More Movies I Can Watch Anytime...

A couple of years ago I wrote Movies I Can Watch Anytime.  As I was watching It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World last night, I realized my list was incomplete.  The following is a continuation of the list from 2011.  There's plenty of comedy, drama, suspense, but no musicals.  So, as with all my lists, here are more movies I can watch at anytime, in no particular order...

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World - This movie is quite possibly the funniest movie ever made.  If Hollywood tried to do a remake today, it would [no doubt] suck.  This one from the early 1960s is a rarity - a movie with a ton of known stars in it that's actually good.  As we were watching it the other night, we came to the conclusion that the only people who WEREN'T in it were the Rat Pack guys. Jimmy Durante literally kicked the bucket after his car "just sailed right out there" off the highway.  His buried treasure from a robbery fifteen years earlier was in Santa Rosita"under a big W." Everybody wanted some free money, and I mean everybody -  Spencer Tracy, Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hacket, Terry-Thomas, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Edie Adams, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, Peter Falk, Rochester, Dick Shawn...Jack Benny made a cameo.  Jim Backus convinced me he was always drunk.  Milton Berle's character is beyond henpecked because his mother in law is Ethel Merman, who is always yelling at somebody "shut up, stupid!"  What was Dick Shawn's bikini-clad girlfriend staring at while they danced in his shack?  In their own ways, most of these characters are really quite stupid and inept, which just increases the hilarity factor because you know that no matter what they, disaster isn’t far behind.   My favorite part of the movie - Jonathan Winters destroyed a gas station - singlehandedly.

Lawrence of Arabia - There are not enough superlatives in the English language to praise this classic by David Lean.  The word "masterpiece" doesn't go far enough to express how good this movie is.  Peter O'Toole IS Lawrence - he always will be.  The only movie I like more than this one is Patton.

North by Northwest - Alfred Hitchcock made many suspense thrillers, but this one always seems to be on TV somewhere. And when I come across it, it's usually at the same point in the movie - where the airplane is chasing Cary Grant all over an empty field.  Hitchcock liked blondes in his movies. He once said they make the best victims. He had plenty of blonde victims - Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Janet Leigh, Tippi Hedren. Eva Marie Saint is the blonde leading lady of NxNW.

Goldfinger - This James Bond movie has probably the best exchange ever between a hero and a villain.  It occurs while Bond is tied down to a table, while a gold laser is slowly cutting the table in half.  As the laser inches its way toward Bond he asks Goldfinger "Do you expect me to talk?"  To which Goldfinger replies "No Mr. Bond.  I expect you to die!" Goldfinger's Oriental henchman Oddjob is a badass dude who cuts things in half with his bowler hat.  He crushes golf balls, too.  And besides, how could you not like a movie where one of the characters is named 'Pussy Galore'?

Young Frankenstein - That's "Fronkensteen." Would you go for a roll in the hay with Teri Garr? Blücher! 

The Princess Bride - A wonderful fairy tale read by Peter Falk to Fred Savage, his sick grandson.  My name is Inigo Montoya...you killed my father...prepare to die! 

The Pink Panther/A Shot in the Dark/The Return of the Pink Panther/The Pink Panther Strikes Again/Revenge of the Pink Panther – Five movies, yes, but they’re really all the same movie.  Peter Sellers was a genius.

A Clockwork Orange - Is there a happy medium between violence and non-violence?  Is violent behavior a sickness that can be cured?  Come my little Droogs and find out...

No Country for Old Men – It all started with a drug deal gone horribly wrong.  Josh Brolin’s character. Llewelyn Moss, comes across the carnage as he’s hunting.  He found $2 million and keeps it for himself.  The drug lords want their money back.  The hire Anton Chigurh to get it back.  Anton Chigurh is a killing machine. A cattle gun is his weapon of choice.  Josh Brolin's character never stood a chance against this guy.  The only way anybody could survive contact with this guy is if he/she won a coin toss.  Tommy Lee Jones is the local sheriff [Ed Tom Bell] who is laments how things have gotten much more violent in his time that it was when his father and grandfather were both sheriffs.

Amadeus – Poor Salieri.  He always refers to Mozart as “the creature.”  He recognizes Mozart’s genius but despises him as a human being.  Salieri devotes his life to God in order to make music, but his is a mediocre composer.  Mozart is a genius, a child prodigy who lewd, crude and socially unacceptable.  Salieri’s faith is shaken when he realizes that God is mocking him through the vile creature that is Mozart. 

The Great Escape - When I was in college at USC I had the pleasure to meet a Canadian gentleman who had taken part in the real Great Escape.  He told our class there were only two things wrong with the movie.  1 - there was no Steve McQueen-type character that rode a motorcycle. 2 - the escape took place in cold weather, not the warm weather as depicted in the movie.  He said the moviemakers got everything else right.  Note: the claymation movie Chicken Run is really a kids’ version of The Great Escape.

Stalag 17 – Lots of prisoners try to escape this POW camp, but they usually end up getting shot.  Since William Holden is the camp entrepreneur and will do anything to make a buck and make his own life as a POW easier, he is suspected by everybody of being the stool pigeon, including Peter Graves, the real snitch.

Pulp Fiction - Quentin Tarantino makes movies where his characters talk...and talk...and talk.  But every now and then the dialog produces something memorable. For instance -

Jules:  What does Marsellus Wallace look like?

Brett: What?

Jules: What country are you from?

Brett: What? What? Wh - ?

Jules: "What" ain't no country I've ever heard of. They speak English in What?

Brett: What?

Jules: English,motherfucker,do you speak it?

Brett: Yes! Yes!

Jules: Then you know what I'm sayin'!

Brett: Yes! Jules: Describe what Marsellus Wallace looks like!

Brett: What? Jules: Say 'what' again. Say 'what' again,I dare you,I double dare you motherfucker, say 'what' one more Goddamn time!

So what are my favorite parts of the movie?  Besides this bit where Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta are fetching Marcellus Wallace's briefcase, there's the vignette of Vinvent Vega and Marcellus's wife Mia.  Then there's the vignette where John Travolta accidently shoots the guy in the back of the car, and Harvey Keitel has to get them out of trouble.  I still have no idea what the shiny thing is in the briefcase.

To be continued…