Two Geeks and a GIT Classic Movie Reviews

The second film in our salute to the late Alan Arkin is the one that netted Arkin an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (it also took the award for Best Original Screenplay)! Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valarie Faris, 2006's "Little Miss Sunshine" chronicles a road-trip from New Mexico to California with what is, perhaps, the most dysfunctional family ever captured on celluloid. Young beauty-pageant contestant Olive (Abigail Breslin) has become the winner of a local pageant for Little Miss Sunshine thanks to a disqualification, and needs to get to the final competition in California. Accompanied by her would-be motivational speaker father, Richard (Greg Kinnear), her mother Sheryl (Toni Collette), her brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) who has taken a vow of silence, her previously-suicidal uncle Frank (Steve Carrell), and her well-meaning but out-of-touch grandfather Edwin (Arkin), the group sets off in a VW Microbus for the competition. They face repeated obstacles and setbacks along the way, but arrive in the nick of time for Olive to compete! The competition, however, doesn't go quite as everyone expected. The film also stars Chuck Loring, Paula Newsome, Dean Norris, and Bryan Cranston! Plus, the gents reveal which two horror franchise originals they'll be reviewing for Halloween 2023!

This pairing salutes actor Alan Arkin, who passed away on June 29th of 2023. We begin with the film based on a Joseph Heller novel that now sits on several banned book lists. Directed by Mike Nichols and adapted for the screen by Buck Henry, 1970's "Catch-22" examines the absurdity of war in a truly satirical fashion. The film stars Arkin as Captain Yossarian, a B-52 bombardier who has grown completely disillusioned with the war against the Germans and the Japanese and is trying to get grounded. He no longer trusts his commanding officers, and begins observing the truly insane actions of those supposedly "in charge." The film feature a cornucopia of Hollywood stars, including Martin Balsam, Richard Benjamin, singer Art Garfunkel, Jack Gilford, Buck Henry, Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, Paula Prentiss, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, Bob Balaban, Norman Fell, Charles Grodin, Austin Pendleton, and Orson Welles! The film gathered so many World War II bombers, it features the largest private air force ever assembled, and the sixth largest in the world (after France) at the time!

Part two of our look at how the social upheavals of the 1950s influenced Hollywood cinema, we move ahead to 1956 and a film that plumbs the depths of that society's xenophobia! Directed by Don Siegel, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" tells the story of Dr. Miles J. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy), a physician who returns from a medical convention to his small town and discovers strange goings-on: People convinced their loved ones are not who they used to be, patients booking appointments and, the next day, canceling claiming they're feeling much better, and seemingly dead bodies with incomplete features appearing in various homes across town. After reuniting with his former love Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter), Dr. Bennell is called to the home of two friends, Jack (King Donovan) and Teddy (Carolyn Jones) Belicec, who show him a body that has some resemblance to Jack. Through a series of investigations, Dr. Bennell and Becky discover that the threat is much more severe than even they anticipated, and they set about trying to escape the town, to warn the rest of the world about the impending disaster bearing down on the entire planet! Plus, the trio unveil a pairing dedicated to another actor the world lost in 2023!

The 1950s, as a decade, was tumultuous in its own way, and that never appeared in cinema more strongly than in the science fiction and horror films of that time! With that in mind, we offer, for your listening pleasure, a pairing of films from those years which are more than they seem! First up, from 1951, a film that speaks to American's concern about the impact of the growing reliance on atomic power, both as an energy source and in our weapons. Directed by Robert Wise, in 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," a visitor from outer space descends on Washington DC, and from it steps a figure who identifies himself as Klaatu (Michael Rennie). He is accompanied by a giant robot named Gort (Lock Martin), and informs those gathered that he will speak his mission only to the assembled leaders of all the nations of earth. After a misunderstanding which results in Klaatu being shot and captured, he escapes to wander among the people of the city. He meets Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her son Bobby (Billy Gray), and Helen's boyfriend Tom Stevens (Hugh Marlowe), and takes a room in their boarding house. After he and Bobby try to get in to see noted scientis Professor Jacob Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), Klaatu reveals himself to Helen and the two of them go on-the-run to try to return Klaatu to his ship before Gort destroys the earth! A film with societal angst fairly seeping through every line, it sends a message of worry for the future of humanity through an entertaining look at first contact!

The the second film in our 80s teen comedies pairing, we turn to an early appearance of the actor who would go on to become a sex symbol on "Grey's Anatomy," Patrick Dempsey! In 1987's "Can't Buy Me Love," directed by Steve Rash, Dempsey plays Ronald Miller, a geek with aspirations to join the popular crowd. When his next-door neighbor (and long-time crush) Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson) ruins her mother's suede outfit (which she was wearing without permission), Ronald seizes the opportunity to make a deal with her: In exchange for spending $1000 on a new suede outfit to replace the ruined one, Cindy has to pretend to be Ronald's girlfriend for a month. He believes this will catapult him into the popular crowd. Cindy agrees and the experiment begins, with Ronald gaining in popularity and Cindy coming to see who he really is... and liking what she sees. Of course, the movie has several twists as most teen comedies do, and a couple moral lessons thrown in for good measure, but everything works out for the best by the end. The film also stars Courtney Gains, Tina Caspary, Seth Green, Darcy DeMoss, Devin DeVasquez, Eric Bruskotter, and Ami Dolenz! Plus, the guys unveil a classic sci-fi pairing over half a century in the making!

This pairing revolves around 80s teen comedies, but we begin with the one that has held up the best through the years, the one that today's high school and college-age students are still watching! The year was 1985, and the undisputed king of teen comedies was John Hughes. For this film, he put together a group of five young actors in a story about a single Saturday in high school detention and called it "The Breakfast Club." Starring Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Paul Gleason, and John Kapelos, the film chronicles what happened the day a beauty queen, a jock, a burn-out, a geek, and a basket case were forced to spend the day together. Through antagonism, mockery, tolerance, revelation, and confession, the five kids from different cliches and walks of life overcome their prejudices and find a way to come together and truly understand each other! This is THE film that the majority of today's students choose when given all of the films of the 1980s to write a paper on, a testament to its lasting message!

From the 1960s to the 1970s, and from the Mercury space program to the Apollo missions we go for our second film dedicated to the brilliance of NASA. There were 12 missions before, 11 of which were successful, and then in 1970, Apollo 13 launched, but things weren't to go as planned. 1995's Apollo 13," directed by Ron Howard, tells the story of the second Apollo mission to fail in its attempt to get to the moon. The film follows mission commander Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), command module pilot Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), and lunar module pilot Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) as they lift off to the moon, but experience a catastrophic explosion after leaving the atmosphere. On the ground, everyone at NASA's Mission Control swings into action, under the leadership of Flight Director Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) and with the able assistance of the original command module pilot Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinese)! While the film shows the PR side of the emergency, as well as the impact on the families of the astronauts, the efforts of the Mission Control staff at NASA really shines in this tense re-telling of when the world watched a rescue attempt where no aid could be sent! Also starring Kathleen Quinlan, Jean Speegle Howard, Chris Ellis, Joe Spano, Xander Berkely, Clint Howard, Brett Cullen, and James Ritz. Plus, the gents reveal which staple of 80s films they're finally getting to (and what they're pairing it with)!

All three hosts have grown up watching the extraordinary efforts by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, known by its acronym NASA. So this pairing is dedicated to the intelligence and perseverance of the brave men and women who work for that agency! First up, there had to be a beginning, and the Mercury space program was it. Based on the novel by Tom Wolfe, with Philip Kaufman writing the screenplay and directing, 1983's "The Right Stuff" tells the (mostly) real story of the beginning of the U.S. space program. The film first focuses on the breaking of the sound barrier by test pilot Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard), which leads to the beginnings of manned space flight. After President Eisenhower demands that actual pilots be sent up, the stage is set for the Mercury 7: Astronauts Scott Carpenter (Charles Frank), Gordon "Hot Dog" Cooper (Dennis Quaid), John Glenn (Ed Harris), Gus Grissom (Fred Ward), Wally Schirra (Lance Henriksen), Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn), and Deke Slayton (Scott Paulin). The film deals rather unflinchingly with the trials and tribulations, both personally and professionally, the Seven and their families experience through this turbulent race against the Russians for outer-space supremacy! Also starring Barbara Hershey, Kim Stanley, Veronica Cartwright, Pamela Reed, Mary Jo Deschanel, Kathy Baker, and Donald Moffat!

Special Extended Episode! The second film in our "Surreality Television" pairing came out later the same year as our first. This time, written and directed by Gary Ross, the story revolves around brother and sister David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon), brother and sister, who each have very different plans for their television on the same night. After an argument results in a broken TV remote, a strange old television repairman (Don Knotts) arrives, and after David demonstrates his love, and knowledge, of the classic TV show "Pleasantville," gives David a special remote, one "with more oomph," and leaves. David and Jennifer again struggle for control over the remote, which results in both of them, somehow, being transported into the TV verison of Pleasantville! There, they become Bud and Mary Sue, the son and daughter in the primary family of the program, George (William H. Macy) and Betty (Joan Allen). They have to figure out how to play along and how to return home, but along the way, they start to change small things about the idyllic lifestyle of the other inhabitants, and these changes begin to manifest by turning bits and piece of the black-and-white world into startling color! Also starring Jeff Daniels, Jane Kaczmarek, Paul Walker, Marc Blucas, and J. T. Walsh! Plus, the hosts unveil the two films honoring the courage and intelligence of NASA that will make up the next pairing!

This pairing, which we're calling "Surreality Television," focuses on films that examine the dividing line between truth and fiction in television. First up is a film that aptly predicted the reality television craze in a somewhat frightening way! Directed by Peter Weir, 1998's "The Truman Show" takes the standard reality television program and ups the ante in a daring and possibly illegal way. Award-winning director Christof (Ed Harris) created a television program where a baby was born into an artificially-created world, and it's become the longest-running TV show in history. Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is the star of the show, and viewers have watch him from even before his birth up to just weeks before his 30th birthday. Surrounded by his "wife" Meryl Burbank (Laura Linney) and his best friend Marlon (Noah Emmerich), Truman has led an idyllic life. But the surprise connection between Truman and an extra on the program, Sylvia, whose real name is Lauren (Natascha McElhone) plants a seed of rebellion in Truman. And when his constructed reality starts to fray at the edges, Truman begins to realize that he may have more choice in his life than he ever thought possible!