THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)

"We carve an idol out of our fear and call it God."

Back in the day, a knight (Max von Sydow) returns from his stint in the Crusades to find his homeland ravaged by the Plague. Already disillusioned by his experiences during the Crusades; he now begins to doubt the existence of God. One morning while getting ready to ride his horse, he looks over and Death is stand there. Looking at him. They talk and the knight challenges Death to a game of chess, believing that the game will buy him time to live longer in this smelly shithole existence we call Life. Death agrees. The game isn’t shown and the film isn’t just these two chatting while they play. No, instead the knight is still on his journey home and the film goes along for the ride as he encounters different people and events.

I love arthouse cinema and while I do watch quite a bit of it, I don’t review it often simply because I’m too dumb to properly express my feelings about it. That said, while I’m sure that I’ve missed various themes and details, I still find THE SEVENTH SEAL to be a great movie. Even all these decades after its original release. At times the pace is slow, but I’m not sure if that’s really true or just a symptom of my stupidity.

Whatever, fuck it. Slow or not, THE SEVENTH SEAL is still mandatory viewing for anybody serious about movies and especially world cinema.   Recommended.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)

A young man with severe mental issues, Joe Buck (Jon Voight), leaves Texas and travels to New York City in hopes of being a long-legged mack daddy. He soon finds out, mainly thanks to his brain having the computing power of 14 Fig Newtons superglued to a half-dead AAA battery, that although he has long legs, he damn sure ain’t no mack daddy! Things happen and before you can say “I should write a YA novel called ‘Donner Party Slumber Party Massacre’ about teens playing a slumber party game where whoever falls asleep first gets eaten.” Ol’ Joe Buck is homeless and starving to death. At the same time, he befriends a predatory street hustler with the confidence building name of Ratso (Dustin Hoffman). Together these two champions go into business capitalizing on Buck’s supposed ability to satisfy women.  Things go about as well as you would expect.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY won three Oscars at the 42nd Academy Awards, including Best Picture.  Looking back on it meow, was MC really the best movie of 1969?  I have no clue.  I haven't seen every movie released in 1969, but I am curious (and will probably update this review in the future) because while it is a good film...I cannot imagine that it was really the absolute best movie of the year.  Then again 1969 was like three or four hundred years ago, so who knows what the fuck was going on back then.  One thing I do know is MIDNIGHT COWBOY is a very interesting time capsule back to a time that looks absolutely foreign as fuck compared to [insert the year you're reading this].  Another interesting tidbit is MIDNIGHT COWBOY is the only X-rated film ever to win Best Picture.  Being "rated X" you're probably expecting to see wall-to-wall big floppy juicy dongs and titties bouncing all over the place, but sadly what little nudity there is was extremely non-erotic and honestly depressing as hell due to (most of) it being in rape flashback nightmares.  Instead, I'm guessing, the X rating was due to overall depressing tone of the film, the homosexual subject matter and the strongly implied sexual abuse Joe suffered as a young child at the hands of his grandmother.

Should you watch MIDNIGHT COWBOY?  Definitely.  100%.  It's still a good film with strong acting, amazing NYC locations and wildly influential on movies and TV shows even still today.  Especially the "I'm walking here!" quote.  That shits been used in everything from FORREST GUMP to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Check it out.

[Update 03/02/2022: This has absolutely nothing to do with the review, but I was just looking through some old newspapers and found a few ads for something called "Midnight Plowboy". I can only assume it's some kind of adult parody of MIDNIGHT COWBOY (or maybe not).  Either way I just wanted to share. Link to newspaper ads.]