Watch the original Cape Fear if you haven’t seen it
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Also watch the Simpsons episode
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Man, what a cast
- Robert De Niro as Max Cady
- Nick Nolte as Sam Bowden
- Jessica Lange as Leigh Bowden
- Juliette Lewis as Danielle Bowden
- Joe Don Baker as Claude Kersek
- Robert Mitchum as Lieutenant Elgart
- Gregory Peck as Lee Heller
- Illeana Douglas as Lori Davis
- Fred Thompson as Tom Broadbent
- Martin Balsam as Judge
- Zully Montero as Graciela
- Domenica Cameron-Scorsese as Dani’s friend
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5-6 years ago, a friend reaches out one day with the news that his marriage is in trouble, and he wondered if he could stay at my place for a little bit. I’m very surprised by the news, but of course I say yes, come on over. I’m obviously curious as to what has happened, but I’m not going to press him; he’ll give me details when he’s ready. For now, I’m flying blind, and the hope is to just keep it light until he indicates he wants to talk about it. I get him a beer and I suggest we throw on a movie. He says yes.
Under the circumstances, I feel like I’m operating with a narrow scope in terms of picking a movie with the right vibe, something that isn’t going to put an uncomfortable “marriage problems” feeling in the air. I suggest Cape Fear. I haven’t seen it, but I know it’s about a prisoner getting out and being hell-bent on revenge. A sadistic, violent thriller? Perfect! And…five minutes into the movie, our main character is having an emotional affair with his racquetball partner that is creating a bunch of strain in his marriage. I could only sigh, shake my head, and think, “you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
Anyway, good movie.
(I have no good answers as to why I didn’t just pick something I’d already seen.)
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What year was that? I can’t remember if I saw it
Seaaon 5 Episode 2 - Cape Feare
Has to be a top 10 episode, possibly top 5 for some people
3rd pick overall in our Simpsons Draft
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Yeah I for sure saw that one but it’s been a very very long time
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Psycho II is on Peacock. Honestly so good. Looking forward to watching it again. Haunting score, unexpected story, and fantastic performance by Anthony Perkins.
Weird fact I learned tonight - Perkins’ widow died in one of the 9/11 planes.
Anyway, check this one out.
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Mitchum is a somewhat forgotten great actor. He has incredible “prescence”. The Night of the Hunter is another great movie where he plays the bad guy.
He has a brand of menace that was rarely replicated and the only other person I can think of who had as much menace presence on screen from the same era was Lawrence Tierney, a man who could have been a huge movie star if he wasn’t so scary to deal with in real life and on set.
(from my top 10 IMDb movies that I hadn’t seen yet)
I knocked this one out now. It wasn’t long before posting that list at eyebooger’s request that I had watched City Lights as well. It’s obviously a bit of a jarring transition to jump from modern cinema all the way back into Chaplin silent films (just mostly silent in the case of Modern Times). Like setting down a 2023 novel and picking up, say, a Jane Austen, you have to put in some mental effort to reset your brain and train it upon something else, because despite the common medium in many ways it’s speaking in its own unique language that does not particularly resemble the daily life of today.
When I watched City Lights, I got mild enjoyment out of it. Many of the physical gags worked; I did laugh out loud a number of times. I could definitely see Chaplin’s talent. That said, for the reason spoken to above, it was difficult to get acclimated and I can’t claim to have been enthralled. It definitely fell more into the “I can appreciate what this was at one time” bucket rather than the “I loved it, zero qualifications” bucket. Although I thoroughly enjoy a lot of movies that are now 80-90 years old, some just do end up being more a subject of distant objective appreciation.
Fast-forward a fairly short amount of time later to my viewing of The Artist, which I was not aware going in was a mostly silent film. That was something that set in over the course of the 5-10 minutes of the movie. “Is this … the whole thing’s going to be silent? Oh shit, that’s interesting.” And I posted about it here, that I found it to be a charming and likable movie that does not deserve to get categorized among the weakest Best Picture winners. It occurred to me during that if I liked that then there actually shouldn’t be that much of a barrier to gaining a greater appreciation of Chaplin.
Modern Times is a legitimately great movie. It’s a richer text than City Lights (which primarily is a simple romance), and while it’s a comedy it definitely leans more into being a social commentary about the exploitation of the working class under harsh economic conditions. It also felt especially poignant with the knowledge that it was released at the height of The Great Depression. One thing that caught me off-guard was that the soundtrack featured the melody of “Smile,” later popularized by Nat King Cole, a song that was apparently composed by Chaplin himself. I’ve always loved that song, it’s absolutely pitch-perfect as used in this movie, and it was a revelation on my end to learn that there was a musical aspect to Chaplin’s overall set of talents. The ending is a thing of beauty.
(Note: that clip is the actual final two minutes of the movie if spoilers are of concern.)
I went into these Chaplin films not necessarily expecting to love them, but I came away wanting more, and will not only revisit these in the future but intend to continue to delve into his catalog (much of which is hosted on Max). Certainly surprised that I went from “I love a lot of classic films, but silent films might be a bridge too far” to looking ahead to, e.g., The Great Dictator and being worried that I won’t like it as much because it’s NOT a silent film.
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Do you Marx brothers?
I haven’t really yet. Their biggest movies are not available on streaming as far as I can tell; I looked not too long ago. I might need to try the library route for that.
My mom had me watch some when I was a kid, and I think they were more of their biggest ones. I worked on a boxed set a while back and all those movies were good (the Paramount ones before they moved to MGM). Their brand of comedy was insane and hilarious. Even though clips do well, they play much better as an entire context of a movie.
It looks like Duck Soup (probably considered among their best but maybe not their funniest, with a bunch of funny scenes) is available for rent and The Cocoanuts (their first movie) is available to subs on The Criterion Channel.
The ones I did work for were the first 5 (The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup), and The Cocoanuts was from 1929, a very early talkie with lots of strange sound problems. Even with those problems, the basic way the sound was done is better sounding than a lot of modern movies once cleaned up.
Absolutely all of those movies will have at least one gag in them that will make you laugh and if you can find the box collection at the library it would be a good jumping off point. The movies are absolutely frenetic, especially The Cocoanuts and are also part musicals. Chico Marx was an insanely talented piano player who looked incredible playing it. I heard his technique bordered on bad but it looked and sounded really good in the movies to me (I’m a non-musician).
At the time The Cocoanuts was made, that was a stage play and they were filming the movie and doing the play at the same time. I think there were some production issues due to that, but it’s pretty hard to see on camera. I think it’s probably pretty hard to make it through life without some exposure to Groucho Marx, so you’re probably relatively familiar with what his comedy is like. Harpo never said a word and was an outstanding physical comedian. Chico is the musician with bad stereotypical Italian accent and is who usually comes in with corny joke set ups that make Groucho want to kill him. I believe Zeppo was in the first 4 movies and he was the straight man before he left the act. You can tell he has chops based on a letter dictation scene that I believe was in Monkey Business, but they gave him almost no moments of comedy which I think caused him to leave the group.
Again, the amount of energy those guys brought to the screen as screen presence was electrifying in those early movies in a way no one was doing at the time (I’m sure I saw some of the later ones when I was a kid, but don’t have any firm memories of them). Chaplin was more of a graceful guy, while these guys came in every scene like a ton of bricks upending the world around them in every scene. Maybe a decent analogy is they had the feeling of The Tasmanian Devil when he entered and left every scene in those cartoons.
Also, while it’s a bit off topic, if you’re into comedy at all, I highly recommend finding The Burns and Allen Show. Gracie Allen is spectacular and is probably one of the funniest people in human history.
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I appreciate this primer. I’ll try to get to a Marx Brothers movie before too long.
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A few years ago I randomly caught Modern Times on TV (last time i’d seen a silent Chaplin was as a child) and was completely blown away by how good it was.
Since then i’ve seen most of his movies (all the movie-length silent ones) and while my enjoyment varied I appreciated all of them. Im also not entirely sure why “city lights” is supposedly the much better one (although it definitely has some high points, like the boxing game or the very end). I thought “the circus” was a lot of fun.
I also would recommend Keaton’s Sherlock Jr which imo is even better than all Chaplin.
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I do think City Lights is the funnier of the two by a fair margin, so purely judging the comedy I can understand the preference some might have for it, but I think Modern Times wins in every other category. That’s just my impression on first watch. IMDb and Letterboxd reflect identical average ratings for the two movies, so I don’t know how much daylight there is between them in popular opinion.
I’ll add Sherlock, Jr. to the watch list. I haven’t seen any Buster Keaton stuff yet (save for his appearance in Sunset Boulevard, which I saw forever ago and honestly don’t much remember).
Sally’s back baby! Kiernan Shipka stars in a delightful time travel paradox movie in which she has a chance to go back to the 80s and stop a serial killer before he begins his spree of murders. Lots and lots of easter eggs and references to other time travel movies, including a few deliberate misdirections making the audience think they know what’s about to happen.
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