[QUOTE=KneadToKnow]
Yeah, but trouble is usually the best tail, so he did what any red-blooded man would. He flipped for tail.
[/QUOTE]
I think Miles was the one who was really eat up with the pussy.
Spade was more impressed with her money. Doesn’t he have a line about them knowing she was lying, but her money more than making up for that fact?
[QUOTE=plnnr]
I think Miles was the one who was really eat up with the pussy.
Spade was more impressed with her money. Doesn’t he have a line about them knowing she was lying, but her money more than making up for that fact?
[/QUOTE]
Something like that. Spade’s greed and Archer’s lust. A winning combination.
[QUOTE=plnnr]
I think Miles was the one who was really eat up with the pussy.
[/QUOTE]
You’re thinking of his line
I’m thinking of the following exchange:
Granted, it’s a fine point to argue. 
[QUOTE=Hampshire]
Spaceship driver: “Okay, we’re done collecting plant life here, let’s go. Can we get a quick headcount first?”
Alien: “We forgot Norm again!”
Spaceship driver: “Oops. There he is. Got him? Good. That’s all earth need is another extra terrestrial running amock.”
-The End
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Chimera]
Any Horror movie that involves a known killer on the loose and a bunch of stupid kids. RUN AWAY. Drive off, hit the highway, leave the premises, depart, flee, egress, exit. Just get the fuck out of there and there will be no further danger.
[/QUOTE]
Sames goes for the suspense/horror genre where the killer(s) aren’t even supernatural but just crazy people. All of these people live where nobody has a gun, ever. Like maybe Canada.
Evil Bad Guys: “Hey, let’s go to Cluricaun’s house and kill him and his family with this chainsaw”
Cluricaun: Blam blam blam blam blam blam.
The End.
[QUOTE=KneadToKnow]
You’re thinking of his line
I’m thinking of the following exchange:
Granted, it’s a fine point to argue.
[/QUOTE]
Right. No need to quibble.
Are you saying that Indiana Jones is an anti-semite?
[QUOTE=MGibson]
The Norwegians were scared and not thinking straight. I don’t really see this as a flaw in the movie.
[/QUOTE]
Or they were thinking straight and realized that if they stop their only chance of isolating and destroying the “Thing” organism will be lost. Never mind zombies or the “Rage” virus; that Thing is apocalypse on sweat potato pie if it gets loose.
Of course, if they’d just let it build its ship and fly away then they movie could have been over. But no, Kurt Russell has to get vengeful on it.
[QUOTE=Pochacco]
Raiders of the Lost Ark could have been skipped entirely.
If Indy had never gone looking for the ark … the Nazis would have found Marion, taken the amulet, dug in the right location, found the ark, taken it to Berlin, and opened it in front of Hitler. The Fuhrer would have been vaporized and World War II and the Holocaust would have been averted.
[/QUOTE]
Overall I agree with you, except that it’s not clear that the Nazis would have found Marion Ravenwood (Abner clearly hid her in an out of the way spot for a reason, and Toht trails Jones to Marion’s bar), and even if they had recovered the Ark, it would have been Belloq and the nasties who were wiped out. Whether it actually would have been opened in front of Hitler or not is questionable once they discover the island with all German soldiers and sailors completely vanished.
In Casablanca, all Rick has to do is give those damned Letters of Transit to Lazlo and be done with the entire business with that manipulative whore Ilsa (and with a tidy profit to show for it, no doubt). Lazlo and Ilsa would have been caught at the airport by Major Strasser and his men and “shot while escaping” or killed by persons unknown, after which Captain Renault would have his men “round up the usual suspects.” Instead, he plays this stupid game with a woman whose obvious interest in him is in what he can provide her. Sucker.
One can make a similar argument for The Third Man, but of course the bumbling, non-German-speaking pulp Western author Holly Martins is quite obviously not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree to begin with, and since the entire story is an allegory (with Martins standing in for the United States fumbling its way through post-war European relations) it is excusable.
Die Hard II; get on the radio of one of the grounded planes and start diverting airborne planes to other airports, and/or put out some emergency flares to line the runways. It’s not that hard, guys. Jeez.
Stranger
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
One can make a similar argument for The Third Man, but of course the bumbling, non-German-speaking pulp Western author Holly Martins is quite obviously not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree to begin with, and since the entire story is an allegory (with Martins standing in for the United States fumbling its way through post-war European relations) it is excusable.
[/QUOTE]
It is? I never thought of it that way. It makes a certain amount of sense I suppose.
Alien should have been over with long before the opening credits:
Futuristic boardroom scene:
Executive #1: Ladies & gentlemen, our remote scanners have detected a signal emanating from a dead planet that lies directly between our deep space mining outposts and Earth. If we divert the trucking rig called “Nostromo” toward that planet, and have the onboard computer wake up the crew from hypersleep early, they’ll be obliged to investigate the matter and find out what’s there.
Executive #2: It ought to be noted that we have no clue what’s really there. Just that the signal was run through several linguistics programs, and it’s most likely a warning to stay away from the planet.
Executive #3: So you’re suggesting that we risk putting one of our trucking rigs, a refinery and a major haul of ore - an multi-trillion dollar investment - at risk just so some untrained goober truckers can check out what is, in all probabliity, a situation that they are being warned to avoid?
CEO: Agreed. We’re not going to jeapordize our mining operation all for the sake of an unknown entity. Let’s send a small team of androids to the planet to size things up.
Well, in the original John Campbell story (or Don A. Stuart story, if you prefer), the Thing didn’t want to fly home – it was building a jury-rigged flying device to get the hell off of Antarctica and somewhere where there was warmth and bodies. Its home was probably long gone – it’d crashed a LONG time ago.*
There are several points during which Alien shouldn’t have happened. If you recall, they were supposed to refuse entry of a contaminated spaceman, but Ashe screwed that up. The scripters never really did settle ionto a coherent story, but they were batting around the idea that either “Mother”, the ship’s computer, or else Ashe, the Secret Robot, were actually helping the Alien to gain entry. In the end it looked kind of like both – Mother to set them down and Ashe to open the door. Exactly why was muddled, too. In the original scripts, Mother or Ashe sided with the Alien because it was an efficient killing machine (None of that damned Three Laws stuff for Us! REAL robots aren’t afraid to trash their creators!) In the sequel Aliens, it was implied that the Company set them down their in the hopes that they’d get infected and bring one back (which seems an extremely haphazard and cockeyed way to proceed. )
*The story is neat and tense, but I can’t make any sort of biological sense out of it. After The Thing converts all of its prey and potential enemies into versions of itself, then how is it supposed to proceed? Does it then go on killing and eating itself? Think-plants soaking up sunlight and nutrients to be eaten by Thing-animals who are then eaten by Thing-Predators? If so, what’s the point? Do they retain their adopted shapes, or do they eventually turn into whatever the Thing norm is? And what would that be? Photosynthetic Things that randomly mutate appendages to get momentary Darwinian advantages over less-creative Things? Doesn’t killing off al,l non-Things ruin a lot of competitive advantage? Things seem to get all their interesting defensive and offensive ideas fro m their prey (look closely at the weird Thing constructions – they’re amalgams of parts of the bodies of what they’ve “eaten”.)
The Andromeda Strain:
“Hey, that’s one of them satellites. Should we open it?”
“No, moron. We should call the Air Force and see if there’s a reward. God, you’re such an idiot.”
A Simple Plan: Near the start, two brothers discover a crashed small plane with a dead pilot and a duffel bag full of cash. Fully acknowledging that this is almost certainly drug money (or other ill-gotten gains) that is surely being looked for and thus would be a Very Bad Thing to take - even if you’re sure no one has seen you - would have made the movie very short, but it would have saved those characters and others a lot of trouble.
A recent one: No Country For Old Men.
If Llewelyn Moss hadn’t had an attack of conscience late at night and gone back to the site of the deal-gone-bad with water for the dying Mexican, no one would have ever figured out who he was, and he’d have gotten away with the money scot-free. Or, if he just HAD to go back, he could’ve done it earlier in the day and not been seen.
[QUOTE=Ferret Herder]
A Simple Plan: Near the start, two brothers discover a crashed small plane with a dead pilot and a duffel bag full of cash. Fully acknowledging that this is almost certainly drug money (or other ill-gotten gains) that is surely being looked for and thus would be a Very Bad Thing to take - even if you’re sure no one has seen you - would have made the movie very short, but it would have saved those characters and others a lot of trouble.
[/QUOTE]
That’s the point of the whole movie; Bill Paxton’s character wanted to turn the money in, and is persuaded only by the woeful financial future of his own circumstances. His “simple plan” (which, had they followed it, would have worked out just fine) unravels because of the failings and stupidity of his brother and his friend. In the end, even a simple plan can’t save him from all of the underlying resentment and anger in his relationships.
In general, pretty much all film noir boils down to, “If he’d kept his nose out of it and done his job, there wouldn’t be a plot.” Sam Spade? Check. Jeff Markham? Check. Walter Neff? Check. Philip Marlowe? Check. And it’s always a dame, ain’t it? You can’t trust 'em. Learn, boys, learn.
Dude, it’s Graham Greene. The story is (almost) always a metaphor, usually Catholic guilt or international and covert relations. Check out Our Man In Havana or The Quiet American.
Stranger
[QUOTE=Max Torque]
A recent one: No Country For Old Men.
Except that the money still would have had the tracking device in it, so I’d think that they would have found him eventually anyway. Now if he’d just split town for good as soon as he got home, then maybe he’d have been out of range by the time they turned it on.
[QUOTE=Max Torque]
A recent one: No Country For Old Men.
[/QUOTE]
Except that the money still would have had the tracking device in it, so I’d think that they would have found him eventually anyway. Now if he’d just split town for good as soon as he got home, then maybe he’d have been out of range by the time they turned it on.
[QUOTE=Max Torque]
A recent one: No Country For Old Men.
If Llewelyn Moss hadn’t had an attack of conscience late at night and gone back to the site of the deal-gone-bad with water for the dying Mexican, no one would have ever figured out who he was, and he’d have gotten away with the money scot-free. Or, if he just HAD to go back, he could’ve done it earlier in the day and not been seen.
[/QUOTE]
That would be true, except that
There’s a transmitter hidden in the money, and in a small town, it wouldn’t have taken long for the bad guys to find it. In fact, going back to the scene of the crime, getting caught, and then escaping, might actually have (temporarily) saved Llewellyn, because then he knew he had to run. I think the most likely alternative is that he’s sitting at home the next day making plans for the money, and some bad guys with machine guns come crashing through the door. Or worse yet, Chigurgh (sp?).
[QUOTE=CalMeacham]
There are several points during which Alien shouldn’t have happened. If you recall, they were supposed to refuse entry of a contaminated spaceman, but Ashe screwed that up. The scripters never really did settle ionto a coherent story, but they were batting around the idea that either “Mother”, the ship’s computer, or else Ashe, the Secret Robot, were actually helping the Alien to gain entry. In the end it looked kind of like both – Mother to set them down and Ashe to open the door. Exactly why was muddled, too.
[/QUOTE]
Ash had a secret directive to bring xenomorphs home. All other priorities rescinded.
Dances with Wolves. U.S. Army officer in full regalia bearing a flag rides alone to a Sioux encampment to return one of their women? He’s dead.