ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981)

In 1997, America is all fucked up and the crime rate is so high the government has converted Manhattan into a prison, complete with guarded 50 foot high walls around the perimeter. There are no rules. The cops just dump the prisoners and split. They don't care what happens as long as it stays inside...but all of that changes when, thanks to some terrorists, Air Force One carrying President Donald Pleasence crashes inside.

The coppers go in to get him, but only find his empty escape pod. The inmates have taken him hostage and instruct them to leave or the President dies. Plan B: convince soon-to-be-transported-to-Manhattan prisoner and ex-special forces soldier "Snake" Plissken to go in and save the President (and a super important cassette tape that he's carrying) within 24 hours. How do they convince him? By placing explosives inside of his neck.  That'll do it.

So anyway Snake goes in and...it's kinda boring. He walks around a lot and talks to some people. Eventually he punches some punks, gets captured and forced to fight a giant dude with a spiked baseball bat, but even that is boring cause the fight is only like two minutes long.  More talking and more running around happens until Snake finally a hold of the President.  Now he must escape from New York.

I've heard tons of hype about this movie being totally badass.  I can see how the idea for this movie is awesome, but the reality of it isn't all that great. It's pretty boring and considering how it came out the same year as THE ROAD WARRIOR it doesn't doesn't have any excuse not to be badass.  I'm sure all kinds of fanboys are vomiting tears and punching their computers right now, but it's true. ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is not action-packed and it looks pretty goddamn cheap.

Worth a watch once just to see what all the hype is about, but I can't imagine wanting to watch it multiple times. Very little violence, no gore, very little tension, zero nudity (unless you count Kurt Russell's nipples or that extremely quick scene in the theater), impressive cast including some uncredited voice acting by Jamie Lee Curtis as the narrator / computer, a gun equipped with a silencer making a lot of noise, a Cadillac with chandeliers on the hood, dated as fuck special effects, important information being carried on a cassette tape despite it being 1997.

If you need me, I'll be in my room watching the next Carpenter-Russell collaboration instead...THE THING.  Or maybe re-reading that escape the store chapter from Robert McCammon's "Swan Song".

Part 2 - Escape From L.A. (1996)

UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929)

[Update 06/05/2023: Need rewatch this film and redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

In 1929 a 29-year-old Luis Bunuel asked his mother for $2,500 to make a movie. He spent half of the money in Paris and the other half making quite possibly the greatest movie of all time. Not a bad deal.

"When I made the film, I was absolutely sure that it was going to be a failure; but I didn't care because I had the conviction that it expressed something, until then never said in pictures. Above all it was sincere."

UN CHIEN ANDALOU was Bunuel's first film and only 16 minutes long, but in that 16 minutes he changed Cinema forever and 65 years later (when I saw it for the first time) it changed my life forever. Made in collaboration with fellow Surrealist Salvador Dali - nobody will ever know how much the collaboration was, but based on their later separate work I personally think the majority was Bunuel. But you do see Dali's influence in stuff like the garden scene, the woman's bare back and the cocktail shaker bell.

THE ANDALUSIAN DOG doesn't feature a dog at all, instead the narrative is more like dream flow of non-connecting visuals and objects and time. There is no explaining any of it, but it is a delight to watch the film over and over and dissecting everything. Not over analyze it, but just pick out all the small details. I won't do it here, there's plenty of books that have already done it.

Highest recommendation possible. UN CHIEN ANDALOU shouldn't just be watch, but absorbed into your mind.