Jesse Plemons, I assume? To be honest when I saw the commercial for the movie, I thought it was Matt Damon in the role.
I re-watched Semi-Tough this week. This was a Michael Ritchie-directed comedy from 1977. I remembered having watched it way back when and having enjoyed it.
But wow there was a lot of stuff that hasn’t aged well. Unbelievable racism and sexism.
Not offensive but equally dated were the clothes the “cool” characters were wearing.
The economic background has changed a lot too. The characters are supposed to be top players in the NFL but they’re depicted as being middle class rather than as the multi-millionaires they would be today.
The stuff that holds up:
The basic story. A guy realizes he’s in love with his female best friend when she gets engaged to his male best friend. Reynolds, Clayburgh, and Kristofferson all do a good job.
And the jokes about whacko cult movements were funny and still relevant.
I’ve only watched two of the three segments of Kinds of Kindness so far, so too early to post about it but I’ve constantly been thinking “oh, Jesse has gone back to the Matt Damon look” (which essentially means he’ lost weight). Will someone please make a film featuring those two, already!
We re-watched You’ve Got Mail. It’s been quite a while. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in their prime.
Well done movie. Very “tight”. Each scene leads naturally to the next. Etc. I really miss the young Tom Hanks. The eyerolls, head wobbles, etc. Chappelle, Kinnear, Posey, Coleman, Stapleton and Zahn are also fun to watch.
OTOH, quite sappy at times. Plus it feels kind of icky once Tom Hanks figures out that Meg Ryan is the online shopgirl but doesn’t tell her which creates an unfair relationship balance.
“I love daisies.”
“You told me.”
Give it 4.5 crimson roses. Not bad for a movie from the last century. 
(I assume Fox Books went out of business at least 10 years ago. Revenge!)
Huh. I haven’t seen it in years, but I always thought it was too long. It’s a two-hour remake of a 100-minute film that was perfect.
And I have always felt that no comedy should be more than 100-105 minutes. Two hours is right out.
Yeah, The Shop Around the Corner is one of my favorite rom-coms from that era. More believable. Less cynical. It’s difficult to re-make movies in an era with different sensibilities.
I find it interesting how many of the secondary characters just disappear halfway through the film. No more Dave Chappelle, no more Steve Zahn, no more Heather Burns. All of them could have had a line or two to at least show where they ended up after the bookshop closes, but nah. We learn more about the Nanny that Dabney Coleman had an affair with than we do anyone else.
I still love it. Watching it is my Christmas tradition.
Heh, our Christmas tradition is The Ref.
We FF through Spacey’s scenes.
I really liked You’ve Got Mail. And that bit that you found icky was pretty much the same in The Shop Around the Corner though I don’t know if it’s also in the original play. The dial-up AOL connections with the screeching modems are amusingly outdated. And the bit where Tom Hanks’ character introduced the two kids to Meg Ryan, “Matthew is my father’s son, Annabelle is my grandfather’s daughter. We are . . . an American family.” Nora Ephron was a great screenwriter and director
For some reason I suddenly remembered an old kids’ movie that I hadn’t seen in many decades: Mad Monster Party?, a stop-action puppet movie from the 1960s.
I streamed it and re-watched it. It’s incredibly hokey, and I read online that the puppets were designed by Jack Davis of Mad Magazine. They look it! The jokes sounded like they came from the writers of Mad Magazine, too. But it was enjoyable to see it again after all these years, anyway. I could have done with a lot less Phyllis Diller, though.
Longlegs (again)
Still recommended.
Decided to stream this one and watch it with my wife. Yeah, what a movies. It’s between this and Furiosa now for best movie of the year up to this point.
Top notch. Loved it.
Oh my God. They used to screen that movie at my local library every Halloween when I was a kid. I looked forward to it every year! I’ll have to find that and check it out.
Finally saw Army of Darkness. It’s been on my list since it originally came out in 1992, but for some reason I never go around to seeing it. I enjoyed the Evil Dead movies and have seen them several times. Army of Darkness was fun and I now need to watch the Ash vs. Evil Dead series.
Watched The Pilot on Netflix. It’s based on a true story about a Soviet fighter pilot who was shot down behind German lines in WWII. Good story, but it’s Russian-made and the production is markedly inferior to what I’m used to watching. The plot jumps around a bit and the action is somewhat disjointed, but it’s still somewhat entertaining.
I’d give it a lukewarm recommendation.
I wasn’t sure if I would like Civil War because the trailers sort of painted it as a commentary on current American politics. But I enjoyed Alex Garland’s other directorial works (Ex Machina, Annihilation).
Fortunately I found it to be less overtly political that I expected. Nick Offerman’s President is apparently so awful he is able to unite Texas and California against him. The film felt like more of a commentary on war in general and how it is covered in the media. Most war film obviously don’t take place on American soil, so regardless of what message they are trying to send, war tends to be something that happens “over there”.
Definitely not a movie I’ve seen recently. But I can remember watching this as a kid.
Actually the little bookstore employees are last seen 70% of the way thru. In terms of mentioning, Steve Zahn’s character is said to be running the children’s section 82% of the way thru. Well after Dabney Coleman’s history with nannies is covered.
Speaking about nannies and relationships. I really love Cara Seymour but she has such a small role.
The Chappelle absence is a fair cop. I wonder if they didn’t know what to really do with him.
(Changing response mode.)
As for run time and comedies. I don’t care as long as the extra minutes are good. Comedy/drama whatever.
This is not at all like the current trend of padding out movies to 2+ hours since they’re going to be streamed and they don’t have to worry about how many showings they can cram in at the theaters. Too much “fluff” is thrown in. YGM is virtually fluffless, IMHO.
Believe it or not, I had never seen Billy Madison before. It popped up on cable yesterday on a lazy Sunday, so I sat and watched it.
Wow. It’s even dumber than most Adam Sandler movies. There are a handful of decent laughs, but this one has not aged well. Sandler’s stunted man-child bit is dialed up to eleven… no, make that a hundred and eleven… in a way that actually feels offensive to mentally challenged people. There’s also some casual sexual harassment that feels pretty icky.
I still love Happy Gilmore though.
I’ve got a DVD copy of it. It’s by Rankin-Bass, the folks who gave us Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and much other TV holiday fare. But this one went to theaters. It did, indeed, have characters designed by Jack Davis (who not only drew for Mad magazine, but also for the EC horror comics before that). They got Phyllis Diller to do one of the voices, but they also got Boris Karloff to do the Mad Scientist’s voice (the Frankenstein monster was in it, but a.) he doesn’t speak and b.) Karloff swore he wouldn’t do the role again – although he appeared in movies with the monster, usually, as in this case, as the Mad Scientist. I like that, in this film, the monster is Diller’s husband, Fang.)
The 4:30 Movie
Recommended.
Kevin Smith made a very cute movie here. Just about kids going to the movies and hanging out and living life in 1986. Somewhat autobiographical, I’m sure, but a fun movie and it has some genuinely good laughs, too.
I recommend it.