I don’t know about you, but I’ve been getting more than just a little sick of Hollywood lately. The majority of what’s out there today seems about as original as Milli-Vanilli; remakes of old movies, sequels upon sequels, and syrupy-sweet love stories. And ALWAYS the happy ending!
That’s why I’ve been getting quite heavily into older movies and indie flicks these days. I watched Easy Rider the other day, and it was great. The scene in the cemetary at the end is very hard to watch, but the rest of it is great–a classic road moive with plenty of social commentary without being preachy.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was great too. Jack Nicholson was fantastic in it, as was the rest of the cast. I had no idea that Christopher Lloyd was in it, and when I heard Nurse Ratchet speak, I instantly knew she was played by the same actress who played Kai Winn in Star Trek DS9. This was also a fabulous performance from her as the manipulative, domineering head of the ward.
As for indie flicks, I highly reccomend Pi. It’s gritty, hard-hitting, insightful and above all, entertaining. Who would have thought that someone could take a movie about mathematics and make it cool? But they did.
Anyway, I know this is a bit of a long post, and I apologize if it’s a little long for some people’s tastes. I also hope you don’t think that I don’t like ANY new movies–I do. I just think there should be more variety and originality out there.
So does anyone else have any recommendations for older or independent movies?
Some other great movies from the late sixties/seventies are
Chinatown (great movie starring Jack Nicholson)
The Graduate
Cool Hand Luke
Annie Hall
All the President’s Men
Midnight Cowboy
Dog Day Afternoon
American Graffitti
Another movie that is interesting is Taxi Driver. It’s regarded by some as a classic, while others (myself included) have mixed feelings about it. It features great performances by Robert de Niro, Jodie Foster, and Harvey Keitel that make it worth watching, regardless of what you think of the movie as a whole.
Yep, All the President’s Men is all about Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s investigation into the Watergate Scandal. It’s great in that, unlike most “based on a true story” movies, it sticks to the facts. I’m sure it strays in a few places, but that’s show business.
Thought provoking, and interesting to see exactly how it all began.
I’ve seen it several times, and I always have to take a minute after the scene where Woodward (Robert Redford) is in the courtroom for the burglar’s hearing. When the judge asks one where he is employed, he says that he’s retired. The judge then says, well, who did you used to work for?
The man quietly says “The CIA,” and the judge has to ask him to repeat himself.
The look on Woodward’s face as he begin to realize what he’s stumbled onto is priceless. Woodward was a low level reporter, he had been at the Post for only nine months, and he uncovered one of the biggest government scandals in US history.
Sorry to ramble, but it is a really good movie. You should check it out.
I just watched it a couple of weeks ago, after the whole Mark Felt affair. My friend and I caught a couple of clues that we hadn’t seen before, concerning deep throat’s identity.
I admit that we could be reading too deeply into it, but there are three parts that make it unbelievably clear that Deep Throat had to have been FBI. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but oh well.
A couple of years ago, before Mark Felt “came out,” I read an article about the Watergate tapes which made it clear that Richard Nixon was positive that “Deep Throat” was Mark Felt. It’s good to know that this drove Nixon crazy, paranoid criminal that he was.