Category: Vintage

The Classics

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4 Stars Vintage

Any Given Sunday (1999)

Unless I had some sort of personal connection associated with a certain game, my interest in football has mostly been minimal at best. That said, Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday has still held a unique place in my heart as a movie of certain first’s.

I remember seeing it in the theater at the ripe age of 12 with my dad, older brother, and grandpa. It was the first movie I would see for many of the actors (most notably Al Pacino), the first Oliver Stone movie, and (most of all), my first R rated movie in the theater. Looking back at the experience, what I remember most (aside from my dad essentially pay money for me to see a grown up movie which included swearing and sexuality) was the mood of down right intensity.

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5 Stars Movies Vintage

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Despite all the division that the year 2020 has brought us, one thing we all have in common is we all yearn for a form of escapism.

That feeling of “I need a break” has been in our fiber from the beginning (after all, God did rest on the 7th day), yet we can sometimes forget the feeling happens for children as well. They will turn to books, imaginary friends, toys, or movies (guilty as charged to this day). It is told so truthfully in My Neighbor Totoro, easily a film I love to retreat to in times of anxiety and unrest.

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4 1/2 Stars Movies Vintage

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles (1987)

As kids, remember how easy it was to make friends?

Perhaps a parent’s friend had kids your age, or you met a new kid on the block. You looked at that kid, and thought “We are about to be friends!”…maybe even “BFFs”. As you got older, you realized hardships would come in the way, and you would either survive them together or, sadly, have to go your own separate ways. Years would go on, and you would meet people you had no intention of being friends with, but God had other plans, and it worked out in the end.

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5 Stars Movies Vintage

Fantasia (1940)

In just over a year, Disney Plus has unsurprisingly joined the ranks of Netflix, Hulu, and others as one of the top tier streaming platforms. It helps when you have not only a vast well of nostalgia in both film and television, but also some original content as well (perhaps most notably The Mandalorian).

Of course, the service does have its fair share of flaws, yet there is one that I find personally irritating. They have catagorized Fantasia (as well as its rather underrated sequel, Fantasia/2000) as a musical. I can understand needing to organize films (anyone who has seen my DVD/Blu Ray collection would attest to that), but I refuse to think of Fantasia as a musical. It is far more than that.

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5 Stars Movies Vintage

All the President’s Men (1976)

In the classic 1994 film Forrest Gump, there is a brief scene where the titular character is spending the night at the Watergate hotel in Washington, D.C. He calls the front desk, informing them of people with flashlights in a room outside his window “keeping him awake.”

While that is undoubtably not what happened, it was my introduction to the Watergate Scandal. Even nearly half a century later, the events that would lead to President Nixon’s resignation is still regarded as one of the biggest political bombshells the world has ever witnessed, yet it was not as if Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein volunteered knowing what it would eventually lead to.

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5 Stars Movies Vintage

Nosferatu (1922)

“Lisa, vampires are make-believe, just like elves, gremlins, and eskimos.”

— Homer Simpson

While they are indeed fictional (unlike the very real eskimos), that does not make vampires any less fascinating. For over a century, we have seen Vampires as not only monsters, but charmers, cereal mascots, teen heart throbs, superheroes (it was announced not long ago that Blade would make his appearance in the MCU), and muppets that helped us count as kids (“Von!” “Two!”…)

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5 Stars Movies Vintage

Psycho (1960)

It was a spine tingling time as a 13 year old on a Tuesday in June of 2001.

The American Film Institute was revealing their annual Top 100 list that they would do every year. That year’s was entitled 100 Years, 100 Thrills. As the countdown was concluding, I had made a $5 bet with my dad (the most I could afford at that time) over which would be number one. He was going with Jaws, while I was rooting for Psycho. By the end, Jaws was number 2, and I had won five dollars, bragging for some time afterwards.

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5 Stars Movies Vintage

Mr. Smith goes to Washington (1939)

I am old enough to remember the days when, as an elementary school student, the wheeling in of a TV on a cart meant a change in mood for the day (and sometimes, the whole week). Sadly, most of those times were dedicated to very below the bar forms of entertainment focused on just learning certain material (unless it was The Magic School Bus TV series).

My first real encounter with watching an actual movie for educational purposes came at the age of 13 in Mr. Russell’s 7th grade Social Studies Class in Middle School. I can’t remember if I had seen Mr. Smith Goes to Washington before then, but I had definetly heard of it. So much of this movie can seem lost on today’s youth, mostly that a political film can actually be entertaining (not to mention, as Mr. Russell let my peers know, that black and white movies are not all boring.)

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5 Stars Movies Vintage

Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Of the countless times that the Oscars have had a segment for montages (excluding the “In Memorium” ones), there was one they did that I wish they would bring back.

At the 62nd Academy Awards (the first to be hosted by Billy Crystal), there was a surprise appearance by an even bigger Hollywood legend, Bob Hope, there to introduce a short video of cinema’s best sharing the first time they ever went to a movie. It was proper that the video used the music from the night’s eventual winner of Best Foreign Language Film, Cinema Paradiso, which brought to mind many movie “firsts” for me (first in a theater, first date movie, etc).

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5 Stars Movies Vintage

It Happened One Night (1934)

Undoubtedly, the romantic comedy is one of the most overused genres.

For every 90s Julia Roberts flick, we get a movie like 2010’s Life as we Know it (which, for undisclosed reasons, was once trending big on Netflix) or 2018’s The Kissing Booth (which made a sequel for reasons unknown to us smart movie goers). In this genre, it seems that you win some, you lose a lot.

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