Category Archives: Classics

Ghostbusters (1984) & Ghostbusters II (1989)

Ghostbusters.  Oh Ghostbusters.  It’s like remembering the first girl you ever had a crush on, your best friend, and most of your favorite toys, all at once.  Also, there was Ecto-Cooler.  These two movies were easily the most viewed of my childhood, along with the cartoon, and of course any merchandise was a must have.  Looking back it’s hard to say just what it was about this story that pulled me in so utterly.  I was fascinated by ghosts, though there’s very little in the movies that could be considered anything other than spectral slapstick.  I certainly appreciate Bill Murray, though watching the films now I see just how much of his performance the kid version of me didn’t register.  I suppose it could have been simply a “right place, right time” situation, or my parents bringing a movie to me that we could all appreciate together, or even just all the amazing toys.  Whatever the case, the Ghostbusters franchise has been with me since near birth, and watching these films again as an adult, with hopefully a more critical eye, I think it’s safe to say I’ll be talking about them until the day I die.

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Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Desperation.  A theme found in an endless collection of stories and one that never lessens in it’s ability to impact us.  The power of this theme comes from the consequences of desperation, specifically the dramatic loss of honor that seems so inevitably tied to it.  It’s this universal emotion that allows Vittorio De Sica‘s Bicycle Thieves to remain so consistently effecting.  The story is simple, and not at all burdened with multiple dilemmas.  Just one: survive.  Survive for family, survive for honor, just survive.  Because this, more than anything else, is the point of existence.

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8½ (1963)

The characters of Federico Fellini‘s are obsessed with age.  Apart from the occasional young person who somehow finds their way into a scene and is simply too naive to know any better, or to care, the chief characters range in age from their late 30s to nearly bedridden and all of them are desperate to regain that which is lost.  The men all have mistresses far younger than they, the women make themselves up literally and with feigned indifference.  While this is not the point of , it is significant to it.  This film is about the fear of commitment, both artistic and emotional.  Allowing age to run rampant in the way it does here, with barrages of the elderly ambling about in the sunlight (in a place so strongly resembling the afterlife it’s no wonder nothing gets done) and women whose usefulness runs out around the age of 55, suggests to the audience that time is fleeting and commitment is an anchor.  Freedom to pursue whatever you want comes at the cost of not being tied down.  To what?  Your producer, your crew, your cast, your friends, your wife, your mistress, your ideas, your ideals, yourself.

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