Alphabetical Movie – The Living Daylights
What a difference twenty years makes.
The Living Daylights was made in 1987 and while it doesn’t have the best of Bond villains, I think it is a solid film in the franchise. I’ve already defended Timothy Dalton as Bond so I won’t bother to do that again.
Watching the film now, what I’m struck by is the depiction of the Mujahideen as heroes and freedom fighters.
I’m not making any value judgements on whether or not that is right. Rather, I’m thinking that to a post 9/11 audience, that depiction might not make any sense. I can think of a few reasons why.
Alphabetical Movie – Live and Let Die
The cliché that a Bond villain can’t just fucking kill James Bond is rarely more evident than in Live & Let Die. Bond is constantly surrounded by bad guys with guns and yet not a one of them seems capable of pulling the trigger.
When Bond gets home at the end of this one, I really feel that he’s got to consider himself lucky that the bad guys he faces are so fucking stupid.
Let’s look at a few examples, shall we?
Alphabetical Movie – Little Shop of Horrors
When I was seventeen, my family took a trip to Europe for summer vacation. We spent a week in France, a week in Germany, a few days in Amsterdam and a week in England. Mostly London.
At the time, I was about to go to college as a theatre major and all I wanted to do in London was go see plays. My parents wanted to go to all sorts of historical buildings and stuff and I resented it at the time. One play a day hardly seemed fair. Who gave a crap about the Tower of London?
The Tower of London, by the way, was pretty cool. I regret it took me several years to realize that.
Alphabetical Movie – The Little Mermaid
I have no idea if anyone else talks about Disney animated films the way we do at my house. We typically refer to The Little Mermaid as the beginning of the second Golden age of Disney.
The first Golden age, for reference, is the era of Fantasia, Pinocchio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and so on. That era arguably ended with The Jungle Book.
There are certainly bad movies during that period but overall, Disney was producing good to great work for much of that time period.
Then you have an era where they produced stuff like The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron and Oliver and Company. Ugh.
Even the decent films from that era like The Rescuers and The Great Mouse Detective don’t compare to the films of that first Golden Age. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is the only exception.
Alphabetical Movie – The Lion King
I’ve often stated that the worst category in the Academy Awards is best song because the people voting for the award don’t know the slightest thing about music. The Lion King is the perfect example of my thesis.
Three different songs from the film were nominated for an Oscar. One was “Circle of Life,” which is one of the best songs written for film ever. It is so good, and the animation that accompanies it is so stunning, that the rest of the film can’t quite live up to the promise of the first five minutes.
Alphabetical Movie – The Lion in Winter
Scenery chewing is a lost art in cinema. Many fine actors work in film these days but so few of them just act the hell out of movies any more. The days of the larger than life performances are relegated to villains in Die Hard movies.
The Lion in Winter is filled with scenery chewing. Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn, of course, spend the entire film trying to out act one another. Both of them fail. When Anthony Hopkins isn’t able to draw attention away from them, you will marvel at the amount acting that is going down.
Alphabetical Movie – The Lineup
I love San Francisco. I mean, I like where I live and I’m not looking to move but if I had to move, My first choice would be San Francisco.
My brother lives there and that means I’ve been there enough to be quite familiar with the city. So familiar, in fact, that when I watch a film like The Lineup, which is set in San Francisco, I find myself distracted by where certain scenes are taking place.
For instance, one of the scenes in the film takes place in front of the Cliff House. I’ve eaten in the Cliff House. The film was made in 1958 so next to the Cliff House you can see the Sutro baths, which burned down in 1966.
I’ve walked around the ruins of the bath houses with my kids. It’s national park land now. All I was thinking when watching that scene was how I was seeing what the Sutro baths looked like when they were actually there. I couldn’t honestly tell you what happened in the scene because I was geeking out about the location.
Alphabetical Movie – Lilo & Stitch
As a fan of the Disney theme parks, I have a bone to pick with Lilo & Stitch. Actually, it’s really just Stitch.
See, Stich has become the most popular Disney character who isn’t named named Mickey. He might actually be more popular than Mickey Mouse but you won’t find anyone at Disney who will admit that out loud.
Because of his popularity, Disney is always on the lookout for more ways to make money of off the little blue guy. They can only sell so many mouse ears, I guess. They have to peddle something else.
The result is an effort to find more places to plug in Stitch. So they plugged him in where he didn’t belong. It isn’t his fault, really. I still blame him, though.
See, in Tomorrowland, they used to have a ride called the “ExtraTERROREestrial Alien Encounter” and it kicked holy ass. I’m not saying it was Space Mountain good because that would be crazy talk.
It was pretty close, though.
Alphabetical Movie – Lightning Strikes Twice
Lightning Strikes Twice is a film that wants to be a Hitchcock movie*. I say that because it is about a man who is wrongly accused and a woman who loves him but also fears he wasn’t so wrongly accused after all. Thing is, it isn’t a Hitchcock movie. It wants really badly to be Rebecca but that movie was directed by Hitchcock and this one wasn’t.
There are plenty of films out there that are described as “Hitchcockian” and I would think any director would like their movie to be thought of in that way. Hell, M Night Shyamalan wanted to be thought of that way so badly, he even did cameos in each of his films. He wanted to be Hitchcock so bad, he started spending all of his time trying to be Hitchcock and none of his time making good movies.
Well, he’s been trying. He just hasn’t been succeeding.
Alphabetical Movie – Lifeboat
For as much of a movie fan as I claim to be, there are far more movies that I haven’t seen than movies that I have. I attribute that to having a life that makes movie watching a luxury in which I can’t always indulge. In a perfect world, I’d be done with the Alphabetical Movie Project and moving on to some other insane plan, like the alphabetical commentary track project.
So while I have no problem admitting that I love Alfred Hitchcock, I must confess that it was only comparatively recently that I began exploring his films. I saw my first Hitchcock film just over ten years ago.
The first Hitchcock film I saw was Lifeboat.
Grail Diary 