Bye Instant Watch: Popeye, I Am Divine, Indecent Proposal, Etc...
Friday, February 26, 2016 at 10:30AM Oscar weekend is a busy time but it's also your last opportunity to watch these titles free if you have Amazon Prime or Netflix. As is our silly habit, we've freeze framed a handful of them at a totally random place to whet your appetite. If this scene looks intriguing maybe you should carve out a couple of hours...
Leaving Netflix (after the jump)
Don--don' fight. I'll go wher-wherever de bubbles are!"
WINGS (1927) the very first Oscar winner (Best Picture and Best Effects). I *love* it. Charles "Buddy" Rogers, is very drunk in this scene, with Clara Bow trying to rescue him from some shady French dame. There's an hour left of the movie which will be mostly the Great War (aka WW I) from here on out with amazing aviation battle scenes for 1927... and the visceral physical friendship/rivalry between Charles and his co-star Richard Arlen.
JOHNNY DANGEROUSLY (1984)
DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS (1986) 2 Golden Globe nominations Best Picture and Actress, Comedy/Musical
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987)
INDECENT PROPOSAL (1993) In the freeze frame about Demi Moore has just made a big messy scene at a high class restaurant and everyone is staring at her... which is as good a metaphor as any for Demi Moore's career in the 1990s. (LOL- not the right hand corner of the screener where an extra is standing with food still on his fork.) This was part of Demi Moore's short but very successful run of hits from Ghost (1990) to A Few Good Men (1992) through Disclosure (1994) that led to her being the highest paid actress in Hollywood (Striptease, 1996)... albeit for a brief moment. The movie about a couple (Demi & young/beautiful Woody Harrelson) who get mixed up in a real estate battle with a mogul (Robert Redford) is very plotty when all anyone cared about was the central "edgy" water-cooler question: would you sleep with someone for a million dollars?
HAMLET (1990) the Gibson/Close/Zeffirelli iteration
THE SEA INSIDE (2004) Oscar winner Best Foreign Language Film
NIGHT CATCHES US (2010) *you have a few extra days for this Black Panther era romantic drama starring Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington. It leaves Netflix on March 3rd*
I never set out at the beginning to play just female parts. But they were the only parts that came my way. They were written especially for me. They were the leads in films. As a young aspiring actor, you don't turn down the lead in a movie. They made me a star, of sorts, with a cult status. But a cult status isn't enough. You can't get by on that. You can't make any money.
I AM DIVINE (2013) *a few extra days for this one, too - leaves March 5th* If you want to get schooled on the pre-internet pre-drag-going-mainstream sensation that was Divine, you should watch this doc. It's by Jeffrey Schwartz who also did Vito for HBO.
JUMANJI (1995)
AMERICAN PIE (1999)
GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS (2000) Angelina Jolie with blonde dreadlocks in a Nicolas Cage movie. This is the only thing worth knowing about it
ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE (2001)
No idea what's going on in the scene above. I remember literally nothing about this movie from Disney's wandering period between blockbuster eras (roughly 2000-2009?).
leaving Amazing Prime
THE FIFTH ELEMENT (1997)
I said Phooey and I mean Phooey!"
POPEYE (1980) Was there ever better stunt casting than Robin Williams as Popeye and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl? This Robert Altman flop also gave us the song "He Needs Me" which is brilliantly used in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Do you have fond memories of any of these pictures... or will you try to cram any of them into this busy weekend?
Reader Comments (16)
I was surprised at how much I really loved Wings. I started it as a duty watch when I was viewing all the Best Picture winners and it pulled me in almost right away.
It led me to try more silents, which has been a bumpy road but has resulted in finding some real gems, The Unknown & The Last Command, along with some really awful movies, Beyond the Rocks-the Gloria Swanson/Rudolph Valentino costarrer is just terrible.
It also made me a huge fan of Clara Bow. She should really be better remembered she's SO alive on screen.
Javier Bardem is brilliant in The Sea Inside but it's so relentlessly grim I can't imagine watching it again.
I'll stick up for "Popeye" - it's a washout as a family film and didn't seem to have audience in mind at all, but it's just so singular. I'm also in the tank for anything Harry Nilsson.
Popeye is worth watching - Shelley Duvall is excellent as Olive Oyl, and the production design was beautifully done. And it's Altman...
I also liked Hamlet with Mel Gibson and Glenn Close was unexpected and very good.
The Oscars started so well; the first two big awards went to Wings and Sunrise, which are both terrific. There was nowhere to go but down from there.
Are we supposed to laugh at Demi being the highest paid actress now.
mark -- it wasn't written as a joke. just a fact. I like her in general
Saw Popeye at the theater as a kid and remember being utterly astonished at its soul-crushing awfulness. Maybe I need to revisit. Harry Nilsson IS amazing.
(shoutout to Glenn for introducing me to the awesome term "soul-crushing" lol)
OK,I thought she was a good actress in the 90's,i know she's more of a has been now but I think she could flourish under the right director.
I adore Johnny Dangerously. I giggle all the way through it. PRICE TAGS ON THE TURTLES.
Demi needs a Paul Thomas Anderson type director to bring her back. She has great movie star charisma, but had bad choice in movies after that initial run.
FWIW, a whole lot of gay-themed movies are leaving Netflix in March. I am Divine, I Killed My Mother, Keep the Lights On, Gayby, Out in the Dark, Getting Go Project, Geography Club and Private Romeo. Mass exodus, that, for some reason.
Glenn Darling what made you think of PTA for Demi? Because he was able to get something out of Burt Reynolds?
Any person with charisma can turn a gr8 perforamce with the right director.
I'm thinking that most people would sleep with Robert Redford for free...
Tyler - This. I was like "where is the "issue" in this "issue" movie?"
Can we have a posterized Demi.
My regret with the Gibson " Hamlet" and the Branagh "Hamlet" is that Alan Bates was Claudius in one, and Julie Christie was Gertrude in the other. I so wish they would have been together as a duo in one "Hamlet".
They were so great in their screen pairings together, and you'd really get a different perspective on how Claudius and Gertrude ending up together, and their love for each other.