June 22, 2019 · 1:10 pm

The Set of 400: Egads! The Fifth in a Multi-Part Series

Muy estupido!

Upon learning of this omission, the wife was decidedly upset, and blamed me for everything from the wage gap to the election of Brian Kemp as Georgia’s governor in 2018. I explained I hadn’t seen this movie in some time, but that was yet another flimsy excuse by the man trying to not give womankind her due. So, remedy!

Thelma & Louise (1991)

But it wasn’t just the willingness to keep a happy household or virulent feminist spousal pressure that brought us to revisit the list as constructed – I really hadn’t seen Thelma & Louise in forever, and am reticent to credit Ridley Scott for almost anything (Has this popped up in the list yet? Oh, if not, it’s coming). So, begrudgingly, I’d like to admit that he does serviceable job bringing this story to the screen – with Sarandon and Davis more deserving of the praise for their incredible performances. But, I mean, if ever a 1991 movie was going to be directed by a woman (and there were plenty available), shouldn’t it have been this one? Is this not more indicative of the goddamn boy’s club the DGA was and largely still is than anything else? Is there a more empowered picture in the history of cinema than Thelma & Louise? No way they’d let Ridley Scott direct this thing now, nor should they, nor should he want to, nor should anyone clamor for it, nor should I continue down this path.

I’m sorry! Jeez!

It probably should’ve landed on the list somewhere this past week – I’d say maybe #315ish, just ahead of The Master. That’s pretty decent representation, and on a list regrettably light on female-led action-dramas! Sorry, all!

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June 21, 2019 · 1:23 pm

The Set of 400: #314 – My Favorite E.T. Wheelchair Reenactment

Today! Because the last three I backed over with my car. Luckily, they turned out to be drug dealers –

The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991)

Directed by David Zucker

Starring Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, George Kennedy, O.J. Simpson, Robert Goulet, Richard Griffiths, Lloyd Bochner, Anthony James, Vitamin C, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Weird Al Yankovic, Jacqueline Brookes, Ed Williams

So, what sort of afterlife do the Naked Gun movies have? Not because these excessive sight gag/pun films were done to death in the ’00s, with your Scary Movies and Not Another… franchise and whatnot. Not because they aren’t quite as revered as the grandaddy of this style – Airplane! Not even because Hot Shots! came out in their midst, and stole some of that thunder (even if they were made by the same people). No, you know what the real question is –

Does O.J. ruin these movies for you?

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June 20, 2019 · 1:10 pm

The Set of 400: #315 – My Favorite Department Store Photographer

Today! Because if you leave me now, in the next life you will be my sworn enemy –

The Master (2012)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Laura Dern, Rami Malek, Jesse Plemons, Kevin J. O’Connor (x2), Ambyr Childers, Christopher Evan Welch, Jillian Bell, W. Earl Brown, Kevin J. Walsh

One of the decidedly less accessible but undeniably brilliant Paul Thomas Anderson films of recent years, The Master is his rage-acted takedown of Scientology-esque “religious” cults of personality. Typical of PTA’s movies, the acting here is first rate – Hoffman’s work as the L. Ron Hubbard of The Cause, Lancaster Dodd, is riveting madness, topped only by Phoenix’s hyper-intense take on the shattered war vet Freddie Quell. Less bombastic but still gripping is Adams as the power-behind-the-throne wife of the cult leader. All three would rightfully get Oscar nominations, but all would lose in the absolutely stacked year of 2012. Okay, I could see Hoffman topping Christoph Waltz for Django Unchained, his always struck me as an odd win, but what, was Phoenix’s volcanic work really going to win out against Daniel Day-Lewis as Abe Lincoln? Or was Adams realistically going to beat Anne Hathaway for singing “I Dreamed a Dream” in Les Mis? 2012, man – it’s one of the greats.

Suffering is a strangely overrated emotion when it comes to Oscar wins, though

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June 19, 2019 · 1:15 pm

The Set of 400: #316 – My Favorite Gutzon Borglum Thrill Ride

Today! Because that plane’s dusting crops where there ain’t no crops –

North by Northwest (1959)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Starring Cary Grant (x2), Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Leo G. Carroll, Martin Landau, Jessie Royce Landis, Josephine Hutchinson, Philip Ober, Adam Williams, Edward Platt, Robert Ellenstein

Hitchcock it is! The one with all the memorable set pieces, North by Northwest lands squarely in the Hitch Wrong Man sub-genre, wherein a regular schmoe (even one who looks like Cary Grant) gets caught up in a helluva lot of intrigue and murder, and is forced on the run, encountering devious foreign agents, low flying planes, and the lovely tourist attractions of South Dakota along the way. This is also the latest Hitchcock movie chronologically that I actually enjoy, but in all fairness, I’ve never actually sat down and watched Topaz. Or, hell, Frenzy for that matter. Maybe I need to keep these sweeping statements to things I can actually stand by. Frenzy might be the greatest movie ever made, I don’t know.

But, come on, it’s not – right?

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June 18, 2019 · 1:10 pm

The Set of 400: #317 – My Favorite Fully Loaded Lexus

Today! Because you took the purest thing in your life and corrupted it –

Blue Chips (1994)

Directed by William Friedkin

Starring Nick Nolte (x2), Mary McDonnell (x3), J.T. Walsh (x2), Ed O’Neill, Alfre Woodard, Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway, Larry Bird, Anthony C. Hall, Robert Wuhl (x2), Bob Cousy, Matt Nover, Dick Vitale, Louis Gossett Jr.

My favorite college basketball movie of all time (yeah, you heard me, Hoosiers), Blue Chips is a pretty over-the-top hoops spectacle that launched the epic film career of that acting titan, Shaquille O’Neal, the Hardcourt Olivier! The Big Thespian! Such a huge deal was Shaq when he entered the NBA that this film was billed as a Shaq/Nolte buddy picture, a 48 Hours set on a college campus, but no! While Shaq does have some acting tasks in the film – and he’s okay – what he really adds to Blue Chips is the ability to dunk, and in the big game, that’s all he does. Over and over and over. And if you like dunks – and who the hell doesn’t? – it’s pretty awesome, in a very 1994 kinda way.

But no, Nick Nolte is the driving force of this cheese masterpiece. His thinly veiled Bobby Knight impression is explosively crazy, and tends to overwhelm the ho-hum tale of teens getting paid to play at this college. There is a terrific series of scenes where Nolte shouts at players – upon finding out they took money or shaved points, where he shouts at referees – because obviously that’d be included, and where he shouts at scheming money-man J.T. Walsh, who shouts back at him just as much. And it’s all great, if you appreciate incessant shouting in your sports films, and again, who the hell doesn’t?

*unintelligible screaming*

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June 17, 2019 · 1:01 pm

The Set of 400: #318 – My Favorite Ineffective Nuclear Device

Today! Because that’s what I call a close encounter –

Independence Day (1996)

Directed by Roland Emmerich

Starring Will Smith (x2), Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, Mary McDonnell (x2), Vivica A. Fox, Robert Loggia, Randy Quaid, Harvey Fierstein, Adam Baldwin, Margaret Colin, James Rebhorn, Brent Spiner, Mae Whitman, Harry Connick Jr., Dan Lauria, Rance Howard (x2)

That crowd-pleasingest of crowd pleasers from the glorious summer of ’96, Independence Day is a bombastic, overblown, super-long, mega-destructive alien disaster movie – a War of the Worlds that no movie studio would allow to end with something like a pesky virus wiping out the enemy. Oh no, there had better be shots of the entire country (and a little lip service to the rest of the world) getting decimated by giant warships, the country and general morale laid low, before the stirring rally commences. This was all before 9/11, mind you. It’s hard to say how this would’ve played after. Judging by the thorough rejection of the pointless sequel twenty years later, I’m guesing not well?

In fairness, Resurgence was a bunch of ridiculous nonsense

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June 14, 2019 · 1:03 pm

The Set of 400: #319 – My Favorite Meal Ordering

Today! Because I don’t know about his face, but I think his brain might be pretty traumatized –

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

Directed Wes Anderson

Starring Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman (x2), Adrien Brody, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray (x2), Kumar Pallana, Waris Ahluwalia, Amara Karan, Irrfan Khan, Barbet Schroeder, Natalie Portman (x2)

In many ways the forgotten Wes Anderson movie, The Darjeeling Limited is a terrific little character study of brothers Peter, Francis, and Jack on a spiritual journey across India that turns out to be much more. As it unfolds, the struggle each brother has gone through in the year since their father’s death gets magnified and fleshed out, building toward a reunion with their mother, played by a wonderful Angelica Huston.

In ’07 this movie had a decent run, for an Anderson film, and had a bit of attention from critics at year end, but it tends to get swallowed in any discussion of the director’s films, largely I feel because of the size of it. Even though it’s the rare sweeping travelogue film in his universe, Darjeeling is a relatively small movie, focusing largely just on the brothers (all giving tremendous performances, with Wilson’s frantic, shattered Francis standing out) and not a litany of movie stars in minor roles, like virtually all other Anderson vehicles. It also occupies the chronological spot between Life Aquatic (more talked about, considering it first followed Rushmore and Tenenbaums), and Fantastic Mr. Fox (Anderson’s first foray into animation), leaving it as the less remarkable middle film. Continue reading →

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June 13, 2019 · 1:14 pm

The Set of 400: #320 – My Favorite British Theodore Dreiser Tragedy

Today! Because you have to learn to push guilt under the rug and move on –

Match Point (2005)

Directed by Woody Allen

Starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Scarlett Johansson, Matthew Goode, Brian Cox, Emily Mortimer, Penelope Wilton, Toby Kebbell, James Nesbitt, Ewan Bremner

The best of Woody’s European/Johansson cinematic excursion of the mid-to-late ’00s, Match Point was the first good movie he’d made in some time, and the first solid straight drama since at least Husbands and Wives in ’92 (and that’s still a funny-ish movie). This Hitchcockian-Dostoevskyian suspense thriller feels reinvigorated by a change of venue from the notoriously NYC-centric filmmaker – a move almost entirely due to British funding more than any desire to leave the Big Apple. The cast is first rate, and the script clips right along – something that Woody’s later comedies have a hard time achieving.

This is the only one of Woody’s pure dramas to make the list – as much as I admire Interiors and Crimes and Misdemeanors, I don’t have great affection for them. It is also one of only two of his films made after 1995 to appear here (again, I’m going to warn there is a lot of Woody Allen coming in the next year. And again, yes, I struggle with this – see #349 Broadway Danny Rose for more details), as his later work has been very hit and miss. For every good-to-great Midnight in Paris or Blue Jasmine, there have been five Anything Elses and Cafe Societys. But hey, at least he keeps making movies. And every four or five years or so, a pretty good one.

If I never see Cafe Society again it’ll be too soon

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June 12, 2019 · 1:23 pm

The Set of 400: #321 – My Favorite Feudal Asian Shakespeare

Today! Because in a mad world only the mad are sane –

Ran (乱) (1985)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu, Mieko Harada, Yoshiko Miyazaki, Mansai Nomura

Akira Kurosawa’s brilliant retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear, Ran was named Best Movie of the Last 25 Years, in a very informal on-campus poll conducted during my second year of college (Keystone, represent!). Sure, maybe we were all being hoity-toity intellectuals at the time – Ran being the only Japanese film on that list, almost for sure – but that’s not to dull this film’s greatness. It’s a sweeping triumph, epic in every sense of the word, featuring hundreds of extras and horses, mammoth location shooting at Mount Aso and Mount Fuji, a budget nearly double that of any previous Japanese production, and a filming/planning process that occupied a decade. And it’s all on the screen, this giant, fatalistic masterpiece of a country and family falling apart in 16th century Japan. Continue reading →

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June 11, 2019 · 1:25 pm

The Set of 400: #322 – My Favorite Mythological Creature Based Energy Drink

Today! Because if you white, then you Ben Affleck –

Role Models (2008)

Directed by David Wain

Starring Paul Rudd (x3), Seann William Scott (x2), Bobb’e J. Thompson (x2), Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Elizabeth Banks (x2), Jane Lynch (x2), Ken Jeong, Ken Marino, Kerri Kenney, Joe Lo Truglio (x2), Matt Walsh (x3), Jorma Taccone, David Wain (x2), Louis C.K., Keegan-Michael Key, Alexandra Stamler, Nicole Randall Johnson

Another film from what I in my infinite late ’00s hubris referred to as the Golden Age of Comedy (okay, if it’s not ’07 to ’11, when the hell is it? Weigh-in!), Role Models is vulgar hilarity at its finest. It’s a stacked group of world-class comedians raucously trading insults and awkwardness with at-risk youths. A dynamite comedy premise if ever I heard one!

Not as random and esoteric as this group’s The State or Wet Hot American Summer, Wain and company got the best out of Rudd and Scott playing the worst versions of their comedic personas. Okay, Scott’s Wheeler might just be a slightly older Stifler, and Rudd’s Danny is a more realistic WHAS Andy, but combined and bouncing off the terrific line deliveries of Bobb’e J. Thompson and the infinite McLovin-ness of Mintz-Plasse, you end up with a movie with as many laughs as any from this glittering golden age (Seriously, when else? Okay, 1934-38, I’ll grant you, was terrific, but none of those movies – none! – feature a gag like Jane Lynch and that hot dog).

“What does that look like?”

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June 10, 2019 · 1:15 pm

The Set of 400: #323 – My Favorite Wish to Just Lay Down

Today! Because people are frightened by what they don’t understand –

The Elephant Man (1980)

Directed by David Lynch

Starring John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins (x2), Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud (x2), Wendy Hiller (x2), Freddie Jones, Michael Elphick, Hannah Gordon, John Standing (x2), Helen Ryan, Kenny Baker (x2)

An absolutely riveting, heart-wrenching biopic of severely deformed 19th century Londoner Joseph Merrick, brought to life by the disparate talents of director David Lynch, actor John Hurt, and producer Mel Brooks. Lynch was hot off his very Lynchian glorified student film Eraserhead – as bonkers a movie as has ever been made – and Mel had recently wrapped his Hitchcock parody High Anxiety, so naturally these two Americans had to get together for a black-and-white period British freakshow drama. Really though, both have a strong streak of outsider characters populating their films and shows, and treating them sympathetically, so it may not be as far-fetched as I’m supposing.

Besides the tremendous performances – Hurt and Hopkins as Merrick’s doctor, primarily – and those gorgeous b&w visuals, the movie is a towering triumph of film make-up. Merrick’s deformities were so massive that it required near full-body coverage for Hurt – a process that allegedly took seven to eight hours a day. Burying your lead actor under massive prosthetics poses an obvious challenge – how does an effective performance emerge when you can barely see the actor – but Hurt is riveting throughout – even if completely unrecognizable. Another good actor example of physical immersion into roles, good and bad, is Gary Oldman – terrifically effective as the massively scarred Mason Verger in Hannibal, and (in my opinion) somewhat less so in his Oscar-winning pile of make-up work as Churchill in The Darkest Hour. Come on, is there one minute of that movie where you’re not just saying to yourself “Oh hey! Look at how much make-up Gary Oldman is wearing!” Maybe it’s just me.

These waxworks are so lifelike!

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June 8, 2019 · 1:20 pm

The Set of 400: Zounds! The Fourth in a Multi-Part Series

This dumbass!

I don’t know how many more of these will turn up either, you guys. I was somewhat shocked at the omissions I made when looking back, and I want to remedy that for all posterity, given that Knowingly Undersold will undoubtedly be my lasting legacy, writing-wise (at least for those of you still unfamiliar with Parade Day – available on Amazon!). There was a list I worked from to assemble these countdowns over the years, and somehow they never became comprehensive enough, and so mistakes were made. I’m sorry! And today’s apology is mostly owed to:

The Great Outdoors (1988)

How I overlooked what often first occurs to me in the canon of great John Candy roles I have no idea. It’s not like I didn’t have Candy on the brain with this list – there are loads of his films still to come – but maybe it’s just that I hadn’t seen it in a while? I have no good excuse. There are plenty of great, iconic moments in this movie – from the above, where Chet Ripley conquers the Old 96er, to “We’ll give them a ride in Suck My Wake” – and a terrific, oily performance by Dan Aykroyd as Chet’s brother-in-law Roman. Oh, and the raccoons! How funny are the raccoons?! And the bald bear! I’m an idiot.

This movie would’ve probably landed right around here – maybe #324ish, just ahead of Fourteen Hours. Hugely disappointed in myself! We watched this movie to death when we were kids, but I hadn’t seen it in some time, so it just slipped my mind in the rankings. Consider yourself recognized, Great Outdoors!

Classic raccoons!

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June 7, 2019 · 1:06 pm

The Set of 400: #324 – My Favorite Morbid Voyeurs First Date

Today! Because I don’t mind losing you, but I don’t want a whole daisy chain of cops sailing out that window –

Fourteen Hours (1951)

Directed by Henry Hathaway

Starring Paul Douglas, Richard Basehart, Barbara Bel Geddes, Grace Kelly, Debra Paget, Agnes Moorehead, Howard Da Silva, Robert Keith, Jeffrey Hunter, Frank Faylen, Martin Gabel, Richard Beymer, John Cassavetes, Ossie Davis, Willard Waterman

The jumper-on-a-ledge thriller seems to have existed since movies began – from Harold Lloyd hanging off that clock (okay, not exactly a ledge flick) straight through to the no-frills Man on a Ledge in 2012 starring that great ’08-’11 movie star Sam Worthington (did not make the list!). But the best one – at least where the entire plot deals with this element – is 1951’s gripping Fourteen Hours. 

The cast is first rate – lead by Basehart’s suicidal Robert Cosick and Douglas’s endearing Officer Dunnigan charged with talking him back into the room. The layered complications are pretty standard for this type of film – why is he out there? How do we get him in safely? Who can help us talk to him? But in addition to this – with the parade of terrific supporting performers like Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Keith, the always brilliant Agnes Moorehead, the screen debut of Grace Kelly – the film also takes the interesting angle of presenting what’s going on at street level. The mania of the onlookers to gawk at the macabre spectacle happening above, with some sympathy, but mostly just to be entertained. It’s a fascinating choice, and one that elevates the movie from what could’ve been a standard suspense will-he-won’t-he flick into a bit of a condemnation of media and humanity, and in 1951! Continue reading →

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June 6, 2019 · 1:15 pm

The Set of 400: #325 – My Favorite Rambo Cosplay

Today! Because of the end of civilization, the Clamp Cable Network now leaves the air –

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Directed by Joe Dante

Starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, John Glover (x2), Robert Prosky, Robert Picardo, Christopher Lee (x2), Dick Miller (x2), Gedde Watanabe, Haviland Morris, Keye Luke, Rick Ducommun, Hulk Hogan (x2), Julia Sweeney, Dean Norris, John Astin (x2), Henry Gibson, Leonard Maltin, Howie Mandel, Tony Randall

There might be other instances on this list – not many, but maybe one or two – wherein a direct sequel made the cut without its predecessor. I don’t know why, I just tend to give more credit to originals, even when they have popularly acclaimed superior sequels. I have some sequels higher on the list where the first foray also cracked the 400, but as much as I liked Gremlins growing up, it’s not something I go out of my way to watch – unlike Gremlins 2, which I still love.

The balls of this movie! It’s a sequel, yes, but it’s also a straight parody of the original, a fourth wall breaking mockery of the first movie’s serious-ish, tongue in cheek horror story. Completely revamping the setting – taking it from the typical creatures invading a small town trope to the office building of a cable television channel – opened the film up for opportunities to poke fun at numerous films and media in general in a wide-ranging satire, replete with monsters. It took the concept of Evil Dead 2 – parodying the original film – and exploded it into nearly a throwback sketch comedy film, ala The Groove Tube or The Kentucky Fried Movie. Well, almost – it does hold together as one story a little more than that, even with its many digressions. Continue reading →

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June 5, 2019 · 1:22 pm

The Set of 400: #326 – My Favorite Blindfolded Driving

Today! Because it’s not deer! Beer! It’s a typo! Use your head, for Christ’s sake!

Delirious (1991)

Directed by Tom Mankiewicz

Starring John Candy (x3), Mariel Hemingway, Raymond Burr, Emma Samms, Dylan Baker (x2), Charles Rocket, David Rasche, Zach Grenier, Jerry Orbach, Renee Taylor, Mark Boone Junior (x2), Patrick Bristow, Robert Wagner

The third film on the list so far to feature a one-word adjective as the title (counting both versions of Notorious, Hitchcock’s #370 and Biggie’s #329), Delirious is a pretty minor comedy, in all honesty, but I really enjoy the plot’s hook – soap opera writer Jack magically entering his own script and assuming leading man status in his own fictional life, and then watching it progressively go to hell. Populated with TV staples such as Perry Mason himself Raymond Burr, General Hospital‘s Emma Samms, Sledge Hammer David Rasche, and Falcon Crest‘s Andrea Thompson, it manages to toe the interesting line between soapy authenticity and decidedly absurdist film comedy, thanks largely to Candy’s terrific work straddling both ends of the story. Continue reading →

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