Monthly Archives: August 2020

August 10, 2020 · 1:16 pm

The Set of 400: #18 – My Favorite Dance with the Devil in the Pale Moonlight

Today! Because I’ve got a flying mouse to kill, and I want to clean my claws –

Batman (1989)

Directed by Tim Burton (x6)

Starring Michael Keaton (x9), Jack Nicholson (x7), Kim Basinger (x2), Robert Wuhl (x3), Michael Gough (x3), Pat Hingle (x3), Billy Dee Williams (x3), Lee Wallace, Tracey Walter (x3), Jack Palance, Jerry Hall, William Hootkins (x2), Garrick Hagon (x3)

One of the main reasons I started heavy-duty list making in the first place, Tim Burton’s Batman was everything to me in 1989. Remember, this was the halcyon summer of the third Indiana Jones and the second Ghostbusters and… Honey I Shrunk the Kids, so nine-year-old Joe had plenty to look forward to after the hectic slog of fourth grade. And while I enjoyed all of those (yes, even Ghostbusters II), none had the impact of the Caped Crusader facing off with the Joker on the big screen. I can’t overstate how important this movie was in the entire formation of my interests for years to come.

Seriously, is it possible we all have it wrong on GBII? I haven’t seen it in forever, but it’s not really all that bad, right? I mean, it’s not Caddyshack II, is it?

And I didn’t like this movie in a cool way – I wasn’t some detached fan who viewed it in secret and mentioned it sporadically if it happened to come up. Ten-year-old me was a giant dork about this movie, badgering all my grade school pals with Batman shit and watching it endlessly at the house. Before it was available on VHS, I read the novelization by (I still remember) Craig Shaw Gardner multiple times. I had the Prince soundtrack and the Danny Elfman score on tapes. I had no fewer than three posters from this movie in my bedroom. It was straight up disgusting, how into this movie I was. Oh, is your big takeaway 380+ movies into this list that I wasn’t a cool kid? Huge surprise, I know! I’m not putting up much of an argument for being a cool adult, either! Continue reading →

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Tagged as Batman, Billy Dee Williams, Danny Elfman, Favorite Movies Ever, Garrick Hagon, Jack Nicholson, Jerry Hall, Kim Basinger, Michael Gough, Michael Keaton, Prince, Tim Burton, William Hootkins

August 7, 2020 · 1:11 pm

The Set of 400: #19 – My Favorite Mass Hysteria

Today! Because that was the whole plan, “Get her!” –

Ghostbusters (1984)

Directed by Ivan Reitman (x2)

Starring Bill Murray (x12), Dan Aykroyd (x7), Sigourney Weaver (x7), Harold Ramis (x3), Ernie Hudson, Rick Moranis (x4), Annie Potts (x3), William Atherton (x2), David Margulies (x2), Alice Drummond, Larry King (x2), Slavitza Jovan, Jordan Charney (x3), Jennifer Runyon, Casey Kasem, Joe Franklin (x2), Jean Kasem, Reginald VelJohnson (x2)

Show of hands – who hasn’t seen Ghostbusters a thousand times? Even if you didn’t grow up with it, that movie airs on television what, every week? Every few days? I solidly feel like this was the gateway to film comedy for virtually everyone around my age. I don’t distinctly remember when it first came out – as I was just pushing five at the time – but once it was on video, it was a solid household staple from that point forward. I can’t even guess how many times I watched Ghostbusters, but I’d say it’s probably among my top five or six films, along with the Star Wars movies, Indiana Jones, Young Frankenstein, and Monday’s film. Stay tuned!

Because what is there not to like about Ghostbusters? It’s just scary enough, just cool enough, and just funny enough to appeal to a wide variety of audience members. You don’t like horror? The scary ghost stuff is pretty fleeting. You don’t like ’80s action flicks? This doesn’t have all that much derring do! You don’t like comedies? What are you, a monster? Everybody likes comedies! Plus, while this movie is funny, has a lot of funny lines, has a lot of funny characters, it isn’t swinging for home run laughs on every beat. It is the quintessential action comedy from an era loaded with them, and the added bonus is that there happen to be ghosts. Fun!

And some of those ghosts are only around for prurient thrills!

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Tagged as Annie Potts, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Favorite Movies Ever, Ghostbusters, Gozer, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Sigourney Weaver, Slimer

August 6, 2020 · 1:12 pm

The Set of 400: #20 – My Favorite George Washington Bridge Joke

Today! Because the dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust –

Network (1976)

Directed by Sidney Lumet (x4)

Starring William Holden (x2), Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall (x4), Ned Beatty (x5), Beatrice Straight (x2), Darryl Hickman, Wesley Addy, Arthur Burghardt, Marlene Warfield, Jordan Charney (x2), Conchata Ferrell, Ken Kercheval, William Prince

The most prescient movie of all time, Network manages to reflect modern television far better than the handful of channels existing in its day. Sure, the writing may have been on the wall that news could someday be weaponized and rolled into general entertainment, but the likes of CNN and FOX News was still years away when Paddy Chayefsky penned his masterpiece and Lumet so brilliantly brought it to life. You may come into Network for the acting – because those are some powerful, towering performances – but it stays with you for the depiction of the rabbit hole nightmare decades before its full impact was evident.

Now, despite winning three of the four acting Oscars in ’76 (the second and most recent movie to accomplish this feat, after A Streetcar Named Desire), this is not a group of particularly well-rounded characters. They more represent ideals than actual human beings, and so no one is very relatable, and the script goes bonkers with the monologuing. Beatrice Straight won Best Supporting Actress for basically one long scene where she yells at her philandering husband. Ned Beatty was similarly nominated for his apocalyptic speech breaking down corporate America in near biblical terms. The most famous sequence of the movie is an almost uninterrupted missive to the viewing audience as Finch’s cracked newsman Howard Beale gets mad as hell. Continue reading →

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Tagged as Beatrice Straight, Favorite Movies Ever, Faye Dunaway, Ned Beatty, Network, Paddy Chayefsky, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Sidney Lumet, William Holden

August 5, 2020 · 1:11 pm

The Set of 400: #21 – My Favorite Closet Full of Board Games

Today! Because I’ve always been considered an asshole for about as long as I can remember. That’s just my style –

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Directed by Wes Anderson (x4)

Starring Gene Hackman (x5), Angelica Huston (x4), Ben Stiller (x3), Luke Wilson (x4), Gwyneth Paltrow (x6), Owen Wilson (x5), Bill Murray (x11), Danny Glover (x2), Kumar Pallana (x2), Seymour Cassel (x3), Alec Baldwin (x4), Stephen Lea Sheppard, Andrew Wilson (x3)

Back in #267 The Life Aquatic, I posited that Wes Anderson’s distinctive style truly began with that film, but the entire blueprint was in place in The Royal Tenenbaums. While Aquatic often feels like an over-directed showcase of filmmaking more than a cohesive movie, Anderson hadn’t gotten all that carried away with himself when tackling his third film, and first after his big breakthrough on Rushmore three years earlier. It would take a little time after Aquatic to reconcile the manner of hyper-detail oriented production design with large idiosyncratic cast to compelling storylines – arguably until Moonrise Kingdom in 2012 – but the rougher version of this concept is fully on display here.

And while most of Anderson’s films work best due to their expertly crafted screenplays and oddball twists, Tenenbaums might be the only one primarily driven by the slate of tremendous performances across its eclectic cast. Hackman was purportedly a nightmare to work with on this film, but he delivers his career best comedic performance as the half charlatan patriarch Royal, in one of his last roles before retiring in ’04 (thanks for nothing, Welcome to Mooseport!). He was snubbed by the Oscars, thanks to that enduring bias against comedies, but did get a Globe nomination, plus wins at the AFI Awards, the Chicago Film Critics, and the National Society of Film Critics. The rest of the cast is no slouch either – Stiller’s apoplectic track-suited Chas, Paltrow’s morose theater maven Margot, and especially Luke Wilson’s shattered tennis pro Richie – the inspiration for one of my many failed Halloween costume efforts of years past.

It’s okay, I know I look more Bjorn Borg than the Baumer

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Tagged as Alec Baldwin, Angelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Bill Murray, Danny Glover, Favorite Movies Ever, Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson

August 4, 2020 · 1:10 pm

The Set of 400: #22 – My Favorite Halloween Yoda

Today! Because it’s okay, mom, we’ll check it out –

E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982)

Directed by Steven Spielberg (x11)

Starring Henry Thomas (x2), Dee Wallace, Drew Barrymore (x2), Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton, C. Thomas Howell, Erika Eleniak (x2), K.C. Martel, Sean Frye

I enjoy box office records, much like some sports purists live and die with baseball statistics. A small group of us have participated in this box office pool for well over a decade, which added a new fun wrinkle to things, but I’ve followed these numbers for a long, long time. The Scranton Times used to run a weekend Top Ten gross section, which was the only way for me to track this until I subscribed to Entertainment Weekly around 1993. And it would be another five or six years until I got full exposure to this data on the internet, in the form of Box Office Mojo, which I would guess is my fourth or fifth most frequently visited website to this day (alongside the Recent Deaths section of Wikipedia, IMDB, Instagram, and maybe Yahoo Sports, in that order). And for all the formative years of my box office interest, E.T. was the top film. From 1983 to 1997, it was the highest grossing movie ever, unadjusted, and is still in the top twenty, as of this writing. Adjusted, it’s the fourth biggest moneymaker ever, only behind Gone With the Wind (a movie so popular it was one of the top five grossing movies of the years 1939, 1940, 1941, 1947, 1954, 1961, 1967, and 1971), Star Wars, and The Sound of Music.

Atlanta was aflame again with the GWTW premiere in ’39!

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Tagged as Dee Wallace, Drew Barrymore, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, Favorite Movies Ever, Henry Thomas, John Williams, Peter Coyote, Steven Spielberg

August 3, 2020 · 1:14 pm

The Set of 400: #23 – My Favorite Indoor Fireworks Display

Today! Because I think you have the job, but why don’t I make sure of something –

Boogie Nights (1997)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (x5)

Starring Mark Wahlberg (x2), Burt Reynolds (x2), Julianne Moore (x4), John C. Reilly (x7), Don Cheadle (x4), Heather Graham (x4), Philip Seymour Hoffman (x8), William H. Macy (x3), Ricky Jay (x2), Melora Walters (x3), Nina Hartley, Nicole Ari Parker, Thomas Jane (x4), Alfred Molina (x4), Luis Guzman (x5), Philip Baker Hall (x7), Robert Ridgely (x6), Joanna Gleason (x2), Jack Wallace, Michael Jace (x2), Jack Riley (x5), Robert Downey Sr.

My favorite movie from one of my favorite years, Boogie Nights kicked off my multi-decade love affair with Paul Thomas Anderson films, nearly all of which landed on this list. Sarah, who is not exactly a PTA fan, has proclaimed that his most recent film (as of this writing) Phantom Thread is the “only real movie I’ve ever seen.” Dissect that statement as you will! But it all began with what I would categorize as his most accessible, mainstream film, even if it is a period epic set in the porn industry.