<p>Okay, my notion is reactions to movies that a) were made 1998 or earlier, no recent flashes in the pan and b) which one has recently seen after not having seen for more than a year.</p>
<p>THE GREAT ESCAPE</p>
<p>Watched it a while back as a home double-feature (consecutive nights) with CHICKEN RUN but haven’t seen it since. Saw it when it first came out (1963?) and a couple of times since then.</p>
<p>Watched it last night. Very good writing (James Clavell and W.R. Burnett) with only one smudge of post-WW II propaganda that I caught. Great ensemble cast, including Richard Attenborough, Steve McQueen, James Garner. Unlike a lot of films from the era, it wears well. Long movie (nearly three hours) but pretty tight pacing and, I took pains to notice last night, featuring a fairly tight economy of structure. Watching Steve McQueen on a motorcycle is still a kick.</p>
<p>BLADE RUNNER</p>
<p>Probably my favorite SF movie. Saw it when it first came out and watched it several times since. There are three different cuts: the original, the “Director’s Cut” and a newly released “Final Cut” which TheMom and I saw in the theater last week. I don’t have a good enough eye/memory to run side-by-side comparisons accurately in my head but I’m going to try to watch our DVD of the Director’s Cut sometime in the next few weeks. For reasons I can’t put my finger on, I think I prefer it to the Final Cut and prefer both to the original theatrical release. The ending scenes seem different in all three and the pacing is smoothest to my taste in the Director’s Cut. The film noir version of Los Angeles in 2019 now seems even more preposterous than when the movie was originally made. And I think I must finally bestir myself to track down the P.K. Dick novel, DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, from which the movie was inspired. A Harrison Ford who now looks impossibly young anchors this suspense/love story. It’s a movie that seems to be better every time I see it, provided there’s enough distance between viewings. Probably one of the quintessential works on what it means to be human.</p>
<p>SLIDING DOORS</p>
<p>Funny, but I don’t really care for Gwenyth Paltrow, but she stars in this cult romance as well as my all-time favorite, “Shakesepare In Love.” A what-if dark-comedy romance playing a what-if game between two paths of a woman who either barely catches a subway or just misses it. Some great lines of dialogue: </p>
<p>“I asked a simple question, there’s no need to become Woody Allen” and “I’m a novelist, I’m <em>never</em> going to finish the book” as a couple of examples. </p>
<p>It’s pretty nifty in how it manages to inter-cut between the story lines of the “two women” who are co-existing at the same time in a very tight space, sometimes passing within meters of each other.</p>
<p>Along the way it wrestles with gritty questions of real-life romance: misinterpretations, correct interpretations that aren’t then correctly followed up on, the old should I call, don’t call, *** am I doing shtick.</p>
<p>The two lines resolve back into one at the end and it’s the one point–assuming you swallow the basic premise–that doesn’t bear much of an examination. Funny, but I note the incomplete success but it doesn’t particularly annoy me and I’m not sure how you get around it. </p>
<p>I haven’t seen this one in years (released 1998, the forward edge of my “retro” definition) and it wears pretty well; I don’t like it <em>better</em> than I used to but it didn’t disappoint. It’s a movie that I think would be excruciatingly uncomfortable to watch if one is having an affair. Chap by the name of John Hannah plays the male lead…from his lovely accent, I wonder if he’s Scots.</p>
<p>===</p>
<p>Of course, at some point I’ll find some movies that haven’t worn well for me.</p>