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The Godfather is the #3 movie on the all time AFI best movie list. Nuf said.
I just want to say that it looks great on BluRay and you'd think that a movie about Italians would have lots of Franks, but there is only one and it's a good one.
When the Godfather is laying in his bed at home after being shot, one of his grandsons says: "Get well soon, Grandpa, love your Grandson, Frank."
Also, there are 4 crying, screaming babies in the movie. Not sure why, but I noticed it. Go watch it again!
If you are looking for a batshit crazy movie, Donnie Darko is for you. Or maybe it's apeshit?
What is it all about? Is he dead? Is he dreaming? Is he in a parallel universe? Is it all of the above? Who knows and after the movie was over, I didn't care much at all.
Drew Barrymore is in this movie and she's listed as executive producer, so I think the writer/director must be a friend of hers because otherwise, this movie probably wouldn't have been made.
Donnie has a 6 foot imaginary friend or is it fiend that is a rabbit with a scary metal mask. Of course, his name is Frank and he takes off the mask and says his father is Frank and his father's father is also Frank and then he shows up as a non-rabbit character also named Frank, so it's all about crazy Frankland.
It's got both Jake & Maggie Gyllenhaal before they were more well known and a gratuitous Patrick Swayze. Maybe you need to be on some kind of psychotropic drugs to get into this movie, but I wouldn't know about that. I can't recommend it.
What a fun movie this is. As Young As You Feel is a feel good movie.
Monty Wooley stars as a 65 year old printer who gets fired for being 65 and he takes charge to get his job back. He finds out who the President of the car company that owns his printing company and impersonates the President, dyes his beard, ends up making a speech to the Chamber of Commerce and changes the age rules at the company.
Then he sweeps the wife of the printing company off her feet, causes the car company president & executives a bunch of trouble and then when you throw in a gratuitous Marilyn Monroe, who dominates her few scenes, you've got a real old time fun movie.
For a last bonus, the weaselly HR guy is named Frank, so there you go.
Finally, I see a movie in the theater that is actually great. State of Play is a crackling thriller set in the world of politics and newspapers.
It stars Russell Crowe as a newspaper reporter, Ben Affleck as a Congressman, Rachel McAdams as a news blogger and Helen Mirren as the news Editor. It's based on a BBC Mini-Series of the same name and I moved up next on my Netflix list.
The action is excellent and the plot keeps twisting and turning, so you never really know what is coming next. There were so many changes in direction that I couldn't figure out the final twist.
The acting by everyone was spot on as I stopped seeing Crowe, Mirren & Affleck as themselves. I highly recommend this movie if you like a thriller, remember to take a breath.
Leatherheads is a really fun movie. It's a Comedy Romance about the start of professional football. It's zero historically accurate, but that doesn't matter. It's got George Clooney & Renee Zellweger in a modern screwball comedy set in the 1920's. It's odd that I watched two movies in a row, set in the 20's (Changeling was the other).
The movie moves along at a good pace and it was directed by Clooney, so he knew what he wanted. There is a lot of snappy dialogue between Clooney & Zellweger.
The football action was good with the final game in a massive field of mud. Number 1 great thing was the first named character was the coach, Coach Frank. Then later in the movie, there is a soldier Frank. So it's a double Frank movie.
I highly recommend this movie.
Changeling is very scary because it's a true story and it was only 1928, when a 9 year old kid goes missing and my Dad was 9 years old in 1928. It's hard to believe that the LAPD had that much unlimited power over regular people, but it's true.
It is an excellent drama and Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich and Jeffrey Donovan do a great job inhabiting their characters. Jolie was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar and Clint Eastwood was the director.
It tells the story from Christine Collins' (Jolie) point of view and her struggle to find her son after the LAPD give her a fake son as a replacement. The police send her to the nut house when she keeps causing problems for them. The actual case changed California law. Lucky for all of us, the police can no longer commit someone to a mental institute without a warrant.
Their is a chicken ranch and although they are mostly in pens, there is one flying chicken! Best line in the script: "I'll meet you at Musso & Frank.", which is billed as the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. It's a movie Frank.
The tag line for Born to Kill is: "The coldest killer a woman ever loved." I already know I'm going to like this movie and it's got Clair Trevor and she's DA Bomb!
They just don't make movies like this any more. Lawrence Tierney as Sam Wild, is a man for all women and he knows it and likes it, but he's not very smart and runs on violence, charm and emotion.
Claire Trevor's character is very similar to Sam Wild, so there is a dangerous undercurrent throughout the movie.
The best line in the movie: "I've never had someone I knew so slightly, be so frank." That counts as a Frank.
It seems like Seth Rogen is almost every other movie, at least 80% of all movies laced with lots of F-Bombs. So when you're in that many movies, some are good and some are not so good, like Pineapple Express and Zack and Miri Make a Porno.
This movie is just mildly funny with some naked people.
I can't recommend it, but as you would imagine, it does have a happy ending.
The Collector is based on a best selling novel. What kind of weirdos were buying this novel? This movie is a creep-fest from the word go.
It stars Terrence Stamp and he is so young in 1965 that I didn't recognize him until the second scene. I guess things have changed in 44 years, because this movie was nominated for 3 Oscars - Best writing, Best Director William Wyler who won one of his 3 Oscars for directing Ben Hur in 1960 and for best leading actress for Samantha Eggar. Eggar did have a difficult role as the collected woman, trapped in a dungeon.
Stamp is a crazed butterfly collector who wins a bunch of money in a football pool and decides to buy a creepy old isolated house and stalk and collect his dream girl and try and make her love him. Mmmmm, it doesn't work. Not a good plan. He does come up with a new plan at the end after his first human butterfly dies from fright after almost killing Freddy and then realizing if he dies, she's stuck in the dungeon forever. Ooops. Another bad plan.
One great thing is that even though there are only 2 characters in the movie, Freddy had a fake name and of course, it's Franklin. Fake Frank! I love it.
You Kill Me stars Sir Ben Kingsley as an alcoholic Hit Man, names Frank Falenczyk from Buffalo NY, who comes out to San Francisco to dry out and clean up his act. They filmed a lot on location in San Francisco, so that's fun to look for places you recognize.
This is another movie that I hadn't really heard of that was amazingly good. It's directed by John Dahl, who directed one of my all time favorites, Red Rock West. Dahl likes to do dark comedy and this qualifies, big time.
It's got an excellent cast with Tea Leoni, Luke Wilson, Bill Pullman, Dennis Farina and Phillip Baker Hall. It must have been a low budget movie to get all that talent and I guess zero marketing budget.
Frank goes to an AA meeting and since it's anonymous, he just explains about all his problems with drinking and not being very good at his job of killing people. He works part time in a mortuary and that's where he meets Tia Leoni and they end up with a killer romance, literally.
I highly recomend this movie and with the main character named Frank, how can you go wrong?
Dark City (Director's Cut) is an amazing movie. I am so happy I didn't see it until it was on BluRay and also recut by the Director, Alex Proyas. DO NOT watch the theatrical version!
Dark City was a difficult movie to market and the "suits" made Proyas put a voice-over at the beginning of the movie which completely spoils the mystery. After watching the Director's Cut and the extra explaining the story behind the movie, I started watching the theatrical cut and it was brutal.
I would call this movie, Alien Noir. It's not very easy to figure out what is going on in the beginning, but if you let the movie take you with it, it turns out very cool and all you want to do is visit Shell Beach, although nobody knows how to get there.
I don't want to spoil the plot by explaining things, but I highly recommend this movie as a seminal work along with Blade Runner in influencing SciFi movies in the future.
William Hurt plays Frank Bumstead and is one of the main characters, so that is a big plus.
Robert Deniro & Al Pacino - how can you go wrong with both of them as the leads of a movie?
Righteous Kill doesn't really go wrong, but there isn't much there, there. It's got the world's largest Red Herring in the history of movies, so from the very beginning you know something is wrong. From the first scene you are puzzled and thinking a lot, at least I was, but I like to figure out the mystery from the clues before the screenplay reveals it to everyone.
Why was it Turk & Rooster? Then Turk turns into Tom, so there is a rare Tom character. It's a barely watchable movie, but I'm not that enthusiastic about it. Oh yes, I did figure it out.
The Captain's Paradise is one of those 1950's English comedies that I love so much. I had never seen this movie before and it was a big surprise to me.
To see Alec Guinness, who would go on to play Obi Wan Kanobi, get nominated for 5 Oscars and winning one for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Bridge on the River Kwai, flamenco dancing with a flower in his teeth, was great and very funny.
He plays a ferry boat captain on the Golden Fleece that runs between Gibralter & Spanish Morocco. He has found his paradise via bigamy. He has his traditional English wife in Gibralter and his hot latin Mistress in Morocco. He gives one a bikini and the other a vacuum cleaner. He figures he's got the best of both worlds and it works for about 7 years. One day, he mixes up the gifts and that tears it.
Then as we all know, the itch starts and each woman decides she needs to grow and switch roles, which confuses the Captain as he's only half a man to each of them. Of course, they both decide to leave him at the same time.
The final scene is a firing squad and the squad Captain says: "Fuego" which means fire in Spanish. There are no Franks, but Yvonne de Carlo has a great bad Spanish accent and there are plenty of Fezes and Vultures, so I've add those two as categories.
John Carpenter remade The Thing From Another World into John Carpenter's The Thing. After rewatching it after several years, I think it's one of those 80's movies that was great in the 80's, but just doesn't hold up now.
I didn't remember how gross and gory it is and if you know me, a movie has to be really gross and gory for me to notice. Now of course, I still get grossed out by real things. I still vividly remember watching a show about forensic science and when the guy said: "Let's fire up the skull saw!", I turned it off.
But The Thing is just nasty. Rob Bottin, the special effects & master monster maker, does his thing and I think was trying to outdo Alien. Maybe if I hadn't seen it before, it would have been a better experience. It just wasn't fun to watch, unlike the fun I had watching It Came from Beneath the Sea, which I've also seen plenty of time, but it seemed like there was more fun in noticing new things.
I will say that Richard Dyson's scream when he's trying to revive a guy already taken over by the creature and both his hands get chomped off by giant teeth in the guy's stomach was still fun.. YAAAAAAAAAA! Wilford Brimley is also quite good and I always like Kurt Russell.
I will always wonder, when a company is setting up an Antarctic expedition, why they only ordered 2 giant flamethrowers instead of 3? You just never know when it's 30 below zero, when you will need a good flamethrower. Zero Franks and of course no chickens or tumbleweeds, but a tape drive and I liked the funky 80's computer graphics with lots of pixels. I think I will add flamethrowers to my list of things to look for in a movie.
Go back and watch the original The Thing with James Arness as the giant carrot alien and just enjoy the final dialog over the radio: "Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!"
The Godfather is the #3 movie on the all time AFI best movie list. Nuf said.
If you are looking for a batshit crazy movie, Donnie Darko is for you. Or maybe it's apeshit?
What a fun movie this is. As Young As You Feel is a feel good movie.
Finally, I see a movie in the theater that is actually great. State of Play is a crackling thriller set in the world of politics and newspapers. 
Leatherheads is a really fun movie. It's a Comedy Romance about the start of professional football. It's zero historically accurate, but that doesn't matter. It's got George Clooney & Renee Zellweger in a modern screwball comedy set in the 1920's. It's odd that I watched two movies in a row, set in the 20's (Changeling was the other).
Changeling is very scary because it's a true story and it was only 1928, when a 9 year old kid goes missing and my Dad was 9 years old in 1928. It's hard to believe that the LAPD had that much unlimited power over regular people, but it's true.
The tag line for Born to Kill is: "The coldest killer a woman ever loved." I already know I'm going to like this movie and it's got Clair Trevor and she's DA Bomb!
It seems like Seth Rogen is almost every other movie, at least 80% of all movies laced with lots of F-Bombs. So when you're in that many movies, some are good and some are not so good, like Pineapple Express and Zack and Miri Make a Porno.
The Collector is based on a best selling novel. What kind of weirdos were buying this novel? This movie is a creep-fest from the word go.
You Kill Me stars Sir Ben Kingsley as an alcoholic Hit Man, names Frank Falenczyk from Buffalo NY, who comes out to San Francisco to dry out and clean up his act. They filmed a lot on location in San Francisco, so that's fun to look for places you recognize.
Dark City (Director's Cut) is an amazing movie. I am so happy I didn't see it until it was on BluRay and also recut by the Director, Alex Proyas. DO NOT watch the theatrical version!
Robert Deniro & Al Pacino - how can you go wrong with both of them as the leads of a movie?
The Captain's Paradise is one of those 1950's English comedies that I love so much. I had never seen this movie before and it was a big surprise to me.
John Carpenter remade The Thing From Another World into John Carpenter's The Thing. After rewatching it after several years, I think it's one of those 80's movies that was great in the 80's, but just doesn't hold up now.
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