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.]

OUTBREAK (1995)

The tagline on the poster says "Try to remain calm." Well, with a film as shoddy, boring and rushed together looking as OUTBREAK that ain't gonna be too hard to do.

OUTBREAK starts out well enough with a mysterious sickness killing off people in Zaire. Military virologist Dustin Hoffman is sent in to investigate. He quickly realizes there's some serious shit going down, but when he requests that his superiors sound the alert they instead say it's nothing and reassign him. And that's where OUTBREAK falters. A taut, well-written story about a highly contagious virus spreading like wildfire could be awesome! Instead, around the midway point OUTBREAK becomes less about the virus and more about the military coverup. Hint: I don't care.

Whenever I watch a movie about an killer virus outbreak I want it to be about a killer virus outbreak not government cover ups, not helicopter chases and not dropping a bomb on innocent people in an effort to stop the spread of the disease. OK, well the dropping a bomb on innocent people part has potential, but it was just never realized. And speaking of unrealized potential: with such an impressive cast and Warner Brothers deep pockets OUTBREAK had the potential to be really good movie. Sadly, that didn't happen and now decades later OUTBREAK hasn't aged gracefully at all.

The actual outbreak scenes early on were interesting, but then when the story centers in around keeping the disease quarantined in the small city of Cedar Creek (a miniature representation of America, I guess) it falls apart. Uninspired dialogue, unrealistic reaction by the citizenry when they are taken over by the military, weak special effects, lame action scenes, predictable climax.

If you need me I'll be in my room watching EBOLA SYNDROME.