My in-laws have a vacation cottage about three hours north of Detroit... in the deep depths of rural middle Michigan. It's a nice place on a lake, with a pontoon boat and everything... but for years and years there was no television at all. Well, there was an actual physical television on the premises, but it sort of sometimes got one station in with a weak signal... So about ten years ago, somebody decided to bring a VCR up there... and my in-laws, later joined by other members of the family, started stocking the place with old VHS movies once the DVD revolution was complete. For years, my mother-in-law also happily gobbled up boxes of VHS movies from garage sales for 50 cents a piece or whatever... and eventually, a pretty sizable movie collection was amassed. Over the last couple years, the cottage has seen encroachment from such things as a DVD player, cable television and semi-reliable cell signals.... but the VHS closet is still a great place to visit on a rainy night... so over the eight days or so... I dug up some oldies after my kids had hit the sack...
Clifford
What the actual fuck? The infamous dark comedy, I guess you'd call it that, starring Martin Short as a ten-year old boy with Charles Grodin and Mary Steenbergen playing the uncle and aunt who take him in. Clifford is basically the spawn of Satan and gleefully ruins his Uncle's life throughout the course of the movie. I wouldn't say Clifford completely works as a movie, a lot of jokes fall flat, but both Short and Grodin are quite good given the skullfuck oddness of the material. Short gets a lot of little chuckles just by acting through facial expressions and glances... for the most part keeping Clifford a character that is slightly unsettling but never really uncomfortable to watch. The movie presents an ending that I think is suggesting that the audience should find him sympathetic... and it doesn't really work... but this one is a bizarre ride... still haven't decided if it was worthy of the 90 minutes invested. I'm leaning towards yes, because I have always loved the work of Charles Grodin.
The Good Son
Yea... the Home Alone kid is a calculating, murderous psycho. I had seen this in the theater when it first released and not really sure if I have seen it since.... Either way, I'll generally say that it has held up pretty well. The story is pretty boilerplate stuff in the general sense... Evil person shows up, good person realizes said evil person is evil but nobody else believes him... evil person dies in the end when everybody realizes he is actually evil. What makes the movie stand out is the performance of the child actors, Macauly Culkin and Elijah Wood. Both are quite good, not saying these are Oscar worthy performances or anything... but this is pretty heady stuff for 12 year olds to pull off, but they largely deliver. The final act gets a bit overly cliche, with the climax coming across as a bit... well.. silly. Still, I was largely glued to this one for the entire two hours... a largely forgotten flick that I'm happy to have revisited.
Overboard
Kurt Russell / Goldie Hawn romcom from the 80s.. This one was played in heavy cable rotation when I was a kid... but didn't remember a whole lot about it. The two stars have undeniable onscreen chemistry and Hawn could still look rather stunning for being over 40 years old at the time...Edward Herrmann, Roddy McDowell and a small role from the guy that played the psychiatrist pitch in with some great supporting roles. The story stretches all possible lines of plausibility... but I never really cared... a stupid grin was stuck on my face almost the whole time even if I wasn't laughing out loud a ton. Lightweight fluff, but charming and humorous enough to be enjoyable... another one that I'm glad I revisited.
Unlawful Entry
Another Kurt Russell movie... This one is a thriller with Ray Liotta as the bad guy. It's really a bad movie, but it's fun watching Liotta channel his inner Gary Busey. His character goes completely unhinged.... and Liotta chews the scenery, shits it out and then chews it up all over again... and it's about the only worthwhile thing the movie has going for it.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1785193 times)
