TV movies that effected me:
Why Me? with Armand Assante and Glyniss O'Conner about an Army nurse who needs facial reconstruction after an accident. It was shocking because the doctor uses labial tissue to create her lips. In 1984, shocking!
Death Takes a Holiday with Monte Markham. Perhaps my first real actor crush.
And the winner for the, I should not admit this in public and I'm SO glad I've grown up award, is Sweet Hostage with Martin Sheen and Linda Blair. Given the state of my life at that time, my loving the movie makes sense but, oy. When I think about it now...ugh.
TV movies that stuck with me for whatever reason (none apparent):
The TV movie starring Richard Hatch as Jan Berry (from Jan & Dean), and his recovery from his head injury after his car accident.
And, of course, the after school special about the dangers of PCP, starring Helen Hunt, who goes screaming crazy from angel dust, and defenestrates herself out of a second story school window.
The TV movie starring Richard Hatch as Jan Berry (from Jan & Dean), and his recovery from his head injury after his car accident.
Deadman's Curve! I actually went and saw Jan & Dean playing at Milwaukee's Summerfest when I was in college because of this movie.
The TV movie that I think is one of the tops in the genre is The Missiles of October, which used to be rerun all the time. Great film!
If we're talking formative tv movies, I would put Roots up at the top. That's when tv was really an event, like my whole school watched it and talked about it in class the next day.
That's a mini-series. I can go on with a separate list of those!
Brian's Song
OF COURSE. And if we want to go foreign,
The Race for the Double Helix,
a British film about the discovery of DNA.
Definitely Brian's Song! The ultimate male weepie.
"His tears will act as her lubricant, bro."
Johnny Drama, on why you never let your gf rent "Brian's Song" for an ex.
How's the Ethan Hawke Hamlet in comparison?
Bad. Bad. Very, very bad. Lord, it wasn't good. Especially noteworthily bad are Hawke as Hamlet, Julia Stiles as Ophelia, and Bill Murray as Polonius.
Julia Stiles especially stank up the joint; after
10 Things I Hate About You
I was totally ready to love her forever, but it took until the Bourne movies for me to forgive her for this (it made it all much worse that her Ophelia hit movie theatres right after Kate Winslet's, but she still would've been glaringly bad even without that comparison).
But, honestly, I feel slightly guilty for singling her out, because the whole thing was one long tedious ooze of unrelenting suck. Kyle MacLachlan as Claudius may possibly have sucked marginally less than the rest of the cast, but that's about as much enthusiasm as I can muster for any of the actual humans involved.
The sets were kind of coldly, glossily pretty, I guess. But that's about it.
Yikes. I will...not add it to my Netflix queueueueue, then.
