OFF THE SHELF

Welcome back to Part Two of Off The Shelf: Vintage Masterpieces – the last “real” issue of Off The Shelf. Three more “clean-up” issues to throw out in the wake of this one and we’re done. A monstrosity and a half I will admit. Who’d have thunk I’d have got to the end eh? Not me, I’ll tell you that. With this issue I want to try and right the wrong I committed with Part One (and keep it a lot shorter at the same time), in so much that I lost sight of concentrating on just highlighting the scenes that stand out and make these chosen titles the Vintage Masterpieces that I consider them to be. So I’m going to try – “try” being the operative word – and lay my opinions aside on ‘why’ they’re considered so highly and just let the chosen scenes speak for themselves. Hopefully!

To understand what I mean by the term “Vintage Masterpiece” and to see all the titles from The African Queen through to Mississippi Burning then check out Part One, which you can find by clicking right here. In the meantime, let’s get on with concluding this subsection once and for all with all things from Monty Python’s Life of Brian right the way through to Vision Quest. Ladies, Gentlemen and Grundy, I give you Off The Shelf Issue # 37 – Vintage Masterpieces: Part Deux…

Monty Python’s Life of Brian
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… you see the ‘stoning sequence’. “Okay… Who threw that?” Hysterical stuff! Brilliantly formed and executed with more laugh-out loud moments in that one four or five minute sequence then in most ninety odd minute modern comedies. One of the best comedies of all time? Undoubtedly! One of the best British movies ever made? Unarguably! The best Python film that they made? In my opinion yes!

The Naked Gun
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Leslie Nielson and Priscilla Presley do the dating montage. The full-sized body condoms, the slow-motion run along the beach with the clothes-lining of the passer-by, and so on and so forth. Brilliant spoof filmmaking! The gag ratio is as strong and equal as Airplane! (the daddy of these types of movies) and, whilst we can forgive the first sequel, the less said about that god-awful third, and Nielson’s career since this film, the better!

National Lampoon’s Animal House
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… they sneak the horse in to the Dean’s office! That bit gets me every time in a film awash with stand-out comedic moments. The minute the horse keels over I piss myself laughing. It’s one of my favourite moments within the comedy genre. I must have seen it over a hundred times but it gets me every time.

The Night of the Hunter
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Robert Mitchum’s deranged ‘preacher’ flexes his knuckles and explains the parable behind his tattoos of “love” and “hate” on each hand. Spike Lee paid homage to it in Do The Right Thing but this is the moment in which you revel in the brilliance of the late Mitchum, one of the silver screen’s most accomplished but under-valued of actors. It’s a film of real beauty and depth and that Charles Laughton never made another film, let alone another film like it, is a criminal shame!

Night of the Living Dead
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… you experience that opening sequence. One of the most iconic in the horror genre. The rest of the film is flawless, low-budget horror that stands the test of time but that opening still kicks ass all these decades on. “They’re coming to get you Barbara!” Indeed!

A Nightmare on Elm Street
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… I forget the actress’ name and the character she plays but… you know Heather What’s-her-face’s best friend in the film, the one with the blonde hair, the bit of a slut with the sleazy biker boyfriend? Yes, her! Well, that moment when the iconic Freddy Kruger (the genre’s best iconic invention, before the sequels fucked him over!) chases her through the boiler room and into the street, through alleyways and the like is, for me, one of the best scary moments within the horror genre. I fuckin’ love that scene. You tend to forget just how great this film is as a standalone horror movie!

The Odd Couple
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… I’m going to have to paraphrase a little here but I love the stand-out argument between Felix (the sublime Jack Lemmon) and Oscar (Walter Matthau) where Oscar chastises Felix about his fastidiousness and obsessive cleanliness, complaining about the little notes he keeps leaving around the apartment. “It took me weeks to work out that when you signed them F.U, it stood for Felix Unger!” One of my all time favourite comedy screenplays and a genuinely display of great chemistry between the two lead actors!

An Officer And A Gentleman
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Louis Gossett Jnr squares off against Richard Gere in this really bizarre, rather naff kung-fu bout and then screams at him “Why don’t you just quit?” and Gere screams back “Coz I got no where else to go!” This flick is too easily dismissed as a “chick flick” and deserves a lot more respect then it gets. I think it’s a genuinely brilliant drama with a great story and a great performance by Gere. And, no, I’m not a homosexual or secretly a woman!

The Omen
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Gregory Peck and David Warner (pre iconic decapitation) go to that graveyard and the dogs attack them. There’s many, many moments throughout Richard Donner’s original horror shocker that has passed into the lexicon of ‘all time greats’ in the horror genre but, for me personally, this scene says everything that needs to be said about the sheer quality of the film – Donner’s direction is tight and effective, Jerry Goldsmith’s score is unnerving and original and the performances are perfectly judged to the scene. The naff sequels and dodgy remake may have diminished this film but it deserves re-visited and given true respect!

On The Waterfront
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… everyone talks about that lauded scene between Brando and Steiger in the back of the taxi cab. The film for me works better as an enormously effective whole then in highlighting that one particular scene. If you want to highlight something take the finale when Brando and Lee J. Cobb square off against one another on the docks. A brilliant piece of dramatic cinema. This is a film of the “old school” variety that stands up fantastically well to this day!

Paths of Glory
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… you indulge yourself in Kirk Douglas’ performance; one of the best from that era. I went to an anti-war demonstration a year or so ago and whilst the speaker was on stage, it was this film that he had played on silent behind him and I found it to be incredibly powerful stuff. Everything that needs to be said about the futility of war, the horrible disregard for human life and the hypocrisy of military hierarchy in terms of our current ‘War on Terror’ was said by Stanley Kubrick decades ago with this film!

Patton
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… you give yourself over to George C. Scott’s performance. Between this and the aforementioned Paths of Glory, here’s two of the greatest acting jobs within the genre of ‘war movies’. I love the scope, design and epic decadence of this film and it’s one whose lengthy running time seems to just completely zip by whenever I watch it. Kudos to Francis Ford Coppola for his script-work. Perhaps he should be concentrating less on getting back into the directing game (I found Youth Without Youth to be an absolute mess!) and spending his later years as a scribe for hire?

Planet of the Apes
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… yeah, yeah, that ending is absolutely fantastic! And it still stands up as brilliantly today as it did back in the sixties. For me one of the most pitch-perfect pieces of sci-fi fantasy cinema from that era comes in the opening act when Chuck Heston and his crew crash land on the planet (of the apes no less!) and get hunted by humanised apes on horseback. I get all kidified and giddy when I watch that and on my new HD TV, upgraded from DVD.

The Poseidon Adventure
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… that ‘rogue’ wave hits and you become instantly immersed (pardon the pun) in the greatest disaster movie of all time. Fantastically staged with some (still) awe inspiring set pieces and superbly cast with stellar turns from Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters whose on-screen death still brings a very slight lump to my throat!

Predator
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… the sheer glossy, perfectly staged excess of one of the best blockbusters of the 1980s takes you into it’s final act and ‘Ahh-Noold’ strips himself down and goes all primitively toe-to-toe with the “ugly motherfucker” from another planet. All that has gone before it is superbly choregraphed explosive, gory gratuity but in the third act we get a blend of impressive special effectives with some great stunt set-pieces. Forget the mediocre, flabby sequel and that god-awful spin-off franchise and just remember this great piece of cinema for the standalone brilliance that it is!

Prince of the City
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… you experience not only one of the best police movies of all time but one of the best ‘lost’ movies of the 80s to boot. This is the second chapter in Sidney Lumet’s unofficial “dirty cop” trilogy, with the awesome Serpico preceding it and the hugely under-rated Q+A coming later! Treat Williams is extremely good in this which makes his twilight years (as the direct-to-DVD action hero if Tom Berenger isn’t available) so immensely disappointing!

The Princess Bride
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… from start to finish – yes, even the Fred Savage and Peter Falk bookends – you get to revel in, I kid you not, one of the greatest movies of all time. It’s certainly in my all time personal top one hundred favourite films. There’s not an “off” moment in the entire film but my personal favourite moments are a) the cliff-top swordfight between Wesley and Innigo Montaya and b) that adrenaline pumping moment when Montaya finally comes face to face with “The Sixth Fingered Man” and delivers his all important speech. I just love this film so, so much.

Psycho
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… put the shower scene aside (as brilliant as it is) and that twist ending (as effective as it is) and revel in that still powerful, still sublimely staged moment when Martin Balsam’s private investigator heads up the stairs of Norman Bates’ home, the tension is unbearable, the music is tearing at our nerves and Hitchcock takes us to an aerial shot (which shouldn’t work half as well as it does!) for the moment when “Mrs Bates” tears out of the room and slashes the investigator’s face open and sends him tumbling down the stairs.

Raging Bull
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… oh come on now? There’s not a word that needs to be written about this film. Definitely in the top five movies made by Martin Scorsese. Definitely in the top three of movies from the 80s and unarguably one of the greatest films ever made. I dare anyone to disagree with me that this isn’t a film that works out to be the very definition of a “vintage masterpiece”.

Rear Window
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Grace Kelly goes into Raymond Burr’s house to look for clues as to whether he is a murderer or not whilst a wheelchair bound James Stewart watches from across the block on his telescope. Hitchcock once said the definition of action in an action movie is having a man walk into a restaurant with a bomb in his suitcase, putting it under the table and then the bomb goes off. He says the definition of tension in a thriller is for the same scene to take place but we sit and wait for the bomb to go off. Rear Window, from the moment Act One is out of the way, is the perfect embodiment of Hitchcock effectively portraying tension!

Say Anything
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) and Diane Court (IIone Skye) lose their virginity in the back of her car and she is coerced into breaking up with him soon afterwards by her father, by giving him a pen, he breaks our hearts by standing out in the rain, distraught and on the phone to his sister, muttering “I gave her my heart! She gave me a pen!” The film then rises into one of the most heart-warming, feel-good moments – for me – in cinema when Lloyd decides to not give up without a fight and goes and stands outside of her bedroom window in the early hours of the morning, ghetto-blaster (this is the 80s, remember!) held high above his head, blaring out the song they lost their virginity to (and what a song too – Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes). A million girls wipe tears from their eyes and a million boys nod warmly whilst the hairs stand up on the back of their necks!

Scarface
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… oh man, what can I choose to highlight the epic brilliance of Brian De Palma’s excessive, garish masterpiece? It’d be too easy to go with the whole “Say Hello To My Little Friend” finale. I think I’m going to go with that brash, loud set-piece in the night-club when Frank Lopez (the always excellent Robert Loggia) wants the getting-to-big-for-his-boots Tony (Al Pacino) ‘put down’ in an assassination attempt, only for Tony to survive and seek revenge. I just love the way it’s shot and the little elements in the scene that show us just how callous Tony Montana is (he uses anybody and everybody as a shield from the bullets). A brilliant, brilliant film!

Scum
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… a young Ray Winstone finally breaks from his subdued stand-offish position, marches into the bathroom with a pool-ball in his sock and promptly smashes the face in of a gang rival in Alan Parker’s seminal, masterful study of young offenders within a borstal-like prison system and the torture and violence they must suffer on a day to day basis. I still struggle enormously with the suicide sequence but I cannot argue against the shear power of this film as a whole. “I’m The Daddy Now!” Indeed!

Serpico
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Frank Serpico (Al Pacino) takes a bullet to the face thanks to the treachery of his colleagues, survives, goes before the grand jury to testify on corruption and Sidney Lumet brings us out of the film feeling as if one man’s live and integrity has been fucked with for nothing and you leave the film feeling thankful that people like Frank Serpico exist but bitter, truly bitter, that the world isn’t made up of more people like him. This is the first (and best) entry in Lumet’s “dirty cop” trilogy. It’s also one of the greatest films made in the greatest decade of cinema!

Shampoo
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… sex-obsessed hairdresser Warren Beatty is fucking Julie Christie on the bathroom floor and Jack Warden, playing her millionaire “sugar daddy”, is edging closer to discovering her infidelity. Tables get turned when Warden opens the door to discover his half naked missus pretending to get her haircut. Presuming she’s safe because Beatty, he assumes, is a “fruit” he walks away. Farcical sex comedy which perfectly captures the era it was released within. Under-appreciated and pretty much forgotten and disregarded by modern audiences but well worth taking a look at and re-evaluating!

Some Like It Hot
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… from start to finish this is one of the best comedy movies that has ever been made and a fantastic stand-out movie from Billy Wilder’s filmography, despite his CV being littered with masterpiece after masterpiece. Expertly written, directed and performed (yes, even Marilyn Monroe!) this is a timeless classic that every single self-respecting movie buff should have in their collection.

Scorcerer
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… that ending! It’s a simple pull-out that could fly over many a viewer’s head if they’ve not paid attention to that lethargically paced first act. The late great Roy Schneider’s character has escaped to South America with a price on his head and has risked his life transporting dangerous chemicals across the jungle in unstable trucks in William Friedkin’s masterful, under-valued and all round fantastic remake of the iconic Wages of Fear. So it stings completely to see him succeed and celebrate in a rundown bar, only to have the henchmen out for his life arrive outside and slowly walk into said bar. The guy’s a goner after having endured so much trauma. This is criminally unavailable these days, especially outside the US, but if you can get your hands on a copy I urge you to. I love this film and I love the controversial musical score too. A great, great film!

Southern Comfort
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… we arrive at that tension soaked, uncomfortable, thrilling cat and mouse ending. In this “poor man’s Deliverance” (this is actually the superior movie and, considering how fucking brilliant Deliverance is, you should really consider checking this out if you haven’t seen it already!) a bunch of part-time soldiers go on a training mission in the Cajun wilderness and arrogantly piss off a bunch of locals, who in turn hunt them down one by one. Powers Boothe and Kevin Carradine are the last men left, stuck in local village during a festivity where it becomes apparent the hunt has only just intensified. The musical score turns the whole set piece up a notch too. Awesome stuff!

Spartacus
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… for all the gladiatorial set pieces and fantastic battle sequences, a man knows he’s a man come the iconic “I’m Spartacus!” sequence if the hairs stand up on the back of his neck and his testosterone levels rise a little bit. I always imagine myself in that scene and whether or not I’d be the total cunt that the movie desperately needs, who’d stand up and scream “No! He’s Spartacus!” then point at Kirk Douglas whilst sticking my tongue out at him! LOL.

Stage Fright
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… well, truth be told, I cannot really comment yet as it has yet to be watched by me! It came in the same boxset as a whole host of classic Hitchcock movies – like North By Northwest and Strangers on a Train, but I haven’t got round to it and just made an assumption about it based on its pedigree. It could eventually end up getting moved!

Stand By Me
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… the film’s final moments break my heart. Seriously. I adore this film (Corey Feldman in ‘good performance’ shocker eh?) and the pay-off is all in those moments towards the end when the young boys (Will Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’ Donnell) disband from their ‘journey’ and Richard Dreyfuss’ beautiful voice-over tells us the fates of each character. That’s the emotional highlight. If you want to be less deep then the pie-eating anecdote and the train bridge sprint are both worth mentioning. On the subject of things worth mentioning, seriousl, what the hell happened to Rob Reiner? Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, The Princess Bride, Stand By Me, A Few Good Men… classics, classics, classics – each and every one of them. Come on Rob, find your way back buddy! We miss you!

The Sting
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… the “sting” itself pays off in the third and final act. Perfectly orchestrated, structured brilliantly and sublimely played by all involved. It’s a great throwaway film of the 70s with a performance from Paul Newman that shows just why he is truly one of the best actors in the business. Robert Redford might have had great chemistry with him, there’s no disputing that, but he was and is the lesser actor compared to him.

Strangers on a Train
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… the plot is set in motion with our two main characters sat in the buffet cart and the very nature of the film (two strangers swapping targets and motives for murder so the crime becomes almost unsolvable) is put into action. The very fact that one of them is two shades shy of a fully established psychopath and the other is a naïve prat who doesn’t realise he is being suckered into a dangerous game. It’s a fantastically established thriller by Alfred Hitchcock, working from an awesome involving source novel by the same author who gave us the Tom Ripley books.

Straw Dogs
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… we come to the ending in all it’s full throttle, blood-thirsty, savage glory with Dustin Hoffman’s pacifist American having to defend his British farmhouse, his wife and a local simpleton from the angry, violent locals trying to break their way in to get their hands on the simpleton. Wall mounted bear-traps, pots of boiling oil and any and every household object become weapons of maximum damage in Sam Peckinpah’s controversial throwaway thriller – long banned on British soil because of the rape sequence which is, in my opinion, still an irresponsible piece of work by Peckinpah but what can you expert from a visual genius who was also a violent, drunken misogynist? Any piece of work – novel, art, cinema or music – that lends itself to portraying rape as something that can eventually be enjoyed is only worthy of being considered reprehensible. A blemish in an otherwise masterful piece of work. Where is the long-in-gestation Edward Norton remake?

A Streetcar Named Desire
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… well, truth be told, I cannot really comment yet as it has yet to be watched by me! I haven’t got round to it and just made an assumption about it based on its pedigree. It could eventually end up getting moved! Now would be a good time to find out who the hell is still reading this though eh? I’m figuring no one. Prove me wrong, use the comment area below to start your posts with “Ha Ha – I’m Still Reading Past The Half Way Mark!”

Stripes
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… for some they’ll champion that bizarrely entertaining but rather silly finale with all the characters getting stuck in an enemy country with a super weapon disguised as a camper van. For me I love the whole first act and still consider this to be definitely one of my most favourite comedies – Bill Murray is on top form as a two-bit loser who loses his job, girlfriend, car and home all on the same day and coaxes his gullible best friend (Harold Ramis) to join the army with him. I love the whole establishing of the story, the characters, all the one liners (“Are you or have you ever been a homosexual?” “No, but we’re willing to learn!”) and Elmer Bernstein’s fantastically catchy musical score (which is the ringtone on my phone for when my Dad calls!). And what a supporting cast eh? PJ Souls and Sean Young are sexy as hell, before the former got fat, old and wrinkly and the latter went mad, Warren Oates is brilliantly disgruntled and young versions of John Candy, John Larroquette and Judge Reinhold are brilliant too. PS the John Candy versus the female mud-wrestlers scene is still an absolute must-see!

Sunset Boulevard
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… well, I’ll leave it to the back of the DVD cover to say it all because it says it so well about the ageing movie star whose descent into madness attracts but ultimately destroys a young aspiring writer: “Billy Wilder’s orchestration of the bizarre tale is a true cinematic classic. From the unforgettable opening sequence through to the inevitable unfolding of tragic destiny, the film is the definitive statement on the dark and desperate side of Hollywood.”

The Sure Thing
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… The Hollywood Reporter called this movie “intelligent, fun, a bit devilish, delightful, frisky and perceptively funny”. I call it one of the best teen movies of all time. It still plays as brilliantly today as it did when it was released. Two years ago I volunteered at a centre for young offenders and I used to run a “movie night”. This was a film I showed that got an enormously positive reaction with a bunch of skin-headed teens laughing their arses off. It’s another film from the Rob Reiner “golden” era. It’s also another film with a fantastic early turn by John Cusack as he slowly shapes his archetypal teen misfit role, ready to blow it out of the park in Say Anything.

The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… let’s not beat around the bush, you all know how much I love this movie. I adore the performances, the musical score by David Shire (whose still working in the industry – he recently scored Zodiac!) and just the whole staging of the movie. I think Walter Matthau delivers one of the best performances of the decade as Lt. Garber, the transit chief trying to negotiate, ad-lib, cheat and con his way to victory against a master criminal (Robert Shaw) who is holding the passengers of Pelham 1:23 hostage. The TV movie remake with Edward James Olmos, Lorraine Bracco and Vincent D’Onfronio was admirable and the upcoming big screen reimagining with Denzel Washington and John Travolta, at the hands of Tony Scott, doesn’t have me too worried (although they should have adapted it into an Inside Man sequel). Nothing can diminish the brilliance of this film and that corker of an ending. “Bless You!”

Taxi Driver
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… like Raging Bull, I don’t need to write a single word to sell this movie to you or justify its place in this particular subsection. Winner of Best Picture at Cannes 1976 and nominated at the Academy Awards for Best Film, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, this is a film that – for me personally – has actually transcended past the point of being considered one of the pivotal movies of the 70s and has now become a piece of moving art! No remakes or sequels or reimaginings with Shia LaBeouf a la Disturbia/Rear Window please.

This is Spinal Tap
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… this is going to sound really, really stupid but in a movie chock full of comedy highlights – and I mean nearly every single second of the eighty minute running time has a laugh of some degree – my own personal favourite is the moment when filmmaker Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner – allegedly affectionately spoofing Martin Scorsese and his appearance in The Last Waltz) chats with Nigel Tufnel about what he would do if he wasn’t in the band and Tufnel goes off into some hysterically nonsensical role-play about being a shoe salesman. I love that scene. I love this film. It’s probably my absolute favourite comedy. I know I keep saying that about nearly every comedy entry in this subsection but at the top of the list will always be this film; the greatest comedy ever made!

3:10 to Yuma
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Glenn Ford’s vicious outlaw, Ben Wade, finally sits down in the quiet of a rundown hotel room with desperate rancher Dan Evans, played by Van Heflin, and the psychological machismo soaked mindgames begin with Wade trying to outsmart Evans and procure his escape, without having to hurt a man he has come to admire. Last year’s remake was a film of equal class and if it did nothing but encourage people like Kristina to check out the original then it was worthwhile having been made.

Thunderball
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… bad guys, good guys, underwater, fights, sharks, harpoons… Enough said! Goldfinger may have set the standard in what was expected of the big, glossy, brainless archetypal James Bond movie. Thunderball maintained it. This is a Bond movie of the type when it was a “joy” to experience them. The first two Brosnan attempts really captured the essence of the Goldfinger/Thunderball type of movies that were needed when making a Bond movie. The Daniel Craig era has stepped away from that and created its own standard that is equally impressive. But for the best in rainy Sunday afternoon excitement, you can’t get better!

To Live & Die in LA
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… I only need seven words: Car! Excessively high speeds! Wrong Direction! Motorway! There, done! You want more? Okay: Nerve-shredding, awesome, high-octane, edge of the seat, perfection and William Petersen. Will that do? Thought so! Another of the “lost” movies of the 80s. A cracking procedural movie and a “Fuck You” to anyone that says William Friedkin didn’t make a solid, classic movie within the 1980s!

Tootsie
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) finally reveals himself to a live TV audience and the audience is finally given the enormously satisfying comedic pay-off they deserve. Nominated for 10 Oscars but obviously walking away empty handed because the Academy don’t “do” comedy (although I’m pretty sure I’m wrong about this – I don’t have the access at the time of writing this to check facts but I’m pretty certain Jessica Lange rightly won Best Supporting Actress for her work here – although hers isn’t so much a “comedy turn”), this is the story of the aforementioned Dorsey, a struggling actor considered so difficult that he can’t get a job within the industry and decides to reinvent himself as a female actress called ‘Dorothy Michaels’, only to end up as the biggest acting sensation on TV. I rank this just behind the godly Spinal Tap in terms of favourite “comedy” movies, or probably third after Planes, Trains and Automobiles. It’s definitely my absolute favourite Dustin Hoffman performance!

Trading Places
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Eddie Murphy hits the screen. That opening introduction, begging on the street and getting rumbled would be a shock to modern movie fans as to just how raw, talented and hysterical Murphy could be. Trading Places is a funny, funny, funny film (hell, any flick with late great 80s icon Paul Gleeson getting butt fucked by a gorilla is worthy of such a label!) but Murphy’s involvement in it makes it even funnier! He’s fast, furious, reckless and you can understand why cinema audiences were agog at encountering him. Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby might have been funnier and more talented in “real life” but Eddie Murphy bettered them on the movie screen. As I say, modern cinemagoers who are under the age of say eighteen or nineteen or only know Murphy for his tragically inept work in the likes of Norbit, Daddy Day Care, Dr Dolittle or whatever would be genuinely amazed by his work here! Did I forget to mention that Jamie Lee Curtis gets her tits out?

Tremors
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… there’s no particular highlight to pay mention to. Although I do adore the moment when the “graboids” attack the actual town of Perfection (population 14!) and the townsfolk have to take to the roofs and general high-reaching sheds and water-towers. This is my absolute favourite B-movie of all time and the perfect example of the fact that sometimes throwaway B-movies can transcend their positions and become iconic, timeless pieces of classic cinema. Tremors is one such movie. Forget the sequels, prequels and this alleged TV show and indulge in one of the most perfectly judged monster movies the decade had ever seen!

Twelve Angry Men
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… man oh man, you don’t need me to highlight any particular scene in one of the best dramas ever made and most definitely any self-respecting actor’s visual guidebook on how to do stellar ensemble acting. It’s another fantastic piece of directorial work by Sidney Lumet, who infamously made the film on one set, in chronological order, like a theatre piece, deliberately with no air conditioning and with a film set that had moveable walls so he could slowly draw them in and increase the sense of claustrophobia. Then there’s the performances which, whilst led by the iconic and superb Henry Fonda, are universally sublime and equally worthy of acclaim; Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, E.G Marshall, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, John Fielder, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Joseph Sweeney, Gorge Voskovec and Robert Webber. William Friedkin directed a made-for-TV version with Jack Lemmon, James Gandolfini, Tony Danza, William Peteresen, Edward James Olmos, Hume Cronyn and George C. Scott amongst others. It was an admirable and somewhat impressive attempt but for true majesty check out the original!

The Untouchables
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… well, forget the over-rated turn by Sean Connery and all the monologues he spouts, my highlight for why this is a glorious must-see masterpiece in it’s fierce, over-blown depiction of prohibition-era gangsters and lawmen, is the set piece where the “untouchables” (Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia and Charles Martin Smith) head to Canada to stop a convey of trucks filled with contraband booze from entering on to US soil and there’s just something about Brian De Palma’s staging of this sequence and Enniio Morricone’s musical score, not to mention with just how fantastically well written it is by David Mamet (definitely my favourite screenwriter – see below!) that just turns this one moment into a hugely infectious piece of vintage popcorn cinema! A true great!

The Verdict
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… you look at the talent attached; one of my favourite actors (Paul Newman) is directed by one of my favourite directors (Sidney Lumet) in a script written for the screen by favourite screenwriter (David Mamet). What the hell is there not to adore? Newman is Frank Galvin, a down-and-out alcoholic who is struggling to keep it together as an attorney at law. When he stumbles across an open-and-shut medical malpractice case that no one thinks he can win, Galvin sees a one-last-shot-at-redemption so he refuses settlement and decides to take the case and the entire legal system to court. This is my absolute favourite performance by Paul Newman and he inspires you and breaks your heart in equal measure throughout the film and he’s supported by a cracking cast of character actors like James Mason, Jack Warden, Milo O’Shea and Charlotte Rampling. A superb piece of drama! If you’ve never seen this film but only heard in passing about Newman’s sublime performance then you have GOT to check it out!

Vertigo
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Leonard Maltin, the man who could find a reason to give Meet The Spartans five stars, finally gets it bloody well right when he describes Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal film as “a genuinely great motion picture that demands multiple viewings” This is one of cinema’s most chilling yet strangely romantic pieces and some fantastic scenery shots of the always beautiful San Francisco landmarks and city streets. James Stewart is absolutely stellar in the lead role and Kim Novak isn’t particularly strong but she’s nowhere near as bad as Tippi Heddren.

The Wages of Fear
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… you experience the founding father of high octane action cinema as we know it. This is the full 141 minute indisputable masterful story of a group of disparaged men in South America, brought together to drive an urgent consignment of highly unstable and explosive nitro-glycerine across perilous jungle terrain. One wrong move or one bump in the road would spell disaster but with each man vying to be the first to the scene of an out-of-control fire at an oil field, each would double cross the other at a moments notice in order to reap the benefits. William Friedkin remade this as the misunderstood but actually rather brilliant Sorcerer. This is thrilling, tension-soaked action cinema at it’s finest.

The War of the Roses
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner set about turning their much lauded comedy tinged sexual chemistry from the Romancing The Stone/Jewel In The Nile movies with the leads in this really rather hysterical, and at turns deeply unsettling (who’d want to enter into a relationship with anyone after seeing this movie?) black comedy from the directorial mind of Danny DeVito – a man who loves to indulge his directorial passions in particular dark comedies (see also Throw Momma From A Train and… er… Death to Smoochy) This is really black but also really funny, fast, furious stuff that manages to keep growing in its status with each passing year!

The Warriors
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… The Warriors get to breaking some jaws in a public bathroom dustup with a rival gang. I first saw this as an impressionable child when it was shown on TV and I was genuinely terrified by that moment in the park where the gang member who is dressed up in baseball get-up with a painted face comes running over the hill in slow-motion. It stuck with me for years. It still unnerves me a little bit even to this day but Walter Hills down-and-dirty, low key film is a classic piece of cult 70s cinema that has slowly but steadily proved itself to be above and beyond the term “cult” and into the area marked “timeless vintage masterpiece”. Memo to Mr Tony Scott though, I’m willing to let you try your hand at The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 because nothing could diminish my love for that film but, really, do you have to fuck around with the memory of this film?

When Harry Met Sally
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… we come to that ending with Billy Crystal finally realising that his dream woman has been under his nose the whole time (a stale piece of plotting these days, but surprisingly fresh and inspiring back at the time of this release!) and rushing to let his good friend Meg Ryan know. The monologue he came up with in the film’s dying moments is one worthy of stealing the most hardened of hearts and it is one that the enormously modest Billy Crystal won’t take the credit for but should, according to director Rob Reiner. Reiner claims that both the infamous “I’ll have what she’s having” line and the beauty of the final monologue are both from the mind of Crystal and not, as the egotistical Nora Ephron would have you believe, from the pen of the screenwriter. One of the greatest romantic comedies ever made regardless!

Who Framed Roger Rabbit
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… this plays as awe-inspiringly well in today’s era of mindlessly empty SFX heavy blockbusters as it did the year it was released. Out there now on a criminally sparse DVD (if ever there was a film screaming for a bells-and-whistles collector’s edition then it’s this), this is a film whose trouble production should well have spelt an absolute disaster (the leading man, Bob Hoskins, had a nervous breakdown towards the end of shooting and started seeing imaginary rabbits in real life, the director kept finding the technology needed to mix live action and animation failing around him despite a successful test run and the studio put immense pressure on the production to keep it “child friendly” despite Gary K. Wolf’s source novel, Who Censored Roger Rabbit, being a distinctly adult satire on film noir on the movie industry) but thanks to the sheer talent of director Robert Zemeckis and executive producer Steven Spielberg (who was familiar with this sort of production thanks to Jaws), they managed to create a genuinely fantastic piece of family entertainment. The much-touted sequel is now completely dead (animated sequences for which were eventually separated and released as cartoon shorts in front of other Disney Blockbusters) despite the fact that there’s an allegedly brilliant script sat in the shelf and Zemeckis, Spielberg and Bob Hoskins have all said they’d be interested to revisit the film with a sequel.

Witness
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… outside of the Indiana Jones movies, this is probably Harrison Ford’s strongest performance. I just wish he’d rewatched this film from 2000 onwards when he turned down some of the best dramatic scripts going around, so that he could have renewed his confidence in his own abilities. I absolutely adore the climactic moment when dawn breaks on the Amish village and we see the trio of corrupt cops slowly march, shotguns in hand, down the pathway so that they can execute detective John Book (Ford) and the Amish mother and son he is protecting. A genuinely brilliant film!

The Wrong Man
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… you indulge in, for me, one of Henry Fonda’s best roles (second to 12 Angry Men, of course). He stars in this dramatic retelling, at the hands of Alfred Hitchcock, of Manny Balestrero – a musician who is wrongfully arrested for a robbery that a lookalike committed. Hitchcock films this in an almost documentary style, turning real life New York locations into a character within the film and using real life witnesses and locations (including the real Manny’s jail cell) in the Balestrero case to a staggering effect!

Young Frankenstein
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Dr Frankenstein’s more inept grandson (Gene Wilder) recreates the infamous Frankenstein’s Monster (Peter Boyle) only to see him escape and briefly seek refuge with a blind beggar (Gene Hackman) to hilarious, comedic effect. Not as consistently hysterical as Blazing Saddles or The Producers. Nowhere near as bad as Dracula: Dead & Loving It. This is still one of the strongest movies on Mel Brook’s CV and a cracking little comedy to boot.

Zulu
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… from start to finish, you find yourself immersed in one of the greatest war movies ever made. This is the daddy of all “siege” movies with 100 British soldiers in 1879 making a stand against a force of 4,000 Zulu warriors in the defence of Rorkes Drift, going on to become a legendary example of courage and endurance within British history. Don’t think about the latter day charges that the British military brought on the infamous attack through torture and massacring in the months preceding it and just enjoy the film for what it is – an exhilarating and involving piece of BRITISH action entertainment. Definitely within my own personal top one hundred movies of all time but then again, there’s probably not a sane and sensible British male who doesn’t have this within their own list of favourite movies.

And in my crappy, snap-shut cover Warner Bros range:

American Flyers
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Okay, I’m going to take a lot of crap for the inclusion of this film in this particular category but I’ll defend it to the hilt. It’s the sister movie of Breaking Away (same theme, same writer!) and it’s directed by John Badham who shoots it with more visual aplomb and sense of urgency and adrenaline then it would have ordinarily been given. The performances are well formed across the board and, thanks to all of these things and a cracking synth-score and great music choices, it’s an adrenaline pumping, feel-good piece of sports-cinema. I have a friend (James Porter, hello sir!) who watched this with me and absolutely died laughing at the line “I must be hallucinating. That looks like Randolph!” (so not funny in or out of context, I have to admit!) but the moment was so unique that a screen-shot from that moment in the movie and the actual line are now on my phone relating to him. I love this flick… and I suppose if you want to see a young Alexandra Paul and her boobies then you could go for this film for that reason too!

Blazing Saddles
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… man, that finale gets me every time. The rest of the film is a glorious laugh-fest of zinger one-liners, brilliant visual gaggery and zany performances but that bat-shit crazy climax involving the cowboys breaking out of their “set” and into the movie studio, getting into a fight with the cast of a musical and so on and so forth, just seals the film as a real vintage masterpiece in the realms of the comedy genre!

Bullitt
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… let’s not beat around the bush, it’s that car chase, that car chase and that car chase that makes this film. As a police procedural it works enormously well but as a full-throttled display of well choreographed action Bullitt is iconic!

Caddyshack
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… you’ve got Rodney Dangerfield at his most hilarious best, a young and savagely hysterical Bill Murray, some of the most quotable lines in comedy history and, hell, even Chevy Chase is funny! The soundtrack is ace and the comedy is tight and well structured. A real joy!

Deliverance
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Ned Beatty gets his ass “corn-holed” by some gap-toothed, backwards hillbillies and the audience is divided into those who are open-mouthed in shock and those who are throwing up in their mouths in disgust. Then John Boorman pulls the camera round, zooming through the trees to Burt Reynolds ready and aiming with his bow and arrow and we’re given some quick and immediate relief from one of the most tense and disgustingly savage scenes in 70s cinema.

Dirty Harry
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… I know, I know! It’s now cheesy as hell but who doesn’t get a sick-ass huge grin on their face during that moment when Clint Eastwood’s ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan foils a bank robbery and delivers that “Do you feel lucky punk?” speech. The thing is, this film shouldn’t be looked on as if it has something to say about the era it was released within but it should be considered, as Eastwood himself says, as a big Hollywood movie that took a real life event (i.e. the Zodiac killings) and turned it into “popcorn entertainment”.

The Exorcist
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… the exorcism actually gets underway. William Friedkin has made sure that the entire success of his expertly staged “build up” has a worthy and very much equal “pay off”. I was never one of those movie fans who managed to indulge in this in it’s “bootleg” form in the mid to late 80s. I first experienced it, like many people my age, when it was finally revived and re-released following the BBFC turnaround here in the UK in the late 90s. I was terrified by it the first time I saw it. Now I’m not so much scared as I am just thoroughly in awe of the power of Friedkin’s filmmaking. What a severely undervalued director he is. Then again, he made Cruising and Jade!

The Getaway
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… 1. Steve McQueen 2. Steve McQueen fucking Ali McGraw 3. Steve McQueen with a pissed off attitude and a shotgun 4. Steve McQueen with a pissed off attitude and a shotgun in a movie directed by Sam Peckinpah. 5. Glorious shoot-outs 6. Extended glorious shoot-outs in a hotel finale with McQueen and said shotgun going on the rampage against cops, criminals and anyone who gets in his way. For the okay but mediocre version check out Roger Donaldson’s Alec Baldwin/Kim Basinger toned down remake. For the full bodied vintage masterpiece version it’s Peckinpah all the way!

Gremlins
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… oh come on, who doesn’t have this within their top five favourite Christmas movies? You Scrooge! I adore this flick from start to finish. I cannot wait until my nephews are old enough to be sat down in front of the TV on Christmas Eve to watch this with me. The Santa Claus monologue, the carol-singing Gremlins, all the foot-chases in the snow. Even when you take away the “Christmas element” it’s still a brilliantly realised, fantastically well made horror comedy that stands up awesomely well even to this day!

Lethal Weapon
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… we come to that climax. The whole film has been about as high-octane, glossy, loud and excessive as you think you can possibly take and then Richard Donner’s iconic 80s buddy movie turns it up to “eleven” so to speak as we get electric shock torture, broken necks, mass shoot-outs, bus crashes, car chases, more shoot-outs and then a bizarrely shot handheld macho fight sequence in the rain. Watch the gritty brutality of this and the sheer zip of Shane Black’s screenplay up against the fourth film in the serious. The tonal shift is staggering!

Lethal Weapon 2
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… you come to realise that, within the realms of “truly fantastic sequels” this is definitely up there. Bigger, louder, faster, more of everything and with everything more fully realised and developed. The action is more regular and more confident and this is just about as much fun as you can have within the realms of 80s blockbuster cinema filmmaking. Okay so they sequeled the hell out of this particular property and lost the perfectly captured tone that these first two movies had established regarding comedy and action, but treat Parts 3 and 4 as throwaway pieces of entertainment and treasure Parts 1 and 2 for what they are – exceptionally brilliant examples of glossy classic action entertainment!

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Oh My God – that ending! It absolutely devastates me! Seriously! I’ve seen this movie well over a hundred times. Probably half of that was due to studying it as part of my Sociology course in High School but still that ending breaks me in half every time. The lobotomising of McMurphy by electric shock therapy and his inability, in Chief’s eyes, to return mentality from it. The fury of Chief that forces him to break free from the asylum once and for all. The swelling of the musical score. The sense of freedom that swells within you from just a small moment. This is unarguably THE greatest movie about institutionalisation that has ever, and probably will ever be made. What’s the movie to rival it? Girl Interrupted? Yeah right!

Rio Bravo
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… we get to that edge-of-the-seat, wham-bam-thank-you-m’am climax which sees John Wayne’s Sheriff John T. Chance lead the cripple (Walter Brennan), the drunk (Dean Martin) and the boyish gunslinger (Ricky Nelson) up against the bad guys, using dynamite to lure them out of their hideout before gunning them down as they run from the explosions. Cinema fans will know that not only was this film specifically made as a direct rebuttal by Wayne and director Howard Hawkes to (what they personally considered) the cowardice of Gary Cooper’s turn in High Noon, but it has been essentially remade many times over by Wayne himself in his career as he loves the story so much. He’s not the only one. Quentin Tarantino considers it to be one of his all-time favourite films: “When I first start dating a girl I show her Howard Hawkes’ Rio Bravo – and she better fucking like it if she wants a relationship with me!”

Shaft
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… the film manages to transcend its “blaxploitation” roots and become just a flat-out piece of iconic, entertaining seventies cinema. Okay, so it hasn’t aged well and modern narrow-minded viewers would find it laughable but for those who appreciate film “of its time” then this is one to be cherished. It’s gritty action cinema that plays like an off-kilter James Bond in some ways. It’s sexy, it’s action-packed and that ending with the abseiling and the shootouts is still a great piece of popcorn cinema!

Shaft’s Big Score
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… a film designed to do nothing more than quickly “milk” the success of the original, manages to take the now standard rules for sequels (bigger, louder, faster, more, more, more) and apply it to the “blaxploitation” genre with Richard Roundtree’s Shaft returning for a new mission, and all involved showing more confidence and assurance then the first time around. Stick around for Shaft taking on a helicopter rigged with a machine gun in the finale, whilst some cracking 70s soul tunes play over the top!

Shaft In Africa
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… well, here’s the confession… this is very much the lesser of the three films and the point when the teet was well and truly milked dry. It’s still got some great action sequences. It’s still got some beautiful black women getting themselves seen to by the stud that is John Shaft, PI. But is it a vintage masterpiece? No. It’s a great slice of Pure Escapist Fun or maybe even a Guilty Pleasure if nothing else. So what’s it doing here? Well it came in the same pack as the other two movies and I don’t want to separate them so like Jason Mewes manages to ride the successful coattails of Kevin Smith, so too does the third Shaft movie manage to get itself included in the “Vintage Masterpiece” category by virtue of just happening to be included next to two actual Vintage Masterpieces!

Superman
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… from start to finish this is just absolute pure perfection in terms of cinematic genre filmmaking; cast and shot brilliantly with a sense of epic filmmaking that was not only needed but an absolute requirement to make this film work. Forget getting sniffy with how poorly the effects have aged and just indulge in what, until Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins came along, was the greatest comic book movie of all time!

Superman II
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… it’s very existence greats the by-word in just how sequels should be made. I’ve seen Richard Donner’s original cut of this film but I own Richard Lester’s version. I admire Donner’s and I could probably grow to love it if it didn’t exist in as rough a form as it did but Lester’s version is so imbued in both my childhood consciousness and my movie buff’s sense of standards that I cannot abandon it. It is a pitch-perfect sequel to a pitch-perfect comic book movie.

Vision Quest
YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING A GENUINE CINEMATIC VINTAGE MASTERPIECE WHEN… Matthew Modine finally gets Linda Fiorentino only for her to abandon him the night before his big “vision quest” (i.e. making the weight grade and taking on the murderous high school wrestling champion that everyone fears) and he experiences the hurt that comes with the high of falling in love for the first time. The true poignancy is in the locker room moment, seconds before Lunatic Fringe’s cult tune kicks in, when Modine looks at Fiorentino and tells her “I wouldn’t change a thing!” Not only is this a cracking underdog movie (known in the UK as Crazy For You to milk the ‘love theme’, cameo appearance and then burgeoning popularity of Madonna!) but it’s also one of the most perfectly realised films about the trials and tribulations of being a teen and experiencing not only love but a thirst to achieve something “great” and “meaningful” with your life as you careen towards adulthood. This is a real 80s gem with a solid soundtrack and thoroughly likeable performances – still unavailable on Region 2 though!

And that’s it! We’re done. Can you believe it? Really, we’re done! Everything is reviewed, over 1500 titles or something. I lost count a long way back. There’s just an acknowledgement section and a catch-up issue to push out – not far behind this issue funnily enough – and then Off The Shelf is officially done and dusted once and for all.
I’m beyond proud of having accomplished this enormous feat (when the issues are put together they, in word-count and page-size, are two and a half times the size of a standard university dissertation!) and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it!

Posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 11:28 am under Off The Shelf by Gazz.
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