show me the movies film festival!

Today ended thirty days of free Showtime!

No bingeing on serials for me - nosirree!

I had Showtime screen lots of movies for me!

All total, there were 18.

I know, you were expecting far more.

What can I say?

The world of culture has been bursting out with blooms!!!

 

I'd started with "3 Days To Kill", a doozie with Kevin Costner as a hitman who has a long weekend with his estranged teenaged daughter while his ex is away on business.

It just so happens that he has a brain tumor and has only months to live, unless...

well, unless he manages to get in one last hit.

If he does, he'll get paid with an experimental drug that could save his life.

What to do, what to do?

Well, one last dance with his daughter sure would be nice.

Ah, yes, and that netted me sweet dreams of dancing with him, too!

 

"Mean Girls" followed, with its high school shenanigans and appropriate animal noises.

That lead on to "The Birdcage", with memories of South Beach and Art Deco - nice!

What to see after those?

 

Well, talking with Sean at AMC about a Jake Gyllenhall movie there reminded me of an earlier one and Sean had remembered the name: "Source Code".

Such and excellent scifi, time travel, romance from 2011, that I watched it again!

That brings me up to May 2nd, the day Tony and Laura came home.

In need of something different, "The Sunlit Night" certainly fit the bill, with an American artist student in Norway.

Everything she sees reminds her of a famous painting, but not the Renoir I have.

The most entertaining part was when she sang Kaddish at a Viking funeral for a Russian Jew who had been a baker in Brooklyn.

For real!

Then dawned May the Fourth and, by looking at the movie listings from A - Z, I spotted an odd one: "5-25-77" from 2022.

Get this: it was about a boy who had seen "2001 A Space Odyssey" and started into a lifetime of homemade scifi movies, leading right up to a visit to Hollywood his junior year, to the set of... c'mon, guess! - "Star Wars"!!!

Then it was to wait until 5-25-77, the opening date... but not at the rinkydink one-screen cinema in his town.

He had to wait another week for it to get there!

So, not only did I get a movie about that one I saw for the first time that summer in Great Lakes, Illinois, but this was a true story about Patrick Read Johnson and his start...

and it was on the day for lisping Jedi knights!!!

Wow!

I know I already wrote about it, but... such a gift from the Universe it was! 

Then I got another gift: a trio of movies about baseball!

"The Bad News Bears", the first one, with Walter Matthau and the classical music score that accompanies his movies, was certainly my favorite.

"The Bad News Bears In Breaking Training" came out the next year and placed los osos de las balas at an exhibition game in Texas, with the winner to get a trip to Japan.

So, the very next year - hey sequels have to be quick when kids are growing! - we have "The Bad News Bears Go To Japan", which lost something in the translation.

The best part of that had nothing to do with the official game, but with the sandlot playing the two teams did after the adults all lost their minds.

Nice!

"Desperately Seeking Susan" was a trip into the 1980's for fashion and music, with Madonna posing as a personals ads poster who catches the imagination of Rosanna Arquette, who is in a marriage with a barely flickering flame.

So good to see Aidan Quinn (a hottie then, and even more so now at 64!) once more, as well as Will Patton (as a blond!) and Steven Wright (as the sister-in-law's deadpanning blind date) and John Turturro (as a wise-cracking emcee) - wow!

I hadn't realized everyone of those men are within just a few years of my age!

Something different was waiting for me with "Boy", written by, directed by, and starring Taika Waititi in 2010, with him as a Peter Pan father who had abandoned his two sons after the mother died, taking up with other like-minded guys and living a bohemian life, gallivanting hither and yon.

The older son had taken up Michael Jackson as his role model... which leads to a Bollywoodesque "Thriller" dance over the closing credits!

Yes, yes, yes!!!

Now I was up to May 16th, so how about a little romance?

Enter John Cusack, a decade after "Say Anything" with a Christmas-themed cutie wrapped around a pair of black gloves and a coffee shop called "Serendipity".

It hit all the right marks for a seasonal lark!

Then it was time to watch some older folks having a bit of romance during "A Month By The Lake" with Vanessa Redgrave and Edward Fox (with both of them being 58 in 1995 and both born the same year as my mother).

Perhaps it was an inside joke that the film was set in 1937?

In any case, with the view of Lake Como in Italy, it truly was a lovely piece!

A more modern tale, "Marvelous And The Black Hole" followed Rhea Perlman as a magician who tries to bring light into the life of a teen whose mother has died.

I truly did enjoy the magic shows... but the black hole got a bit tedious.

So glad I never had to deal with teenagers!

Besides the magic, the best part was the older sister, who remembered more about their mom, including the posting of a flock of flamingoes in the front yard. 

When the Black Hole has to present a school project, she did so using a story of a princess on a moon... with flamingoes in the yard.

Very nice.

There followed a series of movies I'd seen numerous times in the past:

"Senseless", with Marlon Wayans as a university student who volunteers for a research study of a new drug, going for that extra cash;

"Tootsie", one with Dustin Hoffman as an actor who becomes an actress to get a job, ending up as a better man (and one I'd seen with Mama while on leave after Okinawa);

"The Jerk", from all the way back to 1979, with Steve Martin as an accidental inventor and Bernadette Peters as his lady love;

"Fargo", with Frances McDormand as a pregnant cop out in the wintry world of Minnesota, chasing murderers... one of the best roles she's ever had.

And, today, the last of the month's worth of Showtime, I chose "The Go-Go's", a brand new documentary of that rockin' all-girl band!

I had so enjoyed their music in the 1980's!

This film is designed to attract the attention of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, in a bid to get this group into that museum.

Sure hope it works!

So, there you have it!

Half the movies I watched were new to me, half were not, as it turned out.

I wonder if that will be the case with the next reward film festival?

Comcast is giving me access to MGM+ next, though I haven't started that yet.

Looking forward to more free movies during those summer reruns!

(smile!)