It woulda helped if I knew anything about the guy going in, huh? Jack Nicholson's face featured one of the most distracting prosthetics I have ever seen- they thickened Nicholson's nose with a piece of latex, and I stared at it all the way through the movie. Kevin Spacey's nose job in another biopic, Beyond The Sea, was similarly distracting.
The Wang features the biggest movie screen in New England. The crowd was completely bonkers. And this was four years before the Special Editions sparked renewed fervor for Episodes Four, Five, and Six.
I don't think I had seen any of Chaplin's films before seeing this biopic.
I have seen many many movies over 25+ years of moviegoing, and television viewing. Of the 500+ movies in this diary, for a vast majority I have at least partial memories of the movie . A movie doesn't have to be good to be memorable: a bad movie can either scar your soul for life, or can be so forgettable as to evaporate before you finish digesting your Milk Duds. Hexed is one of those movies.
A perfect movie for Bill Murray, even the presence of Andie MacDowell cannot spoil this movie.
Ned: Phil? Phil Connors? Phil Connors, I thought that was you!
Phil: Hi, thanks for watching. [Starts to walk away]
Ned: Hey now, don't you tell me you don't remember me, 'cause I sure as heck-fire remember you.
Phil: Not a chance.
Ned: Ned... Ryerson. "Needlenose Ned"? "Ned the Head"? C'mon, buddy. Case Western High. I did the whistling belly-button trick at the high school talent show? Bing. Ned Ryerson, got the shingles real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate? Bing, again. Ned Ryerson, I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple of times until you told me not to anymore? Well?
Phil: Ned Ryerson?
Ned: BING!
Phil: [resigned] Bing.
A funnier-than-it-deserves "Lethal Weapon" parody, starring Emilio Estevez as the burnt out suicidal cop, and Samuel L. Jackson as the about-to-retire straight arrow detective. Also starring Kathy Ireland, William Shatner, Tim Curry, and Jon Lovitz, with cameos by Academy Award winners Whoopi Goldberg, F. Murray Abraham... and Denis Leary, J.T. Walsh, James Doohan, Corey Feldman, Phil Hartman, Erik Estrada, Larry Wilcox, Paul Gleason, Bruce Willis, Charlie Sheen, and Denise Richards (Richards and Sheen would marry 9 years later, and divorce 13 years later.)
At the convenience store counter...
Colt: Nice weather? You think we're having... nice weather? I guess you didn't lose the only one that meant anything in your life. I guess you don't feel burned out by the human misery and despair perpetrated by the criminal vermin that infest every pore of this decaying city, forcing you to guzzle cheap wine and cheaper whiskey to dull the pain that shatters your heart, rips at your soul, and keeps your days forever gray... What flavor Icee you got today?
Clerk: Kiwi Cherry.
Colt: Yuck.
Walking home afterwards, I had a lively argument with my date about this movie.
As evidenced by Kevin Kline in this movie, the best thing about being president is the privilege of throwing the first pitch at an Orioles game...
Featuring Bridget Fonda as an unlikely ass-kicking assassin, and Dermot Mulroney as an unlikely clueless boyfriend. The best thing about this remake is the great Nina Simone soundtrack. This was first and only time I've actually gone out and bought a movie soundtrack immediately after seeing a movie.
Instead of making another Top Gun parody, the Hot Shots! gang moved on and made a Rambo parody instead.
Rabinowitz: What are you reading?
Topper: Great Expectations.
Rabinowitz: Is it any good?
Topper: It's not what I'd hoped for.
This was an awful movie, and my hatred for director Renny Harlin begins here. He seems to relish in creating endearing characters, then killing them for no reason. The opening sequence, where Sly fails to save a hiker from falling to her death, turned me off immediately. The third in John Lithgow's Evil Antagonist Trilogy, preceded by Ricochet and Raising Cain.
The Many Deaths of Samuel L. Jackson • Samuel L. Jackson dies almost as often as Steve Buscemi: Here's a pretty comprehensive listing of all the deaths of Sam Jackson:Death By Gunshot
- GoodFellas (Joe Pesci)
- Jungle Fever (Ossie Davis)
- True Romance (Gary Oldman)
- Hard Eight (Philip Baker Hall)
- Jackie Brown (Michael Keaton)
- One Eight Seven (Russian Roulette)
- Basic (unknown)
- Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (the DiVAS)
- Jurassic Park (velociraptor)
- Deep Blue Sea (super-smart great white shark)
- Star Wars Episode III (light saber/evil lightning)
We saw it in a sold-out theater on opening weekend. I nearly got my arms ripped off by the women sitting on either side of me: when the girl Lex (Arianna Richards) is hanging from the suspended ceiling in the lab, and a raptor leaps up and snaps at her, I thought they dislocated my shoulders!
Since this was a free movie, I don't have a stub, and since it was over a decade ago, I don't recall which summer it was. But I did see Casablanca on the Esplenade one summer. It was probably the summer of 1993, but it might have been 1994. I was supposed to meet up with my friend Craig and his girlfriend, but they arrived after the movie started, and in that pre-cellphone era, there was no way to find each other in the dark.
After this feature, I did not attend again until 2005. There are several reasons for this. First of all, I moved from Beacon Hill in 1993 out to Somerville, so it would no longer be convenient to visit the Esplenade. Secondly, WBZ cannot advertise these free flicks, so it's very hard to learn their upcoming schedule. And thirdly, the movies they do show tend to be family-friendly fare, which is not always my interest.
Almost ripped my own arms off at this atrocity. I'm sure the producers hoped that Danny (Austin O'Brien) would be as beloved as Macaulay Culkin, but he was just annoying. Plus, there's this scene where he eats popcorn with scabby hands: not something I need to see on a giant movie screen.
Jonah: If you get a new wife, I guess you'll get to have sex with her, huh?
Sam: I certainly hope so.
Jonah: Will she scratch up your back?
Sam: [surprised] What?
Jonah: In the movies, women are always scratching up the mens' backs and screaming and stuff when they're having sex.
Sam: How do you know all this?
Jonah: Jed's got cable.
Sam: Oh.
Nat's Top 10 All-Time Box OfficeHere's the top 10 list of the movies I have seen the most often in a movie theater. I don't have any hard data on movies seen prior to 1987. For example, I have a memory of saying I had seen Star Wars "six times", but I don't remember knowing that, I just remember saying it. Plus, I don't know if I was referring to Episode 4 or the original trilogy. In addition, sketchy documentation of films I've seen at the Brattle makes this list a little inaccurate.
- The Star Wars Films, Episodes 1-6 Twenty-one Times
I have seen Episode 1 three times, Episode 2 twice, and Episode 3 twice. I have seen Episodes 4-6 on two occasions each that I can document. I saw Episodes 4-6 once each in 1977, 1980, and 1983. I think it's a safe guess that I saw Episodes 4-6 five additional times, either in their original releases or in re-releases, between 1977 and their release on VHS in the 1980s. - The Indiana Jones Trilogy Eight Times
I have seen each of the films at least once each in 1981, 1984, and 1989. I saw the trilogy again in 1994. I also saw Raiders Of The Lost Ark in 2003 and 2004. I think I must have seen these films in the theater more than once in the 1980s, but I have no proof or memory of it. - Pulp Fiction Six Times
- 13 Oct 1994 Free Sneak Preview Screening
- 20 Nov 1994
- 13 Jan 1995 Cabot St Theater, Beverly
- 31 Jan 1995
- 18 Feb 1995 Fresh Pond, Cambridge
- 1 Mar 1995 Brattle Theater
- The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy Six Times
I have seen each film in the trilogy twice in the theater. - Casablanca Six Times I have seen Casablanca on St. Valentine's Day with Emily in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006. I also saw it at the Hatch Shell in either 1992 or 1993. I have seen it at least once more beyond that.
- Citizen Kane Four Times I have seen Citizen Kane an estimated four times in the theater, most recently on July 10, 2004.
- Die Hard With A Vengance Three Times
In the summer of 1995, the year I saw 73 movies, three of those 73 were Die Hard with a Vengance. - Batman Returns Three times in 1992.
- Terminator 2: Judgement Day Three times in 1991.
- Die Hard Three times in 1988.
Ken Branagh and Emma Thompson (not pictured) at their best.
Perfectly executed thriller from Sidney Pollack. Pollack's career is alarmingly uneven- he made great movies like Out Of Africa, Tootsie, and Three Days Of The Condor, yet he also cranked out Havana, the Sabrina remake, and Random Hearts. The Firm is not great, but it is an expertly crafted thriller: Tom Cruise's ambition gets him in too deep at a Mob-owned law firm, run by a Who's Who of great character actors (Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, Wilfred Brimley). Can his patented Tom Cruise Run save his bar license...and his life?
Two fantastic thrillers in four days: Wolfgang Petersen's breakout (English-language) film.
I brought this upon myself. No one tied me up and dragged me to the theater!
"I don't think you understand the relationship a man has with his facial hair." I just counted, and I have seen six Rosie O'Donnell films in the theater: Tarzan (voice only; 1999), Beautiful Girls (1996), Exit to Eden (1994), Another Stakeout, Sleepless in Seattle, and A League of Their Own (1992).
Stuart Mackenzie: Well, it's a well known fact, Sunny Jim, that there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world, known as The Penteveret, who run everything in the world, including the newspapers, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows.
Tony: So who's in this Penteveret?
Stuart: The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, and Colonel Sanders before he went tits up. Oh, I hate the Colonel with his wee beady eyes! And that smug look on his face, "Oh, you're gonna buy my chicken!"
Charlie Mackenzie: Dad, how can you hate "The Colonel"?
Stuart: Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smartass!
I have no memory of this, but unless someone snuck into my house and pasted this stub in while I slept, well...
I found it very funny that Diane Keaton's character would yelp or scream every time she was scared or startled-- and the volume and duration of the scream varied depending on the seriousness of the scare. The handheld camera made me queasy. I think I saw this in the single-screen theater that used to be on Boylston Street in Boston, across from the Prudential building?
Who else but screenwriter Quentin Tarantino would make his protagonist a comic book shop clerk -slash- kung fu movie geek who has wild sex with a beautiful call girl? Talk about wish fulfillment. Then again, QT did romance Mira Sorvino for a couple years. Not only is Sorvino super-hot, but she won an Oscar for playing a call girl in Mighty Aphrodite.
It's amazing this is the same Daniel-Day Lewis from Gangs Of New York...
This is on my Top Ten list, All-Time Favorite Movies. I saw it many times on VHS tape (with the voice-over and different ending, aka the original theatrical release) before I first saw it like this. I think I saw the Director's Cut on laserdisc before I saw it in the theater, but I'm not 100% sure of that.
D&C combines several of my least-favorite genres: Marijuana Comedy, Hazing Movies, and Seventies Nostalgia.
Here's a breakdown-by-studio of the animated movies I have seen in the theater. Movies excluded from this list:
- Movies with plenty of CGI combined with live action (Roger Rabbit, Gollum, Yoda, Davy Jones);
- Movies with Muppets (Fozzie, Scooter, Lew Zealand); and
- Movies with marionettes (Team America: World Police)
| Disney | Pixar | Et Al |
|---|---|---|
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Is this a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie? I don't think the studio ever figured it out...
Pleasant Family Fun.
Touching and poignant. I saw this with the family on Thanksgiving weekend.
Del Preston: Alright, ladies and gentlemen. It takes two people to run a concert: one back stage, and one out front. One man alone cannot do this. Wayne, you will run the backstage team. Milton, you are my liaison between Wayne's backstage team and Garth's front-stage team which includes myself in the booth. To the left and right of the stage are machine-gun pillboxes, M-60 Browning. Now these babies tend to heat up so shoot in 3 second bursts. In the event of capture I will personally distribute these cyanide capsules to be placed under the tongue like so [places a capsule in his mouth]. Any questions?
Garth: Yes, I have a question. When did you turn into a nutbar?
All Julia Roberts does for 2 hours is look scared, and she whispers her way through the whole thing. Watch for Cynthia Nixon as the best friend.