Summer 2004

NetFlix Mania

Donnie Darko
Grandpa: Twisting, weird world where airplane parts get lost in roaming dimensions. Touching at times, crushing at others. I should own it. Maybe, after a few more viewings, I'll be closer to the movie.

Bigfoot: This movie was way too weird for me to own. Its strange characters and stranger world was good for a watch, but I have no interest in thinking about it or trying to understand it.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Vol 1; Disc 2
Grandpa: What part of cable do I miss most? Adult Swim! ATHF is great. I'ma gettin' this on DVD for my very own soon. I could watch that show every day.

Bigfoot: We need more Adult Swim shows on DVD! I need Home Movies and Sea Lab to add to the Aqua Teens and that'll fix me up real good.

Best of The Muppet Show: Diana Ross / Brooke Shields / Rudolph Nureyev
Grandpa: The Muppet Show is always fun to watch. If the special features were better, I'd buy the discs in a heartbeat.

It Happened One Night
Grandpa: I watched this movie one day years ago when I was home sick. Clark Gable is excellent. While romantic comedies may share the same element of predictability, this movie's simplicity makes it better 99.9% of all others.

Bigfoot: Claudette Colbert is brilliant as an heiress trying to escape from her father despite having lost all her money early on in the trip. This is the classic tale of a journalist trying to get the headline. Definitely a good watch.

The Office: Series 1
Grandpa: Wickedly funny. Reminds me of some of the best aspects of News Radio. But the characters in The Office are so much more pathetic, making it just a bit funnier.

Bigfoot: Most characters in The Office are so real that it's almost painful to watch. But once I got through the pain and realized that I didn't have to work with these people, it got funny. Real funny.

Bully
Grandpa: Jesus. A bunch of loser kids kill their asshole friend and get caught. Pathetic. The characters are sweating throughout the entire movie, even in the air conditioning. Warning: Not a date movie.

Bigfoot: It's crazy to think that this movie is based on real people.

The Cheerleaders Collection: Revenge of the Cheerleaders
Grandpa: David Hasslehoff dancing and playing basketball. Cheerleaders getting nude and having boatloads of sex. One confusing chase scene at the end of the film. Needs to be remade - NOW!

Bigfoot: Grandpa told me about the movie a while ago. It's much weirder than he made it sound. The cheerleaders make some super special tomato sauce loaded with booze, pot, 'ludes, whatever. They get the whole school loaded, including some administrators. It's hilarious.

His Girl Friday
Grandpa: Remade in the 80's with Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner. Big problem, Burt Reynolds is awesome and all, but he's not Cary Grant. Not by a long shot. This movie is delightful.

Bigfoot: Cary Grant's character wants to get his ex-wife back. His ex-wife, played by Rosalind Russell, wants to become a happy housewife and leave her reporter days behind her…until she gets snagged to help out just this once. This comedy is superb.

Fritz the Cat
Grandpa: I love this movie. If you have not seen it, your life is void of all context.

Bigfoot: I wish I had watched this high.

Veronica Guerin
Grandpa: I liked it. The story of how hopeless the "War on Drugs" is, and multiplied by a legal system that ties the hands of journalists. An honest to goodness tragic story, which is rare in the docu-drama film world.

Bigfoot: Sometimes I just want to watch a crime story. This fit the bill nicely.

The Women
Bigfoot: Best movie ever! What could be wrong with a movie, made in the 1930s, where socialites gossip and fight over men, give up on men altogether, and then find a happy medium. Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, and Joan Crawford are among the stars in the all-female cast. I immediately wanted to own this movie and watch it again and again.

Grandpa: Damn right! Best movie we've seen on Netflix.

Metropolis
Grandpa: Black and white German movie about the struggle between labor and management. Toss in the cruel fate of misused technology, and you have one of the most odd-ball movies ever. I liked it very much, but I don't exactly know how to explain why. Filmed beautifully with great soundtrack. At times, it is on the border of being all dumb and shitty like Koyaniskansi (sp - like it matters, what a piece of arrogant shit that was!) but manages to be endearing.

Bigfoot: This had some promise as a labor vs. management story, but it tried to put too many pieces together and failed.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: I Accuse My Parents
Grandpa: I love Joel and the robots.

Bigfoot: I love accusing my parents.

Real Women Have Curves
Grandpa: Ooooh, a message movie. Seriously, it's pretty good. I expected it to be more heavy handed, but it dealt with the cultural/age divide very well.

Bigfoot: After I watched this, I took off my clothes and danced around work in my underpants.

Kentucky Fried Movie
Grandpa: It's mostly funny, but drags a bit before the end. You can see jokes that will be repeated for the next twenty years, like it's some kind of reverse time capsule.

Miller's Crossing
Grandpa: "White is black, up is down." I liked Goodfellas and The Godfather, but this is my favorite mob movie ever, mostly because the killing and the violence is secondary. Like Road to Perdition, it's a movie about one guy going through hell for love.

Bigfoot: All the mob you can eat, topped with a squeeze of intelligence and a side order of cinematography.

American Splendor
Grandpa: Not as depressing as "Crumb", but just as engaging.

Bigfoot: Comics, acting, and real life blended together very well.

Creature Comforts
Grandpa: What a waste! That dumb disc had FIVE short films. They were OK, but c'mon! Five! They could have added some film of children watching the shorts, or a room full of prisoners. Total rip off.

Bigfoot: No way, Grandpa! I'd totally own this. The first short, Creature Comforts, was worth the rental alone. Animals at the zoo are being interviewed about their living conditions. It's hysterical.

Mr. Show: Season 3: Disc 1 & 2
Grandpa: Like the Muppet Show discs, I'd buy them NOW if the bonus features were better. Mr. Show is the funniest non-cartoon show on the Tee-Vee in the past ten years.

The Young Ones: Every Stoopid Episode: Disc 1
Grandpa: Jesus. I am amazed that some crappy American network never tried to re-make this, American-Style. It would have been made in 1987, and Scott Baio and a Corey would have been involved somehow. It would have sucked, but tons of kids would buy the tee-shirts from the show in the Village every weekend.

Bigfoot: I used to watch this all the time when I was in high school and loved punk and anarchy. It's still pretty damn funny.

Swimming Pool
Grandpa: All the reviews for the movie made me think it would be cool, but it was not. The whole thing left me cold. Good acting, but stupid movie.

Bigfoot: There is much less dark mystery and much more stodgy-to-slutty personality clash than the movie's hype lets on. It was altogether watchable, but nothing I'd expected. And the ending was seriously weird.

The Manchurian Candidate
Grandpa: One hell of a good movie. If I have a kid, I'll make sure he/she has watched this and Kelly's Heroes before they enter High School. It's that important.

Bigfoot: Angela Lansbury's best. Sinatra's best. Just one damn good movie with one damn good cast.

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