Two Geeks and a GIT Classic Movie Reviews

It's another listener-suggestion pairing, this time of films featuring the legend that is Boris Karloff! Friend of the podcast, John Strahan, suggested two Karloff films based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe. First up, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, Karloff stars as Hjalmar Poelzig, a famous architect who has built his home on the site of a bloody historic battle. Meanwhile, newlyweds Peter Allison (David Manners) and his wife Joan (Julie Bishop), who are traveling in the region by train, meet up with the enigmatic Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi). After leaving the train station, an automobile accident strands the three travelers on the road, and Dr. Werdegast suggests they accompany him to his "old friend" Poelzig's home nearby. There, Poelzig and Werdegast both become fixated on Joan, but only one has her best interests at heart! Throw in some coincidental satanism, and a severe case of ailurophobia, and you have a strangely compelling tale of love and revenge!

Our second film in our tribute to the great Sidney Poitier, who passed away on January 6th, 2022, came out just five weeks after "To Sir, With Love," but it brought audiences to a stunned silence with its realistic depiction of the treatment an African-American man would have received in Mississippi in the late 1960s! Directed by Normal Jewison, "In the Heat of the Night" sees Poitier playing Virgil Tibbs, the top homicide investigator from Philadelphia, on a trip to visit his mother in Sparta, Mississippi, get brought in as a murder suspect after a prominent businessman gets killed. Officer Sam Wood (Warren Oates) brings Tibbs into the station and presents him as the guilty party to Sheriff Gillespie (Rod Steiger). Fortunately, Tibbs reveals that he, too, is a police officer, and is grudgingly given the respect he's due by the Sparta police department. After Tibbs' chief suggests Virgil stay and help, he and Gillespie begin a tense, perilous (for Virgil) few days hunting down the real killer! Plus, the trio reveal which long-time listener has suggested the next pair of films to be reviewed!

We interrupt our regular schedule of film reviews to pay tribute to an Actor's Actor. Someone who was a trail-blazer both on and off the screen, who was the epitome of a commanding presence, and who never turned in a bad performance in a career that lasted over 50 years. Sidney Poitier passed away on January 6th, 2022, but he left us a catalog of performances people will be talking about for centuries. And in only one year, 1967, he released three films that are among the top Hollywood classics of all time. We have chosen to review two of them as a way of honoring this great man. The first film in our tribute pairing dedicated to Sidney Poitier is "To Sir, With Love." Directed by James Clavell, this film is the story of an engineer, Mark Thackeray (Poitier) who takes a teaching job at a school for poor and troubled kids while waiting to find a "real" job in his field. After failing to reach them for weeks, an epiphany sends him in a different direction, and ultimately wins him the respect and admiration of his students. Co-starring Judy Geeson, Christian Roberts, Suzy Kendall, Geoffrey Gayldon, Faith Brook, Christopher Chittell, and the pop-singer Lulu in her first acting role! A true love-letter to any teacher who cares about their students, and any students who ever had that one special teacher!

Part two of our look at the work of director Robert Altman focuses on a film with 24 leading and supporting characters. It's a bewildering trip through politics and country music known as 1975's "Nashville!" The film boasts a tremendous cast, including Keith Carradine (who won an Academy Award for the song he wrote and performed in the film, "I'm Easy"), Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Shelly Duvall, Ned Beatty, Timothy Brown, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, and so many more! And while the acting is superb, and the storylines are interesting, the overall impact of the film obscured by the choices made in their presentation, leading to a fascinating if somewhat muddled tale. Plus, the trio announce a shift in their schedule to pay tribute to a trail-blazing master actor who recently left us.

It's a listener-suggestion pairing of Robert Altman films! Bennett Oberfeld contacted us on Facebook to point out that we had yet to do any films from the acclaimed director and suggested two Altman films, which we agreed with, and thus this pairing! First up, from 1970, it's the film based on the book by Richard Hooker about life in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or M*A*S*H unit, in the Korean War. Starring Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, Roger Bowen, Rene Auberjonois, Gary Burghoff, Bobby Troup, Timothy Brown, and John Schuck, this looks at the antics of two highly-qualified surgeons, Hawkeye Pierce (Sutherland) and Trapper John McIntyre (Gould) who are assigned to a M*A*S*H unit just a few miles from the front line! With a casual indifference to anything Army-related, except for saving their patients, this film spawned an eleven-season TV series spinoff and added a theme song to our musical lexicon that still lives in our hearts and minds today!

The second film in our "I can't believe you haven't done THAT movie yet!" list also happens to be directed by Robert Zemeckis, although that wasn't planned when the pairing was first decided upon! Winner of SIX Oscars at the 1995 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Effects, Visual Effects, this film tells the story of Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) a boy who's considered "slow" due to his IQ, but grows up to be a man who has incredible experiences that take him all over the United States and into Vietnam. 1994's "Forrest Gump" is a masterpiece of storytelling, showing you the world through the eyes of a simple yet incredibly good man as he deals with love and loss over the course of his life. And, whether it's dealing with his mother (Sally Field), his best friend and true love Jenny (Robin Wright), his army Lieutenant (Gary Sinese), or his best friend in the Army, Bubba (Mykelti Williamson), Forrest only ever sees the good in people. And finally, the trio reveal which listener-suggested pairing will be their very first for 2022!

Often, when we talk to people about our podcast, they'll ask us if we've done certain movies. This pairing is made up of two films on what we call our "I can't believe you haven't done THAT movie yet!" list. :) First up, it's the first, last, and likely only time you'll ever see Disney and Warner Brothers cartoon characters in the same film, a movie that was also instrumental in pushing ahead special effects in the industry! Directed by Robert Zemeckis, it's the story of Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), a down-on-his-luck Private Investigator, who gets hired by the studio head of Maroon Cartoons to find out if their star "toon," Roger Rabbit (voice by Charles Fleischer), is being cuckholded by his wife Jessica (voiced by Kathleen Turner). And, in a world where toons and humans life, love, and work side-by-side, any investigation involving both is bound to go spectacularly off-the-rails in the most comical of ways, and 1988's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" is no exception! Also featuring Christopher Lloyd, Joanna Cassidy, and a plethora of voice-actors, including some of the greats from days gone by, this film blends animation and live action in ways no one thought possible until this movie was made!

Part two of our holiday pairing jumps ahead nine years and focuses on the now-veteran director Jon Favreau's second film, the sugar-fest that is 2003's "Elf!" With an all-star cast, including Will Ferrell, James Caan, Bob Newhart, Zooey Deschanel, Ed Asner, Mary Steenburgen, Peter Dinklage, Amy Sedaris, Andy Richter, Kyle Glass, Artie Lange, and Leon Redbone, the film tells the story of a human raised by Elves named Buddy (Ferrell), who travels to New York to find his real father, Walter (Caan). There, he meets Jovie (Deschanel) and discovers that life outside the North Pole is much more different than he anticipated. When Sants (Asner) has transportation problems on Christmas Eve, it's Buddy, Jovie, and Buddy's new family, to the rescue! Plus, find out which to movies from the "I can't believe you haven't done THAT movie yet!" list the trio has chosen to finish out 2021!

Happy Holidays! It's part one of our yearly pairing of holiday films, this year starting with a new take on the story of Santa. In this episode we take a look at 1994's "The Santa Clause," starring Tim Allen, Judge Reinhold, Wendy Crewson, Eric Lloyd, David Krumholtz, and Peter Boyle. Directed by John Pasquin, this film tells the story of Scott Calvin (Allen), an advertising executive for a toy company, and also a single father to his son Charlie (Lloyd). On Christmas Eve, after hearing noises on the roof, Scott scares "Santa" who falls off the roof and disappears, leaving only his santa suit. Scott and Charlie find a card that says "Put on the suit, the reindeer will know what to do." And so begins a year-long saga as Scott slowly begins to transform into Santa Claus, much to Charlie's delight, and the dismay of his ex Laura (Crewson) and her new psychiatrist husband Neal (Reinhold).

Our second War Film moves ahead four years in real time, but focuses on the same time period as the first. This time, it's a hopeless plan to sabotage twin radar-guided guns that are preventing the allies from rescuing some two-thousand men stranded on the island of Keros in the Aegean Sea. But a mountain-climber and his partner, a demolitions expert, a master strategist, a butcher, and a trained killer may just be the team who can pull it off! Directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Stanley Baker, James Darren, Irene Papas, and the beautiful and talented Gia Scala, this is a masterful demonstration of how you make an engagin, tense, and riveting espionage film! Plus, the trio give a shout-out to a listener who flagged a hole in their library of reviews thus far, and they reveal which two popular Christmas films they're reviewing this year, regardless of how two of the three feel about them!