Watchmen was released in 2009. At that time our son was in his early twenties, and our relationship was not great. He was living at home in order to help us give hospice care to his Grandfather while trying to transfer to another college. It was not ideal for anyone, but this was the situation at hand.
I asked him to go with me to see it. The movie was fine. Afterward we stopped at a chain restaurant for microwaved food and some beers. That movie gave us a chance to just relax. No talk of frustration, responsibilities, and expectations. I’m indifferent to the movie but I’ll always remember it as a pleasant break during a hard time.
So give us a sneak peek to some movies that you like/dislike. If you are not a movie person post whatever moves you.
amazing song
terrible movie
wierdly enough this is the version of the song i know
and now i dont know who done what no mo
My movie taste in a nutshell
8 1/2 is probably my long-time favourite film and I don’t care that that statement often invokes “Oh, a film snob” types of eye rolls.
I have 8 1/2 -esque nightmares of all the women in my life showing up at my house and judging me.
My parents said this was the first movie they ever took me to where I just sat there watching with my mouth open.
This was a tough one to watch. I had problems with my dad at the time and the relationship between him and myself reminded me of Red Foreman/Clarence Boddicker and Robert Sean Leonard.
I cannot bring myself to watch Dead Poets Society after Robin Williams passed.
Dead Poets Society was my introduction to Robert Sean Leonard, my first childhood crush. I had the opportunity to briefly see him in person just before House, M.D. started and I just froze. One of the few times I was genuinely star struck.
Retrospectively, I hate that one of my parents was completely unsympathetic to Neil Perry’s character when we watched it. They claimed he should have just waited until he was 18 and said “screw you, Dad. I’m going to be an actor.” Missed some crucial bits of the predicament. 🙄
My dad, Charlton Heston’s biggest fan in ten zipcodes in any direction, won’t watch any new movies except 007s. On time I managed to scam him into watching Total Recall (1990 Arnold version). He was entertained enough to wonder where they found a three-breasted actress.
Oh I have so many. I like the notionally “unintended” homoerotic musicals from the 1960s, but given all the gay men involved in the casting and the choreography. they knew what they were doing.
Well, this sucks. There’s a sequence from “Bye Bye Birdie” that goes on for a while and you see all kinds of young male dancers rump-shaking to beat the band. This is the intro, so you see the male dancers, but it cuts off before the chorus line gets going:
Like Rita Moreno in this next clip, I like to live in America, even though recent events have accelerated our planning to move abroad. We’d be abroad by now, if The Curse of Covid had never hit. “West Side Story” might be the gayest movie musical ever filmed. All four principals were gay, and Jerome Robbins, the choreographer, famously—um—conducted his own private auditions for the men who were cast. Yes. Each and every one of the men you are about to see endured a 1-on-1 with Jerome Robbins:
When the house is empty sometimes I put on a Bye Bye Birdie one-man show where I play all the parts. It’s pretty spectacular, but the costume changes are exhausting.
Did you ever watch “Mad Men”? There’s a scene from the first season, or maybe the second, where one of the characters, a married, closeted gay male, does the Ann-Margret “Bye Bye Birdie” song, to the horror of his wife, and even though she says nothing, she manages to express that she fully understands the she has married a gay man. I loved that show so much. I’ve seen every episode at least three times. On first viewing I was irritated by the Betty character (January Jones) but the more you watch and rewatch the episodes, the more you realize she’s doing the same thing. She doesn’t say anything, and she’s often petulant, but wordlessly she manages to convey more than any amount of unspoken dialogue could possibly express.
“Downton Abbey,” another favorite of mine, tried to do the same to notoriously comic effect. Something would happen, and various characters would look at each other, in concern and alarm, to the point of easy parody. Britain’s “Guardian” did weekly recaps and every week would bestow a “Mr. Carson’s Arched Eyebrow” award, often won by Mr. Carson himself, that highlighted this aspect of the show. Those columns were a gem. I should look them up and try to figure out the woman who wrote them and see what she’s up to now.
Movie adjacent?
One of the best movies I’ve ever seen. If you watch it be prepared to ugly cry.
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
Written by Nick Cave with a great cast including Danny Huston, John Hurt, and Guy Pearce, what’s not to love?
Another Aussie flick
Muriel’s Wedding
Didn’t mean to post 2 of the same trailer, sorry
I am not a movie guy. I own maybe 6 DVDs (anything else in the house was purchased and watched by Lady Miss Meme). This is one of the first ones I bought:
Recently, I was reminded of this film after spending quite a large chunk of time reading back on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (Ich bin ein Berliner. It’s essential family history…)
This film broke my heart.
The Lives of Others trailer:
Did you ever visit Berlin when it was split into east and west? I studied in West Germany and overstayed what was supposed to be a 12-month stint with the connivance of a friendly professor. I wrangled a period where I was sent to a lovely residential hotel in West Berlin, on the German taxpayer’s dime, and would commute daily through Checkpoint Charlie to the Humboldt University in East Berlin. There, I was watched like a hawk, including during bathroom and lunch breaks, by a male minder who wasn’t much older than I was but he must have had some kind of special clearance that allowed him to interact with Westerners. I’ll never forget it. I still think about it almost 40 years later. Those poor East Germans. Hitler took power in 1933 and the wall didn’t come down until 1989, so that was 56 years of unrelenting state terror. I am a good leftie socialist but my brief spell commuting in to East Berlin made me a hardened anti-Communist Cold Warrior. I am the only person I know who, on the one hand, cheers on the DSA and works as much as I can to get things like Medicare 4 All and other social programs implemented or expanded, but will leave a room if anyone makes even the slightest suggestion that the Cuban, Venezuelan, or Chinese Communist regimes are something worthy of emulation.
On the classical music front, Aaron Copland’s Our Town Suite. He adopted it from his soundtrack for the 1940 version of Our Town. The movie isn’t great, but the music sticks with me.
Can’t have a movie theme duan without a Kenny Loggins song…
I lived in the town where all of these movies were filmed.
Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head–there are a lot more. The town is a shitty place to live, but a great place to make a movie.