'Heart Of Gold'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Also, my favorite Xmas movie.
Mine is probably The Ref at this point (apart from some of the classics that I have an undying fondness for). Gremlins gives it a run for the money, though.
Though I did wonder for a second if A Fish Called Wanda counted.
Oh, that's totally a rom-com in my book. But that book includes the movies I mentioned earlier, so...
The Ref rocks...that family is too much like mine, though. Not even kidding.
I would put most screwball comedies over any of the recent films
If you haven't seen it, check out It's Love I'm After. Bette Davis and Leslie Howard play a bickering pair of stage actors (think Lunt and Fontanne with serious problems getting along offstage). Olivia deHavilland plays an heiress who falls for Howard's character, then invites the pair to weekend at the family mansion. Comedy ensures. Boy, does it ever.
Another great screwball that also qualifies as a rom com is My Man Godfrey, but that one doesn't qualify as "unjustly forgotten."
Katharine Hepburn? Well, there wouldn't have been a movie without her (the role was specifically written for her, IIRC.)
The story I've heard goes further than that. In the late '30s, she appeared on a list of "box office poison" actors/actresses. So she got Philip Barry (the Neil Simon of his day) to write the play, The Philadelphia Story, specifically for her. The play was a Broadway hit, and when MGM came around to buy the movie rights, one condition was that she play Tracy in the movie.
Hmmm. Would the re-make of The Thomas Crown Affair be considered a rom-com?
don't think so...I'd call it a "caper, with romantic and comedic elements." Great movie, though.
What counts as a nihilistic action film? I suspect I love or hate them.
Skipped a bunch, so this may have been answered, but since I made up the term I guess I should 'splain myself. I like action films, so it's not the shoot-'em-up that gets to me. It's the shoot-'em-because-there's-a-hole-in-my-soul that I find dreary.
Bleak. That's it. Action + Bleak - any Happy at all = nihilistic action film. The Dark Knight. I know, I know, Heath Ledger's last film. But I hated it all the same.
(And now please forgive me for not defending my shallow, Pollyanna tastes. I'm not being avoidy, I just need to get some grading done.)
Bleak. That's it. Action + Bleak - any Happy at all = nihilistic action film. The Dark Knight. I know, I know, Heath Ledger's last film. But I hated it all the same.
Hey, I am All Batman, All The Time, and I loved Batman Begins and bought it on DVD the day it came out.
I have no desire to see The Dark Knight again, nor do I want the DVD. You're spot on -- it is bleak. Bleeeeeeeak. With a side of why god why.
Aha. I do love the nihilistic action film. I love the cheery action film also, but Batman needs a hole in his soul, and I adore him to bits.
eta:
With a side of why god why.
Because he can! The only reason I haven't bought it yet is because I don't have a Blu Ray player, and it deserves Blu Ray.
Batman needs a hole in his soul, and I adore him to bits.
Batman *does* need a hole in his soul, and yet, I can't quite get past the monolith of bleakness that The Dark Knight was. (For me, of course. I know other people didn't find it as unrelentingly bleak.)
The bleakness of Dark Knight is one of the reason I love it. Almost everything the "good guys" do doesn't work out.