I love Kramer vs Kramer. I think this is the movie that convinced me young Dustin Hoffman was a phenomenal actor more than The Graduate.
I love the sequence after he loses his job and knows he has to find a new one asap if he has any chance at court. He’s got such a noble character arc from workaholic to genuinely loving father.
Unfathomable that he actually takes her letter out of the envelope and just starts reading it out loud in front of his son without having screened it first. WTF. Not even saying that there’s necessarily a circumstance where he should keep her letter from him, but surely you want to prepare yourself for what the hell you’re going to be dealing with when the kid hears it.
I never thought about it that way!! I guess I came from a family of secrets such that I was glad he didn’t hesitate, but you make a good point.
omg, I didn’t know that. Thats nearly unforgiveable.
Got my hand up for 2001.
I recognize its art. I recognize its goodness, but man, it didn’t catch me other than a few moments here and there. The sound design is amazing, the visuals are fantastic, and the story doesnt grab me even a little bit.
There are dozens of us!
It’s amazing how good Tombstone is and how boring Wyatt Earp is. In Tombstone, it’s about three brothers who just want to retire and get rich, but trouble won’t leave them in peace. Plus Val Kilmer rules as Doc Holliday. Wyatt Earp theoretically should have been able to do the same and then some with its three hour runtime, but its one boring sprawling sequence after another.
K vs K was my first movie nudity I think. I would have been 14 and went with my Dad or maybe both parents.
Jo Beth Williams.
I think my first nudity was Doc Hollywood when the small town doctor emerges from the lake. I was as speechless as Michael J Fox. After that I didn’t know what to watch except that horror movies were a pretty good guarantee to see something.
I’ve always lumped this and Ordinary People together and had zero desire to see either. But the Rewatchables has me curious. Let me know how it goes.
Kramer vs Kramer is solid, but I will never forgive it for beating Apocalypse Now
Both Siskel and Ebert started out hating Quitnen Tarantino but did turn around.
From the writer/director of Blue Ruin and Green Room which I loved. Looks kind of cheesy but I’ll definitely be giving it a watch. Watching someone beat up on crooked cops should at least be entertaining.
You have to remember that horror was looked down on by most everyone in the 70s-80s, it would have been a hot take for a critic to like a Carpenter monster movie like The Thing.
I also need to rewatch 2001. I’m pretty sure I was a literal child when I first saw it and was like “wtf this is not an awesome space movie” and I never revisited.
On the topic of classic movies, and motivated by my recent realization that Gene Hackman is great in everything, I recently watched The French Connection for the first time.
I have a really hard time characterizing this one. I liked it, and almost certainly would have loved it if I had been around to see it in theaters against its contemporary counterparts, but I didn’t love it. And I’m not entirely sure why. I think part of it was that I don’t think I enjoy Hackman in the absolute lead as much as I enjoy him playing off someone else (like in Unforgiven and Crimson Tide). I guess Hoosiers would be an exception to that.
But I think the bigger part is how it was filmed. Something that’s easily described is its very herky-jerky, documentary style camera that almost induced a feeling of motion sickness. (Similar to the movement in Bourne Ultimatum.) But I don’t think that’s entirely it. A lot of times when I see a movie and can’t quite articulate why I felt about it the way I did, I’ll dig through critics’ reviews to see if they capture what I’m feeling. Ebert gave it 4 stars, so he obviously isn’t sharing my vibe, but he does capture some of it:
The movie is all surface, movement, violence and suspense. Only one of the characters really emerges into three dimensions: Popeye Doyle Gene Hackman, a New York narc who is vicious, obsessed and a little mad. The other characters don’t emerge because there’s no time for them to emerge. Things are happening too fast.
All true.
The story line hardly matters.
Yes - why is this good? Basically, I agree with how he described the ingredients but I simply think that those ingredients didn’t result in a great meal. Pauline Kael was much more negative and better captured how I felt:
I know that there are many people—and very intelligent people, too—who love this kind of fast-action movie, who say that this is what movies do best and that this is what they really want when they go to a movie. Probably many of them would agree with everything I’ve said but will still love the movie. Well, it’s not what I want, and the fact that Friedkin has done a sensational job of direction just makes that clearer. It’s not what I want not because it fails (it doesn’t fail) but because of what it is. It is, I think, what we once feared mass entertainment might become: jolts for jocks. There’s nothing in the movie that you enjoy thinking over afterward—nothing especially clever except the timing of the subway-door-and-umbrella sequence. Every other effect in the movie—even the climactic car-versus-runaway-elevated-train chase—is achieved by noise, speed, and brutality.
Writing all of this down, I think the most similar experience for me (both watching and in how I felt vs. the public) was Mad Max: Fury Road. The movie was a spectacle - loud and interesting and it kept my pulse up for a lot of it, but as I watched it I felt that was a storyline that I was simply missing and that there wasn’t enough substance underneath to make me really love it or want to watch it again.
Bring on the hate.
I can take or leave the French Connection. Its fine. I don really enjoy car chases, but I love on location gritty 70s NYC movies. I probably would have liked the movie better if all the chases were on foot or subway.
So glad I saw Deadpool & Wolverine when I did. Social media has been full of spoilers in the past week, including by Ryan Reynolds. Some of the most fun parts of the movie have appeared in my feeds repeatedly.
ngl, I kinda have to see this dumb movie when it’s on streaming because of the online spoilers. Gambit and Blade are in this somehow? Okay, take my money.
Might want to spoiler that, tbh.