Thursday Movie Picks: Escape

-
Wandering Through The Shelves is still going strong with TMP in 2020! For the first week of the year we're talking about films where making a great escape was a big part of the film. Here are three of my favorites.

 1) The Shawshank Redempton

 I have to start off with the most obvious choice, but is there a more iconic prison escape than the one in this film?

 2) Return of the Jedi

 I'm still bitter as hell over feeling let down by The Rise of Skywalker, so I turn to the film it tried so hard to replicate but couldn't. Our crew escaping from Jabba the Hut was a thrilling way to kick off this film.

 3) Iron Man

 Tony Stark started his story by escaping from his caved prison in a make shift Iron Man suit. And in 2019 we got to see him end that story by being Earth's best defender. *insert poetic cinema meme here.*

Comments

  1. GetterJanuary 2, 2020 at 6:40 AM

    Ah, I wanted to go with Shawshank too but I didn't really have time to think everything through today. I rushed it. Shame. But you have amazing picks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. joel65913January 2, 2020 at 8:28 AM

    Happy New Year!

    I've seen all three of your choices today! The only one I was truly fond of is the first which was much better than I expected it to be. I'm not a big Tim Robbins fan but he did well in this.

    I've never been enraptured by the Star Wars films and when I first saw them, all at once on TV when I was sick-hardly an ideal way to watch them-I hated them. But when they were re-released in theatres for some anniversary or other I took my nieces and nephew to see them and softened towards them considerably. They really were made for big screen viewing. I'll never love them but they were entertaining-that holds only to the original trio though the rest that I've tried to watch stink.

    Iron Man was fine, I saw it once and that was enough.

    So many choices and ways to go with this. I took the simplest route.

    Escape (1940) American Mark Preysing (Robert Taylor) arrives in Nazi Germany searching for his mother, one time stage star Emmy Ritter (Nazimova) a German native who has gone missing. Discovering she has been arrested, interned in a concentration camp and scheduled for execution on trumped up charges he turns to a sympathetic American expatriate Countess Ruby von Treck (Norma Shearer) to formulate a plan and attempt an escape.

    Escape (1948) Matt Denant (Rex Harrison), newly released from the Air Corps after the war’s end, is wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to be imprisoned for three years. Managing to escape he takes flight, at times literally, and with the help of local girl Dora Winton (Peggy Cummins) he attempts to flee his unjust punishment. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

    Escape (aka The McKenzie Break) (1970) In a remote northern Scotland POW camp German submarine Capitan Willi Schlüter (Helmut Griem) challenges the authority of the camp’s Commanding Officer, Major Perry (Ian Hendry) leading to major conflicts. British Army Captain Jack Connor (Brian Keith) arrives to investigate what he believes to be escape attempts. While he looks into matters Schlüter leads an escape party through a hidden tunnel and the chase is on!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brittani BurnhamJanuary 2, 2020 at 2:06 PM

      Popular title! I haven't seen any of your picks. I'm a little jealous of you not being a Star Wars fan. You don't have to face the crippling disappointment like I am right now. Must be nice. lol

      Delete
  3. Sonia CercaJanuary 2, 2020 at 8:34 AM

    Great picks!! I can’t believe The Shawshank Redemption didn’t even cross my mind!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Often Off TopicJanuary 2, 2020 at 8:38 AM

    I'm back at work today so stupidly thought that made today Monday, so I'm clearly on a roll haha. Love your picks!

    ReplyDelete
  5. SaraJanuary 2, 2020 at 8:57 AM

    Excellent choices! I loved Shawshank and Iron Man! It's been a couple of years since I watched Return of the Jedi so that scene is very vague in my head.

    ReplyDelete
  6. BJanuary 2, 2020 at 12:17 PM

    I have Iron Man on my list too! Love it!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ronyell (a.k.a. Rabbitearsblog)January 2, 2020 at 3:45 PM

    Oh man! I loved Iron Man! I need to rewatch that movie again! Great list!

    Check out my Thursday Movie Pick!

    Ronyell @ The Surreal Movies and TV Blog

    ReplyDelete
  8. thevoid99January 2, 2020 at 4:03 PM

    3 amazing films. I went for something different with my choices but you can't go wrong with these 3 films. Especially Iron Man in how Tony Stark built an arc reactor inside a cave with a bunch of scraps and a suit with a bunch of scraps. Props to Yinsev for helping Stark and steer him onto the right path in life.

    And yes to ROTJ. JJ has been drinking too many fanboy juice to get an understanding of what the franchise needed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brittani BurnhamJanuary 2, 2020 at 4:20 PM

      JJ ugh. Looking at the first Iron Man suit makes his bleeding edge armor look so much cooler. I know some people didn't care for that but I loved it. Off to read your post now!

      Delete
  9. BirgitJanuary 6, 2020 at 10:21 PM

    All 3 films are great and I LOVE Shawshank but I have already used this twice so I steered away from it. Return of the Jedi is perfect and Ironman is another good choice but so would Thor:Ragnorok work as well, I think.

    ReplyDelete
  10. WandererJanuary 9, 2020 at 1:57 PM

    I've seen all your picks...and yes Shawshank was the movie that inspired this theme.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by, let's talk movies!
(comments are moderated to reduce spam)

Popular posts from this blog

Random Ramblings: The Radio Flyer Conundrum

-
Image
Recently, I was talking to someone about who I thought were the best child actors when I was also a child.  Two that really stood out to me were Elijah Wood and Joseph Mazello, and one film those two were in together was called Radio Flyer.  Then I was reminded about the uniqueness of this film. Instead of reviewing the film, I wanted to have an open discussion about the ending. It deals with a tough issue; child abuse. What I’ve noticed is the way that the film ends is interpreted many different ways, and the filmmakers never came forward to say what was right and wrong. I’m interested in hearing everyone’s opinions on it. How did you interpret the ending? Obviously spoiler alerts will follow.. For those of you who haven’t seen the film, the basic premise is this: Two young boys, Mikey (Wood) and Bobby (Mazello) move in with their single mother and her boyfriend, who refers to himself as ‘The King’. It doesn’t take long for The King to start physically abusing ...
Read more

Indie Gems: Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

-
Image
Passionate about your profession? I had never heard of this film until it ended up on one of Jason's favorite horror movie lists around Halloween. It immediately sounded interesting to me, so of course I threw it in my Netflix queue. (and if I'm just now watching it after adding it around Halloween, you know how ridiculous my queue is) Taylor (Angela Goethals) is a journalist who, along with a film crew decides to follow around a serial killer named Leslie Vernon. (Nathan Baesel) He plans on doing the typical slasher thing - getting a bunch of drunk teens in an abandoned house and knocking them off one by one. He gets advice from a retired serial killer, Eugene (Scott Wilson) and is threatened by a man who's on to him, Doc Holloran (Robert Englund) Taylor and crew are there capturing it all. Leslie Vernon is fucking hilarious to start with, and clearly very passionate about what he does. He tells Taylor all of his secrets and can barely contain his excitemen...
Read more

My Favorite Movie Youtube Channels

-
Image
Starting around 2018, I started watching Youtube for more than just movie trailers or music videos whenever a new one dropped. Now I'm in full blown subscription mode and don't bat an eyelash at watching a Youtube video that's over an hour long. I watch Youtube for a few different categories of content, but one of them that I love most is movie/TV essays and commentary, and that's what I'm going to talk about today. Below is a list of my favorite movie related Youtube channels. Let me know if you're familiar with them too, or if you have any you'd like to recommend to me.  Double Toasted - I'm honestly surprised this channel isn't bigger. I first came across Korey and Martin when they reviewed War for the Planet of the Apes a few months before it hit theaters and I thought they were hysterical. While their full length videos stream on Twitch, they often upload their movie reviews and commentary on youtube and they're always hilarious. They've...
Read more