Movieing On - Movies from 1999 or Earlier

Remember The Seven Samurai? There, you had seven good guys defending a city against all odds. Now imagine that movie, set it in the end of the Wild West, and have the good guys be bad guys. Then give it to a 1960s version of Quentin Tarantino and ask him to direct it. Yup, that’s pretty much The Wild Bunch.

Show notes and links:

* The Wild Bunch (1969) – IMDb (imdb.com)

* salad days – YouTube (youtu.be)

Thelma & Louise. It’s hard to imagine, looking at the sheer amount of episodes that we’ve done, that we’ve never gotten around to making an episode about this movie. It is, after all, the quintessential road trip movie … What’s that? Huh? It’s famous for other things, too? Oh. I did not know that! Fascinating.

Come see what Ridley Scott does when he’s not making effect-heavy blockbusters scored by Hans Zimmer. Come see two of the women who were nominated, but ultimately lost the Best Actress academy Award to Jodie Foster this year. Come away asking yourself if this is the true origin of the phrase “Geez, Louise”. Also, drama, excitement, death, sex, money, robberies and everything else a person could desire.

As we mention in the beginnin gof this episode, there have been some pretty bad technical issues to deal with of late. Hopefully we’ll have them all sorted out within the next few weeks, but in case we get an episode or two out late every so often – now you know why.

Show notes and links:

* Thelma & Louise (1991) – IMDb (imdb.com)

* “Off the Cliff” by Becky Aikman (amzn.to)

* Facts to Know about Women in Hollywood (womenandhollywood.com)

You know … Any surface-level description of this movie will make it sound bad, so I’m not even going to try to do so. Instead, I’m just going to advise everybody to go see it at their earliest convenience, if they haven’t already.

Show notes and links:

* The Color Purple (1985) – IMDb (imdb.com)

There aren’t too many movies made about mermaids any more. I don’t know why this is so, but it’s a sad fact that in order to watch a mermaid-themed movie, one has to dig through the archives. Fortunately, this can be fairly rewarding, such as when one finds the 1948 mermaid classic Miranda.

Show notes and links:

* Miranda (1948 film) – Wikipedia (wikipedia.org)

* Miranda (1948) – IMDb (imdb.com)

* Miranda (1948) – Ken Annakin | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related (allmovie.com)

* BFI Screenonline: Miranda (1948) (screenonline.org.uk)

* Making a Splash: Mermaids (and Mer-Men) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual … – Philip Hayward (google.se)

* Miranda (1948) – Rotten Tomatoes (rottentomatoes.com)

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said that “while the surface of his film sparkles with sharp, ironic dialogue, deeper issues are forming. Chasing Amy develops into a film of touching insights. Most romantic comedies place phony obstacles in the way of true love, but Smith knows that at some level there’s nothing funny about being in love: It’s a dead serious business, in which your entire being is at risk.”

And I suppose that’s definitely one way of putting it.

Show notes and links:

* Chasing Amy (1997) – IMDb (imdb.com)

* Kevin Smith – IMDb (imdb.com)

* Silent Bob (gamespot.com)

Six guests are invited to a strange house and must cooperate with the staff to solve a murder mystery.

Show notes and links:

* The Crazy Story Of How “Clue” Went From Forgotten Flop To Cult Triumph (buzzfeed.com)

* Why There Are 3 Endings And What Happens In Each (cinemablend.com)

* Clue (1985) – IMDb (imdb.com)

Sorry, an error occured during publication and we went for almost a week thinking this week’s episode had been published, whereas it was just lying in "Draft" status the entire time. How embarrassing.

Many great films were released in 1987. We’ve got The Princess Bride, The Lost Boys, Dirty Dancing, Predator, Spaceballs, Lethal Weapon and many more… Standing a head and a half higher than these movies, however, is the Vietnam War-themed Kubric classic – Full Metal Jacket.

Join Breki, Linnea, Nancy and Gordon as they work their way through this cinematic tour de force and try to work out the structure of the movie. Three acts? Five acts? Two acts? Who knows?!

Show notes and links:

* Full Metal Jacket (1987) – IMDb (imdb.com)

* Stanley Kubrick – IMDb (imdb.com)

* Street without Joy (book) – Wikipedia (wikipedia.org)

* Street without Joy (amzn.to)

* Fire in the Lake – Wikipedia (wikipedia.org)

* Fire in the Lake (amzn.to)

* Richard Wagner – Ride Of The Valkyries (youtube.com)

You can say a lot about Michael Keaton. He’s an underrated actor for sure. He might not have been the most convincing of Batmen, but he was way better than George Clooney or Val Kilmer. Hell, he was probably even better for the role than Ben Affleck, to be honest. You might even say that his crowning achievement didn’t come until late in life, when he did Birdman – that movie is amazeballs.

So it’s always fun to dig up some of the earlier works of an actor and watch a movie like Multiplicity, where Michel Keaton stars alongside Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton, and Michael Keaton. Hilarity, quite obviously, does ensue.

Back in the late 80s, Eddie Murphy was an up-and-coming actor, and it’s kind of a shame that he isn’t among the very top of the crop today. Best known originally for his wide repertoire of characters, his crude sex-themed humor, his big wide smile, boundless energy and goofy laugh, today he’s probably best known for his “nutty” comedy roles in children’s movies… But that’s not the Eddie we remember.

Having come from a stand-up comedy career at the same Bay Area Comedy Club as Robin Williams and Caryn Johnson (whose stage name eventually became Whoopi Goldberg) before getting into acting, this was an actor who was destined for great things. The role of Winston Zeddemore in Ghostbusters was originally written with him in mind, in fact. He is arguably the biggest movie star ever to come out of Saturday Night Live, was the first actor in the world to be paid in excess of $1 million for their first cinematic role, and is considered a role model by many – including Chris Rock. He may be the only person in the world to have played both a human that can talk to animals (Dr. Dolittle) and an animal that can talk to humans (Donkey in Shrek).

Siskel and Ebert gave this movie two thumbs down, and I understand why. A decade and a half later, however, both of them were looking back at this movie as a classic, and I absolutely understand why as well. The shelf life of movies changes over the years, and this is a movie that is very much of its time.

Show notes and links:

* Coming to America (1988) – IMDb (imdb.com)