Let's Finally Watch This

The year is 1996. Due to the rise of Indiewood, home media, and industry changes, indie filmmakers are gaining traction in popular culture. The Coen Brothers (Joel and Ethan) are two such filmmakers, known for their dark humor, snappy dialogue, and lovingly exaggerated portrayals of rural characters. Their critical hit Fargo explores a crime gone wrong in the frozen wasteland of…Minnesota.

What Fargo offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: an encapsulation of “Minnesota nice,” ugly scenes of incompetent criminality, the down-to-earth goodness of Marge Gunderson, and a wood chipper.

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The year is 1986. Since the Rocky movies, there has been a renewed interest in sports movies. Now Indiana natives David Anspaugh (director) and Angelo Pizzo (screenwriter) bring the quintessentially Indiana sport of basketball to the big screen in the aptly named Hoosiers. Starring Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper, this classic feel-good movie doesn’t break any new ground but follows the gameplan so skillfully, an audience can’t help but enjoy.

What Hoosiers offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: a traditional sport-movie plot, a town obsessed with basketball and suspicious of outsiders, a greater focus on character than tactics, and an authentic Hoosier vibe.

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The year is 1976. Sure, it’s the bicentennial of the United States, but people are still discontent with the ways things are going, right? That discontent is what the characters in Network, directed by Sidney Lumet, are banking on. Longtime news anchor Howard Beale, threatened with the loss of his job, declares he is going to kill himself on national television. Soon, he is a prophet of the angry citizen. Meanwhile, the network adjusts its programming to rake in the ratings from a new type of television program that seems eerily familiar to our modern-day newscycle.

What Network offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: a prophetic satire on the power of television; rousing religious monologues about the ills of society rooted in a now iconic line; an unconvincing and frustrating romantic sideplot; and communists arguing for their fair share of the profits.

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The year is 1966. The United States is in the midst of cultural upheaval, the Vietnam War, and the development of New Hollywood. Movies are pushing boundaries, soon leading to the creation of a new MPAA rating system. One film that helped necessitate this change is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? directed by Mike Nichols. It stars celebrity power couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in an intense drama full of mind games and unsettling revelations.

What Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: stellar acting from Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, a can’t-stop-watching car wreck of an after-dinner party, a penetrating peeling back of stories and appearances, and nearly two hours of continuous drinking.

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The year is 1956. And you can’t have the 50’s without SCIENCE FICTION!  Amid the plethora of sci-fi films released this year comes Forbidden Planet, which became an inspiration for many future projects and franchises, including Star Trek. The first film set completely on an alien planet, it combines unique visual and audio effects, futuristic gadgetry, and a psychological view of humanity to create an enjoyable, if somewhat dated, experience.

What Forbidden Planet offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: a plot loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the first entirely electronic film score, a foundational entry in serious science fiction cinema, and the iconic Robby the Robot.

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The year is 1946. The war is over, and the soldiers are coming home. Director (and veteran) William Wyler uses this moment in history to make The Best Years of Our Lives, a remarkably contemporary and multi-faceted drama featuring three men from different branches of the military and socioeconomic standings adjusting to civilian life. Each struggles with his own reentry into the world he left behind.

What The Best Years of Our Lives offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: one of the first major movie roles for a disabled person; impressive use of deep focus; a movie that feels unique both in its subject matter and its proximity to the event; and a substantial amount of drinking and smoking.

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The year is 1936. The cinema world is filled with talkies. Sound has revolutionized the industry. But Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times revels in its almost-silent-film genius. The iconic Tramp tries to make an honest living for himself and his street urchin love in a world of machine-filled factories and hard-to-keep jobs, a gentle satire on a world not completely unlike our own modern times.

What Modern Times offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: Charlie Chaplin, a pillar of cinema history, at his best; a conveyor belt scene often imitated; hijinks and escapades rooted in the Tramp’s lovable persona; and the Chaplin’s first spoken “words” on film.

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The year is 1926. The movie industry is a year away from its first big sound film, but another major technological advance is also slowly approaching--COLOR! The Black Pirate is a vital early success of Technicolor, due in part to actor Douglas Fairbanks's swashbuckling athleticism. With its vibrant use of color and high adventure, The Black Pirate influenced many future pirate movies.

What The Black Pirate offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch class movies: a successful use of early color technology; exciting archetypal characters and story beats; Douglas Fairbanks's exuberant flair; and an all-around fun movie that doesn't feel as old as it is.

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The year is 1916. It’s only been a decade since The Story of the Kelly Gang, but director D.W. Griffith has pushed the medium to new heights. With the same vision that created the cinematically groundbreaking (though racist) The Birth of a Nation (see episode 36), Griffith ushers audiences through four separate plotlines in what some have called the only “film fugue.” Intolerance sets out to tell “love’s struggle throughout the ages,” from present day troubles with crime and poverty to the downfall of the great Babylonian empire.

What Intolerance offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: a massive scale in sets and story; a way-ahead-of-its-time intertwining of narratives; silent movie melodrama; and Mountain Girl.

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Welcome to Season 5 of Let's Finally Watch This, a podcast for casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies. We have another 12 exciting, decades-hopping episodes for you.

First up, we're back in 1906, where moving pictures are still very much a technology in its infancy. This time we're in Australia, where the legend of Ned Kelly holds sway in the cultural imagination. Enter Charles Tait and his brothers, who produce what many consider the first dramatic, feature-length film, The Story of the Kelly Gang.

What The Story of the Kelly Gang offers casual movie fans who have always meant to watch classic movies: charmingly amateur acting; 17 surviving minutes of the original 70; a historically important but visually damaged view of early movie-making; and one artistic expression of the Australian interest in bushrangers.

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