2020 Shelter in Place Alphabet Movie Draft - BONUS ROUNDS

[Padrino]

Although I fully agree with everything you wrote about this title, this one just wasn’t quite my taste.

However, my favorite interpretation of this film is Barry is a de-powered Superman without his cape, and he spends the whole film searching for it.

-Barry Egan is not too far sonically from Jerry Siegel.
-Constantly wears a blue suit with a red tie for the S.
-His sisters are the different forms of Kryptonite.
-His nemesis is a sinister, manipulative business man.
-He is continually shown accidentally breaking things otherwise requiring superhuman strength (unbreakable plunger.)
-Defeats 4 goons alone with nothing but a tire iron. -Consummate goal is to earn unlimited flight.
-His love interest is Lena Leonard (L.L. for Lois Lane).
-He travels from a phone booth in California to Dean’s mattress store in Provo, Utah and it is edited to suggest he ran there at superhuman speed (still holding the receiver he ripped from the booth).

Sure, it breaks down a bit at the thought of a lonely Superman calling a phone-for-sex hotline, but overall, I think the theory holds up delightfully well.

And what about his cape?
Well, don’t know about you, but in the very final frame ...

I see a cape.

View attachment 10001

I wouldn't try to create too much of a Superman parallel with Barry Egan, but I do think it's astute to recognize that there is a pseudo-superheroic element to the film. Punch-Drunk Love is very much about how we derive strength from love, intimacy, connection:

"I have so much strength in me you have no idea. I have a love in my life. It makes me stronger than anything you can imagine. I would say 'that's that', Mattress Man."

It's one of the most genuinely powerful moments in the film. For much of its runtime, Barry is so beaten down by the circumstances of his life and his inability to make real or tangible his desires (the phone sex sequence, while painfully awkward, is an important signal that Barry cannot truly connect with people). But when Lena comes into his life, when he becomes animated by his feelings for her and the reciprocal feelings she has for him, we see him transform. And when he finally confronts the Mattress Man, you fully believe that sad sack Barry Egan could really "beat the hell from [him]."

I also just adore Anderson's chosen diction for this sequence. Barry doesn't say, in the common parlance, "I'm going to beat the hell out of you." Instead, he says, "So you tell me 'that's that' before I beat the hell from you," emphasis mine. It's an odd word choice, but I believe it's an intentional one that suggests something about Barry's inherent goodness. Love has made Barry righteous in that moment, and, indeed, a bit superheroic, as if he could leap tall buildings in a single bound, one might say.

 

[Löwenherz]

I wouldn't try to create too much of a Superman parallel with Barry Egan, but I do think it's astute to recognize that there is a pseudo-superheroic element to the film. Punch-Drunk Love is very much about how we derive strength from love, intimacy, connection:

"I have so much strength in me you have no idea. I have a love in my life. It makes me stronger than anything you can imagine. I would say 'that's that', Mattress Man."

It's one of the most genuinely powerful moments in the film. For much of its runtime, Barry is so beaten down by the circumstances of his life and his inability to make real or tangible his desires (the phone sex sequence, while painfully awkward, is an important signal that Barry cannot truly connect with people). But when Lena comes into his life, when he becomes animated by his feelings for her and the reciprocal feelings she has for him, we see him transform. And when he finally confronts the Mattress Man, you fully believe that sad sack Barry Egan could really "beat the hell from [him]."

I also just adore Anderson's chosen diction for this sequence. Barry doesn't say, in the common parlance, "I'm going to beat the hell out of you." Instead, he says, "So you tell me 'that's that' before I beat the hell from you," emphasis mine. It's an odd word choice, but I believe it's an intentional one that suggests something about Barry's inherent goodness. Love has made Barry righteous in that moment, and, indeed, a bit superheroic, as if he could leap tall buildings in a single bound, one might say.

Well that analysis certainly is a lot more elegant.

 

[Padrino]

Legendary and utterly prolific Italian composer Ennio Morricone passed away today. He was 91 years old. I've selected two films in this draft that he scored, linked below:

The Thing
Once Upon a Time in the West

And @KainLear selected perhaps the most iconic film that he scored:

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Morricone was most famous for his contribution to the spaghetti western tradition, but across the decades, he composed for a wide array of directors in both Italian and American films, with budgets of all kinds, and remained a force in film up until his death. RIP.

 

[bajaden]

Or maybe the strategy of picking in strict alphabetical order immediately after another person picking in strict alphabetical order just isn't working out as well as it sounded!

It would appear!

 

[Löwenherz]

Legendary and utterly prolific Italian composer Ennio Morricone passed away today. He was 91 years old. I've selected two films in this draft that he scored, linked below:

The Thing
Once Upon a Time in the West

And @KainLear selected perhaps the most iconic film that he scored:

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Morricone was most famous for his contribution to the spaghetti western tradition, but across the decades, he composed for a wide array of directors in both Italian and American films, with budgets of all kinds, and remained a force in film up until his death. RIP.

 

[Sluggah]

I will fully admit that part of my strategy (and apparently that of everybody else who isn't going strictly alphabetical, evidently) is to avoid Q. But if I had to pick a Q I'd probably have hoped to sneak this movie in. It's no masterpiece, but it's actually enjoyable and rewatchable.

Rewatchability has become the main criteria in my ripe old age. My apologies to the two critically acclaimed Qs I loved but snubbed.

 

[Sluggah]

I'm sure Q is the least favorite letter for everyone. Not a lot of movies that I like start with that letter, but here is one of them. Quick Change, a clever movie about a bank robbery and the chaos that follows.

Also one of my five Q movies.

 

[Jack Jack]

KainLear has timed out. Capt. Factorial is on the clock

 

[Capt. Factorial]

It appears that @KainLear has timed out, so...

To fill my "L" column in the alphabetical movie draft, I select:

Lars and the Real Girl - 2007

Directed by Craig Gillespie

Starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Kelli Garner, Bianca

Trailer

I'll admit, the premise of this movie is enough to make one a bit tentative, and at the time it came out it starred an actor who hadn't really hit his stride yet. I can understand why Lars and the Real Girl was a box office flop. But if you haven't seen this, and you believe in Ryan Gosling, go back and give this one a shot. Gosling stars as the titular Lars, just your average resident of a rural Minnesota town who goes a bit funny in the head and starts parading around an adult doll as his new girlfriend "Bianca". As much as this could have been a one-joke movie, it's decidedly not. And while it's about Lars, the film positions itself to be just as much about his family's and the community's response to the unexpected, and how they pull together to help him after their initial shock and horror. I found a quote from Roger Ebert that really encapsulates it: "The film wisely never goes for even one moment that could be interpreted as smutty or mocking. There are so many ways [it] could have gone wrong that one of the film's fascinations is how adroitly it sidesteps them. Its weapon is absolute sincerity. It has a kind of purity to it."

For whatever reason, I've long held in my head that there's a tetrarchy of touching, personal storytelling in films of the early-mid 2000s. With Lars, now all four of those films have been selected in this draft (along with The Royal Tenenbaums, Lost in Translation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). I would have loved to select all four, but I took two of them in the last draft, and the alphabetical format wouldn't allow it anyway. That's OK, I got two of 'em.

We get her up, and put her to bed. We carry her. And she is not petite, Lars. Bianca is a big, big girl!

 

[Jack Jack]

Q = The Queen of Trees

This is the story of the largest supplier of food on the African Continent, the African Sycamore Fig, and the microscopic wasp that pollinates this monster tree. Narrated by the late Ian Holmes (of Bilbo Baggins fame), this gem of a documentary explores the relationships of many layers of the ecosystem around the food cycle of this tree. I recommend it highly!

Link #1
Link #2
Link #3

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536480/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

 

[Löwenherz]

Going to double up on Kurosawa again with the original “man with no name” action popcorn thriller.

.. but ‘cause it’s in black and white, and you have to read subtitles, it’s considered all sophisticated and stuff.

Y is for ...

Yojimbo (1961)

I never had any appreciation for the Western genre until I began to enjoy samurai movies. Then the rugged individualists gunslinger heroes of the American old west were shown to me as the direct descendant of the ronin samurai. And suddenly it all clicked.

Yojimbo carries with it that same mythos of the untamed Wild West, but somewhat in reverse, almost as if it were a post-apocalyptic film centering in on an era when the centuries long ruling structure was crumbling, allowing local rivalries and strongmen to fight for control of the scraps.

It’s with this backdrop that our unnamed hero, played by the indomitable Toshiro Mifune, wanders into a broken town torn apart by a street gang turf war. It starts when he hears a random villager lamenting the loss of his son who chose to join one of the gangs, and the no-named ronin deciding he’s going to do something about it. Not for any sense of duty, honor, or nobility, but seemingly, because he has nothing better to do.

So he strides into town, starts playing each gang against the other, working his way up the ranks of both, until they finally catch on, at which point he has to take on a group of baddies in a 1v10 showdown, which he expertly wins in a flurry of katana swipes.

He then tells the peasant’s son (whom by now you’ve completely forgotten about) to go back to his parents and get fat on gruel, says things should be quiet now, and walks out of town into the dusty oblivion.

If you’re worried I’ve given away the whole plot, as is often the case in this genre, that really isn’t the point. Instead, it’s the joy of the journey and witnessing a single hyper-competent anti-hero navigating a situation he has no business correcting, and accomplishing the impossible with magnificence.

Yojimbo was rather infamously the foundation for the Eastwood spaghetti western trilogy that included The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, and also the inspiration for a Bruce Willis gangster movie I always thought had squandered potential, until I realized it was just a shoddy reimagining of Yojimbo.

Do yourself a favor, and catch the original.

 

[Warhawk]

Q = The Queen of Trees

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536480/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

Um, I hate to be the one to ask, but was this ever released in a theater? It looks like it was made by BBC for TV and shown in the US on PBS.

 

[Jespher]

Um, I hate to be the one to ask, but was this ever released in a theater? It looks like it was made by BBC for TV and shown in the US on PBS.

This was shot by Mark Deeble in November, 2005, and picked up by several platforms, including by the BBC. It also was released internationally at film festivals in 2005 and 2006. I first saw it in January, 2006 in Nevada City, CA at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival, where I purchased a copy. They are still available in Nevada City at the SYRCL office.

I have some questions:

1) What constitutes wide release?
2) Is a documentary that airs over several platforms made for TV or does it constitute a film?
3) How can a TV program run at a film festival?

 

[VF21]

This was shot by Mark Deeble in November, 2005, and picked up by several platforms, including by the BBC. It also was released internationally at film festivals in 2005 and 2006. I first saw it in January, 2006 in Nevada City, CA at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival, where I purchased a copy. They are still available in Nevada City at the SYRCL office.

I have some questions:

1) What constitutes wide release?
2) Is a documentary that airs over several platforms made for TV or does it constitute a film?
3) How can a TV program run at a film festival?

As someone who has run several of this drafts, I'm going to jump in here.

The rules state "...All movies must have been released in theaters. No made-for-TV, no Netflix, no Amazon, etc. Too many of those films just aren't available for everyone to view and it's hard to expect people to vote for a bunch of obscure films no one (except you) has seen."

Released in theaters is a key there, as is explained in the comment about availability for viewing.

While it appears as though it is a very good and interesting film, IMHO it does not qualify under the rules.

 

[Padrino]

With my eighteenth pick in the Shelter in Place Alphabet Movie Draft, I will make use of the letter E to select:

Escape from New York (1981):

Director: John Carpenter
Dir. of Photography: Dean Cundey
Writer(s): John Carpenter, Nick Castle
Score: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasance, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton
Genre: Science fiction, action
Runtime: 1 hour, 39 minutes

IMDb Entry: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

I'm in time for my next pick! Woohoo! My second John Carpenter selection of the draft is a stone-cold action classic, and was the springboard for Kurt Russell's post-Disney career as an adult actor.

 

[VF21]

With my eighteenth pick in the Shelter in Place Alphabet Movie Draft, I will make use of the letter E to select:

Escape from New York (1981):

Director: John Carpenter
Dir. of Photography: Dean Cundey
Writer(s): John Carpenter, Nick Castle
Score: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasance, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton
Genre: Science fiction, action
Runtime: 1 hour, 39 minutes

IMDb Entry: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

I'm in time for my next pick! Woohoo! My second John Carpenter selection of the draft is a stone-cold action classic, and was the springboard for Kurt Russell's post-Disney career as an adult actor.

Nice pick. Had ET not been available, that would have been on my short list for "E".

 

[Warhawk]

While it appears as though it is a very good and interesting film, IMHO it does not qualify under the rules.

Yeah, that is kind of where I was getting hung up as well. I don't see a screening for a film festival as being the same as "released in theaters". Someone is digging deep for pretty interesting content, but I don't see it meeting the criteria for selection in this draft. It won a Peabody award, but that is for broadcast (radio, TV, digital distribution) programs.

 

[Warhawk]

I just got back from vacation late last night and I'm plowing through work stuff so I don't have time for a write-up at the moment. I'll put one together later tonight or tomorrow. For Elf, too.

A funny superhero-type flick with great acting by Ron Pearlman - "H" is for Hellboy (2004)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167190/

 

[VF21]

G - Groundhog Day



From imdb:

A weather man is reluctantly sent to cover a story about a weather forecasting "rat" (as he calls it). This is his fourth year on the story, and he makes no effort to hide his frustration. On awaking the 'following' day he discovers that it's Groundhog Day again, and again, and again. First he uses this to his advantage, then comes the realisation that he is doomed to spend the rest of eternity in the same place, seeing the same people do the same thing EVERY day.

Phil: When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.

Phil Connors: This is pitiful. A thousand people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat. What a hype. Groundhog Day used to mean something in this town. They used to pull the hog out, and they used to eat it. You're hypocrites, all of you!

Phil: I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster, drank piña coladas. At sunset, we made love like sea otters.
[Ralph and Gus snort]
Phil: *That* was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get *that* day over, and over, and over...

 

[Capt. Factorial]

G - Groundhog Day

I was wondering if this would get picked!

 

[Löwenherz]

I was wondering if this would get picked!

I was split between it and Grand Budapest

 

[Capt. Factorial]

I was split between it and Grand Budapest

I've mentioned previously about rewatchability being something I consider an important factor in this draft. Groundhog Day takes rewatchability to a new level, because if you've watched it once, you've already rewatched it several times!

 

[Löwenherz]

With my eighteenth pick in the Shelter in Place Alphabet Movie Draft, I will make use of the letter E to select:

Escape from New York (1981):

Director: John Carpenter
Dir. of Photography: Dean Cundey
Writer(s): John Carpenter, Nick Castle
Score: John Carpenter
Cast: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasance, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton
Genre: Science fiction, action
Runtime: 1 hour, 39 minutes

IMDb Entry: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082340/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

I'm in time for my next pick! Woohoo! My second John Carpenter selection of the draft is a stone-cold action classic, and was the springboard for Kurt Russell's post-Disney career as an adult actor.

I love this movie partially for its over-the-top, but played straight grit / campiness, but also for its place (along with The Warriors and many others) in Cinematic and American History during the 70s and 80s when New York City was symbolic shorthand for dystopian hellscape.

And it seems to have a limitless set of awesome posters.

 

[VF21]

I've mentioned previously about rewatchability being something I consider an important factor in this draft. Groundhog Day takes rewatchability to a new level, because if you've watched it once, you've already rewatched it several times!

That's pretty much what I was thinking...and why I opted for it over a different (as yet unpicked) favorite.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I don't know where we're goin', but there's no sense bein' late.

Q is for Quigley Down Under

Given my occasionally (lovingly) maligned "infantile bias," and the fact that this movie co-starred Laura San Giacomo in her prime, I mostly remember being... disappointed by this movie.

 

[Jack Jack]

As someone who has run several of this drafts, I'm going to jump in here.

The rules state "...All movies must have been released in theaters. No made-for-TV, no Netflix, no Amazon, etc. Too many of those films just aren't available for everyone to view and it's hard to expect people to vote for a bunch of obscure films no one (except you) has seen."

Released in theaters is a key there, as is explained in the comment about availability for viewing.

While it appears as though it is a very good and interesting film, IMHO it does not qualify under the rules.

After thinking it over all day, Q shall not be skipped!

Q = Quiz Show (1994)

You know why they call them Indians? Because Columbus thought he was in India. They're "Indians" because some white guy got lost.

If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.

"Quiz Show" is the type of movie that invites viewers to ask themselves how they would act under similar circumstances. If you were a contestant on a TV game show and the producers offered you a load of money to do a fixed show where you're given the answers in advance, would you do it? Or would you turn your back on the producers and walk away? In this film, Charles Van Doren does not walk away, but he does hesitate. As played by Ralph Fiennes, he's a bright, likable fellow who seems like a good man despite his willing participation in a fraud.

The film is smartly written, tightly plotted, and populated by interesting characters. It is also entertaining. It unfolds like a great detective story, except that no murder has taken place. There isn't even any crime. As shocking as it may seem, there were no laws against rigging a quiz show back in the 1950s, because no lawmaker had considered that such a thing would ever happen. When the scandal came to light, those working behind the scenes who engineered the fraud managed to survive with their careers intact, and the people who suffered the harshest consequences were the contestants, who were simply pawns. That says something about the distortions of television culture, but this theme, among others, is nicely understated in the film.

Director Robert Redford has a gift for finding the drama in seemingly mundane topics, but not in a contrived or manipulative fashion. The '50s quiz show scandal is the sort of topic that could easily have made for a preachy and artificial TV movie. It's a great credit to Redford's film that it doesn't contain any long moralizing speeches. Though the movie has many great quotes, the characters talk like real people, and the situations grow out of their personalities. We end up rooting for several characters at once. We want Richard Goodwin (Rob Morrow), the lawyer sent to investigate the show, to succeed in uncovering the scandal. But we also feel for Van Doren, who almost comes off as a tragic hero. We even feel a little for the pathetic and unlikable Herb Stemple (John Turturro), the whistle-blower who's been bamboozled and humiliated by the producers.

The movie works on the most basic level as simple drama, the high points being those scenes where Goodwin uncovers each new layer to the case. The first time I saw the film, I was put in mind of a detective story like "Colombo." There's no mystery, of course, since we know from the start who the perpetrators are, what they did and how they did it. But the labyrinth of corruption that Goodwin must probe is fascinating to behold.

Goodwin naively assumes he's practically taking down the network (the movie hints that the scandal goes to the very top) even though no laws were broken. The situation has the feel of a conspiracy, the people talking in euphemisms like they were mob bosses or something ("For seventy grand you can afford to be humiliated"). The contestants themselves are no dummies: they are smart, knowledgeable people who could very well have been used honestly on a trivia show. The producers simply wanted to control the responses to make the show more dramatic. What made this unethical was the amount of deception it required. It's one thing to have entertainment that everyone knows is fake (e.g., pro-wrestling), it's quite another to pass off something phony as something real. Of course now I'm getting preachy, something I praised the movie for not doing. But that's exactly my point. In a lesser movie, there would have been characters explaining the distinction. Here, it's left to us to assess the situation. That's the best kind of movie, the kind that invites further discussion.

Above all, the movie is about integrity and what defines it. Goodwin (in a classic reversal of our culture's typical view of lawyers) is the boy scout in the story, who says at one point that he would never have participated in the fraud if he were in Van Doren's shoes, and we believe him. But a large part of the film involves his relationship with Van Doren, a man he likes and doesn't want to hurt. His desire to protect Van Doren (but not Stemple) from ruin while bringing down the true perpetrators of the scandal leads to one of the movie's most memorable lines, when Goodwin's wife calls Goodwin "the Uncle Tom of the Jews," because he's sticking up for a corrupt Gentile. We respect Goodwin and admire his reluctance to hurt Van Doren, but we, too, wonder whether he's handling the case with the proper objectivity.

The movie has some interesting subtexts dealing with the anti-Semitism coming from Jewish producers themselves. In one scene, producers Dan Enright and Albert Freedman basically explain to Van Doren, in so many words, that Stemple is too Jewish for the show. This is a phenomenon I've rarely seen dealt with in the movies, possibly because there aren't too many films depicting the history of television.

The film is often criticized for departing significantly from the facts of the case. For example, the real Goodwin actually played a minimal role in exposing the scandal. I can understand why those involved in the case may have resented these inaccuracies. But filmmakers do have dramatic license. Probably this film should have changed the names of the characters from their real-life counterparts, to reinforce the fact that it's not an exact account of what happened. The purpose of movies isn't to duplicate real life, but to reflect on real life, to gain fresh insight, and "Quiz Show" achieves that purpose with dignity and style.

Link #1
Link #2
Link #3

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0110932/?ref_=fn_al_tt_0

 

[foxfire]

I choose Captain Ron (1992)



https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103924/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

 

[foxfire]

I will edit all my posts right before the voting

 

[LoungeLizard]

M - Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)



https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0107614/

Robin Williams is spectacularly funny in this film about separation, divorce, and custodial battles.

 

[Löwenherz]

After thinking it over all day, Q shall not be skipped!

Q = Quiz Show (1994)

Link #1
Link #2
Link #3

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0110932/?ref_=fn_al_tt_0

Nice pick young squire.

Has been on my radar for years, but hadn’t quite reached my must have list until now.