Mary Versus the Movies

We return to Camelot with a look at the 1967 film production of the Lerner & Loewe musical, again starring Richard Harris as King Arthur. At three hours, it's an overly-long production that loses steam in its third hour, but the first two are lush and often inspired, and possibly the best-looking movie we've covered for the show. Starring Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, David Hemmin...

A black comedy about a sexually-repressed couple who fund their dream of opening a restaurant by posing as sex workers and robbing and murdering Los Angeles swingers. When a local thief worms his way into the scheme, everything goes haywire, jeopardizing their chance at the American Dream. Starring Paul Bartel, Mary Waronov, Robert Beltran, Susan Saiger, Buck Henry, Ed Begley Jr., John Paragon, an...

A mysterous boy is adopted by a couple and soon shows himself to be unnervingly perfect. Is he really a robot? Maybe even a secret military project? Yeah, of course he is, this is the 1980s. It's not great. Starring Barret Oliver, Michael McKean, and Mary Beth Hurt. Written by David Ambrose, Allan Scott, and Jeffrey Ellis. Directed by John Heyman

We welcome back Alana Phelan to the show to talk about a Corey Feldman-Corey Haim fantasy with weirdo philosopher Jason Robards inhabiting Feldman's body as he tries to romance Meredith Salinger. It's a very weird movie loved by this weeks' guest. Starring Corey Feldman, Corey Haim, Meredith Salinger, Jason Robards, Piper Laurie, and Harry Dean Stanton. Written by Marc Rocco, Daniel Jay Franklin,...

Dan Ackroyd's misguided take on the copaganda classic Dragnet was a huge disappointment when Dennis saw it in theaters back in 1987. Does his opinion hold up? Or is the film even worse than he remembers? Should he have talked Mary out of covering this at all? But at least we finally get to cover a Tom Hanks movie for the show, right? Starring Dan Ackroyd, Tom Hanks, Christopher Plummer, Dabney Col...

We start the first of a two-part series examining the musical  Camelot , the Broadway hit based on T.H. White's  The Once and Future King , which I recently re-read in preparation. For part one, we look at both the original cast recording from 1960, as well as two clips from the  Ed Sullivan show, featuring Richard Burton as King Arthur and Julie Andrews as Guenevere. Unfortunately, this is all we...

We finish "Dennis versus the movies" with a very silly Canadian hair metal horror movie wherein Jon Mikl Thor battles a rubbery devil. It's the kind of goofy trash they used to show at 3 a.m. when we were a proper country. Starring Jon Mikl Thor. Written by Jon Mikl Thor. Directed by John Fasano.

The Rankin-Bass adaptation of Peter S. Beagle's fairy tale about the last unicorn in the world and the small band of humans who help her is a melancholy story gorgeously animated by the Japanese studio Topcraft. This was a favorite movie of Mary's as a kid, but completely unknown to Dennis. This month, we fix that.  Starring Mia Farrow, Alan Arkin, Tammy Grimes, Jeff Bridges, Christopher Lee, Keen...

"Dennis vs. the Movies" continues with a look at Martin Scorsese's black comedy about a yuppie who meets the wrong woman, is stranded overnight in Soho, and hunted by an angry mob. It's a comedic take on the country's feelings about New York, expressed in other film of the period--a terrifying, lawless place,  Escape from New York , The Warriors , "the Bronx is burning" and all that--and stands it...

We kick off "Dennis versus the movies" month with a viewing of the second Muppet movie, The Great Muppet Caper, in which the Muppets go to England and get tangled up with Charles Grodin and a jewel heist. Joining us is our special guest, Zach Woliner, a puppeteer and children's entertainer. Starring Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Charles Grodin, Diana Rigg, John Clee...

David Lynch's violent romantic drama plays like William Faulkner had written  The Wizard of Oz starring Elvis Presley--a strange, campy, Southern Gothic road trip through America that Lynch described as "a love story in Hell". Starring Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Diane Ladd, Harry Dean Stanton, and Isabella Rossellini.

Neil Jordan's neo-noir romance about a jailbird driver, a high-priced escort, and the mob boss running everything is a bleak, sometimes-funny look at duplicity, delusion, and the seedy side of London.  Starring Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane, and Clarke Peters. Written by Neil Jordan and David Leland, and directed by Neil Jordan.

From the nadir of Disney filmmaking comes yet another spin on Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee , this time featuring Dennis Dugan as a NASA engineer accidentally sent back in time with his android twin Hermes. It's not the worst movie we've covered for the show--the supporting cast of English comedians as Arthur's court are fine--but it's not exactly Bedknobs and Broomsticks . Starring Dennis Dugan...

Omar, a young Brit from a Pakistani family, and his boyfriend Johnny, a former skinhead, attempt to open the nicest laundromat in London while tackling issues of family, race, class, sex, crime, and Thatcher-era austerity. Starring Saeed Jaffrey, Roshan Seth, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gordon Warnecke, and Shirley Anne Field. Written by Hanif Kureishi and directed by Stephen Frears

Merchant-Ivory's lush adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel of romantic struggle against Edwardian repression is the best possible version of those PBS dramas your mom likes to watch--better, even, because this one has full frontal male nudity.   Starring Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands, Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, and Simon Callow. Written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala,...

New York's hottest club is Liquid Sky. This club has everything: heroin, David Bowie impersonators, aliens, necrophelia, shrimp, cocaine, a Fairlight CMI synthesizer, Germans, murder, and anorgasmia.  (A UFO causes havoc in the New York downtown art scene, where sex and drugs mix together with casual cruelty and sometimes murder. It's pretty cool.) Starring Anne Carlisle, Paula E. Sheppard, Susan...

It's a cyberpunk body-horror story of sex and violence, shot through with the kind of late 1980s indie movie aesthetics that we seriously miss, sitting somewhere between David Lynch and MTV.  Starring Shinya Tsukamoto, Tomorowo Taguchi, and Kei Fujiwara. Written and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto.

David Lowrey's rewriting of the medieval poem Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight is well-acted, and has some lovely art direction, it ultimately misses the mark in several ways: the CGI is murky, the crucial section at Sir Bertilak's castle is truncated, and the ending is muddled at best. The poem having an ambiguous meaning is fine—you can debate whether it's a celebration of chivalry, an elegy for...

Toxic fandom by way of Stephen King, with one of the most famous torture scenes in cinema. Look, our fans are great, and we're gonna keep saying that, please put down the hammer. Starring James Caan, Kathy Bates, Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen, and Lauren Bacall. Written by William Goldman and directed by Rob Reiner.

Joe Dante's love letter to the midcentury monster movie, nestled in a comedy about a William Castle-type director promoting a film in the Florida Keys during the Cuban Missile Crisis, is a deliriously silly movie that feels made for Mary and Dennis. Starring John Goodman, Cathy Moriarty, Simon Fenton, Omri Katz, Lisa Jakub, Kellie Martin, Jesse Lee Soffer, James Villemarie, Robert Picardo, John Sa...

Barry Levinson's first film, set in that quiet week between Christmas and New Year's Day, is a surprisingly smart examination of young men and relationships, and why people should (or shouldn't) get married. It's nostalgic without being overly sentimental, looking back at 1959 not as some golden age of youth, but simply another, earlier time, and not that different from 1982 (and really not that d...

John Huston's final film is a surprisingly warm adaptation of James Joyce's short story about a Twelfth Night Christmas party that shows the cracks in a marriage, opening up questions about love, identity, and how well we can truly know one another.  Starring Anjelica Huston, Donal McCann, Helena Carroll, Cathleen Delany, Dan O'Herlihy, Donal Donnelly, Séan McClory, and Colm Meaney. Directed by Jo...

Rankin-Bass are responsible for several classics, from  The Hobbit and  The Last Unicorn to  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and  Santa Claus is Comin' to Town . This is not one of them. No, it's twee Stage Irish nonsense with Americans doing terrible accents, and a complete misunderstanding what a banshee (bean sí) is. Also, apparently St. Patrick is a leprechaun. Whatever. Starring Art Carney, Pe...

We're surveying a selection of Bugs Bunny cartoons, all with a medieval theme, some of which are explicitly Arthurian.   The earliest, "Knights Must Fall", is a pretty generic burlesque of Bugs Bunny versus a powerful knight, but draws some inspiration from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, especially in Bugs's use of locomotives and whatnot.   "Knight Mare Hare" is a pretty unfocused t...

Two hours of upper-middle-class naval-gazing? A poison pill of nostaliga? An exericize in self-loathing? A critique of ex-hippies who sold out? Or an attempt at excusing "going straight" and embracing being a yuppie? Maybe it's all those things. Or maybe that's putting too much weight to put on a movie that's mostly a small drama about people coming together after a friend's suicide.  Starring Kev...