When a Stranger Calls - 1979

There can still be firsts in a 6 year old blog. Such as, the first movie reviewed while in El Salvador after watching a movie on a plane.

When a Stranger Calls is well known for two very recognizable things. 1, Have you checked the children, 2, the call is coming from inside the house. Both of these moments happen in the first 20 minutes, though, so what the fuck is the rest of the movie about?

Well, I don't think I'd seen this before and I didn't know the answer to that question. Turns out, an actual dark, layered portrait of a victim and her torturer, including a well written and somewhat well executed portrayal of a serial killer. Color me surprised.

Stranger follows the killer in what is usually a bad move, but because of some cool shots, some good plot turns, and a few excellent dialogue parts, it really works. There's a really remarkable part where the villain escapes and he considers the low chance that would happen. He concludes he must be invisible, invincible, maybe never even have been born. It's a really cool moment where we can see his dysfunction, his beautiful albeit fractured and broken soul.

As Stranger ends, another fun thing is that we have been told the end already, and yet when it happens it is still surprising and shocking. The end is realistic, harsh, and final. Credits roll, and shit, I liked this way more than I expected.

The Towering Inferno - 1974

I remember a while back I watched Airport, Airport 1975, and Earthquake. All classic 1970s disaster movies. I really like disaster movies and they're a lot of fun, and these ones I watched with relish. Now on Amazon, I saw that The Towering Inferno was available.

Paul Newman and Steve McQueen star in The Towering Inferno. It's the classic story of a new huge building being built in San Francisco of all places, and funny enough it's basically exactly where they would build the Salesforce tower later. In the movie, the Tower is monumental, it is the new tallest building in the world, and it's like over 130 stories tall. I honestly don't remember if they ever definitively state how tall the building actually is.

Pretty soon into the ribbon cutting ceremony and the opening of the building, something goes wrong and a fire starts. They have security cameras everywhere, but the fire is in a closet and cannot be seen on the camera system. So the fire is ignored until it's uncontainable, and soon enough all the people in the building are in trouble.

The Towering Inferno was a true epic disaster movie. 2 hours 45 minutes long, this mammoth film showed everything needed to make this have an impact. Multiple setups happen to toss our heroes into danger. There's the scene of Newman dangling children over a precipice once the stairs have gone out, there's people trapped with fire on one side and a several hundred feet drop on the other. There's a scene with a basket carrying people away from one of the top stories of the building, the enormous height below them. There's all of these scenes and more.

The Towering Inferno was a smash success and spawned many disaster movie copycats. Newman and McQueen both deliver good leading man performances, and by the way, look very similar. They sbow up a water tank in the building and I guess that puts out the fire, everyone celebrates and the day is saved. Hooray.

The Day After Tomorrow - 2004

Roland Emmerich burst onto the scene and into everyone's heart in 1996 with Independence Day. It was high budget. It had great stars. It was about aliens. We loved it.

He then destroyed himself with the American Godzilla movie, and whatever came after that. I don't remember exactly, but around 2004 we all thought this was a joke. The Global Warming plot, Jake Gyllenhaal, this movie was a joke. I saw it when it was newly on the new release shelf, laughed it off, never saw it again. Until now.

I revisited A Quiet Place and me and my girl were in the mood for more destruction so we put this on. It's just over 2 hours and it's about a crazy cataclysmic 3-4 days in the warming cycle, and its got early 2000s stupidity all over it. And Jake Gyllenhaal.

This is obviously a sorta joke entry but I enjoyed this enough. It did what it was supposed to do and despite a dumb plot and plot holes I liked it. It felt like it at the time and it does again now that the whole "crisis" ends in like 15 minutes in the movie and seems like everything is basically better immediately and everyone will be fine. Also, I thought, I wonder what a sequel to this would be like?