Lazy Hot Takes on Classic Films

Monday is movies (and sometimes TV). Here's a couple of wild, lazy hot takes on some classic films. Maybe you have one to offer as well. Fun, right?

I watched The Omen this weekend. First time I’d seen it in several years, it was always the “classic horror” I talked up the most – frightening because if you believe in that shit then it was totally terrifying, and such great mood and music and creeping intensity. I saw it when I was young, and it ruined me. That final frame of Damian’s haunted smirk.

But to rewatch it, my mind now ruined by so many horror films, nothing ever as frightening as a person from your office sneaking up to tap you on the shoulder and ask you to come in on Saturday, was to confirm that it’s really not that scary. Not that scary at all.

The music remains the highlight, something I already knew from buying the score on vinyl recently – at the absurd price of around $90 (well, I didn’t so much buy it, as trade in some old junk until I had enough money for what I have to say constitutes a fair swap).

Anyway, one thing that hit me, watching The Omen in 2023, watching it as a parent, watching it with my son in fact (a horror obsessed kid, no idea how that could have happened?!) I realised that the film is actually about the horrors of terrible parenting.

These rich, career driven, status chasing fucks couldn’t give a hoot about their kid. There they are walking through autumn leaves discussing themselves in an early scene, and they lose their child. A mild panic and then they find him – he’s still practically swaddled.

They move to the big house because the dad gets the big, big job and they have a nanny raising their child. And they couldn’t care less.

By the time he pushes the mother over the ledge, I’m fully cheering for Damian.

This is possibly the wrong read of the film. But it pleased me no end to discover this take. It got me through a fairly boring re-watch, and somewhere in there is probably my own baggage, or at least my own information. I was a stay at home dad, and I took that role very seriously, because why wouldn’t you. I can watch the movies about missing kids and grief that parents feel after their children die. They are sad, and sometimes deeply moving. But I can watch them. I know not all parents can do this. And I respect that. I watched a movie called Mass this weekend, about two sets of parents getting together to discuss the death of their kids in a school shooting. I chose to watch it this weekend because I was home alone.

This weekend I also caught up with The Justice of Bunny King, which is a good movie – far better than I expected – and speaks to a different kind of grief a parent might feel. A different kind of baggage.

These sorts of movies are never an issue for me to watch. Because I’m interesting in that exploration of humanity.

I’m fully joking when I say Dear Zachary is a hot date-night film. But, I did recently take my wife to see The Room for a date-night. And she still looks at me with a residual who hurt you sadness in her eyes when that film is mentioned.

But I’m only half-joking when I say that now and forever after I will think of The Omen as a movie about shit parents.

My favourite ever misread, or weird hot take about a movie is this.

Admittedly, this Karate Kid clip is a parody. Of course. A genius bit of comedy. So brilliant, that in Ralph Macchio’s book, Waxing On (which I recently finished reading, enjoyable, if a bit one note) he not only addresses this particular parody-review, he has to have a go still at refuting it. This just makes the recap/review even funnier.

I once wrote a “pisstake” review of a film. Well, I’m sure some readers have figured I’ve done that more than once. But I was baffled when I finally sat through the Lady Gaga-remake of A Star Is Born. Not because she did a bad job, she was pretty great. But the story. And the way it was told. It wasn’t serious, surely? But everywhere I looked, people were drinking in this alleged sincerity. This was a deep meditation on art and fame apparently. Lol. I nearly wound down the window of the plane I was in, and took a leap of faith to escape the trite ending of the picture that I could see being telegraphed a nautical mile away.

So, I wrote this (below). Even read it out one time at a poetry reading – it was interesting seeing the faces of the people in the audience, after I’d pre-hyped it as a piece about the new Star Is Born film. They smiled, nostalgic for the Streisand version, appreciative of the new take, and ready (at least they thought so) for my views on it all:

I watched that new version of A Star Is Born – it features  Bradley Cooper as a nose fetishist and Lady Gaga as a nose. 
 
He was the bad side of Kris Kristofferson, none of the wisdom or insight in the lyrics, none of the heft or deft or breadth – fucking plod-happy nothing-songs that apparently  get a crowd. 

(He fingers the nose to an Allman Brothers song. And 12 first cousins all named Jethro all  come at once). 
 
Unable to live or write or be happy without the nose he takes her on tour and (yes, yes, he blows the nose…ahick!) but – cue title: A Star is Born!
 
The nose gets to sing on stage, then co-write then write. Moving from backing to lead. 
 
Then the nose gets a horrible-shit-cunt manager, and he makes her change her look and  sound – and soon she loses any of the grit or charm and just becomes any other type of singer.  And Shit Shitstopherson gets drunk and drunker and falls over and over. 
 
When he finally hangs himself  out to dry, we can only figure that the moral of the story is that nose fetishists should  be allowed and not discriminated against, and music manager-types are still the fucking scum of the  fucking earth. 
 
The movie contains: 2 stars. 

**

So, with that as your setup, I’d love to know if you have any particular Hot Takes you stand by when it comes to a blockbuster, or well-reviewed/revered film. Either something you’ve read or something you believe yourself…