And of course, Hitchocck fans know from "Topaz" as HIS take on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"JFK Assassination" -- and that CBS Special Report. (Back when they were REALLY special reports and REALLY breaking news.)

Here -- as in other films -- JFK blown away leads to the Beatles in America within 6 months and "the sixties really begin." For Bob Dylan, too. For Pete Seeger? Not so much.

Also, you can tell that Bob Dylan personally approved the script. He gets him some pretty ladies in this film. But then...he really DID. One of them is Joan Baez(also still alive as this film has come out, and, to be frank, cast with an actress prettier than she was, I'm a swine..) The record shows she was just too big a star for him to marry (in his mind.)

[–] swanstep (2769) a month ago

To which I add: "If you made a great movie that was only shown in one room to 100 people, should THAT be considered a success?"

Relatedly. I read some articles recently talking about 'snubs' in various critical awards and the Golden Globes this year. One that stuck out to me was the suggestion Marianne Jean-Baptiste had been snubbed for Mike Leigh's Hard Truths (she got a supporting actress Oscar nom for Leigh's relatively big '90s hit Secrets and Lies). but then I checked out the facts - that Hard Truths has Had literally *no* official release in the US yet. I'm sorry but you can't be snubbed for anything if you haven't put yourself out there for actual judgement. Yes, very occasionally critics and other voters will pile in with support to hail a genuine obscurity but... no one has any entitlement to such extraordinary consideration, films become *entitled* to consideration only if they take the actual risk of paying for a release, even a very limited one in LA and NYC (as The Brutalist has done). I'm prepared to believe that Hard Truths is one of the best films of the year, but you do have to *actually* release it to really count as being from any particular year!

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

I suppose I should refine my point a little.

Certain movies DO only get shown in one room to 100 people to QUALIFY for awards(or maybe three rooms around the country to 300 people) but EVENTUALLY get theatrical releases.

Or, modernly, get streaming releases.

But my hypothetical -- and its not THAT fanciful -- is "what if you made movie and ON PURPOSE only 100 people EVER saw it?"

Idea being: iIsn't film meant to be a "mass medium?"

Surely The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago were seen by MILLIONS of people in 1965, THAT's a mass audience. (And I'll state again that while I can SEE how The Sound of Music made its inflation-adjusted biliions, and I can SEE how Thunderball made ITS billion...Doctor Zhivago still seems like a very long, rather dull slog through Russian history, with some unfulfilling "cheater's love" going on.

I'm always intrigued to read that Doctor Zhivago was "big with college students." THAT was college students in 1965. Are college students in 2025 more...Marvel-oriented? Maybe.

PS. I saw a trailer for "The Brutalist" with "A Complete Unknown." It looks interesting -- AND I see where Guy Pearce is prominently in it.

Flashback to a significant other from another time. We saw LA Confidential together in 1997, we loved it and she told ME "This Guy Pearce is going to be a star -- you'll see."

Well, I'm still waiting to see but - Guy Pearce never really goes away and he always manages to turn up in something good like The Brutalist. The other two stars of LA Confidental -- Kevin Spacey and Russell Crowe -- have seen career losses and weight gains. Perhaps Guy Pearce witll be the surviving star, after all.

[–] swanstep (2769) a month ago

Guy Pearce has some staying power for sure...Memento and LA Confidential are still his calling cards I'd say, but he's been good in a range of other things and The Brutalist looks like another big role for him.

Dude has great taste in and success with women too: he has kids with a Dutch actress Carice van Houten who was Melisandre on Game of Thrones, excellent as the lead in a great Verhoeven movie called Black Books, and generally is a classy, intelligent beauty.

[–] roger1 (4046) a month ago

Guy Pearce has some staying power for sure...Memento and LA Confidential are still his calling cards I'd say, but he's been good in a range of other things and The Brutalist looks like another big role for him.

---
Pearce seems to have enough staying power to "grab a big one" every so often. Best Picture winners , too -- he had a great "star cameo" in The Hurt Locker(gets blown up early) and wasnt he in "The King's Speech"? So maybe Best Picture again with The Brutalist.

He was even the bad guy in one of those supergrossing Marvel Iron Mans, yes?

--

Dude has great taste in and success with women too: he has kids with a Dutch actress Carice van Houten who was Melisandre on Game of Thrones, excellent as the lead in a great Verhoeven movie called Black Books, and generally is a classy, intelligent beauty.

---

Well, handsome movie star men(the cheekbones on that guy!) tend to get the shots with beautiful classy women -- if they want them.

That significannt other of years ago, made that call about Guy Pearce so I keep following him.

She also hipped me to an actor named Michael Shannon -- we first saw him in a small part in the so-so Pearl Harbor movie of 2001. I remember she said: "I think he looks like Joseph Cotten." (Hey the "e" in Joseph Cotten now works on my machine.) I'm not so sure about that, but Shannon certainly has a character star career now.