Thursday, March 8, 2018

Thursday Movie Picks: Just One Day


You know how it is. Some nights, you go somewhere, the night doesn't go quite as planned, so you try to leave. Here's the thing: leaving this place and getting home is a whole lot tougher than you thought it would be. You quite literally have to fight your way out. Thursdays make me feel that way. They almost never go the way I want them to and I wind up fighting just to make it to Friday. So yeah, for this week's Thursday Movie Picks hosted by Wanderer at Wandering Through the Shelves, I'm picking movies that echo this experience. The official topic is movies in which all the action takes place on just one day. Hopefully, your day goes a lot smoother than it does for these guys.


The Warriors
(1979)
Cyrus is the leader of the biggest gang in New York. Instead of just flexing his muscle and overrunning the competition, he wants to unite all the gangs. He invites nine delegates from every gang in the city to call for a truce. Of course, he gets shot dead. And everyone thinks the Warriors did it. Our boys in the brown leather vests have to bop their way from the Bronx all the way home to Coney Island. It's one of my favorite movies of all-time, and I'm not even joking. I've literally watched it at least once almost every year since it's release and often more than once.


The Raid: Redemption
(2011)
Rama is a rookie cop with a baby on the way. He's also part of a unit of 20 officers going into an apartment building to drag out a crime lord. There's just one little thing. The building is loaded with bad guys and every one of them is armed to the teeth...or can fight his ass off...or both. what ensues is one of the best action movies to ever make it to the screen. And possibly one of the bloodiest. And I love every second of it. (My full review)

Dredd
(2012)
Let's take the plot from my previous pick, except we're going to trim the number of officers going into this ever-so-dangerous apartment building from 20 down to 2. Next, let's make it a post-apocalyptic setting in which people are herded into these rather large dwellings in the few inhabitable places on Earth and make the cops legally empowered to serve as judge, jury, and executioner. What we get is another rousing action flick that was overwhelmingly ignored despite its dual status as a superhero flick. Of course, it was an R-rated one before Deadpool and, unfairly in my opinion, had to deal with the stigma of the dreddfull 1995 movie about the same character starring Sylvester Stallone. (My full review)



18 comments:

  1. Nice theme! I liked Dredd, that was way better than I expected it to be. My husband loves Warriors, but I always found it annoying. I never saw either Raid movie.

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    1. "My husband loves Warriors, but I always found it annoying."

      The first half of this sentence fills me with joy. The second half turns it into sadness. I'll let you make it up to me by watching The Raid movies. I think that's a win-win.

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  2. Love that you made it a sort of get to morning alive theme within the theme. :-)

    WARRIORS!!!! I haven't thought of that movie in years but it was SO popular when cable was just starting. It was everywhere for a while but now is hardly run at all. I don't have the slavish devotion to it that you do but I enjoyed it.

    I haven't seen your other two. I avoided Dredd specifically because I slogged my way though the first Judge Dredd which despite the presence of my beloved Diane Lane was a piece of garbage.

    I didn't go as dark with my three.

    High Noon (1952)-Just married to his Quaker bride Amy (Grace Kelly) that morning Sherriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper who won the Oscar for this performance) has quit his post and plans a quiet farm life away from the town. Word comes that a killer he had imprisoned 5 years ago has been paroled and is arriving with his gang on the noon train intent on a showdown. Ignoring advice from all to flee, including successful businesswoman Helen Ramirez (an outstanding Katy Jurado) his former mistress, Will tries to gather help to stand up to the outlaws but finds all the townsfolk turning their backs on him and he must face them alone at High Noon. A thinly veiled allegory for the blacklist which affected many involved with the film.

    Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962)-A young singer, Cleo (Corinne Marchand) must wait two hours for the results of a biopsy and drifts around Paris seeing friends and considering the exigencies of life. Part of the Nouvelle Vague movement this isn’t for everyone but it has its charms.

    Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)-“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” That’s the credo of uber popular high school student Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) who decides that today is too perfect to be wasted in school. After convincing his parents he’s sick he gathers up his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) and girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara) for a day of adventure in the city while his suspicious principal Mr. Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) tries to catch him red-handed. Broderick is madly charismatic in the lead and surrounded by a fantastic cast including Edie McClurg who is hysterical as Rooney’s secretary.

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    1. All any of us can do is try to get to morning alive, Joel.

      Dredd won't change your life or anything like that, but it is a very solid action flick that doesn't really feel like a superhero movie.

      High Noon and Ferris Bueller's Day Off are both fantastic. I still need to see Cleo from 5 to 7.

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  3. I have no complaints about any of your three choices--love them all. I'll also second two of Joel's picks. High Noon is a classic, and Cleo from 5 to 7 is a wonderful film written and directed by Agnes Varda, the grandmother of French Nouvelle Vague (and nominee at the last Oscars for Faces Places). For what it's worth, I use Cyrus's speech from The Warriors to discuss elements of nonverbal communication in my comms classes. Pitch, cadence, pacing, gesture, tone, etc. It's a great and powerful example.

    I've never been a huge Ferris Bueller fan.

    As it happens, the review I posted yesterday is a film that takes place in about 12 hours. Also, if memory serves, Rebel Without a Cause takes place within 24 hours as well, as does Training Day. In fact, if you replace The Warriors with Training Day, you'd have a cop trio.

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    1. Cleo has been on my watchlist for a while. I need to get it crossed off one of these days.

      That is so cool about Cyrus's speech. Props to you for using it.

      I'll be watching Rebel later this year as part of the Blind Spot Challenge.

      I thought about picking Training Day, but wasn't thinking along the lines of a cop trio, but I guess I should've.

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  4. I haven't seen any of these and only heard of Dredd but, you are right, I thought it would be the same as the awful one made with Stallone

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  5. I haven't seen any of these but I like the theme!

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  6. Dredd is the one film in that list that I haven't seen but it's been in my watchlist for years as I'm waiting for it to be on TV or available on DVD in my local library. The other 2 picks are perfect, especially The Raid: Redemption which is a top-tier action film.

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    1. I think you'll enjoy Dredd. Hope you get to watch it soon.

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  7. Dredd is amazing. There is actually this news from this week that Alex Garland was actually the one who directed it.

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  8. I've heard such good things about The Warriors; I really need to see it one of these days. I've heard good things about The Raid, too, but very mixed things about Dredd.

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  9. Great theme within a theme! But damn, I haven't seen any of these movies.

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    1. Sounds like you've got some movies to watch.

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  10. I like Dredd too. It was surprisingly a good action movie.

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