Three Days of the Condor
Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?
Three Days of the Condor
Directed by Sidney Pollack and also starring Faye Dunnaway as the love interest this is a nicely paced, complex, spy thriller.
In fact perhaps a bit top complex as I had trouble keeping up in a couple of places (that could have been the wine though), everybody seemed to be working both sides and it was tricky to remember who you could trust or who was a bad guy. This was obviously intentional on the director and screenwriters part.
The “basic” plot is Joe Turner (Robert Redford) is a low level CIA operative, a reader, who basically trawls through magazines and books from around the world to see if there are any hidden messages or plots similar to actual spy missions (this is before the Internet, these days he could probably have just set up a google alert and put his feet up).
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Inglourious Basterds (2009)
You probably heard we ain’t in the prisoner-takin’ business; we in the killin’ Nazi business.
Inglourious Basterds
There are admittedly a couple of funny lines and some black comedic drama but more action drama than Abbot & Costello I think.
This movie is an alternative version of the “end” (I assume) of the second world war as seen through the imagination of Quentin Tarantino.
Starring a mutachioed Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine, Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa (for which he won a well deserved Ocar), and Eli Roth as Sgt Donny Donowitz amongst others. It involves a group of Jewish soldiers, nicknamed The Basterds by the Germans, sent to France to basically kill Nazis.
There’s also a second plot parallel to this involving a Jewish girl, Shosanna Dreyfuss played by Melanie Laurent with a traumatic background linked to the evil Nazi Hans Landa.
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Dirty Dancing
Nobody puts Baby in a corner.
Finally, after 23 years, I got around to watching the 1987 Patrick Swayze movie, Dirty Dancing.
I’d always avoided it because I had no interest in watching a chick flick about a 16 year old girl falling in love with a dance instructor at a Butlins style American holiday camp..
But after a stream of guys films, The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Parker, Chinatown and All the Presidents Men, it was time to give my wife a break, and watch a girly romance film.
I was actually pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t the cheezy, falling in parentally disapproving love, 80s predictable romp I was expecting. Well, alright it is, but in a fairly ok, kind of way.
The film is set in the 1950s and sees younger daughter “Baby” (Jennifer Grey) go with her family to a rich holiday resort in the woods by a lake somewhere in the US for a couple of weeks during the summer, where she discovers the staff party – the staff who consist entirely of professional trained dancers it seems. Is this where the students from Fame go for their summer jobs? – and most importantly she meets the good looking but arrogant Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze), who predictably she falls for but he doesn’t like her as she’s a rich, spoilt daddys girl.
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Blog Ranking – Show Some Love
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