Rambling Film

Official Synopsis:  An uptight businesswoman (Sarah Jessica Parker) accompanies her boyfriend (Dermot Mulroney)to his eccentric and outgoing family's annual Christmas celebration and finds that she's a fish out of water in their free-spirited way of life. 20 years is a little "young" to be a Blind Spot, but we're approaching the holiday season and this film always gets brought up in annual Christmas lists. I was never compelled to watch this back then, but now I'm curious to see what I've been missing. On one hand, this film is surprisingly progressive for its time. I wasn't expecting there to be a gay couple ( Tyrone Giodano and Brian White) much less a gay couple where one of then men is deaf?! We love that representation (though it is painfully obvious no one in this film aside from Giodano actually knows sign language) I also loved bratty Rachel McAdams, and that the closest thing this film gets to a love scene is between the oldest couple. (Diane ...

Official synopsis:   The late, great impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (William Powell) looks down from Heaven and ordains a new revue in his grand old style. This is one those classic films that I had never heard of until one of my favorite readers/classic film extraordinaire Joel recommended me to me. It was an easy sell. Judy Garland, Lucille Ball, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly. I'm in. Said follies are divided into segments. Some being comedy bits and others musical numbers. I think the film could've made better use of its framing device by having Ziegfeld talk in between all or most of the segments. He only appears at the beginning and it didn't feel like enough.  Of all the segments, I enjoyed the musical numbers the most. Watching Astaire and Kelly tap together is a treat, as is any time Judy Garland is on screen. I wish she would've gotten to sing a little more in her sketch.  On top of having a very compelling cast, the sets and costumes are glorious. They're so g...

  Official synopsis: A paranoid, secretive surveillance expert (Gene Hackman) has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered. I realized with the recent death of the legendary Gene Hackman, that despite feeling like I always knew who he was, I haven't actually seen a lot of his filmography. According to what's listed on letterboxd, prior to The Conversation, I had only seen 5% of it. So I made it a priority to check out one of his films for my next Blind Spot, and his starring role in Francis Ford Coppola's feature sounded like a good place to start. It's fun to see Coppola regulars like Robert DuVall and John Cazale pop up in this ,but the biggest treat for me was Harrison Ford as Martin, the "go between" for the man hiring Hackman's Harry to spy on the couple. He's just so effortlessly cool, even though his character is quite shady. He's on screen for all of 10 minutes yet all I could think of is how ...

  Official Synopsis:   Sophie (Meryl Streep) is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who has found a reason to live with Nathan (Kevin Kline), a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust. I was well aware of the choice Sophie had to make before going into this film. It's just a popular phrase in the pop culture lexicon. But I never bothered actually seeing everything that happened after her choice, so when Tubi's search bar was under construction (seriously) and this was the only one of my potential Blind Spots that showed up on a main page, I decided to see what Sophie was up to. Friends, I was not expecting this movie to play like a damn soap opera. I was expecting something a bit sadder given the subject matter, but instead I got a brightly lit, over acted *gestures wildly* whatever this is. Meryl Streep is very good, and she's much more grounded in this film than Kline and Peter MacNicol, whose characters I didn't like to begin with, and th...

  So you failed miserably at your 2024 Blind Spots.... It's me. I'm "you." But, I'm still determined to watch classic films, so I'm going to continue on with my Blind Spot series in 2025. I'm not committing to a set timeline, because it will just stress me out when I miss it, but I am going to try my best to watch as many classic films as I can in 2025. Here is my tentative list. As always, the streaming landscape always changes, and people at my local library love to hoard discs, so these could change. I'd also love any recommendations I can add from you! Women are my main focus. So anything with a strong female performance, send it my way! 2025 Blind Spot List The Last Picture Show La Dolce Vita Valley of the Dolls The Silence Rebecca (1940) The Manchurian Candidate (1962) I'm Not There (2007) Rope Stage Door (1937) Kitty Foyle Funny Girl Flesh and the Devil (1927) Wish me luck...