“Nothin’ like a good piece of hickory.”
The Scoop: 1985, R, Directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Clint Eastwood and Michael Moriarity
Tagline: Hell has come home.
Summary Capsule: The Man With No Name saves a mining settlement with no hope
I’m a sap. I’ve said it before, numerous times, but making me cry at movies is often like shooting fish in a barrel, at least the first time through. And I love it.
Interestingly, it’s not always the sad moments that make me cry. I wrote this list before I wrote the introduction, and only three are officially truly sad moments. The other seven are bittersweet, some even more sweet than bitter. A few are even downright happy (well, by tearjerker standards). What can I say? Strong emotion makes me cry.
So, my ten moments I cry, no matter how many times I’ve seen the movie (and with #7, that one feels like it’s the triple digits.)
“I’m amazed at how tiny my paycheck is.”
The Scoop: 2009 R, directed by Greg Mottola and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, and Ryan Reynolds
Tagline: It was the worst job they ever imagined… and the best time of their lives.
Summary Capsule: the summer before going off to graduate school, a young man’s parents can no longer provide him with the money they promised so he has to take any job he can: welcome to Adventureland!
“It’s just like the first time I came here, isn’t it? We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet.”
The Scoop: 1944, Unrated, Directed by Billy Wilder and starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson
Tagline: It’s Love And Murder At First Sight!
Summary Capsule: An insurance salesman with a taste for someone else’s wife gets mixed up with a rotten dame that might be the death of him.
“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown”
The Scoop: 1974 R, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway
Tagline: No tagline
Summary Capsule: More twists than that party game with all the colored dots
“Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents, be happy.”
The Scoop: 1971 R, directed by George Lucas and starring Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasance, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie
Tagline: Visit the future where love is the ultimate crime.
Summary Capsule: George Lucas’s horrifying vision of a future where love and sex are forbidden, people are expendable and there’s nothing on TV but reality programming.
“When somebody asks me a question, I tell them the answer.”
The Scoop: 2008 R, directed by Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan, and starring Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor and Saurabh Shukla.
Tagline: What does it take to find a lost love?
Summary Capsule: Young man becomes a contestant on the Indian ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ to gain the attention of his true love and maybe fulfill his ultimate destiny
“To your virtues…and especially your vices, Sara”
Tagline: CLINT EASTWOOD…the deadliest man alive…takes on a whole army with two guns and a fistful of dynamite!
The Scoop: 1970 PG, directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine
Summary: A money-minded gunslinger and a sexy nun team up with Mexico for a showdown against the French, and afterward everyone will eat Freedom Fajitas.
“When somebody asks me a question, I tell them the answer.”
The Scoop: 2008 R, directed by Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan, and starring Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor and Saurabh Shukla.
Tagline: What does it take to find a lost love?
Summary Capsule: Young man becomes a contestant on the Indian ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ to gain the attention of his true love and maybe fulfill his ultimate destiny
When searching for the next movie to unleash into a full-fledged Mutant Viewing (now with 85% more sodium!), I found myself squatting at a curious crossroads. Yes, there were plenty of bad movies to take on and examine under a (hopefully) witty, critty microscope… but I felt like that’s all I’ve been doing, lately. Even us ogres have a soft side. Yet the good movies out there are, as Pooly once said, hard to review in length, because it all ends up with you saying, “Boy howdy, this is great!” They don’t all make for great viewing material.
So, squatting in front of my DVD rack, I considered my choices for a long time, until one day, out of the blue, a little fairy with a nasty cough knocked on my door and thrust a copy of The Princess Bride into my hands.
