User:Mikado282/Movies

From time to time, I have been asked to make recommendations for U.S. movies. To keep things straight, I have been meaning to make a list here. I am an old romantic, so don't expect anything particularly pop culture about my recommendations. Naturally, many of my recommendations are nostalgic, so in deference to our wiki's host, I will note where they tie into TF2.

Several movies from 1968 are mentioned throughout my 1968 memoirs, here.

Yes, I know I have served some spaghetti and full Monty, but only those that have been immensely popular and influential within U.S. cinema.

★M★I★K★A★D★O★1776!★ 🎇🎆🎆🎆🎆🎇 🎇🎇 🎇🎇  (Contact Mikado282 (SM)) | (contribs) (Help Wanted!) 15:45, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

---

Holidays

Smissmas

---

Three television Christmas specials from my childhood. In 1968, I would have watched them all at Christmas.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

See Randolph the Blood-Nosed Caribou, Santa's Little Accomplice, Wutville, Blitzen Bowl, Reindoonicorn, Doublefrost, Big Elfin Deal, Festive Backburner.

This special played on TV every Christmas I remember! If you want to watch essential Rankin/Bass productions, this could be your first. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer made all of Rankin/Bass's works possible. The sponsors were "Noelco" shavers (reskinned Norelco, watch).

---

A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

See Scorcher's Solo and A Developer Named Charlie Brown.

Around 1968 I started to identify with Charlie Brown.

---

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966)

See Prancer's Pride, Spirit of Giving, Grinch-like Smissmas cakewalk destroyers.

With Boris Karloff's narration of Dr. Seuss' text, the original TV special is the most faithful and best.

---

Scrooge (1951), Scrooge (1970)

See Ebenezer, Miser's Muttonchops, Soldier visited by 3 spirits at Christmas, Billionaire Hat Magnate Scrooge, Dapper Dickens.

Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is one of the most-published, filmed, and referenced stories of all time. The message is not that you will go to Hell if you are not generous, but you will suffer enough from regret for not helping others when you could. The Christmas season is a traditional time to watch any of the movie versions of A Christmas Carol. Some are better than others.

• The 1951 Alastair Sim portrayal is well-done and traditional.
• But, I personally also greatly enjoy the 1970 Musical version. (Thank you, very much!) I think the musical illustrates the Scrooge pathos best; lost deep inside, he is truly a caring person, but has lost the way. (The weak part is "Obiwan" hamming it up too much.)

---

Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (1970)

See B.M.O.C., Gift Bringer, Gift-Stuffed Stocking. Smissmas Caribou, Frontier (you'll get it if you watch the heart-melting). Narrated by Fred Astaire.

If you watch two Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, I suggest this as the second one. While the special is mostly tongue-in-cheek origin stories for North American secular traditions (upon which the whole of Smissmas is based) it has a couple very special musical pieces. Most important for me, however, is the performance of Keenan Wynn, Disney's once and every other family-movie villain. Spoiler: He voices an evil Warlock, who loses his powers when Kris Kringle melts his frozen heart ....

---

Halloween Event

---

Frankenstein: Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Young Frankenstein (1974), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

See Medic, The Naked and the Dead Page 98: FRANKENSTEIN, FrankenHeavy, Cadaver's Cranium, Rottenburg, Monster Bash, Hassle Castle, Dr. Cadaverus Hale, "Either way, he's a fearsome, inscrutable, on-fire Frankenstein of a man."

While there are many movie versions of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, the 1930s films Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein established the main cinema tropes, and are the ones to watch if you want to understand the tropes. Young Frankenstein makes tributes to many elements of the first two films and is my family's traditional Halloween movie — they consider it Mel Brookes' best movie. My son's review of The Rocky Horror Picture Show was "Well, I can't unsee that." I however, greatly enjoyed the well-crafted "rocky horror" music, and, like Pink Floyd's "The Wall", I could sing the whole soundtrack when I wore a younger man's clothes.

---

Death Becomes Her (1992)

See Tryhard, Voodoo-Cursed Soldier Soul, Gibs

Really a very funny "spooky" movie. Many subtle references most of you kids maybe aren't going to get. Bruce Willis is so far out of type that it takes a long time to recognize him. He must have been coached by Rick Moranis. Goldie Hawn was a ditzy babe on Laugh In in 1968. Meryl Streep started acting in 1969.

---

Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

See Elizabeth II

A silly SciFi creature musical. A couple of the songs are pretty good (Mean Green Mother from Outer Space, Suppertime). The Audrey II is an intriguing animation; pinch yourself, it is all muppetry! No CGI. No blue screen. No optical effects. This is one of the many late-70s/early-80s to bring in stable actors from the original Saturday Night Live.

---

Fourth of July

---

1776 (1972) Trailer

See Soldier's interpretation of the Siege of Fort Stanwix: Tour of Stars. See also First American, Big Daddy.

1776 is a playful but dramatic musical Broadway play that combined into a single event the debate over independence from the United Kingdom and the debate over the Declaration of Independence. Some criticize the play for historical imprecision, but that is only a result of combining a great many important historical persons, events, debates, and issues into a mere three acts fit into 2 and a half hours.

---

The Patriot (2000) Trailer

See Valley Forge, Colonial Clogs, Compatriot.

At a time when Hollywood had become wholly unpatriotic, a German directed this examination of the Revolutionary War. Besides its quality, I particularly like it for its focus on the campaigns in the southern colonies, a region generally overlooked by most movies about the war; it wasn't only Yankees that fought the war.

---

Johny Tremaine (1957) clip

See Soldier's interpretation of the Boston tea party: his tea party with his war pals.

This is my wife's favorite, particularly the song in the clip. It is an early-style Walt Disney family movie. Naturally, for the style of historical fiction novel, the central characters are fictions, but they interact with the famous patriots and historic events of Boston on the eve of the War for Independence. A central event of the film is the Boston tea party. ---

War

Casablanca (1942)

See A Cold Day in Hell, Page 22: Of all the bones in all the hot dog costumes in Siberia, ...

Considered one of the greatest films ever made. As such, this is the movie that started movie references. Decades ago, I talked a younger friend into watching Casablanca. He said that at first he was disapointed because it seemed that the movie was just a bunch of cobbled together cliche lines he had heard as a youth, but then he realized that the movie was the origin of all to those lines.

---

Patton (1970) TF2 Clip

See Mantreads, General's Formals, Magnificent Bastard, Show me your war face!

This frequently referenced movie is commonly considered the essential movie portrayal of General Patton. Even so, the actor George C. Scott hated the man, loathed the U.S. military, and refused the Best Actor Oscar awarded to him for the movie. He was the first actor to refuse that award.

Patton really did invent the Mantreads for U.S. Tankers.

---

The Train (1964) Trailer

The  ·  Best  ·  Train  ·  Movie.

---

Action

Crocodile Dundee (1986), Crocodile Dundee II (1988)

See Mr. Mundy, "That's not a knife.", "Now, this is a knife.", Crocodile Dandy, Crocodile Smile, Trophy Belt, Crocodile Mun-Dee, Ol' Snaggletooth

In my opinion, the second movie has much better story and action than the first movie, but you really can't fully understand it without having watched the original. Actor Paul Hogan co-created the archetypical Outback character so heavily referenced in TF2. The first movie is really mostly a bunch of gags based of the big city mouse/outback mouse trope; while Sue is enaged into the Progressive elite rich of New York City, Dundee is established as a working class hero. While the second movie uses the MacGuffin drug cartel villains trope of the 1980's, it expands on the study of the Dundee character and his relationships with the Outback and his friends there.

---

Bullet Train (2022)

BulletTrain, Boomslang, professionals, Spoilers, mate

---

Science Fiction

The original Bread Head. (You laugh, but you know it's true!)

The Thing (1982) Trailer

See Scotch Saver, Antarctic Researcher, Five-Month Shadow.

There are now two official TF2 maps inspired by this movie; see Snowycoast and Bread Space! (I first learned to program computers on the equipment in the backroom of the Norwegian base.)

---

Alien (1979) Trailer, Aliens (1986), Prometheus (2012)

See Bread Space, Isolated Merc, Isolationist Pack, Burstchester, Giger Counter.

When I was on liberty in NYC in 1979, the USO gave me free tickets to watch this movie I had never of. I came out of Alien as white as my Navy uniform. Aliens is one of those rare sequels that are as good as the original. The franchise spiraled a bit after that, but Prometheus stepped it up on the effects and raises some hard science fiction topics as each character expresses their interpretation of the discovery of the "Engineers".

---

Predator (1987), Predator 2 (1990)

See Bullet Buzz, Heavy Lifter, Gone Commando, Soviet Gentleman, "Ain't Got Time to Bleed".

Predator is a pretty good action take on the monster-takes-them-one-by-one cycle. In my oprinion, Predator 2 is a creative extension of the storyline, as sequels go, and a good role for Danny Glover (even if it was kind of Murtaugh sans Riggs).

---

The Fifth Element (1997) Trailer

Even though this is not a U.S. production, and its SciFi art style is adorably European, I have to recommend it; I cannot not watch it whenever it is on.

---

Jaws "You're gonna need a bigger boat." (1979), The Meg "You're gonna need a bigger shark." (2018)

See Community, Cranial Carcharodon, Pyro Shark,

I have a little trouble catergorizing these. They are almost two different genres Jaws with nearly Hitchcockian nostalgia for the New England Coast and its community fishing culture that has gone extinct since then, and The Meg with clininal Animal Planet science fiction. Even as a fan of the one and enjoying the other, I unable to watch The Meg without reflecting on Jaws. The Meg makes one particular tribute to Jaws, of the thousands of Chinese swimming off Sanya City, one particular woman is chosen to anounce the Meg's arrival ...

Note, I am leaving out all of the Jaws' sequals — definitely, none of them hold up to the original.

---

Blade Runner (1982)

See Do androids dream?.

---

Epics

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) Trailer

See Lawrence of Australia.

---

Ben-Hur (1959) Trailer

See Romevision.

The novel Ben-Hur was completed in Teufort by its author, Lew Wallace, in 1880, while he was the IRL Territorial Governor of the Badlands.

---

Doctor Zhivago (1965) Improved Trailer

See Mikado282's cameo.

---

Westerns

Quigley Down Under (1990)

Macho Mann, Sniper

This is the only Tom Selleck movie I would recommend; good story, good soundtrack, good drama, good shooting. In my opinion, Tom Selleck did only two roles super well, Magnum PI and Quigley. But Quigley was his last rodeo. That is to say that, Blue Bloods is maybe a third best performance, but you have to pay close attention to tell whether he is supposed to be a police commissioner or a reverse mortgage salesman.

---

The Big County (1958) Clip

You don't catch Gregory Peck (Guns of the Navar0wned, Moby Dick) and Burl Ives (Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer) in Westerns very often. The water war is not an unusual plot for a western, but the Peck and Ives portrayals are unique.

---

Eastwood ... Clint Eastwood

See Hat With No Name, Brim-Full of Bullets.

The sixties and early seventies movies made Eastwood's career. The only Clint Eastwood movie I would hesitate to recommend is Heartbreak Ridge (1986).

---

Bond ... James Bond

See Spy references, no really, just see Spy references.

The villain lairs of Bond movies have greatly influenced the art of Team Fortress 2 maps. Each Bond movie reflects historic and cultural changes of the times of their filming. Doctor No comes at a time when the US and USSR were competing for discovery and control of uranium. It is little remembered that tropical guano is radioactive and was at one time mined for uranium and the Doctor No secret base is on an old guano mine.

Man with the Golden Gun is perhaps the least Bond-like of them all, I wouldn't recommend it except for completing the set.

---

Romcom

I usually avoid straight up romantic comedies, but I do recommend a few, for some reason.

Tootsie (1982)

See Pyro ("He's not here, is she?")

---

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

This is my favorite Warren Beatty film, and he is not really on my list of favorite actors. This is a case where the remake is better than the original (Here Comes Mr. Jordan, 1941)

---

La Cage aux Folles (1978)

See Birdcage, Bolted Birdcage.

One of the most successful foreign language films in the U.S..

---

Asian themes

Let's be honest, here, these are mostly Kung Fu Chinese-themed. (That also means most are not U.S. productions.)

---

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)

There is one technique in this film I used to teach in the SCA.

---

Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004)

---

Kung Fu Hustle (2004 )

See Fred Astaire Top Hat outtake in the hidden page. (Kung Fu Hustle references Top Hat).

---

House of Flying Daggers (2004)

(Non-U.S.) If you are a fan of the art direction of Samurai Jack, I think you would enjoy the art of this movie, referred to by some as "live action anime".

---

The Sand Pebbles (1966)

Imperfect people in an imperfect situation. This is an unusual film for its setting in the rarely-studied Yangtze Patrol in 1928 China and China's tripolar struggle for national independence and identity.

---

Let the Bullets Fly (2010)

Although this is a fully PRC Chinese production, there are several American references, the plot has echoes of Fist Full of Dollars, the horse tram sounds like an American steam locomotive, the bandits were at a point wearing the distinct uniforms of the U.S. Expeditionary Marines in China in a scene reminiscent of the U.S. Charge up San Juan Hill.