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This week, the men of GLoP take on two topics they know a lot about: the best of movies made about New York City and their favorite, most re-watchable movies. And yes, they delve a bit into the contre-Trump of the week, too.
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I love Better Off Dead. It’s one of those ridiculous movies my family quotes all the time, like Napoleon Dynamite. “Gee, I’m real sorry your Mom blew up, Ricky.” Or “Now that’s a real shame when folks be throwin’ away a perfectly good white boy like that.”
My personal favorites are “Tentacles. En Tee. Big difference” and “Go that way, very fast. If something gets in your way…turn.”
The Sure Thing is another very re-watchable movie. Too bad John Cusack turned out to be just another Hollywood leftie. (and I understand he hates Better Off Dead).
Heh, now that just reminded me of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.
You three are better than “Car Talk”. Or should I say, “CAR TAlK”?
Hey! Shout out for After Hours! I don’t know anyone else who admits to having watched (or at least to having ENJOYED watching) it.
Complete and total freak show. That was my first Catherine O’Hara movie, too; man, was she great in that. Watching After Hours is like being high but without the actual hashish. I just remember blinking rapidly when it was over and stumbling around and thinking, “What the heck just happened?!” And also, “I will never, EVER go to New York.” :D
I was gonna say, You’ve Got Mail isn’t even the best New York movie starring Meg Ryan and written by Nora Ephron.
When a certain set of movies is on, it’s true, I can’t help watching–even though the movies themselves are only so-so: The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Better Off Dead, Ferris Bueller, Red Dawn, Back to the Future, Better Off Dead, The Sure Thing, Say Anything, Pretty in Pink, Heathers…. If you were in high school in the mid to late 80s, you know the movies I mean.
But in general, the movies I have probably most frequently rewatched, alone and with my kids:
Lord of the Rings–especially The Two Towers
Galaxy Quest
Mystery Men
Murder by Death
13 Going on 30
Harry Potter movies 3 and 5-8
Scenes from Atonement–but not the whole movie (because *paaaaaain*)
Hindi: Jodhaa Akbar, Dil Bole Hadippa, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham
Rebecca
His Girl Friday
Spellbound
Firefly and Serenity
Guns of Navarone
Day of the Jackal
Smallville season 10
Deep Space Nine, the Dominion War episodes
Arthur Christmas
Lawrence of Arabia
Holiday Inn
North and South (BBC)
Sabrina, Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Casablanca
Gaslight
Bleak House (BBC)
Up!
Tangled
And yes: the Keira Knightly P&P :D
O’Hara is really good. The way she played Kevin’s mom absolutely straight in Home Alone.
I saw 13 going on 30 last fall. That should be seen by 13 year old girls all over the country. More than i thought it was going to be, and a morally conservative movie with heart.
We’re No Angels. The good one with Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, Peter Ustinov, and Basil Rathbone. The one with Robert De Niro and Sean Penn ought to be burned.
Bullitt gritty san fran cop movie. Fwiw Best Years of our Lives I will watch to the end every time. Chinatown and Field of Dreams too.
Most things with Sean Penn ought to be burned.
Beat me to it! The opening sequence with Jon Politios’s explanation about “ethics” is worth the price of admission!
Actors who’ve made it big in two languages: Peter Lorre; Greta Garbo; Ingrid Bergman. More recent: Antonio Bandera; Penelope Cruz. Lots more who don’t immediately come to mind.
Rob’s John Davidson anecdote alone was worth the price of this month’s subscription. It’s all profit now.
I love Better off Dead. It’s similar to One Crazy Summer – same director, also stars John Cusack, but the elements worked better in Better Off Dead. Curtis Armstrong was charming in ways Bobcat Goldthwaite was not.
Real Genius is another I’ll break out every few months. Very quotable. And Top Secret. Took me a while after those two movies to accept Val Kilmer as anything but a comic actor.
Yeah, One Crazy Summer just doesn’t hold up.
I think one of the things that really makes Better Off Dead so re-watchable is the pastiche of styles and homages to other films. Just off the top of my head there are obvious elements of Harold and Maude (the repeated staged suicides), the scene in the park with the paper boys in the fog with the weird lights and lens-racking is (I assume) a Bergmann thing. That plus the surreal humor (Barney Rubble asking Lane if it’s okay to ask out Beth…)
I’ve seen the film at least a dozen times and I almost always catch something I hadn’t seen before.
I recall an interview with other cast members and the director, that Cusack was furious when he saw the final cut of the film, and (supposedly) almost physically attacked the director screaming that he’d ruined his [Cusack’s] career.
I want my two dollars
John Cusack may be a leftie, but he was in a whole bunch of great 20th Century films: Sixteen Candles, The Sure Thing, Better Off Dead…, The Journey of Natty Gann, Stand By Me, Eight Men Out, Say Anything (my favorite), The Grifters, Bullets Over Broadway, Gross Pointe Blank, Con Air, Being John Malkovich and High Fidelity. That is a very impressive group of diverse films. Then come the 21st century, he no longer made good films. It’s a baffling thing.
The song is Danny Boy, sung by Frank Patterson. The actor, Albert Finney. “The old man is still an artist with a Thompson.”
Been awhile since I watched it, but I loved that scene.
Just wanted to share how much I enjoy the GLOP podcast. I haven’t been very active on Ricochet the last couple of years, but I still never miss a GLOP or the flagship podcasts. Keep up the good work!
Greatest NY movie of all time? Isn’t it obvious?
1981. John Carpenter. Escape from New York. Absolute classic. mal
malwords
Greatest NY movie of all time? Isn’t it obvious?1981. John Carpenter. Escape from New York. Absolute classic. mal
I don’t think they were including documentaries.
Great rewatchable movie: My Cousin Vinny!
I just released a video on Youtube this week about New York with a retrospective of some New York movies, titled “Wizards of New York,” but now I wish I’d held off a little while so I could revisit some of the movies mentioned here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnAYSO0kQLU
I will say that I also love After Hours. My favorite moment is when Griffin Dunne is hiding out on the fire escape from the mob searching for him. He hears something and looks through a window across the street and sees a married couple arguing, and then the wife IIRC pulls out a pistol and shoots the husband. And Dunne just resignedly mutters, “I’ll probably get blamed for that.”
No. I immediately recognized Gene Hackman in Young Frankenstein.
Why hasn’t anyone mentioned Manhattan or Annie Hall? Practically NY commercials. Rob mentioned Hannah and Her Sisters so not a complete prohibition on Allen films.
Exactly! Annie Hall deservedly won four (4) BIG Oscars – Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. Woody Allen stiffed the Academy and didn’t attend the awards show.
Woody Allen’s next film – Manhattan – was by every measure a better film than Annie Hall – Manhattan is arguably the best-filmed black & white movie of the second half of the 20th Century, it has a better story than Annie Hall, one of the most bittersweet love story endings in Hollywood history, and that amazing Gershwin score. So naturally there were only two Oscar nominations, Best Screenplay and Mariel Hemingway for Best Supporting Actress.
I don’t understand how any discussion of New York movies could exclude Annie Hall and Manhattan. It calls into question the GLoP Culture bona fides.
I’m sure this glaring omission will be admitted in the next GLoP podcast.
For rewatchable, the GLoPsters were spot-on with Animal House and The Dirty Dozen. The Godfather movies indeed have strong gravitational pull, but I am generally able to remind myself that I might not have the three hours to spare. Back to the Future is highly rewatchable, as the best time travel movie ever made, one that keeps revealing details with each rewatch. The 1976 Best Picture winner, Rocky. Someone mentioned Chinatown, which is also a great mid-late 20th Century black & white movie, but – spoiler alert – it lacks a happy ending, so if you rewatch it, make sure you have the suicide hotline in your contacts. THE INCREDIBLES! ought to be required rewatching – it’s the most important movie made thus far in the 21st Century.
@libertydefender Chinatown is in color
but I wanted to ask you or any other Animal House fan… why? The movie comes up a lot here, and from Jonah. Why is that so funny and rewatchable? I finally saw it last year, and though moderately amusing at times it wasn’t very funny, and is forgettable. Even its crassness isn’t funny, just crass. I suppose it got the ball rolling on a lot that came later, but having just recently seen the first Police Academy (also not funny) I doubt that is much in its favor. Did you have to be a young adult in 1978 (though Jonah and Rob were kids), 3 years before I was born? Am I missing something?