The Manchurian Candidate

It's well worth rewatching at some point down the road, even if you don't feel like doing it anytime soon -- I found on rewatching that there are some really gorgeous performances whose impact I hadn't noticed so much the first time around because there's so much twisty plottiness happening and Angela Lansbury is just so show-stoppingly huge. But once I knew how it all turns out and I could attend to the details, there was so much to quietly admire and savor.

Laurence Harvey: So broken, so aggressively unpleasant and unlikable; he's painfully aware of just how repellant he is, and he mourns it and can't stop it all at once. It should be a sappy anvillicious moment, but when he says "I was lovable once" he invests the line with a terrible, quiet gravity and longing that just wrecks me.

Janet Leigh: So quietly snarkful, so sure of her attraction to Sinatra and his to her; all their dialogue is loopy and sideways and seriously makes no sense at all, but her delivery is just weirdly irresistible. It's not quite like a seduction; it's like she already knows they're going to end up together, that it is just as much a fact as the train they're on. A fact that hasn't happened yet, but no less sure and solid for that; the quietly nutty dialogue is purely a formality, the path they walk to arrive at that fact. It's totally meaningless and serious and perversely fun all at once. When I was a kid I just utterly adored her and wanted to grow up to be her.

Sinatra: As good as he's ever been, ever.

The twittering garden club ladies. The girl of Laurence's dreams and her father, and the easy rapport the two actors have. The nice kid who looks too young to be at the garden club. Just... oh, so many fine performances that are hard to see and appreciate the first time around. But they're there.

I'm with Nicole. And I own very few movie DVD's (lots of TV ones). In fact, I own Newsies, Swing Kids, Moulin Rouge, and the LOTR series.

however, I do have to say that the song "Sante Fe" is both earwormy, and a little off-key.

I keep saying this but t hearts JZ. And seconds everything she said.

The remake is well worth catching too. I don't think it's as good a movie, but they did some interesting things with the story that play on ones expectations. Also, like the original, the performances are really, really good.

I don't think it's as good a movie, but they did some interesting things with the story that play on ones expectations.

I agree. (And paired with the original, it's just fascinating to see how paranoia has evolved over the years.)

So quietly snarkful, so sure of her attraction to Sinatra and his to her; all their dialogue is loopy and sideways and seriously makes no sense at all, but her delivery is just weirdly irresistible. It's not quite like a seduction; it's like she already knows they're going to end up together, that it is just as much a fact as the train they're on. A fact that hasn't happened yet, but no less sure and solid for that; the quietly nutty dialogue is purely a formality, the path they walk to arrive at that fact. It's totally meaningless and serious and perversely fun all at once.

Roger Ebert tells how he was going over this movie in a film class once, and I think it was one of the students came up with the theory that Sinatra was another Manchurian Candidate, and that Leigh was his handler. This might explain some of the chemistry and language used in this scene.

Roger Ebert tells how he was going over this movie in a film class once, and I think it was one of the students came up with the theory that Sinatra was another Manchurian Candidate, and that Leigh was his handler. This might explain some of the chemistry and language used in this scene.

I read that (I think he mentions it in his GREAT MOVIES essay on the film), and it's a fun idea, but I really am glad there is no evidence of it, because I love the idea even more that Rosie is actually just who she is, as she's one of the most loveably loopy characters since Katherine Hepburn in BRINGING UP BABY.

The fact that she's in this movie is so bizarre and random and yet feels just right, and she is a wonderful break from everything else that's going on in the film, which, despite the healthy doses of satire ("There are exactly 57 card carrying communists..." - James Gregory was so good in this too), gets really violent, grim and tragic.

I adore the Manchurian Candidate. It's up there with The Lion in Winter for the Fucked Up Films I Love Award.

I have never seen Newsies. However, I've seen Velvet Goldmine often enough (I've owned it for five years) to half-expect my Batman to put on eyeliner and masturbate to pictures of Ewan boykissage.

Though I'm not sure how much of that's Velvet Goldmine, and how much is an overdose of Batfic.

Hee. Frankenbuddha is so very much me on Leigh's Rosie. The idea of her being another handler is enchanting, but I would cry if anyone involved in the film actually said that this was in fact so. Her weirdness, deadpan slyness, and quiet sexual and romantic confidence were iconic to me, one of the defining images of someone who owned (in her quietly whack-ass way) the pleasures of adult womanhood. I never wanted to be a teenage girl or a giggly postadolescent, but God, did I want to be her (still do, pretty much). And God, do I not want her to be part of the conspiracy.

Loved MC (still haven't seen the remake). Liked Newsies a lot.

It worked for me, but if he hadn't ended the movie the way he did (with Sam Jackson letting Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer go, and what he said to them when he did) it might not have had as big an impact.

What Frank said about Pulp Fiction. That last segment of the film really brings it all together for me. Not that I didn't like that film up until that point, but the ending (middle) sequence just brought everything right back together.

Still, I think that, to date, Reservoir Dogs was by far Quentin's best film. No other movie has left me quite so speechlessly horrified at the end of it. Carpenter's The Thing comes closest.

Both those things kind of lend some creedence to the horror theory.

Though I'm not sure how much of that's Velvet Goldmine, and how much is an overdose of Batfic.

I was about to say, you needed Velvet Goldmine to make that image seem feasible?