Saw a Takashi Miike picture called The Great Yokai War. "Yokai" is a Japanese term for monsters from folklore, as opposed to the more familiar kaiju. It's a kids' picture, about a young boy from Tokyo sent out to live in the countryside with his older sister and his intermittently senile grandfather. When a vengeful spirit appears, the boy gets caught up in a war between warring groups of yokai and must find his courage to become the "Kirin Rider", the hero who will set everything to rights. It's not a bad picture - nothing deep, but an amusing story. Some of the yokai are really trippy, Japanese folklore can get pretty "out there", apparently.
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I'll go with Kathy, I'll go with friends, I'll go alone.
When I was a kid, I used to always go to the movies with my friends, one set or another, but always boys. Then when I got older, I started to feel uncomfortable doing that and resoloved to only go to the movies with girls. Eventually, I got to the point where I felt overcame the stigma of going to the movies by myself, and after that I became comfortable seeing movies with my male friends again. Then I got married and didn't concern myself with $#!t like that no more.
Having a crowd around, hearing people gasp or laugh or otherwise respond to the film, is one of my favorite things.
Ideally, yes. But what turns me most against "the hell of other people" is that I cannot remember the last time I went to a theater and someone didn't break out his or her cell phone while the movie was playing. I did have one decent communal movie-going experience in recent years, and that was at a Doctor Who thing. Before the lights went down, people were milling about an talking, some were even dressed in costume. But then when the episode started they shut the hell up and watched it!
I really miss the theaters that had older movies, usually double features. In the early 70s I would go to the old “movie palaces” on Broadway in downtown L.A., walking distance from our office location at the time. That’s where I first saw The Manchurian Candidate (1962), supposedly pulled out of circulation after JFK’s assassination. Later that decade I saw a lot of these programs at the Rialto in South Pasadena, another old “palace.” They and their sister theater the Nuart in West Los Angeles used to print and mail a monthly ad showing their schedule, including miniature posters. Each double bill would run for two or three days. It was around until sometime in the 90s, because I know that I took Gayle there after we were married. I caught up with a ton of great movies there.
JD DeLuzio > Richard WillisFebruary 15, 2025 at 8:34am
I saw Casablanca for the first time in my teens. A college film club was running it on a large-ish screen. Being part of an audience reaction, which included new viewers and people who'd already watched the film 100 times, was a memorable way to be introduced to it.
On an unrelated note, we're on page 666 of this discussion.
High Noon(1952). My first (sorta) exposure to this movie was the satire in the early Mad comic. It must have been 1977, its 25th anniversary, when it was rereleased on the big screen that I first actually saw it. It immediately became one of my favorite movies. It broke all of the conventions at the time. The hero wears a black hat; the main villain, a white hat. Every shot has a clock or a pocket watch in it.
Three gang members have come to town and are waiting for the Noon train. Their leader, Frank Miller (no relation) has been inexplicably freed from prison. Every character we meet, except the A-hole deputy (Lloyd Bridges!), subtly adds to the growing tension. It is implied that they took anything and raped any women they wanted. Anyone who stood up to them, like the former deputy played by Lon Chaney Jr, would suffer or die. Chaney’s character is now a drunk with a knife scar crossing where an eye used to be. When the train finally arrives (exactly matching run time to real time), we expect Frank Miller to look like a fiend for Hell. He’s actually neatly dressed and better looking than the hero.
If you’ve seen it, you need to rewatch it. If you’ve never seen it you should make a point of it, even if you don’t like westerns. You won’t regret it.
I saw a goodly number of films on a "big screen" for free in college sponsored by the MSA (Missouri Students' Association). After college, I would often go see a revival film at the Tivoli Theater in University City's Delmar "Loop" (St. Louis). [Digression: This is just a couple of doors down from Vintage Vinyl, my favorite used record store, and from Blueberry Hill, often frequented by Chuck Berry. Across the street is Subterranean Books, and The Loop is within easy walking distance of a Metrolink station (St. Louis' lightrail). Finally, Tracy's and my "zeroeth date" was at the Tivoli and we ate at Fitz's Root Beer.] Among the vintage movies I saw there were Gone With the Wind and Dr. Strangelove (the latter for the first time).
Tivoli Theatre
THE TIVOLI IS SHOWING MOVIES AGAIN!!!! One Family Church is happy to announce that we are launching a brand new community-wide initiative that will p…
Speaking of double features, I remember the first double feature I ever saw (at St. Andrews Cinema). I was very young, and my grandmother told me we were going to see two movies. I had never heard of a "double feature" and naturally assumed we were going to see the other one at The Strand downtown. My grandmother and I didn't sit together because I liked to sit way down front, which gave her a headache. When the credits began to roll after the first movie, I exited through a side door, fully expecting to see her emerge from a door farther up. When she didn't, I tried to get back in, but there was no handle on the outside of the door! Luckily, she had seen me leave the theater and immediately found an usher to escort her out the front of the theater and around to the side to retrieve me.
Some noteable double-features I have seen in my life: Monty Python & the Holy Grail and Bugs Bunny Superstar; The Missouri Breaks (Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson) with the theatrical revival of the Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers; The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers; Billy Jack and The Trial of Billy Jack. Ah, those were the days!
JD DeLuzio > Jeff of Earth-JFebruary 15, 2025 at 6:13pm
I've likely mentioned this before: the furthest-away of the nearby drive-in theatres does summer double features of a recent movie combined with a drive-in classic from the past.
I also made it to a notorious drive-in in Toronto before it closed for good and watched a memorable double feature. Story here for the morbidly curious. Atomic Blonde and The Dark Tower at Polson Pier, frequently (in the past) called "Poison Pier."
August 6, 2017 (personal) by JD - Everything2.com
The Docks Driving Range and Drive-In, nestled in the Port Lands, the last seedy waterfront section of Toronto, between the gentrified Harbourfront an…
The last time I went to a drive-in was for the (let's see if I can get this right) "Multiple Madness Midnight Marathon" dusk-to-dawn show one Hallowe'en night when I was a junior or senior in high school. There was a whole carload of us, but only Debbie S. and I managed to stay awake for all six movies. I used to be able to tell you what they all were, in order, but now I can only rmember some of them. My Bloody Valentine was one, I know. and there was one, [Something] High, about multiple grisly and unique murders at a high school. One I remember (because of its odd title) was The Rats Are Coming, The Werewolves Are Here.
My first (sorta) exposure to [High Noon] was the satire in the early Mad comic.
We watched Godzilla Minus One all the way through tonight, after a false start the other night. Great movie. It's hard to believe they did so much with so little money, but of course, the reason it's good isn't the F/X. What made it different from previous Japanese (and American) efforts were characters we actually cared about. We stopped the other night after the lead female character was killed, and spent the next couple of days debating whether she was really dead or not. That's so not normal for a Godzilla movie, and a sign of our investment.
I should also mention the direction. When Godzilla passed under a ship underwater, we went "ooh!" And when he erupted under one, the camera swooped over his shoulder as he turned during the attack, and it was breathtaking. And so forth. Such great work.
I also watched the 2019 Midway. (I say "I," because my wife bailed early on.) Which until this week I didn't know existed
I watched the original back in the day, of course. It was one of those Towering Inferno/Longest Day kind of aging-stars spectaculars that were so popular in the '70s. Let's see: Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Hal Holbrook, Robert Mitchum, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner ... yeah, all these guys were too old for the movie, unless they were playing Nimitz or FDR. It was cool seeing Toshiro Mifune as Yamamoto, though! (Because it's always cool to see Toshiro Mifune.)
The new one tried to give a little love to the women on the home front, and even to the Japanese a little. My wife says that made it controversial in 2019. I don't remember any of that, and I have to say after watching the movie that I didn't see much to get bent out of shape about. There were a couple of scenes of wives looking concerned, and a couple of scenes showing Japanese military people being dedicated to being Japanese military people. Shrug.
Except for the end, where the film was dedicated to the U.S. and Japanese men and women who died at Midway. Um, no. No Japanese women died at Midway, because there were no Japanese women there. The battle was between an aggressive Japanese military trying to conquer other nations' territory by brute (and brutal) force, in this case Midway Island, a U.S. military base. I'm sure not gonna boo-hoo if any Japanese soldiers or sailors died, as they had no business invading.
The movie also stretches back to the events that brought the two fleets to collision at Midway, which most war movies don't, which I applaud. This includes the attack on Pearl Harbor which, again, is inexcusable. Every time I've read about Pearl Harbor I've been brought to tears, and this movie's F/X brought it home even more. It was a slaughter, where almost 3,000 Americans died more or less in their pyjamas. The only complaint I have is that movies like this make Pearl Harbor look like more of a fight than it was, just to make Americans look heroic. (The guy who played Bjorn Ironside in Vikings grabs a 20mm gun and shoots back at the Japanese planes from the deck of the USS Arizona, shooting down at least one plane. Um ... unlikely.) Because we don't want to see Americans slaughtered in their pyjamas. But that's what happened. Only 129 Japanese died in that attack, and I'd guess as many died by accident as U.S. resistance. And while the U.S. lost 188 airplanes, the Japanese lost 29. And, of course, the U.S. lost eight battleships (four were later repaired), while the Japanese lost 0.
Because it was a sneak attack, not a battle. And we were just lucky Japanese Admiral Nagumo didn't take out the fuel tanks like he was ordered to (he preferred expending his resources killing civilians) and that the flattops happened to be out on maneuvers instead of in port.
I had some trouble with the dialogue in this movie, especially that ascribed to Admiral Nimitz. Most of it was so bad that Woody Harrelson couldn't save it, and most of the time he didn't look like he was trying. Maybe that awful wig was making his brain too hot. And I struggled with Ed Skrein (born: London) and his Brooklyn (?) accent. Also, some of the "inspiration" speeches wouldn't inspire a squirrel to eat a nut.
But for all that there were a lot pluses:
I appreciate that movies like this can teach people who don't read history a lot stuff they kinda ought to know.
I also appreciate when these movies strive toward accuracy (and of course complain when they don't).
Who knew a movie could actually make me appreciate the acting skills of a Jonas Brother?
The F/X! Jeepers, Midway really put me in the cockpit in some scary scenes. Is that what the "Greatest Generation" faced? No wonder the adult men in my childhood didn't want to talk about the war.
I appreciate any and all Yamamoto scenes, anywhere, any time. That was one scary-smart, interesting and dangerous dude.
I appreciate that they managed to find actors who looked like Americans of the time: skinny. We are a much fatter nation now, and some historical movies yank me right out of the story when the actors (who are sometimes in historical famines) are about 30 pounds heavier than they ought to be.
Gee, I sure have talked a lot about a movie that doesn't warrant it. But history -- especially American history -- is something I'm invested in, and want to see handled accurately. Midway does well enough at that.
Now where are we gonna get a Battle of the Coral Sea movie? Oh right: Never. We didn't really win that one. Except for strategically, saving Australia and all. I'll settle for a Battle of Leyte Gulf movie. We probably haven't had one, because it's too unbelievable.
Replies
I'll go with Kathy, I'll go with friends, I'll go alone.
When I was a kid, I used to always go to the movies with my friends, one set or another, but always boys. Then when I got older, I started to feel uncomfortable doing that and resoloved to only go to the movies with girls. Eventually, I got to the point where I felt overcame the stigma of going to the movies by myself, and after that I became comfortable seeing movies with my male friends again. Then I got married and didn't concern myself with $#!t like that no more.
Having a crowd around, hearing people gasp or laugh or otherwise respond to the film, is one of my favorite things.
Ideally, yes. But what turns me most against "the hell of other people" is that I cannot remember the last time I went to a theater and someone didn't break out his or her cell phone while the movie was playing. I did have one decent communal movie-going experience in recent years, and that was at a Doctor Who thing. Before the lights went down, people were milling about an talking, some were even dressed in costume. But then when the episode started they shut the hell up and watched it!
I really miss the theaters that had older movies, usually double features. In the early 70s I would go to the old “movie palaces” on Broadway in downtown L.A., walking distance from our office location at the time. That’s where I first saw The Manchurian Candidate (1962), supposedly pulled out of circulation after JFK’s assassination. Later that decade I saw a lot of these programs at the Rialto in South Pasadena, another old “palace.” They and their sister theater the Nuart in West Los Angeles used to print and mail a monthly ad showing their schedule, including miniature posters. Each double bill would run for two or three days. It was around until sometime in the 90s, because I know that I took Gayle there after we were married. I caught up with a ton of great movies there.
I saw Casablanca for the first time in my teens. A college film club was running it on a large-ish screen. Being part of an audience reaction, which included new viewers and people who'd already watched the film 100 times, was a memorable way to be introduced to it.
On an unrelated note, we're on page 666 of this discussion.
High Noon (1952). My first (sorta) exposure to this movie was the satire in the early Mad comic. It must have been 1977, its 25th anniversary, when it was rereleased on the big screen that I first actually saw it. It immediately became one of my favorite movies. It broke all of the conventions at the time. The hero wears a black hat; the main villain, a white hat. Every shot has a clock or a pocket watch in it.
Three gang members have come to town and are waiting for the Noon train. Their leader, Frank Miller (no relation) has been inexplicably freed from prison. Every character we meet, except the A-hole deputy (Lloyd Bridges!), subtly adds to the growing tension. It is implied that they took anything and raped any women they wanted. Anyone who stood up to them, like the former deputy played by Lon Chaney Jr, would suffer or die. Chaney’s character is now a drunk with a knife scar crossing where an eye used to be. When the train finally arrives (exactly matching run time to real time), we expect Frank Miller to look like a fiend for Hell. He’s actually neatly dressed and better looking than the hero.
If you’ve seen it, you need to rewatch it. If you’ve never seen it you should make a point of it, even if you don’t like westerns. You won’t regret it.
High Noon - Wikipedia
I saw a goodly number of films on a "big screen" for free in college sponsored by the MSA (Missouri Students' Association). After college, I would often go see a revival film at the Tivoli Theater in University City's Delmar "Loop" (St. Louis). [Digression: This is just a couple of doors down from Vintage Vinyl, my favorite used record store, and from Blueberry Hill, often frequented by Chuck Berry. Across the street is Subterranean Books, and The Loop is within easy walking distance of a Metrolink station (St. Louis' lightrail). Finally, Tracy's and my "zeroeth date" was at the Tivoli and we ate at Fitz's Root Beer.] Among the vintage movies I saw there were Gone With the Wind and Dr. Strangelove (the latter for the first time).
Speaking of double features, I remember the first double feature I ever saw (at St. Andrews Cinema). I was very young, and my grandmother told me we were going to see two movies. I had never heard of a "double feature" and naturally assumed we were going to see the other one at The Strand downtown. My grandmother and I didn't sit together because I liked to sit way down front, which gave her a headache. When the credits began to roll after the first movie, I exited through a side door, fully expecting to see her emerge from a door farther up. When she didn't, I tried to get back in, but there was no handle on the outside of the door! Luckily, she had seen me leave the theater and immediately found an usher to escort her out the front of the theater and around to the side to retrieve me.
Some noteable double-features I have seen in my life: Monty Python & the Holy Grail and Bugs Bunny Superstar; The Missouri Breaks (Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson) with the theatrical revival of the Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers; The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers; Billy Jack and The Trial of Billy Jack. Ah, those were the days!
I've likely mentioned this before: the furthest-away of the nearby drive-in theatres does summer double features of a recent movie combined with a drive-in classic from the past.
I also made it to a notorious drive-in in Toronto before it closed for good and watched a memorable double feature. Story here for the morbidly curious. Atomic Blonde and The Dark Tower at Polson Pier, frequently (in the past) called "Poison Pier."
The last time I went to a drive-in was for the (let's see if I can get this right) "Multiple Madness Midnight Marathon" dusk-to-dawn show one Hallowe'en night when I was a junior or senior in high school. There was a whole carload of us, but only Debbie S. and I managed to stay awake for all six movies. I used to be able to tell you what they all were, in order, but now I can only rmember some of them. My Bloody Valentine was one, I know. and there was one, [Something] High, about multiple grisly and unique murders at a high school. One I remember (because of its odd title) was The Rats Are Coming, The Werewolves Are Here.
My first (sorta) exposure to [High Noon] was the satire in the early Mad comic.
Ha! Mine, too! (A '70s reprint.)
We watched Godzilla Minus One all the way through tonight, after a false start the other night. Great movie. It's hard to believe they did so much with so little money, but of course, the reason it's good isn't the F/X. What made it different from previous Japanese (and American) efforts were characters we actually cared about. We stopped the other night after the lead female character was killed, and spent the next couple of days debating whether she was really dead or not. That's so not normal for a Godzilla movie, and a sign of our investment.
I should also mention the direction. When Godzilla passed under a ship underwater, we went "ooh!" And when he erupted under one, the camera swooped over his shoulder as he turned during the attack, and it was breathtaking. And so forth. Such great work.
I also watched the 2019 Midway. (I say "I," because my wife bailed early on.) Which until this week I didn't know existed
I watched the original back in the day, of course. It was one of those Towering Inferno/Longest Day kind of aging-stars spectaculars that were so popular in the '70s. Let's see: Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Hal Holbrook, Robert Mitchum, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner ... yeah, all these guys were too old for the movie, unless they were playing Nimitz or FDR. It was cool seeing Toshiro Mifune as Yamamoto, though! (Because it's always cool to see Toshiro Mifune.)
The new one tried to give a little love to the women on the home front, and even to the Japanese a little. My wife says that made it controversial in 2019. I don't remember any of that, and I have to say after watching the movie that I didn't see much to get bent out of shape about. There were a couple of scenes of wives looking concerned, and a couple of scenes showing Japanese military people being dedicated to being Japanese military people. Shrug.
Except for the end, where the film was dedicated to the U.S. and Japanese men and women who died at Midway. Um, no. No Japanese women died at Midway, because there were no Japanese women there. The battle was between an aggressive Japanese military trying to conquer other nations' territory by brute (and brutal) force, in this case Midway Island, a U.S. military base. I'm sure not gonna boo-hoo if any Japanese soldiers or sailors died, as they had no business invading.
The movie also stretches back to the events that brought the two fleets to collision at Midway, which most war movies don't, which I applaud. This includes the attack on Pearl Harbor which, again, is inexcusable. Every time I've read about Pearl Harbor I've been brought to tears, and this movie's F/X brought it home even more. It was a slaughter, where almost 3,000 Americans died more or less in their pyjamas. The only complaint I have is that movies like this make Pearl Harbor look like more of a fight than it was, just to make Americans look heroic. (The guy who played Bjorn Ironside in Vikings grabs a 20mm gun and shoots back at the Japanese planes from the deck of the USS Arizona, shooting down at least one plane. Um ... unlikely.) Because we don't want to see Americans slaughtered in their pyjamas. But that's what happened. Only 129 Japanese died in that attack, and I'd guess as many died by accident as U.S. resistance. And while the U.S. lost 188 airplanes, the Japanese lost 29. And, of course, the U.S. lost eight battleships (four were later repaired), while the Japanese lost 0.
Because it was a sneak attack, not a battle. And we were just lucky Japanese Admiral Nagumo didn't take out the fuel tanks like he was ordered to (he preferred expending his resources killing civilians) and that the flattops happened to be out on maneuvers instead of in port.
I had some trouble with the dialogue in this movie, especially that ascribed to Admiral Nimitz. Most of it was so bad that Woody Harrelson couldn't save it, and most of the time he didn't look like he was trying. Maybe that awful wig was making his brain too hot. And I struggled with Ed Skrein (born: London) and his Brooklyn (?) accent. Also, some of the "inspiration" speeches wouldn't inspire a squirrel to eat a nut.
But for all that there were a lot pluses:
Gee, I sure have talked a lot about a movie that doesn't warrant it. But history -- especially American history -- is something I'm invested in, and want to see handled accurately. Midway does well enough at that.
Now where are we gonna get a Battle of the Coral Sea movie? Oh right: Never. We didn't really win that one. Except for strategically, saving Australia and all. I'll settle for a Battle of Leyte Gulf movie. We probably haven't had one, because it's too unbelievable.
I'll settle for a Battle of Leyte Gulf movie. We probably haven't had one, because it's too unbelievable.
Put me in the camp that says ADM Halsey screwed up big time here. ADM Kinkaid was the real hero of this battle.
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