Category Archives: Movies

February 26, 2020 · 2:18 pm

The Set of 400: #136 – My Favorite Coin Pudding

Today! Because the misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress –

The Great Dictator (1940)

Directed by Charlie Chaplin (x2)

Starring Charlie Chaplin (x2), Paulette Goddard (x2), Jack Oakie, Henry Daniell (x3), Reginald Gardiner, Billy Gilbert, Grace Hayle, Maurice Moscovitch

The first Charlie Chaplin film I remember seeing, The Great Dictator was no easy sell – I mentioned this quickly in To Be or Not to Be, but Dictator had a variety of issues stateside and abroad when the movie was in production. First, they began shooting in 1937, years before Germany would invade France and kick off WWII, so many were still calling for appeasement at all costs and were anti-intervention. England announced they would ban The Great Dictator when they learned of its production, despite Chaplin’s continued huge star status and this notably being his first all-talking motion picture (Modern Times still had large silent sections in 1936). Many groups pressured Chaplin to abandon the film altogether, afraid it would further inflame Hitler and the Nazis. It was a weird, brief period in history, and thankfully production ran so long on this movie that by the time it came out, public opinion had swung, the war was underway, and The Great Dictator was largely embraced with the classic status it now enjoys. Continue reading →

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February 25, 2020 · 2:09 pm

The Set of 400: #137 – My Favorite Crane Game

Today! Because I’m actually from a smaller company that was purchased by Mattel in a leveraged buyout –

Toy Story (1995)

Directed by John Lasseter (x2)

Starring Tom Hanks (x5), Tim Allen (x4), Don Rickles (x3), Wallace Shawn (x4), Jim Varney (x2), John Ratzenberger (x5), Laurie Metcalf (x4), R. Lee Ermey (x3), Annie Potts (x2), John Morris (x3), Erik von Detten, Penn Jillette (x2)

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I have a soft spot for the first films in movie series, even if the sequels are demonstrably better. This doesn’t extend to superhero movies for some reason, but in many other cases when people point to the superiority of a second or third film, I still feel beholden to the original as my favorite – you will see the bundle of examples of this in days to come.

I just think the degree of difficulty is so much higher when you have to tell an interesting, engaging story while also setting up your whole world and potential franchise. Sure, in many cases, the filmmakers weren’t operating under the idea that their movie needed to be the launching pad for a massive, multi-decade tale, which makes it all the more impressive when the original story can hold up and function as the solid backbone everything else stems from. Continue reading →

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February 24, 2020 · 2:15 pm

The Set of 400: #138 – My Favorite Exploding Briefcase

Today! Because I get a kick out of watching you, the great James Bond, find out what a bloody fool he’s been making of himself –

From Russia with Love (1963)

Directed by Terence Young (x3)

Starring Sean Connery (x5), Daniela Bianchi, Robert Shaw, Lotte Lenya, Pedro Armendariz, Bernard Lee (x2), Eunice Gayson (x2), Lois Maxwell (x3), Vladek Sheybal, Desmond Llewelyn, Anthony Dawson (x2)

It’s not something I realized before I put together this list, but apparently as my tastes are concerned, the entire James Bond series boils down to the first couple movies, a huge gap of the same thing over and over again, and then the last couple movies. Considering how long this franchise has been in existence this is a little strange, I know, but I’m a Connery/Craig guy. Some of the intervening adventures are solid – it’s not like they just straight lost their way for forty years – but my favorites are bookending the enterprise.

This second Bond film is far more indicative of what was to come than Dr. No the year before. While that was largely set in Jamaica, it felt like it could’ve been in any beachy locale. Plus, you’ve got Bond running around barefoot most of the time, and while Dr. No is a SPECTRE agent, you don’t get the impression any of this is part of a larger scheme, for the most part. No, From Russia with Love is when Bond becomes Bond – set almost entirely in exotic, 1960’s Istanbul and on the Orient Express, you’ve got SPECTRE and SMERSH agents causing havoc for a well-tailored 007, we get our first faceless Blofeld, we get our first Desmond Llewelyn Q (even if he’s still named as Boothroyd in FRwL), you’ve got terrific, tough supporting villains in Robert Shaw’s Grant and Lotte Lenya’s Rosa Klebb, you’ve got a weird gypsy v. gypsy girl fight for some reason, and you’ve got a slam bang boat chase explosion finish worthy of a Bond movie.

Cubby Broccoli, that looks expensive!

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February 21, 2020 · 2:20 pm

The Set of 400: #139 – My Favorite Reckoning

Today! Because I was his friend. And it will be a very long time before someone inspires us the way he did. I believed in Harvey Dent –

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Directed by Christopher Nolan (x2)

Starring Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman (x4), Michael Caine (x5), Morgan Freeman (x2), Marion Cotillard, Matthew Modine, Ben Mendelsohn, Aidan Gillen, Liam Neeson (x3), Juno Temple, William Devane (x2), Cillian Murphy, Tom Conti, Alon Aboutboul, Nestor Carbonell, Thomas Lennon (x4), Joey King

I think it’s safe to say that, even with The Avengers that summer, The Dark Knight Rises was the most anticipated movie of 2012. Just go by the sheer numbers – there had never been a sequel to a movie that grossed as much as The Dark Knight at that point, so financially, expectations were all over the place. TDK had more than doubled Batman Begins at the box office, but upon Heath Ledger’s death whatever had been planned for TDKR went out the window. It was like season three of The Sopranos – everyone was excited to see where it would go, even if the original gameplan had to be scrapped on the fly. The first trailers were cool, and like TDK they premiered the opening IMAX sequences months early, before…Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol maybe? Something in the winter of 2011. And it was awesome, with all its “Tell me about Bane! Why does he where the mask?” coming from the man who would be Littlefinger.

Bad judge of the opposition!

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February 20, 2020 · 2:20 pm

The Set of 400: #140 – My Favorite Missing Contact Lens

Today! Because I’ve forgotten the sardines! No, I haven’t. I haven’t forgotten the sardines. I remembered the sardines. Well, what a surprise, I guess I’ll just go into the kitchen and fix some more sardines to celebrate –

Noises Off (1992)

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich

Starring Michael Caine (x4), Carol Burnett, John Ritter (x2), Marilu Henner (x2), Christopher Reeve (x3), Nicollette Sheridan, Mark Linn-Baker, Denholm Elliott, Julie Hagerty (x2)

You want stagey? I’ll give you stagey! One of the funniest plays of all time made for a very funny, star-studded film in its own right, that doesn’t bother trying to break away from the theater at all in Noises Off. Movies about plays! Or really in this case, a movie about a play within a play, which is the perfect rabbit hole for this guy. I’m not sure how popular this movie ever became, and I know how popular modern theater is to the world at large, so it’s possible you aren’t overly familiar with Noises Off? I’m yet to see it performed on stage – the set is a massive pain in the ass – but this movie used to air on your WPIX and WWOR all the time at the sweet spot in my television viewing history – ’93, ’94, ’95 – and so exposure to Noises Off was very high.

Madcap theatering!

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February 19, 2020 · 2:24 pm

The Set of 400: #141 – My Favorite One-Handed Cake Devouring

Today! Because when the ghosts have a midnight jamboree/They break it up with fiendish glee –

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)

Directed by James Algar (x2), Clyde Geronimi (x3), Jack Kinney

Starring Bing Crosby (x2), Basil Rathbone (x4), Eric Blore, J. Pat O’Malley (x2), Oliver Wallace

The only movie I’m guaranteed to watch every Halloween (which is kinda awkward, as The Wind in the Willows isn’t scary in the least), The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, I’ll admit, is not the way I’ve always seen it. Growing up, I had no idea it existed in this combo fashion, only having a copy of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow portion recorded off TV, I want to say. And that is primarily why this movie made the list still – but that’s not necessarily to shortchange the opening half of the film.

Ah, that classic tale of a playboy amphibian

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February 18, 2020 · 2:11 pm

The Set of 400: #142 – My Favorite Warsaw Shakespeare

Today! Because I’ll decide with whom my wife is going to have dinner and whom she’s going to kill –

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Starring Jack Benny, Carole Lombard (x4), Robert Stack (x2), Lionel Atwill (x2), Sig Ruman (x4), Felix Bressart, Stanley Ridges, Tom Dugan, Halliwell Hobbes (x2), Miles Mander (x2), Charles Halton

Filmed just prior to America’s entry into WWII, To Be or Not to Be stands as one of the rare comedies of the era tackling the Nazi menace. Once the war began, the whole filmic enterprise took on a justifiably somber tone in regards to the conflict, and so comedies are few and far between. Chaplin’s The Great Dictator had been met with some audience hostility in 1940, so uncomfortable did German aggression make viewers, and so To Be or Not to Be was far from an easy sell when conceived, despite the tremendous script and no less a filmmaker than Ernst Lubitsch at the helm.

By the time the movie would premiere in March of ’42, America was squarely in the war and the film’s star Carole Lombard was dead – a January plane crash after a domestic trip selling war bonds killing her, her mother, and 15 U.S. soldiers. Indeed, Lombard is often referred to as the first female casualty of the war, given the reasons for her travels at the time. So this, coupled with the film’s obvious brilliance, changed the attitude of audiences to one more receptive and supportive of aggressively anti-Nazi pictures.  Continue reading →

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February 17, 2020 · 2:10 pm

The Set of 400: #143 – My Favorite Pseudo-Goldschlager Endorsement

Today! Because they literally stopped me from eating foods that were shaped like dicks…You know how many foods are shaped like dicks? The best kinds –

Superbad (2007)

Directed by Greg Mottola

Starring Michael Cera, Jonah Hill (x5), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (x3), Seth Rogen (x2), Bill Hader (x2), Emma Stone, Martha MacIsaac, Joe Lo Truglio (x4), Dave Franco, Kevin Corrigan, Carla Gallo, David Krumholtz (x2), Aviva Baumann

There is a lot more going on in this movie than I think people remember. Quick – what was Superbad about? Is this a film that is lingering in the memory as the years go by? Was this a sort of hyper-vulgar teen comedy flash-in-the-pan that really served as a big-screen jumping off point for a bunch of actors, but in itself doesn’t really capture the imagination? The real question I guess is – do you remember anything about this movie beyond McLovin?

“How old are you?”
“Old enough.”

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February 14, 2020 · 2:19 pm

The Set of 400: #144 – My Favorite Surprise Poultry

Today! Because guilt is petit-bourgeois crap. An artist creates his own moral universe –

Bullets Over Broadway (1994)

Directed by Woody Allen (x7)

Starring John Cusack (x3), Dianne Wiest (x3), Chazz Palminteri (x2), Jennifer Tilly (x2), Mary-Louise Parker (x2), Rob Reiner (x2), Tracey Ullman (x2), Jim Broadbent (x3), Jack Warden (x2), Joe Viterelli, Harvey Fierstein (x2), Edie Falco, Debi Mazar, Tony Sirico, John Ventimiglia, Tony Darrow

If you were to take the entire Set of 400 up to this point, feed it into a computer, and have that parse out all the elements that might make up the perfect film geared toward this guy, it may well spit out Bullets Over Broadway. It’s the seventh Woody Allen movie on the list, it’s from a year I proclaim to love more than almost any other in cinema history: 1994, it’s a movie about a play, it’s a movie about gangsters, it’s a movie about writers, it features a ton of future Sopranos actors, it was nominated for and won a slew of awards – Bullets Over Broadway kinda has everything for me.

Ah, theater!

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February 13, 2020 · 2:19 pm

The Set of 400: #145 – My Favorite Wedding Photo

Today! Because to hardly know him is to know him well –

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Directed by George Cukor

Starring Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant (x4), James Stewart (x3), Ruth Hussey, Roland Young, John Howard, John Halliday, Mary Nash, Virginia Weidler, Henry Daniell (x2)

The old time theater guy in me just can’t get enough of kinda stagey goofball comedies of seven and eight decades gone by, and few are more entertaining than Cukor’s acrobatically wordy The Philadelphia Story. It just manages to not feel like a play – what with the brilliant, wordless opening sequence, and shifting some action to a handful of remote locations – while also feeling as locked in as, say, 1966’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or every adaptation of The Iceman Cometh or Long Day’s Journey Into Night ever made. Hell, Animal Crackers is little more than the filmed stage play, and even it manages to counter Philadelphia Story cinematically, for the most part.

Plus, comic spousal abuse! Hilarious!

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February 12, 2020 · 2:20 pm

The Set of 400: #146 – My Favorite Hidey Hidey Hidey Ho

Today! Because they don’t have my address. I falsified my renewal, I put down 1060 West Addison –

The Blues Brothers (1980)

Directed by John Landis (x3)

Starring John Belushi (x2), Dan Aykroyd (x5), Carrie Fisher (x5), James Brown (x2), Aretha Franklin, Steve Cropper, Donald Dunn, Matt Murphy, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, John Candy (x8), Henry Gibson (x4), Lou Marini, Willie Hall, Kathleen Freeman (x3), Frank Oz (x5), Twiggy, Charles Napier (x3), Steve Lawrence, Steven Williams (x2), John Lee Hooker, Pinetop Perkins, Steven Spielberg, Alan Rubin, Tom Malone, Murphy Dunne

One night while still living in Scranton, with then-girlfriend Sarah’s brother and his then-girlfriend visiting, we all became gripped with the idea that we needed to acquire a copy of The Blues Brothers, immediately. As I’ve written somewhere before, I have something like 1800 movies on DVD, so not having The Blues Brothers was simply insane and unacceptable and needed to be remedied post haste. So we loaded into this Oldsmobile Achieva I was driving at the time and went to the only place still open at this late hour that might possibly sell a copy of the SNL classic – Wal-Mart. You’d be right to warn against the sorts potentially encountered at late night Wal-Mart, but that evening, I think those deviant sorts were us. We were rolling frozen concentrated orange juice down the aisles and causing general mayhem – and I’m honestly not sure if they even had The Blues Brothers. We ended up with a copy eventually, but I’m not sure if it was that night.

(Incidentally, this was also the night the gas pedal on the Achieva somehow got stuck down, and for a few seconds I was convinced we were going to die. There are some indications that we possibly did all fly into a coma that night, and that everything that has happened since has been some crazed dream, what with all the Red Sox World Series championships and the current occupant of the White House. Shit, is he still president in February of 2020?! This was like the summer of 2004, I think, so maybe brain-damaged induced fantasy would’ve run out of logic, chronologically and otherwise, by this point.)

Like, this really happened, didn’t it?

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February 11, 2020 · 2:13 pm

The Set of 400: #147 – My Favorite Marquis of Queensbury Shoutout

Today! Because I think your in-laws are coming to pay you visit, Squire darling –

The Quiet Man (1952)

Directed by John Ford (x3)

Starring John Wayne (x3), Maureen O’Hara, Victor McLaglen (x2), Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, Mildred Natwick (x2), Francis Ford (x2), Arthur Shields (x2), James O’Hara, Eileen Crowe, Sean McClory, Jack MacGowran (x2), Ken Curtis

Back in the days of my epic MySpace blog – where all of Parade Day was originally published – I ran a movie ranking not unlike this one, except it was encapsulated in a single post and focused on drinking movies. Parade Day, you may recall, is basically a comedy booze adventure itself, so maybe this was just the weird place I was in circa the early-to-mid ’00s. You see, when you commute to college, you largely miss getting the wild drunken antics out of your system, and so in some cases this chases you into your 30s. Anyway, that movie ranking – which I cannot find at present, with MySpace no doubt holding it hostage somewhere – was topped by that greatest of drinking films, John Ford’s brawling comic romance The Quiet Man, a movie so ingrained as a love letter to alcohol that it also dragged E.T. onto the list, for that one crazy sequence where E.T. and Elliott get hammered while the alien watches John Wayne romance Maureen O’Hara.

We’ll cover this again down the road

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February 10, 2020 · 2:10 pm

The Set of 400: #148 – My Favorite Grand Central Station Ballroom Dance

Today! Because I’m hearing horses! Parry will be so pleased –

The Fisher King (1991)

Directed by Terry Gilliam (x2)

Starring Robin Williams (x3), Jeff Bridges, Mercedes Ruehl (x2), Amanda Plummer, Michael Jeter (x2), Harry Shearer (x3), Kathy Najimy (x2), David Hyde Pierce (x2), Tom Waits (x2), Carlos Carrasco, John de Lancie (x2)

Ah, comedies about mental illness! It’s a weird sweet spot to have, but its popping up over (#393 The Dream Team) and over (#193 They Might Be Giants) and over again (#286 Me, Myself and Irene) on this list means that it might be time to face facts – this is weirdly something I’m into. Now, The Fisher King is only sort of a comedy – that much is pretty definitely true. While all the aforementioned movies lean heavier on the laughs (okay, maybe not They Might Be Giants as much), if this one didn’t have Robin Williams at his manic zenith you’d be hard pressed to classify it as even kinda funny. Bridges’ asshole shock jock Jack tumbles mightily when one of his radio show callers goes on a shooting spree, and descends into alcoholic hell. Williams – a victim of this same gunman incident – emerges as a crazed homeless knight named Parry, and they progressively help each other, largely without knowing it, at least until the time comes to retrieve the Holy Grail on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Continue reading →

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February 7, 2020 · 2:18 pm

The Set of 400: #149 – My Favorite Kippered Herring

Today! Because I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty –

Monkey Business (1931)

Directed by Norman Z. McLeod

Starring Groucho Marx (x4), Harpo Marx (x4), Chico Marx (x4), Zeppo Marx (x2), Thelma Todd, Rockliffe Fellowes, Harry Woods, Ruth Hall, Tom Kennedy

The Marx Brothers third feature film, and the first not based on one of their Broadway shows, Monkey Business attempts to expand their very stagey banter into a real motion picture, with largely good results. There are clearly some growing pains in this move – while the scope of the movie broadens out a bit, the team’s bread and butter remains the same, with extended comic dialogues and paired off routines between Groucho & Chico, Chico & Harpo, and Groucho & Zeppo. It would be another year before they truly figured out how to break the routine for good, in Horse Feathers.

Classic shtick!

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February 6, 2020 · 2:12 pm

The Set of 400: #150 – My Favorite Monkey Funeral

Today! Because I am big, it’s the pictures that got small –

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Directed by Billy Wilder (x2)

Starring Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Nancy Olson, Erich von Stroheim, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough (x2), Jack Webb, Cecil B. DeMille, Hedda Hopper (x2), Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner, Anna Q. Nilsson

Even for movies about movies, which lean heavy on this formula, Sunset Boulevard’s art-imitating-life bent is almost head-spinning. By many indications, Gloria Swanson was only amping up her own persona slightly in playing damaged, faded silent star Norma Desmond, while her former director turned butler Max Von Mayerling was played by accomplished Austrian actor Erich von Stroheim, who had himself directed Swanson in the 1929 drama Queen Kelly. Cecil B. DeMille appears as himself, as do Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson. While Hollywood cameos in Hollywood-set films is nothing new, it’s the fact that these folks would play such degraded, forgotten versions of themselves in 1950, when former silent actors were basically out on the curb, that makes it all the more remarkable.

Aww, poor Buster

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