Mean Streets

I’ve always liked that logo animation — so simple and so distinctive.

Oh, is that Harvey Keitel? So young…

OK, this movie is already annoying me — they’re showing what I guess is supposed to be Super 8 footage in the titles, and they’ve sped it up like we’re watching silent movies from the 1910s. To signal to the audience that we’re watching something oldie? It’s annoying!

I may never have seen this movie before.

Ooh, I see! These streets are mean!

Aha! This must be J. J. Abrams’ favourite scene ever as a child and he shaped his entire career around it.

I totally see what Scorsese is going for, but this is just kinda annoying. Scorsese is so interested in these guys but they’re so boring.

I’m starting to suspect that this movie is just going to be the camera following these low-rent petty criminals around? I guess it’s been a life-long obsession of Scorsese, these guys. He just finds these kinds of people so fascinating for some reason or other. Was he, like, twelve and these guys were on the block and he just loved them so much?

Well, this had more of a plot than I initially assumed it was going to have.

But I just had absolute zero interest in these characters. It’s kinda embarassing how Scorsese tries to give the Keitel character this… depth… by having him having this internal dialogue about religion and stuff.

I found the movie to be intensely boring for the most part.

But there’s some interesting things here, like the way some of the scenes are shot, and some of the editing is fun. But…

Mean Streets. Martin Scorsese. 1973. ⚂

Darling, How Could You!

Heh heh, this is brilliant. I’ve laughed out loud several times already.

Anyway, I think this is part of the Hazel Flagg collection? I was only able to find this on a Spanish DVD — which isn’t that unusual; they’re still going strong on physical media there. But it means a totally unrestored transfer, of course.

Wow, that’s an actual li’l baby. They usually substitute somebody a bit older…

This is delightfully stupid. I can’t stop smiling.

Heh heh. Joan Fontaine (34) plays the mother to Mona Freeman (25), and it kinda works — Freeman is laying, like, 15 I guess? And Fontaine is playing, like, 45, and they’re just putting their all in.

I haven’t laughed this much in yonks. When it was over I was like “what!? that was just fifteen minutes, surely!?”

Movies like this is why I love Old Hollywood — they had such a machine going, pumping out movie after movie on a high professional level. And sometimes you’d get some kind of masterpiece popping out of the machine, but more often you’d get something like this: Not a masterpiece, but a movie where things just click: Charming actors chewing the scenery in an amusing way, with a silly plot with low stakes and lots of good gags, and direction and cinematography that’s totally unremarkable, but very enjoyable. They just had a process of putting all these professionals together and getting something good out more often than any other era or place.

Darling, How Could You!. Mitchell Leisen. 1951. ⚅

Sorcerer

Oh, based on the name, I assumed that this was going to be a fantasy movie… So far, it seems like it’s a thriller/terrorist/agent movie?

It’s fun — I still have absolutely no idea what this movie is about. For all I know it’s going to turn into a fantasy movie any minute now.

The reason I’m watching this is that I enjoyed To Live and Die in L A, so I bought a whole bunch of movies by William Friedkin. So far they’ve all been pretty good, I think?

I’m guessing this company is totally evil!

The 70s were so sweaty… but there’s a reason here — they’re in Central America.

Oh, I guess I see where this is going now… only after 45 minutes. This is like the total opposite of a Netflix movie — unclear what it’s about, scenes that require you to pay attention, filmed on location, no talking heads that as-you-know-Bob the audience, and not that many famous actors.

OK, I didn’t know what this was about anyway. And now I understand why they kept it secret for this long, because it’s just ridiculous. This isn’t a late-70s movie — it’s a premature 80s movie.

It’s just so audacious in its sheer preposterous stupidity. OK, here’s the plot: An oil company needs some dynamite to blow out a burning oil well. So far so normal. Instead of ordering some dynamite from Amazon, I mean, Costco, they go to an old stash of degraded dynamite — that’s separated into nitroglycerine and grain (but is still the only dynamite that exists in the Americas). The nitro is very volatile, so they can’t fly it in. So they get our four … I hesitate to call them characters … to drive the boxes of nitro three hundred kilometres through the jungle.

The exciting part is whether they’re gonna blow up!

Does that sound sufficiently stupid for you? It should!

I do admire that they don’t even try to make this make sense in-movie at all. It’s just “OK, we need to get this nitro over there”.

So many scenes of this… which is fun and all, and I guess the sheer stupidity makes it more fun?

You can just enjoy the stunts.

Look at these lonely roads, untravelled by humans before… er… I mean… What I want to say that these roads are quite well-maintained for having no traffic except nitroglycerine transports.

I quite liked this movie until we got to the central section, which I just found to be a snoozefest. I know! I usually like that sort of stuff! I don’t know quite why — perhaps it’s because we don’t really care about any of the characters? Or because the surrounding plot is just too stupid? I mean, even the “drive nitroglycerine around” bit is just too stupid in itself — if it was that sensitive, the first pothole would make it go boom.

Oh, where was I… yes, I just couldn’t get into that part. But I think if I’d seen this when I was, like, twelve? I’d be totally on board.

Sorcerer. William Friedkin. 1977. ⚂