Thursday at the movies

Boy, it's been years since I saw it last, but got "The Secret of Roan Inish" through Netflix and it was great. As my girlfriend said, a great movie without sex or violence. It may be John Sayles' best movie. You'll wish you were Irish. It's just wonderful.

I also saw "House of Games" with Lindsay Crouse and Joe Mantegna. It started out feeling a little stiff, in part because Crouse plays an uptight psychiatrist, in part because playwright David Mamet directs it and it starts out feeling like a play. It gets better, though. Mantegna plays a con artist. Let's just say that the movie is an education in itself of the various cons that a con man would do. There's a quick sighting of William H. Macy, on screen for a minute or so, as a Marine who's checking at a Western Union desk for some money.

I also saw "Tropic Thunder", which was a real hoot. I have to say that Tom Cruise, whom I did not recognize under the makeup, was a scene-stealer.

Let me see. Then there was "The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill But Came Down A Mountain". For a couple of days I kept asking Girlfriend if I looked like Hugh Grant. You know, cute, with a bemused expression. Colm Meaney was also in it. Thing about Roan Inish and wanting to be Irish? After this one you'll want to be Welsh.

And see what I'm saying about me and Hugh Grant? A striking resemblance. I got a hat something like that too.

I finally saw "The Conversation", the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola thriller starring Gene Hackman. An added treat is that it was filmed in San Francisco and '74 was the year I moved out here, so it was like getting into a time machine and seeing everything like it was the first day I got here. Harrison Ford is really young and he's a (maybe) bad guy. There is a young Teri Garr and a young Cindy Williams and the great John Cazale.

Then there was the Robert Redford vehicle, "Havana", which I actually thought was better than its reviews. Alan Arkin was in it, and if I'm not mistaken a young actor who eventually became Ugly Betty's dad was in it too.

Have I told you about "The Iron Giant"? It's a cartoon based on a children's book by Ted Hughes (the British poet who'd been married to Sylvia Plath) that is at once delightful and also has all the Cold War paranoia of the sixties. It's actually a pretty heartwarming film.

Then there was "There Will Be Blood" about the buttholes who were at the beginning of the California oil business. That whole "I drink your milkshake" thing is a description of the same slant-drilling that precipitated Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait a few wars back. But Daniel Day-Lewis gets away with it.

I don't know what it is/was about James Spader. I saw "Bad Influence" wherein Rob Lowe is intruding on Spader's life and trying to make him do rotten and illegal things. I mean, why does someone as good-looking as Rob Lowe become such a scumbag, and why does he want Spader to do bad things? I could never figure out the motivation. It was sort of like the one where Spader was a cop who was followed around by Keanu Reeves as a serial killer. I could never figure out these bad guys' motivations.  

Anyway, that's all, folks.

Comments

[Sis]

I think my comment on this got kicked out, so let me try again---

Think of Bad Influence as a Faustian morality tale, with SPader as Faust and Rob Lowe as the Devil. The scene where the premise is set up is kind of weak, so it's easy to miss the whole concept. Definitely a better movie than The Watcher. Also enjoyed seeing Christian Clemenson in that one.

We also LOVED Roan Inish!