Impromptu – just a sexy romp of a flick, inspired by some real-life friendships and dalliances among a circle of continental belles-lettrists et artistes in Bourbon-Restoration France, with a tour-de-force performance by Judy Davis as novelist George Sand.
Love At First Bite – for years, I thought this was just a silly, campy, and bloodless (some would say “toothless”) vampire spoof set in Manhattan. Now I see it also as a biting satire of the single life (the telling details in Susan St. James’ tragic apartment) and a meditation on modern alienation. That, and the immortal line “For you, never a quickie; always a longie.”
Withnail & I – (speaking of tragic apartments…) It amazes me that not everyone “gets” this movie – appreciating that it’s supposed to be both funny and tragic, and that the Withnail character is having problems with more than just unemployment, booze, and drugs. I’ve even shown this to people who didn’t think it was funny! I think it’s probably the funniest movie ever made… but clearly mine is not a unanimous opinion.
A View to a Kill – yep, the lame-o Roger Moore James Bond vehicle, with an improbable plot and Christopher Walken and Grace Jones as the villains. But IMHO it is perhaps the best-realized of the campier Bond flicks, with really great villain parts. If its plot was less OTT preposterous than that of, say, Moonraker, it also had peppier pacing throughout to keep it aloft (like a helium-filled zeppelin, you might say). I even like the Duran Duran/John Barry theme song. (I also like Octopussy for the same general reasons, though not as much.)
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid – I think people tend to overlook this Steve Martin vehicle because, as a formalist exercise in splicing Martin and Rachel Ward in a plethora of classic B&W noir scenes, it defies the usual easy Steve Martin categories (in the way that Woody Allen fans tend to overlook his “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” perhaps?). The pleasures to be had here are twofold, though – the unlikely success of inserting Martin in all these old noir scenes, and the fun of identifying these scenes and figuring out how cleverly they were edited together to put together a more-or-less coherent plot.
The Ninth Gate – Eurotrash eye-candy, but controlled by Roman Polanski for atmospherics and a general sense of dread. For Europhiles, bibliophiles, noir buffs, occult-flick junkies, and fans of Johnny Depp, Lena Olin, or Emmanuelle Seignier.
The Wicker Man – A true oddball melange of film structures and styles, not neatly reducible to horror, detective story, melodrama, sexploitation, black comedy, or musical, yet encompassing all of these. Great performance by Edward Woodward, of all people. I have yet to show this to anyone who admits the same rapt fascination and enthusiasm that I feel for this film (and some hated it), but I haven’t given up trying, either.
Nice to know I’m not the only who liked that movie. Sure, it doesn’t have much of a plot, but the sheer Retroness of it is worth it(notice how nothing seems to be from later then 1970, except for maybe some of the cars?)
I’ll second the votes for Joe Versus the Volcano (just got the soundtrack a few days ago, hooray!), Tremors, and Withnail & I. Fantastic movies, all.
And I’ll add They Live, a note-prefect B-grade horror/action flick starring Rowdy Roddy Piper. It’s got all the elements of a classic like the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, including some moderately profound social commentary buried among the cheesy action.
Also it’s got, hands-down, the single most bad-ass fight scene I’ve ever seen on film. Totally gratuitous; it’s just thrown into the middle as if John Carpenter were saying, Check out my big, bad-ass fight scene!
“I came here to kick ass, and chew bubble gum… And I’m all out of bubble gum.”
Repo Man with Emilio Estevez. I heard somewhere that the glowing thing in the trunk was the inspiration for Pulp Fiction’s glowing suitcase.
I laughed like crazy all through A Mighty Wind, but everyone I was with thought that I was nuts.
Movies I can watch over and over again:
Predator 2 Mortal Kombat The Legend of Billie Jean (currently playing on TV! On Encore. They just met Lloyd.) Wing Commander (surprisingly good sci-fi despite the presence of Freddie Prinze Jr.) The Fifth Element (brilliant on all fronts) Lost In Space Mystery Men Thirteen Ghosts (who doesn’t love Tony Shaloub?)
I clicked on this thread specifically to mention this movie! I literally wore out the two copies of it I had. I need to go get it on DVD. I have always thought Andrew (formerly Dice) Clay was a quiet riot. I am also the only woman I know who feels that way. He’s beyond hilarious.
My other pick would have to be Boogie Nights. I absolutely love that movie. My husband groans whenever I tell him we need to watch it…again. I’ve probably seen it over one hundred times. I think it is just fascinating, for some reason. Noooo…and not that reason either!
I’ve spent the last five years trying to convince my husband that Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey are the best movies ever made. He’s not buying it…
I also third Big Trouble in Little China and The Emperor’s New Groove
Two Brian DePalma flicks come to mind: ‘Body Double’ few people mention or admire. I think its superb trash, preferable to most ‘serious’ movies. The way DePalma does these movies, it’s like soap opera horror, with heavy romantic strings one moment and outlandish violence another.
DePalma also directed Robert DeNiro in his first two movies, ‘Greetings’ and ‘Hi, Mom’. ‘Hi, Mom’ is off-the-wall satire and oddball humor with tons of awesome scenes. Why this movie isn’t more popular confounds me.
Has anyone else seen ‘The Heist’ with Pierce Brosnan? This was such a smart, snappy little flick, but it seems unneccesarily obscure.
Kung Pow
Awesome movie. It is quite possibly the Stupidest movie ever made, but thats what makes it so funny. Most people would just turn this one off. If you liked Monty Python and the Holy Grail you would probably like this one too.
Since I like this kind of movie (ie, one in which the reality of what’s going on isn’t what it seems to be), and love going back through a movie once the true perspective has been revealed, I rented it and watched it tonight, keeping an eye out for clues that would point it one way or the other. Unfortunately, neither movie rental store had the newer version with the commentaries, so there’s no way to check those.
My conclusion, after watching with a split personality in mind is that it doesn’t hold up. First, I’ll respond to your clues.
True, but that can be explained just as easily by Ryder’s trying to frame Halsey.
That would explain it, but it’s not the only explanation. I assumed that Ryder had been driving ahead and staking out the next area that Halsey might stop. Still, your theory does hold up here as well as mine.
As does the name Ryder. On the other hand, The Hitcher could be to indicate that the bad guy was a psychotic hitchhiker, and that name was already in use for an HBO tv series, which prompted the name change to avoid confusion, and Ryder chose that name as a pseudonym because of how he chose his victims. In either case, it takes on new meaning only if you accept the split personality theory first; it’s not a reason to suspect a split personality.
Ryder wasn’t talking, so Capt. Esteridge took Halsey into the room to try to provoke him. When Halsey spits on Ryder, they remove him from the room. This plays just fine as them being two separate people.
In fact, this is one of several scenes that show that Halsey and Ryder cannot be the same person. Capt. Esteridge is talking to Halsey in the observation room while the Sgt. Quark is interrogating Ryder in the interview room. Two different people in two different rooms, both talking to police. When Halsey enters the room, Capt. Esteridge looks back and forth between them. Finally, Halsey spits on Ryder, and he’s escorted out of the room, which makes no sense if the two of them are the same person.
Other scenes indicate that there are two people. When Halsey and Nash are escaping in the police car, Nash loses the handgun, and can’t get the shotgun unlocked. Halsey is driving, and has no weapon. Ryder pulls up beside them on the dirt road and shoots down the helicopter with his gun. How could Halsey have shot down the helicopter with no gun?
After the chopper is shot down, Nash looks at Ryder in the black pickup, indicating that she sees something there. After Halsey and Nash stop, she asks Halsey, “Why didn’t he kill us?” This shows us for sure that Nash saw Ryder.
At the motel, Halsey is in the shower when Nash disappears, and he goes looking for her. Capt. Esteridge finds Halsey and escorts him over to the truck with Nash tied to the trailer. Capt. Esteridge tells Halsey that they can’t do anything, because if they shoot him, his foot will come off of the clutch and the truck will go forward. Someone is in that truck revving the engine with his foot on the clutch while Halsey is outside with Capt. Esteridge. When Halsey gets in the truck, Ryder is in the driver’s seat. This scene makes no sense at all if they are one person.
After the arrest and interrogation, Ryder is put into a transport bus, and Halsey into a cruiser. Capt. Esteridge is talking to Halsey. Clearly he’s going to be set free. This makes no sense unless Halsey is innocent. If Halsey/Ryder are one person, who is on that transport is he on the transport or in the cruiser, and who is the other person?
While Halsey hijacks the cruiser and tracks down the transport, Ryder manages to get free and kill the guards, the jump onto the cruiser that Halsey is driving just as the bus crashes. How could the same person be simultaneously killing the guards on the bus and driving the transport behind the bus? How could one person jump from the bus through the cruisers windshield while driving the cruiser at the same time?
Both Nash and Capt. Esteridge see Halsey and Ryder in two different places at the same time, as well as a bunch of cops at both the truckstop and at the police station. On a couple of occasions, Ryder and Halsey are doing two different things at the same time. Only two of the murders have a blackout to explain how Halsey could have killed without knowing it (the Volkswagon and the jail). All of the others happen while Halsey is awake, and sometimes somewhere else (the family in the stationwagon is slaughtered while Halsey is at the side of the road after the bus accident.
My take is that the first half of the movie is set up to keep you guessing about whether Halsey is actually a killer with a split personality, but the second half systematically destroys that theory. Perhaps Ryder is some demon who cannot be stopped by anyone other than Halsey; remember what Ryder says when Halsey asks him what he wants: “I want you to stop me.” Or perhaps Ryder just has “movie-serial-killer” powers, ala Jason and Michael Myers.
I too, know and love this movie. It was injected periodically into my childhood as I grew up, but I never could remember the title so my attempts to describe it made all within earshot disbelieve it could ever exist.
The Adventures of Baron Münchhausen is mine. Many people I know hated it, but it was always dear to me, especially the surreal kingdom on the moon, which I absolutely fell in love with specifically because of how Gilliam handled it with the straining budget, which really made it better than other lavished sets, although they were still exceptionally done. The story of the Baron’s fantasy world in the midst of reality makes it one I’ll never grow tired of.
