Over & Overs: Moonstruck (1987)

In our new Team series, members of The Film Experience wax rhapsodic on movies they can't help watching frequently and can't turn away from if they stumble upon them. Here's Deborah Lipp...

 

I ain't no freaking monument to justice!

As with many of my favorite movies, I find Moonstruck endlessly quotable. I open with a quote in the hopes I can restrain myself from doing nothing but quoting in the course of this write-up.

We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die!

Oops.

Moonstruck is infinitely watchable because it works on so many levels... 

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We met Marsha Mason!

Last week we had the privilege of attending a live podcast recording of "Live at the Lortel" in the West Village where the guest was four-time Oscar nominee Marsha Mason. While a good portion of the interview focused on her new play "Little Gem" and her deep devotion to the stage, all of her Oscar nominated performances got at least some airtime. (She never intended to be a film actress but then Cinderella Liberty kind of fell into her lap). 

The piece of the interview we found most fascinating was hearing her talk about her work on Chapter Two...

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Lunchtime Poll: What would you do with a $2 Million Tip?

by Nathaniel R

On this day 25 years ago It Could Happen to You was released, a romantic comedy in which a cop (Nicolas Cage) wins the lottery and shares half his fortune with a waitress (Bridget Fonda) who he was unable to tip. The original and far superior title was Cop Gives Waitress $2 Million Tip. That year in its rejected honor, my friends and I would jokingly refer to movies by a single sentence plot rather than titles... Streep Goes White Water Rafting, Vampire Brad Feels Guilt, This Bus Is a Bomb! etc -- shut up, it was funny at the time.

In its honor today, what would you do with a $2 million dollar windfall? The catch is that you have to spend half of it on the movies. Would you invest in films, be a patron for an auteur, gift it to a struggling actor, or other? (After the jump, an Oscar-adjacent list for fun)

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"The Client" and Populist Oscar Choices in Acting

by Nathaniel R

Today is the 25th anniversary of the release of The Client which was a big sleeper success in its summer, ending the year as the 13th highest grossing movie of 1994. Only that number wasn't bad luck since Susan Sarandon netted a Best Actress nomination for the legal drama. That nomination kept her momentum as "overdue for a win" going strong until the next year when she won the Oscar for something in Oscar's more typical wheelhouse, Dead Man Walking (1995) an issue drama based on a true story.

So let's discuss something no one talks about much. What are the lead acting nominations that would never have happened without the big hit status for the movies that housed them? This is NOT meant as a critique of the performances. Sometimes Oscar just needs to be convinced by enormous success to look at worthy pieces of acting within genres they take less seriously (their loss) or star vehicles they might not have stopped to mull over without all the general audience enthusiasm forcing the movie to be taken seriously... 

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Review: Long Shot

by Chris Feil

The year ahead of any presidential election always comes with a middling political satire stumbling toward zeitgeist. Remember Swing Vote? Probably not.

This preamble year’s attempt, Jonathan Levine’s Long Shot, also blends that recurring genre with one that feels as periodically common these days - it’s also romantic comedy. Here Charlize Theron plays Charlotte Field, Secretary of State to an incompetent but popular president not seeking a second term, with her chances at launching a presidential run hingeing on the success of her new global green initiative. Her romantic foil comes with Seth Rogen’s Fred Flarsky, a journalist brought aboard as Charlotte’s speechwriter to help boost her approval ratings.

But it’s not just Fred’s witty journalistic approach that helps Charlotte reveal her authenticity to the masses, it’s the boyish crush he’s had for her since she was his teenage babysitter. To the film’s credit, it’s much sweeter (and a lot less creepy) than it sounds.

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