#93: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

 

THRILL SCALE 1-10

8

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, but the first time was only two years ago

BEST SEQUENCE

The mother and daughter reunion that occurs in the cellar

BEST LINE

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

97%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"George A. Romero's debut set the template for the zombie film, and features tight editing, realistic gore, and a sly political undercurrent."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A ragtag group of Pennsylvanians barricade themselves in an old farmhouse to remain safe from a horde of flesh-eating ghouls that are ravaging the East Coast of the United States."

THOUGHTS

• More than any other movie so far, I'm gonna talk spoilers, including the ending of the movie, so be warned. But also, come on. It's 50 years old, it's only 95 minutes long, and thanks to a copyright oversight, the whole movie is legally available on Youtube. If you're worried about spoilers, just go watch it, especially if you've ever enjoyed other zombie-related entertainment - you owe it to the subgenre to see where it all began
• While watching this movie, the word that kept coming to mind was "economical," and while it was certainly made on a budget ($114 000 to be precise), I mostly mean that in regards to time, characters, and plot. Time - there's no long build-up. We briefly meet Barbra and Johnny, siblings who are visiting their father's grave, and Johnny croaks at minute 7. Then it's off to the races, with Barbra hiding in a farmhouse with a few others. Characters - that thin backstory for Barbra and Johnny is probably the most we get in terms of character development. Barbra meets up with a handful of strangers, and we learn next to nothing about them. Plot - there isn't really one. A group of people have to work together to defend themselves from "ghouls" (the movie never uses the word "zombie") in a farmhouse. Even the cause of the zombies reanimating is only vaguely explained through a news broadcast (radiation from an exploded space probe that was on it's way back to Earth from Venus. Hey, I'm no scientist)
• Incidentally, I was going to make a snarky comment about the way this movie spells "Barbra" instead of "Barbara," but then I remembered Barbra Streisand, so it would seem that I was the fool
• The above points about this movie being economical were not meant as a criticism. This is a tight movie that leaves an impression and packs a punch. "Concentrated" is another adjective that comes to mind
• This is not, strictly speaking, the first zombie movie. The term "zombie" actually comes from Haitian folklore, and there were a number of movies made before this one about reanimated corpses, including everyone's favourite, Plan 9 From Outer Space. Night of the Living Dead, however, is seen as the birth of the modern zombie movie - these zombies are unintelligent, aggressive towards the living, and they are driven by their hunger for human flesh. Watching this movie, one recognizes so many tropes that will appear again and again in the future. A few of my favourites - they can only be stopped with a shot to the head, body shots won't do any good; a group of survivors boarding up the windows and doors with scrap wood; zombie hands reaching through said windows and doors for some pretty good jump scares; infighting amongst the survivors about the best strategies for survival; and that old classic, an infected person in their midst who stops living and starts attacking
• But despite being a trendsetter, the movie does show its age in a few ways. The acting and dialogue is a little corny, there's a melodramatic and fake-looking fist fight between two survivors, when we finally get to see the zombies eating human flesh it looks a little silly, and the makeup effects used in 1968 would, understandably, develop to be more convincing in later movies. Given what they were working with, though, this is still an impressively immersive movie. The way the zombies are lit is often very creepy
• What really stands out to me, both on this viewing and the previous one, is how incredibly bleak the ending is. And I mean it, now, spoilers coming up
• Every single main character dies! Sure, we had that early death at minute 7 so we know the zombies aren't just playing around. Then at minute 72, two main characters die in a truck explosion during a botched escape attempt, leaving only a few people. And you think this smaller group of survivors will be able to work together, set aside their differences, and figure out a way out of this darned mess! But no, very abruptly things get bad, and they rapidly get worse and worse, including a supremely chilling case of zombie matricide (my pick for the most effective scene)
• At last the only remaining survivor is the most capable of all of them, Ben, and we think he deserves to live - he tried to protect the others, he had the best ideas, he knew when to barricade himself in the cellar when the house finally gets overrun. However, Ben is ultimately shot by a posse of vigilantes who are on zombie-extermination duty. And there is no justice for Ben
• As referenced in the Rotten Tomatoes quote above, George Romero's zombie movies often contained aspects of social and political commentary. I have to be honest, however, I'm not usually one who looks for subtext; I often take my movies at face value. I'm better at reading about film analysis than I am at pontificating about it. If you want to approach this just as a zombie movie, you're going to have a good, thrilling time. If you want to approach this as a zombie movie and a clever allegory, however, you may have an even better time, and I welcome any discussions about the movie's deeper meanings in the comments

Up Next: #92 on the list, Body Heat, from 1981, a movie that everyone agrees is fantastically sexy and ridiculously steamy. I saw it years ago, but I don't remember much about it, so how sexy can it be?! We shall find out

Update: Actually, there aren't any more zombie movies on the list proper, and we haven't supplemented the list in a while, so we'll take a brief detour to check out Romero's follow-up to Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, which he made 10 years later. Up next, #93-B: Dawn of the Dead from 1978!

#94: THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979)

 

THRILL SCALE 1-10

7

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Never

BEST SEQUENCE

A very early scene set in the control room of a nuclear power plant during a near disaster, and which sets into motion the events of the whole movie. It's tense and well acted, especially by Jack Lemmon.

BEST LINE

"Guess what! I've got a syndrome! And the only prescription is more China!" - Just kidding. This is a very good movie, and the script is great, it's just not very quotable.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

86%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"With gripping themes and a stellar cast, The China Syndrome is the rare thriller that's as thought-provoking as it is tense."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A reporter finds what appears to be a cover-up of safety hazards at a nuclear power plant."

THOUGHTS

• I don't know much about nuclear energy. I know it's been around for quite some time, and I believe it's relatively more sustainable than some other forms of power. I also know that it has caused some terrible disasters (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima to name a few)
• And I know that at this point nuclear energy has not killed me, and to the best of my knowledge it has not put me in harm's way. However, that's partly what makes this movie so unnerving. The filmmakers posit that we may all have been a lot closer to catastrophe than any of us realize, due to factors entirely beyond our control
• As mentioned above, early in the movie, we have a near nuclear disaster. This almost comes to pass because a needle on a gauge is stuck, and it becomes unstuck with a finger tap. Now, I have faith that safety measures and equipment standards have improved since 1979. But there's no possible way to account for every single contingency or circumstance, and there's especially no way to account for the ultimate fallibility of people. And I can certainly imagine how terrifying this film must have seemed back when it came out
• I mentioned in my last review that I had no idea if this movie was a disaster movie or an investigative thriller. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say, although spoiler alert, you have been warned, this is not a disaster movie. The plot does not deal with an actual nuclear disaster or the consequences of one. However, it does deal with the characters realizing how much more likely a disaster may be than they thought, and watching them decide how to handle this knowledge is, in my opinion, way more thrilling than an actual disaster movie would have been
• Incidentally, this movie has absolutely nothing to do with China. It takes place entirely in California. The title refers to the idea that in the case of a nuclear meltdown the core components of the reactor would have nothing to contain them, so they'd burn all the way down through the centre of the Earth and out the other side into China. Physically and geographically impossible, of course, but hey it's certainly an evocative way of describing it
• Some nuclear power plant details that I noticed from this movie: in a nuclear power plant if things go haywire, the actual technical term for an emergency shutdown is a SCRAM. Like that's actually what they call it with the utmost seriousness. There's something darkly hilarious about that. Also, the majority of the characters pronounce "turbine" as "turban," can't say I've ever heard that pronunciation before
• And we have the classic mispronunciation of "nuclear" as "nucular," although I think it's only Michael Douglas who says it, so maybe that's on him
• As a thriller this is very well made. The characters' motivations are compelling, our sympathies shift at points, and there's a very exciting character-driven climax. There are also some very effective car chase scenes - and they make sense in the context of the plot, even if this doesn't sound like a car chase-type film. Finally, I didn't even notice until reading about it after the fact, but this movie doesn't have a soundtrack. Any music we hear is diegetic, usually coming from car radios. It was a strong choice for this movie and it adds to the sense of realness and urgency

Up Next: Not only is it our first horror movie on the list, it's also a deeply influential film that firmly established the tropes for an entire genre: #93, Night of the Living Dead from 1968.

#95: FULL METAL JACKET (1987)

 

THRILL SCALE 1-10

6

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, 15+ years ago

BEST SEQUENCE

The climax of the boot camp sequence is filmed like a horror movie and it is genuinely chilling

BEST LINE

"Bullshit. I bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose." - Gunnery Sergeant Hartman

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

92%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Intense, tightly constructed, and darkly comic at times, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket may not boast the most original of themes, but it is exceedingly effective at communicating them."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue."

THOUGHTS

• Not only is this our first Stanley Kubrick film, it's also our first war movie, of which there will be several. And I'll admit, the war movies may be a little hard for me to assess. The actuality of the Vietnam War, the sheer destruction and loss that result from any war, the inhumanity that occurred during this time period, these are all pretty heavy topics to unpack in my silly little blog in which I wax poetic about Dennis Hopper blowing up a bus. To assign a Thrill Score to a movie like Full Metal Jacket feels glib at best, insensitive at worst. Just know that we are still treating these movies as movies, and we are not necessarily addressing the concepts behind these films. War is not thrilling, war is not action-packed. War is terrible, and war is Hell
• And to be fair, most war movies take this exact same point of view. Full Metal Jacket has a particular focus on the way war dehumanizes its active participants. We spend the first 45 minutes of this movie going through Marine boot camp, during which the recruits are emotionally disassembled through physical, verbal and mental abuse, only to be reassembled into pliant, obedient weapons. This effect lasts through the rest of the movie, as well. The characters are rarely ever referred to by their actual names, they mostly go by the nicknames assigned by their brutal drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, played by R. Lee Ermey
• Famously, before acting in this movie, Ermey was a real drill instructor and he started as just a technical advisor for Kubrick. He was then cast in the movie, and ad-libbed most of his lines. If you can get past the homophobic, fatphobic and racist abuse he heaps on the recruits, you can definitely find some pitch-black comedy in parts of this performance. He then went on to have a fairly long film career, including as the voice of the main Army Man, Sarge, in Toy Story. I can guarantee you there are some pretty amazing mashups of these two movies out there on the interwebs
• Vincent D'Onofrio appears, also in his first major film role, playing Private Pyle (nicknamed after Gomer Pyle, incidentally, a character from The Andy Griffith Show who went on to have a Marines-based spinoff show). Private Pyle receives the brunt of Hartman's ire, culminating in the above-mentioned climax of the boot camp sequence. Christian Bale and Robert De Niro are always brought up as actors who go through extreme physical transformations for roles, but check out Vincent D'Onofrio! These two movies both came out in 1987! (Full Metal Jacket and Adventures in Babysitting)

• After the boot camp sequence, we then go to Vietnam with the Marines, and the movie becomes a bit more of a generic war movie. There are some notably difficult scenes in which the Marines' utter disregard for the enemy is on full display. They do not see the Vietnamese soldiers, or even the civilians, as human beings; they see them as things to kill, as they were trained. This is the kind of movie in which the concepts of "good guys" and "bad guys" become increasingly murky, even just amongst the Americans
• We end with a fairly tense scene in which an American squad is pinned down by a Vietnamese sniper. They are eventually forced to confront the enemy as an individual person, and they are left with a choice between mercy and indifference. Of the latter half of the movie, this part is definitely the most effective
• When it came out, Full Metal Jacket was somewhat overshadowed by Platoon, which won the Best Picture Oscar for 1986, and which we'll be talking about a little later (it's #72 on the list). On rewatch, I remembered the boot camp sequence pretty well, but I was surprised by how little I remembered of the Vietnam section. I don't think it's the most effective war movie I've ever seen, but the more I've been thinking about it to write this review, the more of an effect it's had on me. This is a very good movie. But I don't necessarily think it's thrilling, at least not in the way I like my thrills. If this description intrigues you, though, I recommend watching it if you haven't

Up Next: #94, The China Syndrome. I know nothing about this movie. Through some light Googling, it looks like it's about a nuclear power plant, but I don't even know if it's a disaster movie or more of an investigative thriller. We'll find out!

#96: BLUE VELVET (1986)

TW: Sexual violence and assault; kidnapping

 

THRILL SCALE 1-10

7

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, but it was roughly 15 years ago

BEST SEQUENCE

Candy-coloured clown they call the sandman

NSFW

BEST LINE

"HEINEKEN?! Fuck that shit! PABST BLUE RIBBON!" - This is a fun thing to yell at people you see drinking Heineken, and it's even more fun if you happen to be drinking PBR at the time. Guaranteed to make you a big hit at parties

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

94%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"If audiences walk away from this subversive, surreal shocker not fully understanding the story, they might also walk away with a deeper perception of the potential of film storytelling."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child."

THOUGHTS

• The chilling, disturbing nature of this movie is entirely contributed by Dennis Hopper's performance as the villain Frank Booth. He is a brutal, sadistic psychopath who seems to act entirely on impulse. One gets the sense that Frank Booth himself doesn't really plan his actions any further than five seconds into the future, and that unpredictability makes him a terrifying wildcard
• The interesting thing about this performance is that Hopper is playing it straight, but if you pitch it slightly differently, or you take certain scenes, lines or mannerisms out of the context of the full movie, you could be forgiven for thinking it's supposed to be comical. His excessive vulgarity, especially, approaches absurdity; he swears in nearly every single line of dialogue he has
• His introductory scene, however, in which he physically and sexually assaults Isabella Rossellini, is so bleak and so starkly violent, that it colours the entire performance for the rest of the film. We see what kind of a person he is right away, and it's impossible to forget, even if the character's crassness may be played for laughs in a very different kind of movie
• While he also played a mass-murdering psychopath in Speed, Blue Velvet is certainly a darker movie and a darker performance, partly because of how much more raw and graphic it is. Funny that two of Hopper's best-known villains appear so close together on this list of 100 movies, and I believe this may be the last we see of Dennis Hopper on the AFI's list, unless Waterworld or Super Mario Bros. make a surprise appearance
• Isabella Rossellini, as Dorothy Vallens, is also extremely effective as the woman being terrorized and sexually blackmailed by Frank. She projects such desperation and vulnerability
• Kyle MacLachlan plays our protagonist, and he's good, especially when you can tell he's scared out of his wits by his interactions with Frank. Kyle's budding romance with Laura Dern was fine, didn't do much for me, but it was kind of nice to have a little bit of optimism in a movie like this
• I haven't seen much David Lynch, but I do feel like I have a good sense of his style. By all accounts this is one of his more plot-focused movies, but there are some very bizarre parts to it, including the scene highlighted above. Certainly, this is way more coherent than something like Eraserhead
• Finally, Kyle MacLachlan's urbane college student, Jeffrey, sure does love Heineken. "Man, I like Heineken! You like Heineken?" he says to Laura Dern at the start of one of their dates. I'm sure this trait is intended to say something about his character, but I prefer to think of it as very ill-advised product placement, especially considering Frank's vociferous critique of Heineken when compared to a nice, cold PBR

Up next: Stanley Kubrick has a total of five movies on the 100 Thrills list. We'll be looking at the first of his five, Full Metal Jacket

#97: SAFETY LAST! (1923)

 

THRILL SCALE 1-10

5

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Never

BEST SEQUENCE

The climactic building climb

BEST LINE

“...” - Everyone

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

97%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Persuasive enough to give audiences acrophobia when they aren't laughing at Harold Lloyd's antics, Safety Last! is a marvel of visual effects and slapstick comedy."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

“A boy leaves his small country town and heads to the big city to get a job. As soon as he makes it big his sweetheart will join him and marry him. His enthusiasm to get ahead leads to some interesting adventures.”

THOUGHTS

• Due to its age, Safety Last! is in the public domain. So if by any chance you do want to watch it, the whole movie is easily available on Youtube. That's how I saw it
• This isn't a very plot-dependent movie, so I'll just describe it. The main character is a department store employee. He has a friend who's really good at climbing buildings. Main character overhears the storeowner say that he'll give $1000 to anyone with a good idea for a promotional stunt. Main character suggests his friend climbing the building will be good for business. Friend gets chased around by a cop, so main character has to climb the building instead. Seriously, that's the plot
• I haven't seen many (if any) silent movies, but this one has Harold Lloyd playing the protagonist, and Lloyd is considered an icon of silent comedy, alongside Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Lloyd did a lot of the stunts himself, and there was a certain amount of movie magic used to make the stunts less dangerous than they look, but they're still pretty impressive (and by the sounds of it, they were also still pretty dangerous)
• But while this was undoubtedly mind-blowing in 1923, that was also 100 years ago and we've come a long way since then. Watching Harold Lloyd climb the outside of a building is pretty cool, but he's still just...climbing a building. It's not exactly riveting stuff. Apologies to Tom Cruise in Ghost Protocol, which I haven't actually seen
• I'm sure this movie is included in this list for historical reasons, which is understandable and we'll have a few more like it, but they'll be hard-pressed to stack up to more modern stuff, at least in my opinion, which is the sole criterion of this blog
• Side-note, the aforementioned friend who can climb buildings like the dickens is named "Limpy" Bill, which is delightful
• Up above, under best quote, I made a silent movie joke, because I'm a clever boy like that. But there was some good old-timey wit in some of the title cards, and some good sight gags
• For example, in describing the main character's superior: "Mr. Stubbs - Head Floorwalker. Muscle-bound - From patting himself on the back." Something very quaint about that
• And having said that, my favourite part of the movie was probably seeing the depiction of working as a 1920s retail employee. The customers stay past the store's closing time, they fight over merchandise, and they ask annoying questions. As an ex-retail employee myself, I can confirm, some things never change

Up next: #96 on the list, and the first which is mostly thrilling because it's actually pretty disturbing, David Lynch's Blue Velvet. I'm also now remembering that movie titles should be italicized, so...moving forward, they will be!

#98: BLOOD SIMPLE (1984)

 

THRILL SCALE 1-10

8

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

No, first time

BEST SEQUENCE

A mid-movie scene that takes place on and beside a dark, deserted road.

BEST LINE

“I got a job for you.”

“Uh, well, if the pay's right, and it's legal, I'll do it.”

“It's not strictly legal.”

“Well, if the pay’s right, I’ll do it.”

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

94%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

“Brutally violent and shockingly funny in equal measure, Blood Simple offers early evidence of the Coen Brothers' twisted sensibilities and filmmaking ingenuity.”

IMDB SYNOPSIS

“The owner of a seedy small-town Texas bar discovers that one of his employees is having an affair with his wife. A chaotic chain of misunderstandings, lies and mischief ensues.”

THOUGHTS

• If it wasn’t obvious from my deliberately vague description of my favourite scene, this is one of those times when I’m going to avoid giving away too much of this movie. It twists and it turns, and I was very glad I got the chance to watch it entirely unspoiled. I really knew next to nothing going into it, and it caught me off guard more than once. In fact, I slightly modified the IMDB synopsis above because it gave away just a little too much. Although “mischief” is a weird word to use, IMDB, it makes it sound like they decide to egg each other’s houses. Things get considerably darker than that.
• This is a movie about regular people making dangerous choices based on the information available to them. However, unbeknownst to them, the information available never ever provides the full picture. The intricate part of the plot is that this is never really anyone’s fault. If I was in some of these situations, seeing the evidence and the things these characters were seeing, I’d probably jump to some of the same conclusions (if not follow through on the same courses of action)
• Great cast. You’ve got Frances McDormand in her first film role (by the way, see her in Nomadland this year, she’s great in it). You’ve got Dan Hedaya, possibly best known as Cher’s dad from Clueless, entirely loathsome in this. And you’ve got John Getz, who I don’t recognize from anything else, but he conveys a lot in very few words.
• Best of all, though, is M. Emmet Walsh playing a real piece of shit. He speaks in a whiny Southern drawl that pretty much lets you know he’s a piece of shit before he even starts acting like one (although that doesn’t take very long at all).
• The score is effectively moody and sparse, but my favourite musical component was the repeated use of “It’s the Same Old Song” by The Four Tops, especially as an end credits needle drop after a pretty intense climax and a great final line. Ashley and I have been humming it all week.

• Some very effective lighting effects and camera movements
• For years now, I’ve considered the Coens’ Fargo as one of my all-time favourite movies, and it certainly shares DNA with this one, the first movie the Coens ever made. Fargo is set in snowy Minnesota, Blood Simple in sweaty small-town Texas, but they’re both about normal people making dangerous choices, getting in over their heads, and ultimately dealing with the consequences in one way or another. Not to mention that they both star Frances McDormand, although in very different roles. While Fargo does have some thrilling scenes of its own, Blood Simple is probably the more thrilling of the two, and I can definitely see myself coming back to it.

Up next: #97 on the list, Safety Last!, a silent romantic comedy from 1923. I haven’t seen it, and I’m really not sure what to expect in terms of thrills, but I suspect this movie is included because of the bonkers physical stunts that some of those old silent movies featured. This one is best known for a scene in which the main character dangles from the hands of a giant clock on the outside of a skyscraper

#99: SPEED (1994)

 

THRILL SCALE 1-10

9

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, a few times

BEST SEQUENCE

If I have to choose, the early part where Keanu chases after the bus and jumps onto it, but really, the entire middle hour of this movie is a glorious thrill ride that just won’t quit

BEST LINE

“Pop quiz, hotshot” - Choosing this because it’s a line that I say frequently myself, and for years I didn’t even know what it was from. In truth, I may have first picked it up from the Leslie Nielsen movie Spy Hard, which has a Speed parody scene and also includes this line and is a really terrible movie.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

94%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

“A terrific popcorn thriller, Speed is taut, tense, and energetic, with outstanding performances from Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper, and Sandra Bullock.”

IMDB SYNOPSIS

“A young police officer must prevent a bomb exploding aboard a city bus by keeping its speed above 50 mph.”

THOUGHTS

• Let’s cut to the chase. As mentioned above, I think the middle hour of this movie, everything that happens on “the bus that couldn’t slow down,” is perfect. If that was all this movie consisted of, I’d happily give it a 10/10 on the Thrill Scale. The driving stunts are some of the best I’ve seen, and I whole-heartedly buy into the escalating series of events.
• The AFI put this at number 99 on their list, but I really think it deserves a higher placement, maybe even in the top 20.
• Do some of the events strain credulity? Sure. But you don’t have enough TIME to stop and question anything! Buckle in and just enjoy the ride. And I’m being extra picky here in even pointing this out, I’ve never watched this movie and scoffed in disbelief. I just grin in delight.
• When you boil a movie like this down to a one-sentence description, you sell it short. I mean, essentially yes, this movie is about a bus that can’t slow down or it will explode. But the fun part is in what the movie does with this bus! The filmmakers thoroughly explored the potential of this scenario in a way that makes sense to me and leaves me satisfied with the situations they chose to throw at this bus. I also think the pacing is top-notch.
• Keanu Reeves doesn’t bring a ton of personality to his role, but I think that’s perfectly fine - it’s not needed. He sells the action, performs some pretty impressive stunts, and hey, he’s not too hard on the eyes either!
• Besides, we’ve got Dennis Hopper and Sandra Bullock for personality. Hopper is cocky and crazed, with some great line deliveries, and Bullock is cute and capable, with some very 90s frilly socks.
• We’ve also got some familiar faces playing passengers on the bus, including Alan Ruck (Cameron from Ferris Bueller) and, much to my delight, an actress named Beth Grant, who I recognized from the Dinner Party episode of The Office, in which she played Dwight’s former babysitter/current dinner party date (“Purely carnal. That’s all you need to know.”)
• So why, oh why, does this movie only get a 9/10 on the Thrill Scale? Well, the bookends of this movie, the first half hour and the last half hour, just can’t compare to what comes between them. And the thing is, these set pieces are fine! Like I don’t think they’re awful, they just pale in comparison to the impeccable middle hour. Am I being too harsh in dropping this movie down on the Thrill Scale just because the middle section is an act that can’t be topped? Maybe. But you know what they say, life isn’t...fare…
• And on that note, I shall leave you with Ashley’s one-sentence review: “Speed: You can tap on but you can’t tap out”

Up next: #98 on the list, the Coen Brothers’ first movie, Blood Simple. Despite being a big fan of the Coens, this is one I’ve never seen, so I’m looking forward to it!