Oddly enough, last night I was flipping through the channels and saw that a 1972 movie called *[The Wrath of God/I] was on. Thinking it was Werner Herzog’s *[Aguirre, the Wrath of God/I], also from 1972, I decided to check it out. Turns out it was a Western starring Robert Mitchum, Frank Langella, Rita Hayworth, and Victor Buono. Not great, but pretty good.
You want the Crash 1996
Not a fantastic movie but much better.
Near the end of the 1980s a friend and I had planned to take in a showing of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. We took a little bit of LSD in the cab on the way down, (because hey, it was the 1980s) and went straight in and sat down.
Everything was just starting to come on strong when the curtain came up on Ulriche Ottinger’s The Image of Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press because as it happened we were there on the wrong night. This turned out to be pure serendipity, because The Image of Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press was a much more appropriate movie to watch under those circumstances.
More recently and jejunely, I grabbed Splinter because it was in the back of my head as something that my wife had mentioned wanting to see. I was actually misremembering Splice, but Splinter turned out to be an above-average little genre horror flick.
In 1998 I went to go see Godzilla (the American one) at the theater with some friends. We mistimed it and Godzilla didn’t start for another hour or so. We decided to see The Truman Show instead, because we figured Jim Carrey is always worth a cheap laugh. Not at all what I was expecting, and still one of my favorite movies.
I saw Godzilla later when it came out on VHS. I think I made the right choice.
I avoided the new Planet of the Apes the same way, but unfortunately the alternative was *Jurassic Park 3. *
Years ago, my best friend and I would go see a movie every weekend, alternating who got to choose. One week she insisted that we see Last of the Mohicans, which I did not want to see even a tiny bit, even though it was my turn to choose. In time I gave way. As it turned out, I absolutely adored the movie, whereas she absolutely hated it.
**Splinter **is definitely at the top of my accidentally-watched skiffy channel movies as well. Intelligent (and scary) horror. **Reeker **is another gem with a dandy plot twist or three along the way.
In the crime film category, which I’m not normally a big fan of I offer No Country for Old Men, which I flipped on one night purely for the Oscar buzz and stayed for the story, and In the Electric Mist with Tommy Lee Jones. Turned that one on because I lurves me some TLJ no matter what he’s in, and the story totally sucked me in.
No Country is great, but Electric Mist is awesome.
The theater near my house went to Indian flicks on Sunday mornings, I thought they carried on their Saturday showing schedule. I don’t remember what I wanted to see but after dragging my carcass out to a 10am Sunday morning show I stayed and watched Bend it Like Beckham. Not only a delightful film but one of my all time favorite soundtracks ever. It was the first time I’d seen Keira Knightly or Jonathon Rhys-Whatshisface though they’d been in a dozen movies by then.
Requiem for a Dream was just sitting in a pile of old busted VHS tapes my girlfriend inherited from her dead father. I threw it in just to have some background sound while I played Civ II, 5 minutes in I turned off the computer and rewound to start it over.
Zombieland has been on my Netflix recommend list forever and I finally gave in one night thinking I’d end up turning it off and going to bed in a little while. While not great, I really liked it and would see it again.
The Cruise was on IFC one night when there was absolutely nothing on. I became an IFC that night, good or bad whatever you see on that channel it’ll be something you’ve never seen before.