Tag: Entertaining – Classic

The Wizard of Oz

Re-watch The Wizard of Oz, and you’ll re-discover a fable about head trauma that documents Judy Garland’s ascent to the summit of child exploitation. –October 31, 2023

Enough Said

People grow older and change, and we mostly ignore them after age 30. Enough Said tilts the frame of reference to middle age and gets great performances from Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini in one of his last roles. –March 31, 2023

She Done Him Wrong

Mae West is a silver screen queen from the 1930s, and She Done Him Wrong startles, today, because she so bluntly controls men by the groin. Look for Cary Grant, too! –March 31, 2023

Toy Story

CGI has advanced a lot since 1995, but Toy Story remains alive with charm and a Classical Style plot that employs voice actors I’d like as neighbors. –March 31, 2023

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Portrait of a Lady on Fire smolders because it accepts the practical realities of Queer women-as-chattel in the late 1700s. It also provides a glimpse of joy among lesbians, which is hot stuff that doubles as a thoughtful commentary about art making. –December 31, 2023

Kung Fu Panda

Though there is a movie and TV franchise to sample, the original Kung Fu Panda remains enjoyable every time I see it. –October 31, 2023

Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Summer of Soul is a slice of cultural history made interesting through vivid music. Peak for Sly and the Family Stone, the Staples Singers, and The 5th Dimension, and feel free to cry when you watch people watch themselves in images from 50 years in the past. –May 31, 2023

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Equal to the original movie and a landmark VFX spectacle on its own, Terminator 2: Judgment Day gives truth to the fiction, “I’ll be back”. –April 30, 2023

North by Northwest

Hitchcock appears at the end of the North by Northwest credit sequence. Then Cary Grant goes on one of the great rides of moviedom. Look for Martin Landau cruising James Mason.  –March 31, 2023

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

I didn’t understand the mythos of Monroe until I saw Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  –February 28, 2023

Sideways

Paul Giammati has a wonderful voice and no shoulders. In Sideways, he’s a middle-aged schlub with a drinking problem, and he’s terrific, as are all other players and moving parts of this story about failure and starting over. –December 31, 2022

Dazed and Confused

Better than I remember it, Dazed and Confused is the story of teens becoming people you wish you’d known when you were growing up. –November 30, 2022

Rocky

Forget the franchise build around it and remember: Rocky is about everyday people trying to be just a little bit better than they were when we first meet them. –September 30, 2022

Avatar

Unsurpassed as the best immersive CGI-fantasy yet, Avatar is a brilliant act of world-building even with lines of dialogue to make your ears bleed. See it in 3-D! –September 30, 2022

Joker

Garrett Chaffin-Quiray and Ed Rosa catch up to the zeitgeisty hit of 2019 and reel-in a real whopper. –April 30, 2022

Dolemite Is My Name

Garrett Chaffin-Quiray and Ed Rosa celebrate Eddie Murphy, a stand-up genius, playing Rudy Ray Moore, another stand-up genius, who invented Dolemite, a Hip Hop God. –April 30, 2022

The Castle of Cagliostro

Take 1: I’m a completist, so The Castle of Cagliostro was my last unseen Miyazaki, and I put it off for years, assuming the master’s first feature would be his worst. Happily, it isn’t. You should see it. Take 2: Eurocentric settings meet oddly eclectic design in The Castle of Cagliostro, the first of Hayao Miyazaki’s feature films… Continue reading The Castle of Cagliostro

The Thing

Garrett Chaffin-Quiray and Ed Rosa found a movement: Make Antarctica Great Again! –November 30, 2021

Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo is nearly perfect, although I didn’t think so when I first saw it. Then you see it again, and again, and again, and its beauty falls into place as so many perfectly placed narrative devices that push a group of fish into becoming better people. –October 31, 2021

The Thing from Another World

Garrett Chaffin-Quiray and Ed Rosa eat their vegetables while interpreting a Cold War classic. –October 31, 2021

Monsters, Inc.

“You filled your quota on the first kid of the day.” Take 1: Again, Monsters, Inc. genuinely enchants me with its story of male work/life partners that yearn to adopt a baby they can’t make on their own. Take 2: All hail Pixar, through which our entertainment-overlords produce the “feels” somewhere in Emeryville, California. Now ubiquitous with… Continue reading Monsters, Inc.

Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins works on every level: as fantasy, as mid-1960s psychodelia, as Anglophile nostalgia. If you’ve never seen it, get over yourself. If you haven’t seen it in a while, remember this is how Julie Andrews won her Best Actress Oscar. –May 31, 2021

Rear Window

Rear Window is the story of a man who can’t get up without help. Now: consider what can’t get up means while enjoying Grace Kelly-as-clothes horse for Edith Head. –October 31, 2020

Jaws

Imagine the pitch meeting: three men hunt a shark with a belly full of boy. Jaws!  Peter Benchley was born into an upper-class family and the Ivy League. Upon graduating he became a journalist and contributed to various newspapers and magazines, National Geographic among them. With an affinity for the ocean, one of his assignments about sharks particularly… Continue reading Jaws

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

Despite repeat viewing in the 1980s, I’d forgotten how many penis and breast jokes there are in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! Or: How O.J. Simpson got away with it. –August 31, 2020

Onward

Take 1: COVID-19 ruined Onward as a Pixar money-maker. Too bad. It’s really good, considering the trailers.  Take 2: It’s the Pixar feature where an older brother is his younger brother’s father. Onward: good the second time, too. –May 31, 2020

Little Women

Neither undersized nor malnourished, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women twists the source into a modern pretzel of delicious production design, pleasing performers, and the single best glimpse of what it feels like to hold a book’s first edition that I’ve ever seen. –April 30, 2020

Groundhog Day

Forever is a mighty long time. Bill Murray manages to survive it with aplomb in Groundhog Day, which is the main reason people can spell P-U-N-X-S-U-T-A-W-N-E-Y. –May 31, 2020

The World According to Garp

Robin Williams is dead. Seeing him in The World According to Garp, supported by Lithgow, Hurt, and Close, makes me sad since I think it’s a great film from a great book that gave me an unexpected great evening. –April 30, 2020

9 to 5

Pour yourself a cup of ambition because the fellas need to learn how penis possession is not permission to sass those you harass for white-collar dollars in 9 to 5.  –May 31, 2020

Slow West

Take 1: Slow West is a weird little love story wrapped up in redemption and vengeance, a classic Western. But it doesn’t feel like Ford directing Wayne with modern cameras. Instead, it’s odd and violent, and it ends with a nod to the costs of forming family. Take 2: Slow West combines non-American performers doing Old West… Continue reading Slow West

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Swaying reeds caught me holding my breath. There is so much reverence for beauty, duty, and combat in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that you may forget it’s a very sad ending. –April 30, 2020

Life of Pi

I love Life of Pi. Mr. Patel is the kind of explorer-sage I hope to be because that is the way of God. –April 30, 2020

La La Land

Take 1: Watching John Legend play a sold-out version of himself is fun, but the theme of expressing truth in creative work, not just for profit but self-satisfaction, makes a lot of sense in La La Land every time Ryan Gosling does puppy dog eyes. Take 2: La La Land is so good that my eight-year… Continue reading La La Land

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus made really bad movies. But they made a lot of really bad movies, and a couple of gems, too. See Electric Bugaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films to learn the full history of their weird, mediocre genius. –March 31, 2020

Run Lola Run

Take 1: Telling a story three different ways, Run Lola Run brilliantly explores three different outcomes with live action, animation, overlapping timelines, flashes of red, and bedroom conversation about a girl who loves a boy. And she runs, oh how she runs. Take 2: As a story, Run Lola Run dazzles with narrative experimentation. At its center, though, it… Continue reading Run Lola Run

Frankenstein

People remember Universal’s Frankenstein as the story of a dude with a flattop. It’s actually about a rich scientist with an abused pet that rouses a poor village to drunken vigilantism.  –February 29, 2020

Before Sunset

Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy hang out in Paris, talking and smiling, and thinking about how they might be soul mates in this middle chapter, Sunset, of Linklater’s Before trilogy.  –February 29, 2020

Border

Take 1: Ever wondered how a troll makes love? Or what a baby troll looks like? Or how a troll finds meaningful work in human society? Border has the answers. And naked trolls, too! Take 2: Imagine the elevator pitch: a custom official, who is a troll, meets another troll and learns that her life isn’t a… Continue reading Border

Best in Show

Best in Show is an exquisitely loving, reality TV-adjacent “mockumentary.” See it if this dialogue is funny: “Pine nut, which is a nut, but it’s also the name of a town.”  –December 31, 2019

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert

Richard Pryor: Live in Concert is brilliant. Equal parts storytelling + profane turns of phrase + racial mimicry + nervy performance = Kevin Hart X 2. –November 30, 2019

Ed Wood

Ed Wood combines multiple stories of non-conformity with the virtues of an all-star cast in a Tim Burton film. And it’s in black-and-white. See it now. –November 30, 2019

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

Take 1: “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very, very brightly.” –October 31, 2019 Take 2: From “The Hi-Lo Bro Show” Podcast: “This is the one where replicants inspire Richard to go full Milton while Garrett obsesses over AI coupling.” –January 31, 2021

Grave of the Fireflies

“All this child needs is some food.” It’s not often that children star in movies. When they do, they often succeed; they almost never die. In Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies (1988) these rules are upended in the adaptation of a short story called “Grave of the Fireflies,” written by Akiyuki Nosaka and published in 1967.… Continue reading Grave of the Fireflies

Cinema Paradiso

“Whatever you end up doing, love it.” Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso (1988) is simply exquisite. A film lovers valentine to other film lovers, rendered with period detail and a lavishly sentimental score by the father-son team of Ennio and Andrea Morricone, the chaptered plot expresses pivotal moments in the life of Salvatore Di Vita, played as six-year… Continue reading Cinema Paradiso

Slap Shot

“You do that, you go to the box, you know. Two minutes, by yourself, you know and you feel shame, you know. And then you get free.” –September 30, 2019

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

“My grades aren’t that bad and you’re telling me the fun is over. Man, I’m still waiting for the fun to start!” Iconic is an overused modifier that means standing-in for something absent. When we claim a movie is iconic, which is the case with Amy Heckerling’s 1982 fantasy Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the point… Continue reading Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Take 1: Jiro Dreams of Sushi features an artist. See it on an empty stomach and avoid your local grocery store’s prefab sushi lunch trays forever. Take 2: Jiro Dreams of Sushi presents edible magic in movie form. –November 30, 2024

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

Take 1: See The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Right now. We’re waiting. You need to know why Gordon Liu is heir-apparent to Bruce Lee’s throne. The stunts rock, linking a series of training sequences to enjoyable confrontations with 2-D bad guys. It’s super-duper rad. Take 2: Gordon Liu = Jesus Christ in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. –March 31,… Continue reading The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

Memento

Memento is the Swiss roll of narrative filmmaking: one rolled sponge cake filled with rich cream and fruity jam, but also sprinkled with a layer of crunchy nuts that you can’t see at first glance. –March 31, 2019

Gabriel Over the White House

Yo, Republicrats. A Socialist has already been President. See Gabriel Over the White House and wash it down with a tall glass of communally pumped spring water brought to you from a non-superfund site near a Native American safe space. –February 28, 2019

Pariah

Pariah makes me happy. It’s not every day that a middle-aged white dude hangs out with a teenaged Black lesbian and doesn’t react to her life with silly moral panic because people like me aren’t the center of everything. –February 28, 2019

Baby Face

Barbara Stanwyck’s Baby Face is turned out by her father at age 14. Over time she exploits the sexual needs of grubby men and becomes wealthy. You know, like a Kardashian, circa 1933. –January 31, 2019

Trainspotting

“Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?” –December 31, 2018

When We Were Kings

“I have wrestled with an alligator. I done tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail.” Long before he was an ad man for an electric grill, George Forman hit hard. In Leon Gast’s When We Were Kings (1996) we see this power expressed through archival footage of the young Foreman training with… Continue reading When We Were Kings

Big Night

“Give people what they want, then later you can give them what you want.” Food is a primal devotion. Any occasion I have to eat or drink something delicious is an occasion to be seized. The fact of enjoying my appetite is a baseline of personal experience that renews in me every few hours, better… Continue reading Big Night

M

“I can’t help myself! I have no control over this, this evil thing inside of me, the fire, the voices, the torment!” The transition from silent movies to sound film was a sea change in the life of motion pictures. It’s been well documented how the transition led to the destruction of many careers and… Continue reading M

BlacKkKlansman

Spike Lee does it again. BlacKkKlansman is a fully impregnated work of art that tells the real story of a Black cop who, with a Jewish cop, infiltrates the KKK. Seems impossible. But it isn’t. And it’s really, really good. –November 30, 2018

Halloween

“I met this six-year-old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes, the Devil’s eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up.” Re-watching John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) after many years is to be reminded of changing movie-making technologies and the nature of our… Continue reading Halloween

Saving Private Ryan

“FUBAR.” War is a difficult subject to portray in a movie. If the aim is a celebration of violence, then the response is uncomplicated moral clarity. If the aim is an exploration of the complexities and destructiveness of the wartime experience, then the response is often far more ambiguous, troublesome, and confused. When these two… Continue reading Saving Private Ryan

The Gold Rush

“Three days from anywhere. A Lone Prospector.” Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925) is a sweet confection from an earlier time before sound film. Built on vignettes, The Gold Rush follows a poor simpleton, The Tramp (Chaplin), who tries prospecting during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898.  When The Tramp makes his way through a snowstorm, he finds a… Continue reading The Gold Rush

Boyz N the Hood

“Can’t afford to be afraid of our own people anymore, man.” –October 31, 2018

Pulp Fiction

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men.” –October 31, 2018

Lone Star

“It’s always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice.” –October 31, 2018

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

“I guess you’ve noticed something a little strange with Dad. It’s okay, though. I’m still Dad.” Roy Neary, played by Richard Dreyfuss, is the lead character in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  The story begins one night when Roy crosses paths with several alien spacecraft. Subsequently, he has visions of a… Continue reading Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Fight Club

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet.” Ever since Chuck Palahniuk managed to publish his debut novel Fight Club in 1996, his idea of male vulnerability displaced onto fantasies of homosocial bonding and violence have increasingly seeped… Continue reading Fight Club

Scarface

“Listen, that’s the attitude of too many morons in this country. They think these hoodlums are some sort of demigods.” Al Pacino’s scene-chewing turn as Tony Montana in Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983) is a mess of a good time. There’s a whole lot of snorted blow and bulging eyeballs, and the dreamy, post-disco face of Miami… Continue reading Scarface

Boogie Nights

“We’ve all done bad things. We’ve all had those guilty feelings in our heart. I’m going to take your brain out of your head and wash it and scrub it and make it clean.” When Paul Thomas Anderson released Boogie Nights in 1997 it was talked about as a Pulp Fiction-esque snapshot of vulgar American pop culture. Some… Continue reading Boogie Nights

The French Connection

“Get your hands on your heads, get off the bar, and get on the wall!” Gene Hackman has long been a personal favorite. Perhaps it’s his speaking voice that echoes a spot in my memory about educated, mid-western speech. Maybe it’s the rough-hewn physical presence with a receding hairline and wily eyes that see more… Continue reading The French Connection

Robocop

“I’d buy that for a dollar,” is something to say among boys of a certain age that saw a hard-R-rated movie and never realized it’s a fascist dream of AI-tech running humankind as a way to keep down the poor. Meaning: Robocop is a brilliant satire on the border with truth. –February 28, 2018

Moana

Moana wants more from her provincial life. “And no one leaves” she sings. Her father answer: “That’s right. We stay / We’re safe and we’re well provided.” In context, you’ll laugh at the difference between parent and child in this finely wrought, animated brilliance. –February 28, 2018

"These are the words I said to you," sayeth the Curator, Garrett Chaffin-Quiray