Two Geeks And A Git Classic Movie Reviews

The second film in our look at graphic novels (of the non-superhero variety) turned into films moves us one year down the timeline but back in time for the subject. Directed by Sam Mendes, 2002's "Road to Perdition" tells a tale of a mob family in the 1930s that is ultimately about fathers and sons. Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) is an enforcer for mob leader John Rooney (Paul Newman). When a conversation turns into a hit at the hands of Rooney's maverick son Connor (Daniel Craig) and is witnessed by Michael's son Michael (Tyler Hoechlin), Connor decides on his own how to ensure the kid's silence. This sets up the conflict between two fathers and two sons that spans the course of the rest of the film, in all its gritty, pale excellence. The film also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ciaran Hinds, Stanley Tucci, and Jude Law. And the trio discuss which two totally cheese looks at the end of the world comprise their next pairing!

This pairing is dedicated to the wealth of material to be found in graphic novels, but specifically not of the superhero variety! First up, the first graphic novel-based-film to ever be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2001's "Ghost World," director Terry Zwigoff tells the story of Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), two recent high school graduates who are searching for what the next step in their lives might be. Through a thoughtless prank, they meet Seymour (Steve Buscemi), an audiophile who Enid takes a peculiar interest in. The story spans their summer and their search for meaning and purpose in their lives. Also starring Brad Renfro, Bob Balaban, Stacey Travis, and Charles C. Stevenson Jr.

After starting in 1938, we move across the years to near the end of the career of the great Katharine Hepburn, a film co-starring father-and-daughter Henry and Jane Fonda. In 1981's "On Golden Pond," directed by Mark Rydell, Hepburn plays Ethel Thayer, wife to Norman Thayer (Henry Fonda). Normal is turning 80, and starting to experience memory lapses, but Ethel take care of him and keeps him grounded. Their daughter, Chelsea (Jane Fonda), her boyfriend Bill Ray (Dabney Coleman), and his son Billy (Doug McKeon), come to visit, and it's decided that Billy will stay with Norman and Ethel for a month while Bill and Chelsea head to Europe. Norman and Billy bond during the month, which only serves to drive home the emotional separation that's always existed between Norman and Chelsea. The film says a lot about families and curing estrangement, and was the last theatrical film Henry Fonda starred in. Plus, the gents reveal which two non-superhero-based graphic novels-turned-films make up the next pairing!

For the next two weeks, we're looking at the career of one of the greatest actors of all time, the legendary Katharine Hepburn. We begin back near the start of her career in 1938's "Bringing Up Baby." Directed by Howard Hawks and co-starring Cary Grant, the film that embraced the zany, madcap comedy and turned it into an art-form. Hepburn stars as Susan Vance, a young socialite with a penchant for twisting people around her little finger. She runs across staid and somewhat baffled Dr. David Huxley (Grant), who's about to get married to his fiance and assistant, Alice (Virginia Walker). David's attempting to woo Alexander Peabody (George Irving), the soliciter of Susan's Aunt Elizabeth (May Robson), in pursuit of a one million dollar donation to the museum. Add to that a pet leopard, a dog that just won't stop barking, a missing brontosaurus bone, and a colorful supporting cast, and you have an experience not quite like any other in cinema history!

The other film in our pairing which features an actor in their first outing as director takes place in Dorchester, Boston in 2007. Directed by Boston-native Ben Affleck, the film stars his brother Casey as Patrick Kenzie, a local private investigator who is brought into a child abduction case by the abducted girl's Aunt and Uncle, Bea (Amy Madigen) and Lionel (Titus Welliver) McCready. Working with his partner, Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan), they learn that the girl's mother, Helene (Amy Ryan) reportedly left the girl with a neighbor for only a few minutes, but when she returned, the child was gone. Police detectives Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Pool (John Ashton) are assigned to the case, which is overseen by decorated Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman). Patrick and Angie pursue the child through a network of neighborhood contacts, and believe they've found her and negotiated her safe return when everything goes horribly wrong, and they believe the child has died. But this is only the beginning of

We begin our look at the first outing by actors-turned-directors with a gentleman who's turned out to be one of the best directors in Hollywood! It all started back in 1971 for Clint Eastwood, with a little thriller called "Play Misty For Me." Dave Garver (Eastwood) is a DJ at KRML in Carmel-by-the-Sea, spinning tunes for the locals. He has a regular caller who always asks him to "Play Misty for me..." One night, at the local watering hole, he hooks up with Evelyn (Jessica Walter), who confesses to being his "Misty" caller. After an enjoyable night together, Dave is ready to return to life as usual, Evelyn, however, has other ideas, interpreting their night together as an indication of commitment and love. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game of passion, obsession, and threat that ends up sweeping over Dave, his intended girlfriend Tobie Williams (Donna Mills), and Detective Sergeant McCallum (John Larch). The film that taught people everywhere to be careful who you let into your home! Also starring James McEachi

After the success of "The Graduate," the counter-culture exploded onto screens across the United States. But it was a surprise hit from the Cannes Film Festival in France that really cemented the movement's place on the silver screen, a film about two drug-dealing and drug-consuming drifters, on motorcycles, headed from Los Angeles to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. First-time director Dennis Hopper, who also starred in the film with Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson, made 1969's "Easy Rider" into a spiritual monument to the culture of the youth of the day, as well as becoming an indictment of the intolerance and bigotry those who participated in such communities faced, especially in the U.S. south, during the late 60s. The film also continued the trend of using modern music in lieu of an instrumental score to provide an emotional floor for the story, creating one of the first great rock and folk soundtracks in film history. And the trio unveil which two films, featuring first-time actors-turned-directors, make up t

As cinema developed, as a medium and as an art, it went through periods of significant change, both in form and content. The late 60s was one of the most drastic turning points, as the free love movement, the hippie movement, and the anti-war movement all dovetailed together, creating what film scholars refer to as the "counter-culture movement" in film. The style, stories, and structure of the stories being told on the big screen started rejecting traditional Hollywood in order to craft new narratives, tales of the youth of the day and what their lives were like, that reflected their experiences living in the America they'd inherited from their parents, whose culture they soundly rejected. And the poster-child of counter-culture films arrived in 1967, an examination of the ennui experienced by those coming out of college and looking ahead at their futures with bleak and detached hearts and minds as they realized that they wanted something different than their parents had, but not knowing what that might be o

The second film in our pairing honoring the late Raquel Welch is one of the best-loved versions of this particular story. Originally penned in 1844 by French Author Alexander Dumas, 1973's version of "The Three Musketeers" had such an impact on both audiences and other filmmakers that some of the elements it established would go on to become traditions that later versions would honor. Directed by Richard Lester, of "A Hard Day's Night" fame, and starred a veritable "Who's Who?" of talent in the early 70s. The story follows young D'Artagnan (Michael York), who is off to Paris to join the King's Musketeers. Of course, things don't go quite as planned. After running afoul of the villainous Rochefort (the incredible Christopher Lee), he gets to Paris only to find out that he lacks the experience to become a Musketeer. Following several mishaps that earn him three successive duels, he meets up with Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finley), and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain) who end up becoming his companions for

On February 15th, 2023, we lost a member of cinematic royalty, a great actress and one of the screen's classic beauties. Raquel Welch passed away at the age of 82, and we're pushing our scheduled pairing back in order to celebrate her work in film. We begin with a film so accurate in its depiction of human physiology, it was show to in medical school as late as the 1980s. Directed by Richard Fleischer, "Fantastic Voyage" tells the story of cutting edge miniaturization technology being used in an attempt to save the mind and life of the scientist at the core of its creation by shrinking a submarine with a specialized crew and sending them take out a brain lesion from the inside. The film stars Ms. Welch as Cora, alongside Stephen Boyd as Grant, Edmond O'Brien as General Carter, Donald Pleasence as Dr. Michaels, Arthur O'Connell as Colonel Donald Reid, and a couple "blink and you'll miss them" cameos from James Brolin and James Doohan!

The second film in our return to Film Noir moves us ahead two years and offers us a radically different story about an insurance salesman. This time around, it's the instincts of an investigator of the Atlantic Casual Agency that suggest a simple beneficiary payout might be something more than it seems, leading to a story about love, crime, betrayal, and justice! Directed by Robert Siodmak, the film stars Burt Lancaster (in his first starring role in a Hollywood film), Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, Vince Barnett, Virginia Christine, Jack Lambert, Donald MacBride, and introducing William Conrad! If Double Indemnity poured shade on the role of an insurance man, this film brings the occupation back out into the sunlight! Plus, the cinematic triumvirate reveal which famous big screen actress will be the focus of their next pairing!

We're returning to the 1940s and the style of film made famous during that decade, Film Noir, with two films looked upon as classic examples! First up, the year was 1944, and the story of an insurance salesman who falls for a beautiful but terribly unhappy married woman so hard he agrees to kill her husband so they can be together. Thus begins a twisted tale of murder, lies, betrayal, and ultimately failure. Directed by Hollywood legend Billy Wilder, and starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Byron Barr, Porter Hall, Jean Heather, and Tom Powers, the film unspools with a tale as tawdry and disturbing as any that came from the hallowed halls of Hollywood. The film provided MacMurray, who had made a career for himself playing good guys, a chance to stretch his acting skills with a role of a completely corrupted, unprincipled individual, and cemented his place as one of the great actors of his time.

Our look at the 1930s wouldn't be complete without one of the biggest films perhaps ever! As the decade drew to a close, one film would sweep filmgoers off their feet and transport them, via cyclone, to a land somewhere over the rainbow. In 1939's "The Wizard of Oz," MGM Studios finally found the film they'd been looking for that would rise to the level of Disney's hit "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" two years earlier! Directed by Victor Fleming, George Cukor, and Mervyn LeRoy (with a bit of help from King Vidor), the film stars a young Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, Terry the dog, and the face and voice that would give children nightmares for decades to come, Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West (among other characters)! Add to that, of course, over 120 little person actors, with some surprise technicolor cinematic magic thrown in for good measure, and the first-ever soundtrack of a film released as audio recordings for audiences to purchase, and y

We turn to a pivotal decade in film history for this pairing! First up - 10 years after the movies learned to talk. 2 years after the first Technicolor film debuted on screens. The Walt Disney company released what everyone was sure would be a failure, so much so that they called it "Disney's Folly," but it would end up being anything but! Directed by William Cottrell, David Hand, and Wilfred Jackson, and featuring the voices of Adriana Caselotti, Harry Stockwell, Lucille La Verne, Roy Atwell, Stuart Buchanan, Eddie Collins, Pinto Colvig, Billy Gilbert, Otis Harlan, Scotty Mattraw, and Moroni Olsen, the first feature-length animated film hit screens in 1937, and became the highest grossing animated film of all time (adjusted for inflation, of course)! We're talking about 1937's Disney classic "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" of course! So much is yet to be common knowledge about the inspiration, development, and production of this timeless tale, but the Two Geeks and a G.I.T. trio are here to fix that!

The second film in our salute to early CGI moves ahead two years, and light-years ahead for the technology, which was being developed as it was being used to create the special effects for 1984's "The Last Starfighter!" Directed by Nick Castle, the story follow Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), a young man trying to break out of his trailer-park maintenance-man existence and head to college far away. His mother, Jane (Barbara Bosson), his little brother Louis (Chris Hebert), and his girlfriend Maggie (Catherine Mary Stewart) all support his goals, but his only escape at the moment is playing a video game outside the park's general store. When he breaks the record on the machine, something that quickly becomes an event for the population of the park, it signals a different kind of graduation for Alex, as shortly thereafter, a strange man calling himself Centauri (Robert Preston) takes Alex on a wild ride to another planet where he's presented as a qualified "starfighter!" After intially balking, Alex eventually winds

Our first pairing of 2023 is dedicated to the very early days of CGI, a.k.a. Computer-Generated Imagery, and its use in science fiction! And, wouldn't you know, Disney was at the forefront of utilizing the developing technology! Directed by Steven Lisberger, 1982's "Tron" tells the story of hot-shot computer programmer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), former employee of ENCOM - an American multi-national software and hardware company - who is trying to find proof that ENCOM's current Executive Vice-President, Ed Dillinger (David Warner) stole his ideas for several popular video games and presented them as his own, thus cementing his current position. Flynn breaks into ENCOM with the help of his former girlfriend Lora (Cindy Morgan) and her current boyfriend Alan (Bruce Boxleitner). Alan has created a program called "TRON" that will help restore freedom to ENCOM's computer system, but needs Flynn to get it the access it needs to do so. From a terminal inside ENCOM's laser-digitization lab, Flynn comes up against th

Wrapping up our first actress-based pairing for Jodie Foster, we move to 2002 and a very different film from last week's! Directed by David Fincher, 2002's "Panic Room" finds Jodie Foster in the role of Meg Altman, a newly-divorced mother trying to figure out how to reclaim her life. She and her daughter Sarah (a very young Kristen Stewart) decide to purchase a massive brownstone home in New York, the former residence of an eccentric and wealthy gentleman. During the walkthrough, Meg notices that one room's dimensions seem off and, sure enough, it's revealed that there is a panic room built into the master bedroom, complete with its own phone line, monitors attached to cameras throughout the building, and supplies to allow one to remain mostly comfortable for days. After moving in, during their first night in their new home, her domicile is invaded by a trio of burglars (Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam, and Jared Leto) whose intentions aren't clear, except that they're looking for something they believe to be

As we head into the new year, we fulfill a request from the spouse of one of the hosts and focus on a pairing based around an actress. Both of the movies in this pairing star Academy Award-winner Jodie Foster! First up, it's the Robert Zemeckis-led, Carl Sagan-written story of first contact with an alien race, as told from a very straight scientific point-of-view, in 1997's "Contact!" The film stars Foster as Eleanor Arroway, a scientist working with S.E.T.I. (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) trying to find out if we're alone in the universe. After many struggles with other scientists who believe such work is a waste of time and resources, one night she hears something that can't be explained as a naturally-occuring phenomenon. This leads her to many additional discoveries, and she becomes part of the contest to be the person chosen to represent the Earth in the planet's initial contact with another life form! The film presents the discovery, and the various reactions to said discovery, in a ver

Happy Holidays! The second of our "Christmas-Adjacent" films moves us into the 21st century for an all-star team-up! Directed by Shane Black, 2005's "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" tells the the story of small-time criminal Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) who, when fleeing from the police after a botched burglary, runs into an audition for a Hollywood film. Cut to Los Angeles, Harry has been flown out by agent Darby Shaw (Larry Miller) to audition for a detective film. At an L.A. party, he meets power-broker Harlan Dexter (Corbin Bernsen) and local private detective "Gay Perry" (Val Kilmer). He also stumbles on his childhood crush, Harmony Lane (Michelle Monaghan), and they together stumble onto a murder mystery that gets everyone involved injured, chased, and threatened! Only Harry's love for Harmony and his sheer stubbornness allows them to survive the convoluted and nigh-unbelievable story! Plus, the trio discuss which two Jodie Foster films they're reviewing for their next pairing (one suggested by Chad's wife)

Happy Holidays! This year, for the December festivities, we're focusing on two films we call "Christmas-Adjacent," meaning that, while they're not technically "christmas movies," they are movies that take place around Christmas. First up is a favorite of Geek Jeff's wife, 1996's "The Long Kiss Goodnight!" Directed by Renny Harlin, and written by the director of the 2nd film in the pairing, Shane Black, the film follows suburban mom Samantha Caine (Geena Davis) who, some eight years before, "woke up" with no memory of her past and slowly built a new life for herself with her daughter Caitlin (Yvonne Zima) and her boyfriend Hal (Tom Amandes). One of the private detective she had hired in the past to try to find her original identity, Mitch Hennessey (Samuel L. Jackson) turns up some new information and the two set off on a bizarre trip where, along the way, Samantha remembers her old identity: An assassin named Charlie Baltimore, who worked for the U.S. Government, and said government isn't happy she's resurfac