Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them!
This week, on Thursday Movie Picks, it's not a bird, it's not Superman.... it's a PLANE! Well, in this case, three of them. And one flying man.
Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker, 1980) "Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?" "Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?" "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue!" "By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?" "There's a sale at Penney's!!" "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley." And those are just SOME of the one-liners. The brilliance of ZAZ's spoof - which uses much of the script from the 50s disaster film Zero Hour - is out of this world. If you don't laugh your ass off, I just don't think you can be helped.
Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997) Look at that trailer. Go on, just look at it. Have you ever seen anything so '90s in your whole life?!? Harrison Ford as the ass-kicking President of the United States. Gary Oldman as a Russian terrorist who hijacks his plane. Glenn Close back in the White House as the Vice President. William H. Macy. I can't believe they didn't put the best part of the movie ("Get the hell off my plane!") in there. Air Force One may be a relic of a certain time and style of moviemaking, but it still one hell of an entertaining ride. Harrison Ford for Movie President in perpetuity.
The Rocketeer (Joe Johnston, 1991) When I was a kid, this was one of my favorite movies. Still is, really - I've never outgrown it. When swoon-worthy pilot Billy Campbell finds a secret rocket-fueled jetpack hidden by the Nazis, he becomes a bit of a superhero. That is, until his gorgeous girlfriend Jennifer Connelly is kidnapped by dashing movie star/Nazi spy Timothy Dalton, in order to get the rocket back. The film is nothing but pure, old-school Hollywood movie magic and fun. I still don't know who in the cast I have the biggest crush on.
BONUS PICK
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (Richard Donner, 1963) So, technically, this isn't a movie. But each episode of The Twilight Zone was basically a mini-movie, and this is one of the very best episodes of that show. The basic premise: William Shatner is a man who suffered a nervous breakdown six months ago while aboard a plane, and is now on a plane again for the first time since. And mid-flight, he sees.... something... on the wing of the plane. But every time someone else looks, it disappears. The "gremlin" may be one of the worst pieces of 50s B-movie style makeup ever, but the tension of the script and the direction work like gangbusters. It was also re-done as a segment of the Twilight Zone movie with John Lithgow in the Shatner role, but the TV version is better.
