Everybody’s got ’em – those movies that, if you stumble onto them while channel surfing, you’ll stop and watch the rest. Not your favorite movies; not the best movies; just your guilty pleasure movies. Here’s some of mine.
Hombre
Not sure this movie could get made today – Paul Newman stars as a blue-eyed “super” Apache. But what draws me in is the extra crispy dialog, probably courtesy of the Elmore Leonard book it’s based on. Two examples:
John Russell (Newman) is a white man raised by the Apaches and when his white father dies he inherits a boarding house. He sells the house and fires Jessie, the lady running the house. Later they end up on the same stagecoach and have this discussion:
Take that 1967 censors!
Later there’s a showdown between John Russell and Cicero Grimes (the main bad guy, played by Richard Boone of Paladin fame). Russell faces off with Grimes and a Mexican bandit. Grimes eyeballs him and says:
I’ve been waiting, patiently, for decades to somehow work that into a conversation!
The Apartment
This is another one unlikely to be made today. The whole premise is the bacchanalia that was (apparently) the white collar office of the 1950s.
This is by far the most upscale of my guilty pleasure films – it won Best Film in 1961. And, although they both showed tremendous range in later roles, the real magic here is Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine doing what they did best – Lemmon as a lovable nebbish and MacLaine at her most pixie-lated.
The movies isn’t holiday themed but it’s climatic scene is set during Christmas week so it’s often shown during the holidays. But I guess that’s just the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.
Breaking Away
I grew up on the South Side of Milwaukee which, back in the day, was very culturally homogenous. For instance, our house was within easy walking distance of three liquor stores, five Catholic parishes and well over a dozen bars (fun fact: for a long time the bar at the end of my street was called Jim’s!). My friends and I certainly embodied the culture from the time we could pass for drinking age until we got out of college. Then we all moved away, never to live in Milwaukee again.
This movie has that same feel with four friends (including our protagonist Dave Stohler) just out of high school in Bloomington Indiana. Home to the university, the townies are called “cutters” because the main industry in Bloomington was stone cutting. Their fathers had all worked in the quarry but those jobs have dried up, Dave’s dad is now a (lousy) used car salesman. One night Dave and his Dad are walking through the Indiana campus and the Dad is lamenting that the buildings were built with stone he quarried but now it’s like the stone had gotten to good for them. Dave cuts to the chase:
That hits home.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
This is the newest of my guilty pleasure movies (2015). Of course it’s been decades since my high school days but this movie feels quintessential to me – sure, there is a dying girl in the movie but it’s still all about the “me”. You know, just like high school.
It has a strong YA book feel to it (nothing wrong with that) but, to their credit, no meet cute, the parents are condoned but just barely, an unreliable narrator, and the three main characters are just quirky enough to be interesting. Expect some tears though.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Another problematic movie – not the plot this time but the cast (Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Mila Kunis, Jason Segel). Yikes! not even Paul Rudd and Kristin Bell can salvage that.
Without question this is a stupid movie. It aspires to be stupid and achieves it. Of course it follows in a long line of stupid movies: Duck Soup, Animal House, Blazing Saddles, Caddyshack, etc.
I guess for every stupid movie there is someone stupid enough to watch it over and over again. And, in this case, that someone is me.
Some others
