Why not head into the dark basement with some of these monstrous tales?
curated back catalog
That time again.
It keeps happening. Does anything change, in the long run?
While going through old posts for the suggested viewing, I found even more movies about police officers acting outside the law to get the bad guys than I expected. Dirty Harry is the archetypal fairy tale of why law enforcement needs to be lawless, but we’re so accustomed to the narrative that “hero” cops bending or breaking the laws that are meant to keep us safe from the misuse of their authority are rarely visible. I recall how badly I hoped that Bad Boys might at least end with the bad guy actually imprisoned instead of executed. Because the unspoken superpower that fictional police have but real police rarely do, is that they are magically always right by being the heroes of the story being told. That doesn’t even begin to discuss the problem that modern law enforcement has with the kind of people who are attracted to the authoritarian, “I Am The Law”, consequence-free state of modern policing.
Additional viewing:
And I don’t have my own words about Do The Right Thing, but that is highly recommended as well.
Leftover Stuffing
I don’t really have enough time for a review this week, so here’s a collection of my favorite Movies of My Yesterdays posts. One might say they’re Movies of My Yesterdays Of Yesterday, but one would be reaching dangerous amounts of meta.
In looking back on these posts, I realized that when I began, I used an introduction that I forgot about by the third entry:
Movies of my Yesterdays is an irregular series where instead of writing about a movie I’ve never seen, I choose a movie important to my past and discuss why that is.
- Galaxy Quest: a love letter to fandom, or a love letter to a love letter to fandom?
- One Magic Christmas: a redemption arc for my first unmagical Christmas.
- The Seven Per Cent Solution: sometimes the author is too in love with the material.
- Meet the Robinsons: This movie, it was made for me!
- The Iron Giant: The movie was head and shoulder cannons better than the book.
Heavy lifting
The mood for this week includes
- The Music Box, the classic Laurel and Hardy short about carrying a piano up a steep hill, again and again and again.
- The Money Pit, a young couple’s dream home project spirals out of control.
- The Long, Long, Trailer, a young couple pulling everything they own behind them, learning a lot in the process.
Yesterday’s Movie Magic
There’s something special about summertime movies. Maybe it’s that the theater was the original air conditioned oasis, but it’s when all the biggest thrills and magical adventures are brought out for our enjoyment, as well as, this year, the reanimated husk of The Lion King. Like all areas of the human experience, the magic of the movies has been documented in the movies, here in realistic and fantasy flavors.
- The Majestic: a Macarthy-era drama about how a movie theater brings a small town together.
- Matinee: the thrillfest of the year sets off a Rube Goldbergian chain of events.
- Last Action Hero: Characters from a campy action movie come to the real world and find it’s a lot messier out here.
- The Purple Rose of Cairo: It’s so easy to get lost in a movie, but sometimes the movie comes to you.
Yesterday’s TV Movies
Real life gets in the way of blogging again, and I just want to relax with some TV, or at least movies about making TV (and radio).
- A Hard Day’s Night: The Beatles have a lot of fun avoiding rehearsals for their big TV appearance.
- Death to Smoochy: Politics and intrigue around who gets to entertain kids on TV.
- Radioland Murders: A madcap murder mystery going on away from the microphone while the station is still on the air.
- Quiz Show: scandal and intrigue around TV trivia games
- Soapdish: soap opera drama behind the scenes in the soap opera production.
- Broadcast News: It’s about ethics in journalism and romance! Still my favorite depiction of unrequited love for a best friend.
Yesterday’s Movies goes to the… wait a minute…
I find myself without the time to review a movie because of some movie-making business coming up suddenly, so here is a selection of reviews about movies about movie-making:
- The Cameraman, a Buster Keaton slapstick spectacle
- After The Fox, Peter Sellers scams a small European town by making a movie with them.
- Bowfinger, Steve Martin scams Eddie Murphy into making his movie with him.
- Lost in La Mancha, a movie about failing to make a movie.
- This Film Is Not Yet Rated, a movie about the movie industry’s failure to rate itself fairly.
