What with The Pip being on two travel baseball teams and my work responsibilities, we haven’t been doing Movie Nights as regularly as normal. Which leads to me thinking “Oh, I don’t need to do a recap post, we haven’t watched anything new…” And thus, a three-month backlog has piled up…
Jaws:
This may be the only proper Family Movie Night in the lot, because SteelyKid specifically asked for it and thus watched it with us. An absolute banger, start to finish.
Mission Impossible 2:
The John Woo one, which is very John Woo.
They Cloned Tyrone:
A sci-fi comedy from Netflix. Has a bit of Serious Message content, but handles it very lightly, so it’s a fun watch. Lots of pimp jokes that I’m not 100% sure the Pip got, but he listens to a lot of rap, so maybe…
Kill Bill (both volumes):
The Pip was appropriately taken aback by the ending of the second one, which seems to promise an epic duel but ends in a long weird conversation about Superman. I’m still not sure it really sticks the landing, but a lot of the stuff along the way is brilliant.
The Natural:
We rented this on VHS back when it first hit home video, and I remembered it as sort of slow and confusing. Don’t know what I was thinking; it moves along pretty well. The ending is shameless, but works so damn well…
Casino Royale:
One of the streamers was doing a James Bond thing and The Pip wanted the contemporary one over a Connery flick.
Pulp Fiction:
First sentence of Tarantino’s obituary, right here. Still a banger.
The Jewel of the Nile:
The sequel to Romancing the Stone. Holds up okay, not the greatest.
Asteroid City:
We did some Tarantino movies, so it was natural to move on to another director known for his highly stylized shots and dialogue…
(This is very strange, but in a fun way. As you would expect.)
Goodfellas:
And now a whole bunch of jokes from old Animaniacs episodes make more sense to The Pip…
(Prompted by a lot of Scorsese discussion on the movie podcast I listen to. Damn, this is a good movie.)
Skyfall:
He asked for another Bond, so we did the other good one with Daniel Craig.
Heat:
I loved rewatching this, but it was a little too slow and atmospheric for The Pip, who dozed off a couple of times. He did allow that the gun battle scene was pretty awesome.
Mission: Impossible III:
The one with Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the villain. I hadn’t see this before; it was good fun.
Loki, season 2:
Technically not finished yet, but we’ll probably watch the finale tonight or Tuesday night.
Blade Runner/ Blade Runner 2049:
The Pip specifically asked to watch the sequel, but I insisted on the original first, because I don’t think the second makes any sense without it. I was worried that these would also be too moody and atmospheric to play well for him, but he was into both of them.
Happy Gilmore:
The Pip’s hitting coach recommended a drill involving taking a couple of steps then swinging, and called it “the Happy Gilmore drill.” So we had to watch the movie to explain the joke…
I was nervous about this one, because comedy doesn’t always age well, but it held up reasonably well. I didn’t try to explain who Bob Barker was, though.
The Killer:
The new David Fincher, which was all over my podcast listening. Very crisp, super violent, and dryly hilarious.
Miller’s Crossing:
One of my all-time favorites, endlessly rewatchable for me. I think it must’ve had some anniversary recently, as a bunch of stuff about it popped up in my Twitter feed, so I pushed hard for this. So damn good.
Inglourious Basterds:
This was near the top of the Amazon recommendations, and The Pip said “Sure.” I deliberately didn’t tell him about the ending so he could have the same “WTF?!?” moment I did when I saw it in the theater.
Stand By Me:
As a child of the 80’s, I was legally obligated to show this to The Pip some time before his 13th birthday. I agree with the review I saw at the time that it might have one more crying scene than absolutely necessary, but it’s pretty timeless in a lot of respects.
The one “How times have changed…” thing was that The Pip was mildly scandalized by the early scene in which the boys are smoking cigarettes in the treehouse. Which was a really great reminder of just how much the status of tobacco has changed in my lifetime.
And that is one great big pile of movies… If you want to see if I manage to resume recapping these on a more regular schedule, here’s a button:
And if you want to quote favorite moments from any of these, the comments will be open: