Category Archives: Mighty List

Mighty List, Screen time

The movie where everybody calls Mr. Potter “Grandpa”

I forgot to cancel my Amazon Prime free trial, so now I have Amazon Prime for the year. Turns out they have movies! That I can watch! For free! On my computer! So I went searched for all of the remaining movies on my Best Picture list and found that eight of them are free for Amazon Prime members.

This afternoon while the kids were down for Quiet Time, I fired up “You Can’t Take it With You,” the 1938 Best Picture winner. And I watched an hour of it, then turned it off. And later the kids wanted to watch some TV so I set them up downstairs and watched some more of it. And then when the kids were done with their shows they came up and watched the end of it with me, and Poppy wanted to know why there were so many grandpas in the basement. (Which would entirely make sense if you’d seen the movie, which is heavily peppered with white-haired men.)

The movie was directed by Frank Capra and starred Jimmy Stewart (my favorite) and Lionel Barrymore. Here’s the Amazon synopsis:

Lionel Barrymore is the eccentric patriarch of a clan of frustrated artists who decided 30 years earlier to retire from the rat race and use his fortune to encourage friends and family to pursue vocations that really interest them. At the center of his family is his granddaughter, Jean Arthur, who is carrying on a romance with her boss’ son, James Stewart.

It was like a not-as-good version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” featuring a whole houseful of Uncle Billies.

Mighty List, Screen time

That Toto song is not in “Out of Africa” at all

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I rented “Out of Africa” about a week before I actually watched it.

“Do you know how long that is?” Rockford asked. I am not a fan of lengthy cinema. “It’s like 3 hours long.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Yes,” he said. “A long time ago. It’s … kind of boring.”

I think he must’ve watched it back when he considered “Red Heat” high cinema. Rockford almost always has an opinion about movies, but it’s rarely just that it was “boring.” That one tends to have its sole provenance in my critique wheel box.

“Out of Africa” is a languid movie, by which I don’t necessarily mean boring, really, just that it’s an excellent film for watching while you convalesce on your couch while an early-spring breeze gently stirs your curtains.

A few things thoughts I had while watching “Out of Africa”:

  • Africa looks so beautiful in this movie. I never really pictured it as lush before, but it definitely looks lush here.
  • Robert Redford. Also does not look too shabby here.
  • My sister-in-law looks like Meryl Streep.
  • Meryl’s accent was somewhat distracting.

    I probably wouldn’t watch it again, but I didn’t hate watching “Out of Africa.” (Is that a ringing endorsement or what?)

    • Mighty List, Screen time

    I’ve come to realize that everyone in “Rebecca” annoys me

    Before we get into this, please be aware that it might get spoilerish in here.

    Everyone at the seaside manor Manderly lives under the shadow of the dead Rebecca de Winter, which turns mousey little second Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine) into even more of a mouse. Such a sad little creature, in fact, that she doesn’t even get to have a first name. Nor does she get to play tennis, because the “dashing” Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) tosses her racquet into the bushes and makes her go for a drive when they meet in Monte Carlo a few days before the the second-worst marriage proposal in film history. (The very worst was Rocky’s.)

    I was never a fan of Maxim in Daphne de Maurier’s novel, and that feeling held fast when I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of “Rebecca” on Friday night. Olivier’s portrayal of Maxim de Winter put me in mind of a mostly-less-violent Ike Turner. I can never quite tell whether de Winter is supposed to be an attractive lead or just a moody jerk.

    Hitchcock’s hand in the 1940 Best Picture winner shows in the lighting, the moodiness and the proliferation of creepy creepers, chief among them the gliding, lingerie-obsessed Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) — she’s a thoroughly freaky study in weirdoism and psychological abuse — and the sleazy cheesy Jack Favell (George Sanders).

    I think the moral of this story is never marry a wealthy recently widowed dude with a pencil-thin mustache. He’s bound to have baggage.