Poets' Favorite Movies
Ron Koertge
Here's the list, BUT in no particular order:
Truly Madly Deeply: She loves him (fill in title), then he
dies and she's devastated. But he comes back! Oh, my God. Then he and
his dead pals get boring.
Humoresque: Joan Crawford gets a load of John Garfield playing
the violin of all things. She has one of her pretty boys fetch her
glasses and as she squints at him from across the room, we see a blurry
JG in a mirror behind her.
The Audition: Japanese horror flick featuring a guy in a sack.
Yikes!
The Conversation: Charles Bukowski once told Gerry Locklin and
me that someone with all the facts only seems paranoid. Are you
listening, Gene Hackman?
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: Worth watching for the colors
of the shirts alone. And then there's that dance with the axe.
Kicking and Screaming: Not the stupid Will Ferrell movie, but
the other one. The bow hunting line kills me every time.
Metropolitan: Whit Stillman's love song to the tuxedo. Clever
as all get out.
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia: Warren Oates riding
around with a head in a burlap bag. What's not to like?
Picnic at Hanging Rock: Sexual repression galore.
Sweet Smell of Success: Tony Curtis' best film. Also starring
Burt Lancaster's glasses.
Ron Koertge taught for three thousand years
at the city college in Pasadena before retiring in 2001 (Oh, all right,
it just felt like three thousand.) I'm a minor poet and a mid-list
author of Young Adult novels, but an ace handicapper of thoroughbred
race horses and a relentless movie-goer. A hundred films a year (in
theaters, of course) is about par for me and my wife, Bianca
Richards. Movies have saved my life more than once, something a stack of
essays never did.
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