Last Month's Watchlist: Leone, Kubrick, and the One Movie I Can't Stop Rewatching

Been on a real movie kick these past couple months, so here's what made it into the rotation. Barry Lyndon was also in there but that one already got its own post a while back.

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

First Sergio Leone western for me and the pace of it caught me off guard, in a good way. Nobody rushes anything. Leone will just sit on a face for what feels like a full minute before anything happens, and it somehow makes the actual gunfights hit harder when they finally come. Eastwood, Van Cleef, Wallach, all three chasing the same buried gold and none of them trusting each other for a second. Completely different pace and world from any western I'd seen before this, and the bg score damn it's just something.

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Grosse Pointe Blank

This one's a ritual for me. I rewatch it every so often and I genuinely don't know why, I just have a soft spot for it. Part of it is the scene where Martin finally shows back up in front of Debi after years of just vanishing on her. But the part I always think about is Martin walking into the convenience store built on top of his old childhood home, and there's a whole gunfight happening around the clerk while he just stands there completely checked out, and the one line he gets afterward is somehow funnier than anything else in the movie. Can't really explain why. It just is.

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2001: A Space Odyssey

Embarrassingly late to this one. Went in expecting some dated, slow sci-fi thing people just respect out of politeness, and it wrecked that assumption fast. 1968, not even 1970 like I'd assumed, which makes it even more insane. The Jupiter stretch where Bowman gets pulled through that tunnel of light was disorienting in a way that felt more like a dream than a movie. And HAL. HAL is the part that stayed with me. The scene where Bowman pulls his memory apart piece by piece and his voice just slows down and turns childlike and scared until there's nothing left, that got me more than I expected a computer to.

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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Hell of a movie. Newman and Redford have this easy chemistry that carries the whole thing even while what's actually happening to these two is pretty bleak underneath it. Keeps choosing jokes over gunfights until it very suddenly doesn't. And the ending doesn't even show you the worst part, just freezes right before it, which somehow lands worse than if they had.

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Four movies, four completely different decades and moods, and all four are still stuck in my head. Good month.

FAQ

Wait, 2001: A Space Odyssey actually came out in 1968?

Yeah, that's the part that threw me too. I went in assuming it was some early-70s thing and it's not, it's 1968, which makes the visual effects and that whole Jupiter tunnel sequence even harder to explain.

What's actually going on with the Grosse Pointe Blank rewatches?

Honestly I can't fully justify it, it's just become a ritual at this point. If I had to point to one thing, it's that convenience store scene, Martin standing there completely checked out while a gunfight happens around the clerk, that's the moment that keeps pulling me back.