Why I flout grammar, David Sonstroem, Strunk and White, and even Fowler, and refer to movies in double quotations.
Brazil1986, Niantic Cinema, with MEWN
It twisted my head and juggled with my brain and I loved it. I don't know how I came to see the second time, with someone who liked it mostly for the English accents. (Just a little snide comment, but this person, who was born in England and had lived in the U.S. since his infancy, bragged about how many times he'd crossed the Atlantic, and it seemed he could never be happy unless that number were even.) When I finally saw the European cut at Cinestudio at Trinity with RDC , ABW, and KRW, the 20 minutes unreasoningly removed from the American cut didn't quite reduce the film to a simplistic plot, but a few crucial threads were allowed resolution. This was my first introduction to Terry Gilliam (I didn't know Monty Python until college).
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The
Breakfast ClubSpring of 1985, Saybrook Cinema, with a group of classmates (a rare occurrence).
There are likely few people more than a few years older or younger than I for whom this movie could mean so much, and there are plenty my own age who got nothing from it. Dated it is, and flawed, but when I saw it first, at 16, it brought me a sort of fierce peace and certainty that I sorely needed. I don't quote it as excessively as I once did (a relief to SEM, I know), but with great lines like "I think your old man and my old man ought to get together and go bowling," I am tempted now and again. I stopped counting how many times I'd seen it after 30, but I can still sing along with almost every line.
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Bringing
up BabyFebruary 1990 with SSP , who idolized Cary Grant and would dress like him when he could.
Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. What could be better? ROTFL. Slapstick comedy, but not vapid. Every line is a gem, every scene a delight; Katharine Hepburn was born on the side of a hill. There are comedies I enjoy loudly and thoroughly once but for which I have a low repetition tolerance; this one has never lost its charm.
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A
Fish Called WandaUConn Ballroom 1989 with NCS and probably others
Maybe it's just my combined lust for and envy of Jamie Lee Curtis's exquisite neck (John Cleese lost his Fawlty doughiness too), but I think it's more likely the brilliant combination of physical humor and perfectly timing biting wit. I do hope the sequel (or whatever) is worthy. And I love its despite its triple CM rating.
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The
Fisher KingFall of 1991, East Hartford Cinemas, with CXJ.
This belongs with Faux Arthurian Fare by its type, but I love it too well. Anything by Terry Gilliam, most anything with Robin Williams, and isn't Amanda Plummer fantastic, and anything with such an honest representation of madness, deserves my approbation. Running naked in Central Park, "Is it all right to miss her now?" and the Grail as a touchstone of sanity, when it has driven so many mad. We've all been chased by a Red Knight now and again.
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Harold
and MaudeI borrowed this from PGN in high school to watch while baby-sitting.
I didn't know Cat Stevens at all and I don't think I remembered Ruth Gordon from a favorite movie from eighth grade, "My Bodyguard." But I loved Harold and I loved Maude and when, as a college freshling , I discovered that the girlfriend of my major crush loved this movie, I realized that I could love her as well. And I learned to love all of Cat Stevens (but not Yusef Islam). This movie is life-affirming solace to me. When Percy died RDC suggested we watch it, but to watch a movie seemed frivolous to me; instead we lay on the floor listening to Tea for the Tillerman, Teaser and the Firecat, and Mona Bone Jakon (for "Trouble" particularly). Maude's throwing Harold's gift into the river "so [she'll] always know where it is" touches me especially, because of the Little Prince. The prince finds all the stars in heaven more beautiful because his rose is on one of them; the narrator finds all the stars in heaven more beautiful because the little prince is somewhere among them. And so whole the river is more dear, because in its waters lies Harold's present.
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Henry
VYork Cinema, Yale, New Haven, Summer of 1990
I fell, as is maybe cliché, for the St. Crispin's Day speech. And for Katherine of France's hair. But what really stirred me was the battle scene. I think this was the first pitched battle scene before gunpowder that I have ever seen filmed. The mud stained red with blood, the fighting in rain, the valiant men dying blow by mortal blow. A Chaucer classmate of mine said she didn't like how the bloody violence was immediately followed by a triumphant song. I don't see "Non nobis" as personally triumphant at all: the primary lyric is something like "Non nobis sed Domine gloria," which translates roughly as "not to us but in god's name the glory." Triumphant? No, grateful and humble.
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The
Lion in WinterBefore 1989, but I don't know when
Katherine Hepburn, Peter O'Toole, Anthony Hopkins, in his first-I-think screen role. The passion and the intrigue of Henry II's court, and would I have loved it the more had I seen "Beckett" first? When I finally saw "Beckett," I was pleased that Peter O'Toole played Henry II just as lewd and lush in both roles, and that it was Peter O'Toole in both movies. A favorite exchange: John grouses petulantly that no one cares about him and "if [I] were on fire no one'd piss on me to put me out"; and George replies, "Let's strike a flint and see." Certainly one of the best lines belongs to Katharine Hepburn (of course), speaking of herself, Henry II, the future Richard Coeur de Lion*, Phillip II, etc.: "Every family has its little ups and downs." Also one of the best last lines ever, and it doesn't even matter that right now I can't remember if which line is Henry's and which Eleanor's: "I want to live forever!" "Do you think there's any chance of it?"
*I can't call anyone who barely spoke English (if at all) and spent six months of his eleven-year reign in England "the Lion-Hearted": he doesn't deserve it.
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Philadelphia StorySummer of 1988, at LKW's with many Charenton affliliates.
Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart. Of course Tracy and Dex wind up together. Of course Mac's girl would rip out the eyes of any rival, unless she happened to be marrying someone else the next day. "Wouldn't we be more comfortable on pogo sticks?" Dinah the demure younger sister, in a dancing gown, borrowed diamond necklace, and smallpox, pounding out "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" on the piano. Jimmy Stewart booming out, "Oh C. K. Dexter Haven." As with "Bringing Up Baby," no word is wasted, no laugh lost; but it is more than a comedy, more than a romance: the most nearly perfect movie I know.
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Pulp
FictionVDM with RDC
and others
When I first heard of this, I thought, "John Travolta? Bruce Willis? Yeah
right." But I learned. Tim Roth, of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead," "Four Rooms" (which I haven't seen yet), "Reservoir
Dogs," and "Rob Roy"; Amanda Plummer of "The
Fisher King"; Uma Thurman, and I'd never seen Samuel L. Jackson before
to remember him. "I'm gonna get medieval on this motherfucker. This here
is between you, me, and Mr. Soon to be living the rest of his life in unbearable
pain..." Does anyone else just hate Fabienne and her blueberry pancakes
and her pot belly? Shouldn't he have gone off with the taxi driver? Has anyone
else asked, when learning about heirloom jewelry, exactly where that jewelry
was stored? By the way, according to the screenplay, the book John Travolta
is reading, whose cover is never distinct, is Blaise Moderne, if Quentin
Tarrantino stuck to that. And I know what's
in the briefcase. Furthermore this movie is useful to explain the evasive
usage of "they." "They sure do talk a lot, don't they?"
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A
Room with a ViewSpring of 1988, with BHM in Boston.
What I remember with the most amusement from my first viewing is both Brian and I lusting for Rupert Graves and less for Julian Sands. This was my first Merchant/Ivory production. I think they should stick with Forster. They garbled The Remains of the Day, reducing that extraordinary novel into a romance-based movie and I, loving Anthony Hopkins as I do, might have to ignore "Surviving Picasso" as I did "Nixon," and for more important reasons than a complete lack of interest in that president. "A Room with a View" is another solace, though when somehow it came up in conversation with a Florentine acquaintance, he swore, which I can understand. The irony seems obvious enough to me, but it might not be to anyone without too much English, especially if he is used to how Brits talk down to the rest of the world. This is the one movie that RJH and I could never watch together. It might have been dangerous. But he translated Mr. Emerson's "Excuse me, my dear, but it seems to me you are in a bit of a muddle" into Latin for me when I was very sad, and he lent me his tape whenever I needed it, and he understood, when I withdrew from Medieval Studies, that the only reason I'd had to go to grad school was that the ticket was bought and everything. This and "The Breakfast Club" are the only movies I will admit to being able to sing along with (I can only accompany the movie, not recite it.)
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The best movie I have seen since "Philadelphia Story." Show business jokes, anachronisms, layers of metafiction and historiography, and the truth proved that all the world's a stage.
Twelve
MonkeysSummer of 1996, with RDC at home. Terry Gilliam again! I have to give "The Adventures of Baron von Maunchausen" (or whatever) another try. Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis (again! but nothing surprised me after "Pulp Fiction" except why he wasted his time with Backdrafts I through IX), Madeleine Stowe, and that older woman "in insurance" who is not Jessica from "Soap" and Jonathan Price's mother in "Brazil" but who looked remotely like her. Very well handled time travel, no glaring paradoxes that I couldn't forgive, no heroic changing the course of time--because how would a changed past affect your future present? Bruce Willis's coming to doubt his own sanity, Madeleine Stowe coming to believe in it, all the Gilliam touches of that underground world. And did Robin Williams meet Amanda Plummer in "The World According to Garp" and introduce her to Gilliam for "The Fisher King" and is that how Gilliam got Christopher Plummer for this?
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Wings
of DesireVDM, sophomore year
Two angels, who live in grayscale, debate whether to join the living, who live in color and have Peter Falk. The setting is walled Berlin, so there must be an East/West dynamic working here as well. I don't know what other poetry I miss by not knowing German. I catch a phrase or at least a word here and there, which excites me. The opening scene and possibly others poses the angels on contemporary gargoyles--weren't gargoyles primarily meant to protect their buildings and to gutter water as a side benefit? This movie reassures you about taking risks, encourages faith in the possible, and features Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
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`Nuff said.
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