Posted on by 1000filmsblog

#383 Midnight Cowboy

Watched: May 10 2026

Director: John Schlesinger

Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, Brenda Vaccaro, Barnard Hughes, Ruth White, Jennifer Salt

Year: 1969

Runtime: 1h 53min

Joe Buck (Voight) is coming east to be a prostitute! The naive (and a bit simple) cowboy tries to establish a career as a “hustler” but is ridiculously bad at the business side of things. Then he meets Ratso/Rizzo (Hoffman) who offers to set him up with a pimp for a cut of the proceeds. What could possibly go wrong?

“Oh my God! I’m GORGEOUS!” (IYKYK)

This could be the setup for either a comedy or a tragedy. Fortunately for the movie, but unfortunately for our mental states, it definitely lands in the latter category. Finding rich women willing to pay for sex is a harder job than Joe imagined. but at least he develops an unlikely but kind of beautiful relationship with the equally weird and lonely outsider Rizzo, who dreams of going to sunny Florida.

But for now, he’s busy walkin’ here

Joe’s past seems a Cimmerian cocktail of childhood abuse, religious trauma, sexual trauma and isolation. Homeless Rizzo is a tragic character as well, squatting in squalor (that’s fun to say ten times fast!) and trying to survive by any means necessary in an inhospitable city.

“So, I see a suave cowboy hustler.” “No, no, this is definitely a bachelor. Confirmed.”

We loved their relationship, the flashbacks and mysteries of Joe’s past, the dream sequences and the fantasies. Hansel and Gretel’s party seemed to us the quintessential ’60s New York party, and that whole sequence was exciting. Also, there’s a not-so-secret homosexual subtext here that’s really great. But we loved a lot of that in the worst way possible – this movie is just incredibly sad. That being said – it’s a classic for very good reasons and we would recommend it to everyone.

“Well Deborah, I’m not gonna pay him to lick my FACE!”

Again though Edgar, why do you make us watch these emotionally devastating movies? There have been three in a row that have gradually chipped away at our will to live. Reality is bad enough right now – we don’t need our entertainment to make things even worse…

Oh, all right, we forgive you. Mostly because these heartbreaking and depressing movies have all been very good. But also partly because you’re not actually forcing us to do this and we kind of brought it on ourselves…

What we learned: We need Jesus! More specifically, we each need a flashing Jesus statue in our bathroom.

MVP: Repression? Imagination? Friendship?

Next time: Sweet Charity (1969)

Posted on by 1000filmsblog · 2 Comments

#218 The Manchurian Candidate

Watched: January 22 2019

Director: John Frankenheimer

Starring: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, James Gregory, Leslie Parrish, John McGiver

Year: 1962

Runtime: 2h 06min

Manchurian

Source

Korea, 1952. A patrol is ambushed and taken prisoner. When they return to the US, generally despised Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Harvey), who’s cursed with a busybody mother (Lansbury) and a fanatic senator stepfather (Gregory), is awarded Medal of Honor. The medal is given to him based on the testimony of his fellow soldiers, who cannot say enough good things about him, although they are unsure why.

Candidate2
“We just really respect the way he used to break up our parties with local prostitutes”

Source

Meanwhile, a few members of the same patrol, including Major Bennett Marco (Sinatra), are troubled by nightmares in which the celebrated Sergeant kills two fellow soldiers on the command of a bunch of ladies talking about agriculture and occasionally morphing into communist leaders.

Candidate3
“Welcome to my talk on how to make blossoming gardens and sleeper agents. I’m very happy to see so many morphing faces here today.”

Source

Marco’s fears are dismissed by the military, and he is eventually placed on sick leave. He meets Eugenie (Leigh) on a train, and she becomes his support system as he tries to make sense of what actually happened in Korea.

Candidate4
She is witty and fantastic, but also insanely reckless. Who talks to an unknown man who’s clearly having some sort of breakdown, and after three minutes decides to give him all her personal details?

Source

Marco’s suspicion is that Shaw, and the rest of the patrol, are all brainwashed and returned to the USA to carry out some sort of plot. But what exactly is Shaw’s mission? Who is his local handler? And will they have any chance of stopping whatever it is in time?

Candidate5
And will Shaw ever get out from under the thumb of his controlling mother?

Source

The Manchurian Candidate is a tense and compelling thriller which keeps going off in unexpected directions. We loved the horticulture talk the soldiers imagined, and the cross cutting between their perception of it and the reality.

Candidate6
Pictured: The Annual Women’s Society Lecture on Communist Leaders™

Source

We also loved how the different soldiers saw this scene differently – the black soldier seeing a room filled with black women, etc. Now, the plot is perhaps a bit far-fetched, but in the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the aftermath of McCarthyism, we’re sure it hit all the right buttons.

Candidate7
Right down to the fear-mongering senator

Source

We found Frank Sinatra to be a surprisingly good actor, and we loved Angela Lansbury: her character could have snatched the “World’s Greatest Mother” trophy right from the cold, dead hands of Mrs Bates…

Candidate8
Surprisingly good actor or not, Frank Sinatra’s card playing skills were clearly below par

Source

We’ll never play solitaire again! Or go to gardening meetings.

What we learned: Beware the red queen! Also, what’s with all these guys meeting cool, interesting, witty women on trains?

Next time: Vivre sa Vie (1962)