Two Geeks and a GIT Classic Movie Reviews

This film begins our official Holiday pairing for 2020! Chosen by Chad, it's the 1938 version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol!" This version of the story contains a few changes from the original tale, but all of them work for this particular telling! Directed by Edwin L. Marin, and adapted for the screen by Hugo Butler, this film clocks in at a trim 69 minutes, but it doesn't skimp on Christmas cheer! Starring Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge, Gene Lockhart as Bob Cratchit, Kathleen Lockhart as Mrs. Cratchit (and yes, they were real-life husband and wife), Terry Kilburn as Tiny Tim, Barry MacKay as Fred, Lynne Carver as Bess, the great Leo G. Carroll as the ghost of Jacob Marley, the dazzling Ann Rutherford as the Ghost of Christmas Past, and Lionel Braham as the Ghost of Christmas Present, in many ways, this film set the standard to which all subsequent versions would mimic! This film is also the very first cinematic appearance of a young June Lockhart as well!

The second film covers close to a whole year, but features the December holidays significantly, in a story about people at cross purposes, in love without knowing who each other are. Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) is the owner of "The Shop Around the Corner," a small New York bookstore specializing in children's literature she inherited from her mother. Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) is the youngest member of a corporate dynasty known as "Fox and Sons Books." When their newest store imperils the survival of Kathleen's bookstore, the two meet and are immediately at odds with one another. But, unbeknownst to either, they have already fallen for each other online. After meeting in a chatroom, they've struck up an email correspondence and are both quite taken with each other, sight unseen. This is a modern take on the original 1940 film which shares a title with Kathleen's book store, and at the same time, a nod to the classic "Pride and Prejudice" story as well! Director/Screenwriter Nora Ephron, with screenwriting help from her sister Delia Ephron, create an engaging, twisty love story for the modern age, and brings Hanks and Ryan together for the third time to cement this as a lovely light-hearted romantic film! Featuring supporting roles by Dabney Coleman, Dave Chappelle, Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey, Steve Zahn, and the legendary Jean Stapleton! Plus, the trio explain how their own rules for picking films resulted in a horse-trade between two of the crew, resulting in the Christmas films chosen for 2020!

The holiday season is approaching, and we're easing our way into it as well! Our first film, set around Christmas, is directed by Jon Turteltaub and written by Daniel G. Sullivan and Fredric Lebow. The story follows Lucy (Sandra Bullock), a subway toll-booth worker for the Chicago Transit Authority, who develops a huge crush on a handsome rider, Peter (Peter Gallagher) who comes through her booth every day. When he is attacked on the platform and falls onto the tracks, Lucy springs into action and saves him. Later on, at the hospital, she is daydreaming and talking to herself about how she was going to marry him. A nurse overhears her, assumes she is Peter's fiance, and announces her as such when his family arrives. Lucy protests, but is steamrolled by Peter's family. She soon finds herself swept into the family she never had by Peter's father Ox (Peter Boyle), his mother Midge (Micole Mercurio), family friend, and Peter's godfather, Saul (Jack Warden), family matriarch Elsie (Glynis Johns), and little sister Mary (Monica Keena). But it's meeting Peter's younger brother Jack (Bill Pullman) that really starts one of the strangest love triangles on film! A few plot holes, but they don't really detract from this sweet, enjoyable film, set during the December holidays!

Our second Thanksgiving holiday pairing film is also focused on the art of the dance, this time from 1987. Baby (Jennifer Grey) travels with her Dad (Jerry Orbach), her mom (Kelly Bishop), and her sister Lisa (Jane Brucker) to Kellerman's, a family retreat in the Catskills, for a week's vacation. There, Baby meets Penny (Cynthia Rhodes) and Johnny (Patrick Swayze), the "dance people," and is smitten with Johnny immediately. When Penny needs to take a night off, Baby volunteers to fill in, even though she has no dance experience. What starts as preparation for a single event builds to a romance and a declaration of love and freedom set in 1963, just before President Kennedy was assassinated. Directed by Emile Ardolino and written by Eleanor Bergstein, the movie "Dirty Dancing" became THE love story of the 1980s, and the soundtrack became, and is still, equally beloved! And the trio explain how they're edging into the Christmas holidays with their next two films!

Beginning our more family-friendly dance-film Thanksgiving holiday pairing, we're beginning with one of the four major dance films of the 80s, and one that made Kevin Bacon the household name (and focus of the "Six Degress of Separation" game), 1984's "Footloose!" Directed by Herbert Ross and written by Dean Pitchford (based on an actual event), the film follows Ren McCormack (Bacon) who has just moved to a small Oklahoma town with his mother (Frances Lee McCain), and finds the environment stifling to say the least. And for a kid from the streets of Chicago, the nightlift leaves a lot to be desired, especially since he can't even dance, thanks to a town ordinance forbidding such physical expression. He quickly meets the source of the rule, Rev. Shaw Moore (John Lithgow) who rails in church about the evils of sex and alcohol, both of which he links to dancing. His zealous ideals are balanced by his strong, soft-spoken wife Vi (Dianne Wiest) and tested by his hellion daughter Ariel (Lori Singer). Add in Ren's friends Willard (Chris Penn) and Woody (John Laughlin), Ariel's best friend Rusty (Sarah Jessica Parker), Ariel's jerk ex-boyfriend Chuck Cranston (Jim Youngs) and Ren's new boss Andy (Timothy Scott) and you have all the right people for a coming-of-age story set against the small-town mindset during the Reagan years!

The second B-Movie in our pairing comes from just two years later than our first! Director Phillip Noyce took the formula perfected in Japan the Zatoichi series of films about blind samurai. Actor Tim Matheson wanted to produce, and brought the idea of making an American version of the films, through two directors, three studios, seven years, and eleven drafts of the screenplay, to TriStar pictures, before getting it made. The story follows former Vietnam solder Nick Parker (Rutger Hauer), blinded by mortar fire, and taught to fight with a samurai sword by kindly villagers. He returns to the U.S. to find his former squad-mate, Frank Devereaux (Terry O'Quinn). After discovering that Frank and his wife have divorced, Nick ends up being tasked to escort Frank's son, Billy, to his father in Reno. Along the way, harassed by people working for mob boss MacCready (Noble Willingham) who have capture Frank and are forcing him to create drugs for him, Nick must find a balance between completing his own quest and protecting Frank's son on his. Plus, the trio reveal which two dance-based films will be part of their Thanksgiving-time pairing!

Everyone loves B-Movies, and the Geeks and G.I.T. are no exceptions. This episode is the first of two focusing on some B-Movies that are worth seeing! It was 1987, the end of the Reagan era, and buddy cop movies were very popular. On the heels of films like "Beverly Hills Cop," director Tom Holland, whose "Fright Night" we just reviewed, brought together Whoopie Goldberg and Sam Elliott in a rather unique buddy action film called "Fatal Beauty." Goldberg plays Rita Rizzoli, a narcotics detective with the LAPD. She stumbles across a cocaine variant called "Fatal Beauty" which does, in fact, kill those who take it. After bearding drug-kingpin Conrad Kroll (Harris Yulin) in his beautiful L.A. mansion, Kroll assigns his security man Mike Marshak (Elliott) to follow Rizzoli "for her protection." Over the course of the next several days, the two find more and more reasons to join forces, along with a growing personal connection. Also starring Ruben Blades, John P. Ryan, and Brad Dourif, this film is so much better than it deserves to be. Even Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up!

It's part two of this year's Halloween pairing, looking at 80s vampire films! For this episode, we move to 1987 and the film the really kicked off the whole teenage vampire craze that's still sweeping Hollywood, director Joel Schumacher's "The Lost Boys!" Written by Jan Fischer and James Jeremias, with screenplay help from Jeffrey Boam, the film follows Lucy (Dianne Wiest), a single mother of two boys, Michael (Jason Patric) and his younger brother Sam (Corey Haim), as they find themselves at the "end of the world," being the west coast, in the California community of Santa Clara. They're moving in with Michael and Sam's Grandpa (the incredible Barnard Hughes), and there's a lot of adjusting to be done by all involved. But the three members of the family meet new friends that all bring complications to their lives. Michael meets David (Kiefer Sutherland) and David's girlfriend Star (Jamie Gertz), who Michael falls for almost instantly. Sam meets the Frog Brothers, Edgar (Corey Feldman) and Allen (Jamison Newlander) at the local comic book store. And when Lucy meets Max (Edwrd Hermann), the owners of the local video rental store, sparks fly almost immediately! But most is not as it seems, and the three sets of relationships collide and sweep Grandpa up in a delightfully original vampire tale that's still entertaining 20 years into the 21st century! Finally, the trio reveal their guilty B-Movie pleasures that'll be making up the next pairing!

It's Halloween time again, and as usual, we've got a pair of amazing horror film reviews for you! First up, arguably the best horror/ comedy of all time, but definitely the best of the 1980s! From writer/ director Tom Holland, it's 1985's "Fright Night!" When a vampire moves in next door, you have to try to destroy him, even if no one else believes you, not even the famous "vampire killer" who hosts the weekly horror movie television program! Starring William Ragsdale as Charley Brewster, the young man who notices the vampire moving in, Amanda Bearse as his girlfriend Amy, and Stephen Geoffreys as their "friend" Evil Ed, the film also features Chris Sarandon as Jerry Dandrige (the vampire), and Jonathan Stark as his live-in... ghoul? Golem? No one really knows, but his name is Billy Cole. And finally, the former "vampire killer" is none other than Roddy McDowall as Peter Vincent! It's a favorite of both geeks and the geek-in-training, so you know it's a great film!

For the second film in our pairing of unabashedly, gleefully whimsical comedies, we move to the opposite end of the 80s for the 1989 Weird Al Yankokvic-written treasure that is "UHF!" Starring Yankovic as George Newman, alongside David Bowe as Bob Steckler and Michael Richards as Stanley Spadowski, the film tells the story of a long-suffering dreamer who gets a dream job: Running a tiny UHF television station! George and Bob, with the help of their new janitor, Stanley, try to figure out how to turn around the failing "U62" TV station. When they unexpectedly succeed, however, they begin to threaten the powerhouse VHF station, Channel 8, run by the cruel and merciless R. J. Fletcher (Kevin McCarthy). Add to this mix Victoria Jackson as George's girlfriend Teri, Fran Drescher as receptionist/report Pamela Finklestein, and Anthony Geary (of "General Hospital" fame) as Philo, the station engineer, and this becomes a "Secret Life of Walter Mitty"-esque comedy with great performances, music, and comedy that'll leave you singing the theme to the "Spatula City" commercial long after you've finished the film! And the trio reveal which two 1980s vampire films made their Halloween pairing for this year!