Movie Details
| Title: | 52 Pick-Up | |
| Director: | John Frankenheimer | |
| Year: | 1986 | |
| Genre: | Thriller | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.12.22 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (5)
- Black Sunday
- French Connection II
- Grand Prix
- I Walk the Line
- Ronin
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.12.22 | Internet | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2022 Day 3! and also the only full day of intentional programming. There were about 30 movies I wanted to fit into today but let's try and get through 6, starting with this 80s Elmore Leonard adaptation starring Roy Scheider and directed by John Frankenheimer. I remember this video box having an exceedingly boring cover and I think this came out before we had cable so I don't think I've seen this before, but it fits perfectly in that HBO-era crime thriller that I remember watching a ton of. Also, my friend Grant recently turned me on to a movie podcast hosted by Josh Olsen and Joe Dante. For the longest time I swore off movie podcasts because I felt like it was one big echo chamber of the same circuit of guests answering the same questions, or geeks like me talking about how great John Carpenter's The Thing is. Well I already know how good The Thing is, I don't need other geeks to tell me. So for years the only podcast I listened to was Elvis Mitchell's Treatment, but even that has fallen off lately. However, with Tarantino and Avary starting up their podcast, I've found that hearing very knowledgeable people in the industry talking about other peoples' movies actually has some value for me, so I've been loving the Video Archives podcast and have tracked down and watched a few movies they've talked about there (without any self-applied pressure to watch everything they mention). Along those lines, The Movies That Made Us podcast on Trailers from Hell (Joe Dante's website) follows a formula of having a guest on not to talk about their own movies but... as the title implies, the guests' favorite movies. And of course Joe Dante has seen everything, walking encyclopedia-style so whenever he chimes in is always interesting to me. That's a long paragraph to explain that this movie popped onto my radar because I heard it mentioned on a podcast. This movie had me with John Glover's obscenely strong mid-atlantic accent that comes and goes throughout the movie. It was like he came to it via coke-fueled John Waters marathon or something. The mid to late 80s were for the most part a hard time to make a sincere thriller that didn't involve explosions or russians or exploding russians, but this movie tries pretty hard to remain in the realm of realism. The score dates it most heavily but I guess that can't be helped. But this does a good job remaining on earth as the story of a guy being blackmailed plays out in an interesting way that I found to be very satisfying. There's also a sleazy element here which I wasn't aware of, where the blackmailers are all in the adult video/porno world of LA so there are are cameos from vintage porn stars (including Ron Jeremy) and both Vanity and a super young Kelly Preston show some skin that was de rigeur at the time but probably problematic for today. The vibe still wasn't as grungy as something like Hardcore, more 8MM in that it's a soft-focus Hollywood studio look at the scene more than, you know, real. So I liked this. It's definitely an 80s movie but the story was smart and intriguing and the supporting cast was all entertaining. It's funny to see Clarence Williams III here playing more to his type (crazy psycho killer) right after his religious cop in Deep Cover, but he was great in both. So next up we're going to keep the podcast picks going with another movie I learned about from Joe Dante and Josh Olsen. |
