email: latenightpickwick@gmail.com
As a matter of fact, I wasn’t a teenage video store clerk. By the time that I was old enough to work, Blockbuster was already on its last legs, having killed Mom & Pop video stores long before that, so I had a choice: I could flip hamburgers at McDonald’s, I could stock the frozen aisle at [Name Your Local Grocery Store Here], or I could work as a teenaged contract killer (cash only — tax free).
Obviously, I would have liked working at a video store, and now I can, having opened one up outside the ticket gate of the Pickwick Drive-In. And — here — I have a shelf of my own for the Staff Picks section, and I even have a super top secret, 1980s-level espionage algorithm to curate five films on a single shelf of a video store.
So, step inside the Pickwick’s sister store and consider selecting one of the films you find on display there, which are merely recommendations — not a “best of” any film list that you could imagine. These films would have resonated with video store patrons as late as 2014, when some of the last big video stores closed their doors. And it’s the Pickwick’s position that these films will still resonate today.
So maybe think about buying a bag of microwavable popcorn or a box of Junior Mints with your rental as well. Or get both, if you’re planning on a double feature …
… But – as always – be kind & rewind.
Marty
R O M A N T I C C O M E D Y
1955 | NOT RATED | 93 minutes | d. Delbert Mann | dp. Joseph LaShelle | s. Paddy Chayefaky
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You will enjoy this movie if you love the Bronx; helicopter family & friends; honest, true romance; and the Stardust Ballroom (loaded with tomatas, if you catch my drift).
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After an endless assault by family, friends & acquaintances to settle down & get married, well-meaning but ultimately lonely Bronx butcher Marty (Ernest Borgnine) falls in love with timid schoolteacher Clara (Betsy Blair), and their destiny appears written on the stars. But now some of those same family & friends insist that the couple’s relationship won’t last – fueled by misgivings of their own hardships, of their own experiences with love & family – leaving Marty & Clara uncertain of their romantic future together.
Marty – the story of two people who have counted themselves out of a happily ever after for too long & now have the chance to actually live happily ever after – comes at a distinct time in moviemaking when the bridge to New Hollywood forged by Lancaster, Monroe, Clift, Brando, and others indicated that writers, actors, directors, and producers were metaphorically heading West to tell a new story of America, of filmmaking. But instead of looking for that new home for Hollywood, Marty nests in that very spot characterized by Old Hollywood, where the American dream is still possible – even remarkably probable.
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Marty is streaming on Amazon Prime.
The Great Escape
W A R
1963 | NR | 169 minutes | d. John Sturges | c. Daniel L. Fapp | s. James Clavell & W. R. Burnett
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You will enjoy this movie if you love beating impossible odds, motorcycles, teamwork, and thwarting Nazis.
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It’s WWII, and Allied POWs — repeat offenders of escapeeism from German camps — are inevitably consigned to a camp run by a particularly nasty Luftwaffe Colonel (Hannes Messemer), where they are promised any attempts of escape will be met with execution. But when a ragtag group of POWs (including a singular cast of Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, and more) are imprisoned there, they have no intention of failing to make an escape attempt, which includes taking as many as 250 other POWs with them in what could be the most challenging military camp escape ever.
The film boasts one of the most jubilant scores to accentuate a story of resilience – of Allied forces standing up to the Reich, when the heroes already begin between a rock & a hard place – naturally inappropriate for a story that possesses so much peril.
More than that, the movie highlights individual heroes (especially McQueen’s Hilt) making the sacrifice to look out for others when they originally hoped to look out for only themselves. It may seem a familiar trope in cinema but precisely what the world needs now.
And the film suggests that this great escape won’t be the last.
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The Great Escape is streaming on MGM+.
Munich
T H R I L L E R
2005 | R | 160 minutes | d. Steven Spielberg | dp. Janusz Kamiński | s. Eric Roth & Tony Kushner
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You will enjoy this movie if you love measured responses to calculated attacks on innocent people, financial receipts, the Olympics, and uncomfortably unexpected acts of violence.
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Based on real events, Munich is the story of the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympic games in Munich and the secret, retaliatory response by the Israeli government that was the result. A team of Mossad agents, led by Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana) — and including others (played by Daniel Craig & more) — carry out the assassination of the terrorists as the film explores not only the violence of retribution but also the affecting nature of retribution, in one of the most unconventional Steven Spielberg films ever made.
Revenge pictures have consistently portrayed a proportional response to an infraction, but Munich not only forces the viewer to stare into the face of violence but also asks the viewer to contend with the repercussions of the reaction to that violence. The motion picture neither condones violent retribution nor repudiates it – rather, the movie exists as a testament to Spielberg’s filmmaking, a cinematic artifact that demonstrates that the director can pivot from family-friendly fare to uniquely uncomfortable moments of inhumanity in one of the most philosophical retaliation pictures of all time – a film more relevant than ever today.
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Munich is streaming on Amazon Prime.
The Iron Giant
A N I M A T E D
1999 | PG | 85 minutes | d. Brad Bird | dp. Steven Wilzbach | s. Brad Bird & Ted Hughes
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You will enjoy this movie if you love black & white sci-fi films from the 1950s, comic books, obnoxiously enthusiastic government agents, and Superman.
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It’s 1957, and despite the Cold War hysteria that dominates the media, young Hogarth Hughes (voiced by Eli Marienthal) befriends an apparently lethal giant robot (voiced by Vin Diesel) who crashlands into his small town community. But when a government agent (voiced by Christopher McDonald) investigating the robot discovers its apparent threat to the world, Hogarth will be aided by a local beatnik (voiced by Harry Connick, Jr.) in an effort to remind the robot that it is more than the manufacture of its weapon-based parts.
“You are what you choose to be,” Hogarth tells the Iron Giant, after the U.S. military threatens it, activating its programmed response to become an automated weapon to defend itself & destroy its aggressors. “You choose.”
And, in those words, one of the best animated films of the 1990s captures the most prescient sentiments of the 21st Century: Would that the world stop responding in fear to something that intends to be friendly, something with which everyone has something in common. One would hope that people would want to be a bit more like the Iron Giant – like Superman.
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The Iron Giant is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Mud
T H R I L L E R
2012 | PG-13 | 130 minutes | d. Jeff Nichols | dp. Adam Stone | s. Jeff Nichols
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You will enjoy this movie if you love beanie weenie, fishing, motorboats, and nightingales — birds that symbolize the promise of good luck.
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When teenaged boys Ellis (Tye Sheridan) & Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) discover a man (Matthew McConaghey) who calls himself Mud living like a refugee on a small island on the Mississippi River, they agree to help him reunite with his true love Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). In doing so, the boys put themselves on a collision course with real-world truths of love & loyalty, as a dangerous group of bounty hunters zero in on Mud & everyone else that the boys hold dear.
There’s a modern-day day Mark Twain nature of this film that resonates with anyone who spent a summer getting lost in the woods or by the creek. But like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the danger is worse the closer you come to civilization, whenever you come close to shore. Mud is a film about the world in which you find yourself & the world in which you would hope to find yourself, if Life allowed it. Ultimately, the difference is about the friends that you have whom will help you find that world.
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Mud is streaming on Peacock.
Christopher Kaine is the most amateur film essayist whom you may ever imagine. He earnestly contends that he was named after the actor Chris Sarandon, because he was either conceived while his parents watched Fright Night (1985) in his paternal grandparents’ basement, or because of their love for The Princess Bride (1987), which stars a character by the name of “Humperdink,” which is pretty funny, if you think about it.
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