So far, yep!

What do you think?

Got a packet at Goodwill yesterday and memories all came back to me 😁

Jerry Goldsmiths score is smooooooth and jazzy with a touch of sex and jadedness appropriate for such a movie. The cinematography by John A. Alonzo brings depression era 1930s Los Angeles to life in all its opulence and despair. Easily one of the best mysteries ever. #moviereview

From Bonnie and Clyde to this, it seems like she was plucked right out of that decade. Without going into too much detail, John Huston as her father will make your fucking skin crawl. He is one of the worst WORST movie villains EVER. Written by Robert Towne, it feels like a Bogart film in the 70s.

Nicholson as Gittes is Nicholson at his best. I love Jack when he goes nuts (the Shining, Batman, As Good As it Gets) but here he reaches deep. He had just confronted some dark family secrets in his personal life and he lets it show onscreen. Faye Dunaway seems like she belonged in the 1930s.

Nicholson plays Jake Gittes, a P.I who specializes in adulterous spouses. When Evelyn Mulwray, wife of chief engineer of Water and Power in 1930s L.A, hires Gittes to trail her husband, he finds himself in a web of murder, sex, greed, deception and industrial corruption.

I have yet to be impressed by a Cameron Diaz performance. She just strikes me as 🤷‍♂️ I liked her when I first saw the Mask but that was puberty 😂 Gleeson and D-Day SHOULD have battled it out. If you want peak Gleeson, the Banshees of Inisherin is brilliant.

And give Liam Neeson a bigger part, dammit! But we did get John C. Reilly and Brendan Gleeson (an underrated actor if there ever was one.)

And Elliot from E.T all grown up!

This play is on my bucket list. I love Denzel and Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice doing Shakespeare, genius.) But Emma Thompson walks off with it.

As she does.

Yes, the people who praise a dude that championed feeding the poor want to put the commandments in schools but suddenly those things become more like guidelines when it’s their turn to ante the fuck up.

As a kid I got out of phys ed with a note for my doctor AND my parents.

Take away these guys’ guns and I’m pretty sure I could handle the Pilsbury Police force.

Great set design, too. The Nautilus is lavish and classy looking but also appropriately claustrophobic in its feel and looks like what I, the landlubber, imagine the inside of a submarine looks like. The under sea scenes capture that feeling of going into the unknown. It’s a real whale of a tale!

Kudos to the scriptwriter, Earl Felton, for not shying away from the more adult themes in Vernes’ work, giving us a more thoughtful sci-fi action adventure. That’s more than I can say about future Verne adaptations (looking at YOU, all versions of Journey to the Center of the Earth.)

Mason handles him beautifully as neither hero nor villain. He has seen humanities evil up close and Mason isn’t afraid to show us his scars. Every time he speaks I feel his pain even when he’s trying to remain stoic. Douglas balances him out nicely. And I love Peter Lorre no matter what.

As a kid I watched this for Douglas’ jokey nature as Ned AND for the giant squid. I’m still amazed by Bob Matteys creature effects. When that thing rises up out of the depths it is goddamn awesome nightmare fuel. As an adult I am more intrigued by Nemo and the moral conundrum he presents.

And he was so antisemitic the people working for him called the studio Mousewitz.