Category Archives: Movies

#269- The Princess Bride

Quick recap: A classic fairy tale- kings, queens, knights, pirates and Billy Crystal.

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Fun (?) fact: Cary Elwes, who played Westley, later continued his stunning career by playing the villain in Twister. Yes, there was a villain. No, it wasn’t the tornado. OR WAS IT?

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Jonas! Why didn’t you just listen to Bill Paxton? WHYYYYY??

My thoughts: Before I start the review, let me make a couple of points: 1 being that I didn’t watch The Princess Bride until I was an adult and 2 yes I do have a sense of humor and anyways, my mom thinks I’m hilarious so isn’t that all that really matters in the end?

As you probably already guessed, I didn’t really care for this movie. It’s not to say I didn’t like it or that I thought it wasn’t very good. I mostly just don’t get the cult following it has. The local Alamo Drafthouse does Princess Bride quote-alongs often, at almost the same frequency as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which is just downright silly to me. I was entertained but not to the point that I would watch this 20 times in a row and then squeal with delight every time someone made a reference to the movie.

I truly feel like I’m being unfair to this movie, having only seen it as a jaded, cold-hearted adult. My six year old loved it, so to me, The Princess Bride did its job. He cracks up every time he hears the ‘My name is Inigo Montoya’ quote and it’s not hard for me to imagine him one day growing up and watching a midnight screening at a local movie theater to bring back all those good childhood memories. As for me? I thought it was a sweet movie and creative, and yes, even funny sometimes, but ultimately, a little out of my age range. Sorry.

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Final review: 3/5

Up next: Happiness

 

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#268- The 39 Steps

Quick recap: A man goes on the run after a woman is found dead in his apartment. However, the woman was actually a spy so not only does the man have to hide from the law, he is also tasked with taking down a bunch of villain spies out to steal information.

Fun (?) fact: The sheep that were brought in for one of the scenes ate up the plants and bushes and the crew had to keep replacing them. Sheep are going to do what sheep do.

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Surprisingly, no one said ‘by jove!’ in this movie.

My thoughts: Seeing as this is my 6th Hitchcock film, I now feel qualified to have an opinion of him as a director. And so far, I think I like him best when he isn’t doing horror. It’s almost comforting to watch his films, knowing that even when this movie was made in 1935, Hitchcock had his trademarks set up: a man falsely accused, a MacGuffin, a director cameo, stairs. It’s all there. At the same time, each film is wildly different from the rest and seeing as this one was all about spies, I was fascinated even more than I normally am.

The character Hanney, the man on the run from the law, is one of my favorite elements of the film. When the movie opens, he’s just a regular guy, maybe hoping to get some action from this random woman who enters his life. But when she’s murdered by an evil spy ring, he gets thrust into the spy life. Throughout the movie, he never really does anything like a stereotypical spy and yet he has enough wits about him to stay one step ahead. In doing so, it made me root for him and want him to solve the mystery before the bad guys got to him first. It also surprised me how much I liked the character Pamela, who ended up handcuffed to Hanney, despite having no previous involvement with either side. She wasn’t just a dumb blonde and made her own decisions, thank you very much.

Seeing as how this movie was made over 80 years ago, I don’t really feel like I’m spoiling it to say that the secrets The 39 Steps were trying to smuggle out of the country were housed in a man called Mr Memory. It was a huge surprise to me when this was revealed, but I also kind of felt bad because his act was a super lame party trick. His schtick was basically that he knew a ton of facts and the audience could shout out obscure questions for him to answer. I mean, considering there was no Wikipedia back then, I guess it’s cool, except how does anyone know if he’s telling the truth? Except if you already know the answer to the question you asked and then in that case, you are just as lame as this guy. Anyway. Just as Hanney figures out he is the key to the whole thing, Memory is shot, but not before divulging his secret to Pamela and him. As he takes his dying breath, Hanney and Pamela hold hands and it was a beautiful ending to actually a really good movie.

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Final review: 4/5

Up next: Happiness

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#267- Shock Corridor

Quick recap: A journalist pretends to be insane so that he can solve the murder of a patient in a psychiatric ward.

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You mean there really is a Bart? Good Lord!!

 

Fun (?) fact: Because he had a small budget, director Samuel Fuller hired little people to hang out in the background of the hall to produce a greater sense of depth for the audience.

My thoughts: Before Shock Corridor, someone could’ve presented me with a movie about being in a mental institution and I would be all over it. So many directions to go! So many points to make! So many complex yet endearing characters! But now I know better, thanks to this movie. See, this is why we can’t have nice things.

The film starts with Johnny Barrett rehearsing his story to a psychiatrist to ensure that the police take him seriously and lock him up in this place. Before I go any further, I want you to imagine what story you would come up with in that situation, knowing that you would be subjected to any kind of technique to cure you and this would most likely stay on your criminal record. What did Barrett and his boss come up with? Incest, of course! And not just incest, because apparently that isn’t crazy enough. Let’s add in a hair fetish! It’s one thing to want to go full into the role and all, but that’s taking it a little too far, I think. Oh, and to make it extra creepy, they added in Barrett’s girlfriend to play the sister. I’ll let you in on how that turned out later on. Hint: not well.

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But, you might be saying, Barrett was trying to solve a murder! He had to concoct a crazy story to make sure he got in and stayed in. I suppose that’s true, although we as the audience never meet who was murdered or see the murderer or get any hint that there is still a threat. Granted, the mental institution does some crazy stuff, but wasn’t that par for the course in the 50s and 60s? By the time the murderer is revealed, I realized that I had never been invested to being with.

So, what to take from this movie? Is it that the insane deserve a voice and a sympathetic ear? No, because the characters themselves are about as stereotypically insane as you can get: A man who sings opera in the middle of the night, a guy who things he is a general in the Civil War and my personal favorite, the black guy whose racist against black guys. Each person shows flashes of sanity at some point, but then retreat back into their world and are of little help in solving the murder. And what does Barrett gain from all of this? He goes insane, too! Turns out, it might not have been the best idea to turn your girlfriend into your sister, buddy. After getting electroshock therapy and intensive counseling sessions to cure him of wanting to molest his sister, Barrett wants nothing to do with his girlfriend.

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There’s a nympho ward!

Final review: 2/5

Up next: The 39 Steps

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#266- Full Metal Jacket

Quick recap: A young Marine survives boot camp and gets sent to Vietnam where he can truly understand the phrase, ‘war is hell, man.’

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Here’s your friendly reminder of how amazing the Simpsons used to be.

Fun (?) fact: Private Joker’s real name in the film is J.T. Davis, a real soldier who is considered to be the first American casualty of the war.

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My thoughts: The Vietnam War alone is about as hellish as anyone would expect it to be. But just in case we Americans didn’t really ‘get it’ the first time around, a slew of war movies came out to make sure we remembered just how bad that war was: Apocalypse Now, Platoon, The Deer Hunter and so on. All the while Stanley Kubrick was watching us, unimpressed with our claims of horror and empty promises of not letting that happen again. And thus, Full Metal Jacket was born.

Full Metal Jacket is horrifying, but not in the ways I expected. I knew there would be blood and guts because this is war, duh, and I was even prepared to see innocent civilians murdered. But the scenes that stuck with me the most were the conversations the men had about the war. As evidenced by the boot camp sequence, the US wanted killing machines and that’s what they got. It’s much easier to give a man a gun and teach him to shoot than to sit him down and explain why he’s going to war. And this tactic works well, for the most part, until a group is separated from their leader and their leader is murdered and then they have to think for themselves. The juxtaposition of the young sniper dying while the soldiers tried to decide what to do with her followed by the men singing the Mickey Mouse theme song is chilling and affected me more than I expected it to.

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Besides horrific scenes, this movie also had some really funny parts. The opening scene of Sgt. Hartman yelling at his new recruits might be one of my favorite scenes on this list, although it’s also really horrible to watch and I felt bad about laughing. Full Metal Jacket is the kind of movie where, when you laugh, the next thing you say is, ‘oh my god, I can’t believe I laughed at that’.The soundtrack is also great and surprised me that it was used for comedic effect as well. It’s a Kubrick film, after all, so I expect nothing less.

Final review: 5/5 but I don’t know if I could sit through it again.

Up next: Shock Corridor

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