Your casual reminder when you're revisiting THE GODFATHER trilogy this week that in addition to Pacino, Caan, De Niro, Brando, Shire, Keaton, & Duvall, all the cool kids know that one of the very best actors of the 1970s was Mr. John Cazale.
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Jen Johans
@FilmIntuition
A 3x nat'l award-winning writer, film critic, essayist, & historian @ FilmIntuition.com, I host the podcast ™
Jen Johans’s posts
If you're going to come for Scorsese:
1) Don't.
2) Learn how to spell his name.
3) Watch his movies. Yes, more than just GOODFELLAS.
4) Look up the reaction to LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. He could give a shit about fanboys.
5) Stop stereotyping Italian Americans.
6) Just don't.
I just discovered that a film exists called ROLLERCOASTER (1977) where it's up to amusement park safety inspector George Segal to outsmart a mad rollercoaster bomber played by Timothy Bottoms... & no, I am not making this up. What's more, it was written by the COLUMBO creators!
I'd forgotten Billy Wilder is a guy who got so mad @ an actor for refusing to do a monologue he scripted that he not only rewrote the film to make sure their co-star got an Oscar nod, he also decided to become a director on the spot to make sure it never happened again. Intense.
PSA: If you watch ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING on Disney+, you get the sanitized version minus the *very* well-earned f-bomb from Elisabeth Shue that thrilled me as a girl watching this in the 1980s. (It's yet another reason why physical media rules.)
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When I took my mask off as I exited a super crowded Ulta & went outside last September, an old woman stage whispered to her daughter, "She's SO BEAUTIFUL but men will have no idea because she's in her prime & hiding behind a mask!"
Hall monitors of TF world.
Although I dig many of the films he's made in the last 20 years, my most controversial Wes Anderson opinion is that he's NEVER topped the first 3 films he wrote w/ Owen Wilson. IMO, those pics had the most heart & universality; Owen's a vastly underrated screenwriter. (Pod-prep)
So PARASITE:
1) Believe the hype.
2) The less you know going in, the better.
3) Absolute masterpiece.
Happy 25th Anniversary to the Amy Heckerling masterpiece CLUELESS.
Still my favorite adaptation of Austen's EMMA (& I've dug most save for the new one), CLUELESS gave my generation the heroine we never knew we needed.
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CHINATOWN was released on this day in 1974. Way back when, I made this collage to celebrate its anniversary for .
That time Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscar for Best Picture & Best Director for THE HURT LOCKER & beat her ex-husband James Cameron who was up for the same awards that night for AVATAR.
TCM is celebrating Ray Liotta tonight. 1 of my fave stories was when he dealt w/ this dude from my college paper who hadn't done any research & told Ray he only plays tough guys. Liotta ignored the narrow qs & instead talked nonstop about how much fun acting with the Muppets was.
Hey, who remembers Gary Paulsen's HATCHET? Discussing great writers from Minnesota just now, I started thinking about how much kids (myself included) treasured that book growing up. Just found the film adaptation A CRY IN THE WILD on YouTube that I know I saw but barely recall.
Treat Williams was such a vital, effervescent screen presence. Last summer, I really enjoyed revisiting HAIR, which he's incredible in & the reason why that ending hits as hard as it does is because of Williams. This is a true loss. Condolences to those who knew & loved him. #RIP
And . . . all Gen Xers immediately reach for the tissues. This is just lovely:
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Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara have welcomed a healthy Baby Boy.
They have named him, River 
The moment you finally realize that this time Arnold's playing the good guy... nearly 30 mins into T2. It's such a brilliant first act of sustained suspense & it's also at this moment that you realize just how mind-blowingly subversive it is to have our villain pose as a cop.
#nw
I first saw him on bootleg VHS tapes being traded in my high school - a gorgeous man protecting a blind woman, putting cotton balls in babies' ears, & burning money. Happy Birthday to my '90s Brad Pitt - Mr. Chow Yun-fat!
Will always retweet this. One of the funniest ads ever.
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If you're new to Anna Karina, PIERROT LE FOU & BAND OF OUTSIDERS are terrific but my absolute favorite film she made with Godard is A WOMAN IS A WOMAN.
A candy colored charmer, it features an irresistible scene where she & Belmondo wordlessly hold up book titles to fight.
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Re: film criticism.
I turned down a staff gig at an online site that wanted me to include the redundant caveat of "but this is just my opinion so make up your own mind" in every review I wrote. Reviews ARE opinions - educated opinions but they're subjective by nature.
1/x
I'm watching JFK again months after I revisited ORDINARY PEOPLE & KLUTE & my goodness, we really don't talk about Donald Sutherland remotely enough, do we?
What he can do in a scene - even just a key line read like "what did *we* think?" in ORDINARY PEOPLE - wow.
Rather than attack a celeb for saying something dumb, as a woman who wrote a huge paper on masculinity in the '50s western, let me just continue to bang the drum for the genre as 1 of the most historically subversive ever when it comes to sex & gender. It's ALWAYS been that way.
Something I love about THE FUGITIVE is how Tommy Lee Jones just shows up, his whole job is to try to put an innocent man back in jail, & we dig him anyway because he's Tommy Lee Jones delivering lines in rapid fire rhymes & he's the coolest cat in every single scene he's in.
"Now go home & get your shine box!"
Fellow GOODFELLAS nerds, on this day in 1970, Tommy DeSimone took out John Gotti's pal William "Billy Batts" Bentvena of the Gambino crime family.
From Switzerland to South Korea, parents of Swiss freestyle skier Mischa Gasser traveled to the #Olympics by bicycle (& it *only* took them a year). Love these stories.
#FreestyleSkiing
We need more women to write about film, we need more men to amplify our voices, we need to be given more opportunities to continue in this field, & we need readers to send a strong, clear message that they value our insights.
We're here, we're ready. Are you?
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Women Represent Just 35% of Film Reviewers, According to New Thumbs Down Report dlvr.it/Rdyc0y
Happy 50th Anniversary to the incredible "Étude in Black" ep of COLUMBO where John Cassavetes - playing a murderous conductor - cannot hide his amusement at Peter Falk's ad-libs. It's utterly adorable watching them nearly break - putting their hands in front of their mouths, etc.
"Why do men chase women?"
#RIP to the tremendous actress Olympia Dukakis, who won an Oscar for her performance in one of my favorite movies - MOONSTRUCK.
Happy 80th Birthday to Our Beloved Scholar of Cinema, Master Filmmaker, Dude Who Openly Adores His Parents, Patron Saint of Sick Movie-Obsessed Kiddos Everywhere, & My Absolute Favorite - Mr. Martin Scorsese!
A Select Celebratory Thread:
Hey, it's the official day of Hoskins, Mirren, & one of the greatest endings in crime movie history. Might need to revisit this one later.
1 of the greatest thrills & terrors of my life was when William Friedkin started following me & sharing my work. After Scorsese, the most professorial of all '70s filmmakers, in addition to his car chases, I dig the way he infused masculine suspense w/ surprising sensuality. #RIP
Ranking films you haven't seen has the same energy of the guy in my 9th grade English class who did his book report on ROMEO & JULIET (but watched the Luhrmann version instead of reading Shakespeare) who said with complete conviction, "the play opens at a gas station."
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A thing to know about me is I think Tim Curry gives 1 of the greatest comedic performances of the '80s in CLUE. His tongue-twister, pratfall-filled one man show style 3rd act sequence where he reenacts the entire film & does his impressions of every one of his co-stars is genius
Happy Birthday to Peter Falk, pictured here having a full-on chat with Kermit the Frog.
30 years ago today, NORTHERN EXPOSURE premiered. 1 of the first TV shows I remember being obsessed with as a girl - not only because I had a mad crush on "Chris Stevens" at the ripe old age of 9 - I started revisiting this humanistic series during quarantine & it's such a balm.
In a factory downtown!
The arts are crucial to our well-being. What I find most alarming about the end of , the massive cuts at TCM, & the rise of AI in creative fields is that we're living in a world that is increasingly losing its curiosity, artistry, humanity, empathy, & ability to think.
I feel like the Academy is 5 seconds away from telling us about an exciting opportunity in crypto.
Who else remembers director Michael Apted's THUNDERHEART? Yesterday at the movies, the KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON trailer reminded me of how great this 1992 film was w/ Val Kilmer, Graham Greene, Sam Shepard, & Fred Ward. Haven't seen it since then! #nw
Happy Sept. I'm private but feel a responsibility to share that I spent Aug. going through my 3rd & most stressfully drawn out cancer scare. I'm incredibly grateful that my news was good but want to encourage you & your loved ones to get your routine screenings & pls take care.💕
The intellectual equivalent of a tap dance, my fave thing to watch onscreen is sharp, passionate people working around the clock to figure things out. ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN is the ultimate; it inspired the biggest boom in journalism school admissions in the US. #nw for the pod.
Seriously, if you guys haven't seen LOCKE, see LOCKE. It's one of the best films of the 2010s, Tom Hardy is phenomenal, & it was actually recorded live like a play. If memory serves, he did this same 90 minute-ish drive 3 nights in a row w/ actors ready to phone in. Dynamite.
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#RIP to the maestro, the master, Ennio Morricone. From Leone to De Palma & beyond, it's impossible to select just one composition out of his entire filmography to call a favorite but I've always been moved by the way that the strings on his CINEMA PARADISO score sweep & soar.
As much as I love this, it's such a true gift for film lovers everywhere that Coppola saw this & thought no, what I want is De Niro to play the quiet, more introspective Vito in a performance almost entirely in Italian.
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Robert De Niro's audition for the part of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather
Confession: I *love* Peter Falk & remember enjoying Columbo reruns & TV movies back in the '80s & 90s but have never actually sat down & watched the full series from start to finish. Time to remedy that!
#NowWatching
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His beef with Charles Boyer following HOLD BACK THE DAWN was so legendary that he even wrote a joke about Charles Boyer hating women in his Hollywood directorial debut THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR.
Martin Scorsese: "John Ford made westerns. I make street movies."
Whenever someone complains they hate westerns, I always say, "you must hate crime films too then," before dropping the hammer, "because building block wise, they're the exact same thing."
Don't trash the western
A portrait of a writer who loved what she did for 15+ years & 2.5K+ reviews, but is, officially, as of this week, blissfully happy to no longer be a film critic. Right now, I prefer the research, writing, & collaborative process of podcasting too much & am excited to continue! 💙
Sam Elliott in ROAD HOUSE is essentially Mercutio in ROMEO & JULIET, right? Like at some point, the screenwriter realized, "oops, he's the most interesting & charismatic character for miles; he's got to go."
The haunting legacy of MYSTIC RIVER (released #OnThisDay in '03), as featured in a collage I made for a few years back.
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This is really tough.
Maybe:
THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, GOODFELLAS, BROADCAST NEWS, THE RIGHT STUFF, & VERTIGO
My favorite Michael Mann motif is the idea that all of his characters are stuck in concrete, trapped in cities, & yearn to take that chance to get to the paradise of sea, sand, & sky that's inevitably either temporary or just out of reach.
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If you're a fan of the "alcoholic disgraced ex-cop in an existential funk stumbles onto a convoluted mystery" neo-noir subgenre (& I mean, who isn't?), check out the indie SMALL TOWN CRIME on HBOMax. Role-wise, for John Hawkes, it's up there with his Teardrop in WINTER'S BONE.
#RIP William Hurt. When I was 15, I saw BODY HEAT & 1 wknd when bored, I wrote a thriller script w/ Hurt in mind for the villain, entered it in a screenwriting contest w/out telling anyone & won. My parents were shocked when I said I needed to go read @ the Library of Congress.💙
Once more I say, God, I miss a majority of films & TV shows being in actual gorgeous, vibrant color.
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THERE WILL BE BLOOD isn't just the best PTA movie, it's 1 of the best movies of the 21st century. When I saw it in the theater, they oversold the auditorium, added folding chairs, & allowed ppl to stand (what fire code?) & you could still hear a pin drop. #nw for a PTA-DDL pod ep
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Such a beautiful movie - Denzel at his handsomest, Michael Keaton so so funny, & the bantering heat between Thompson & Branagh! Just queued it again.
This is 42! The best thing about getting older is knowing who I am & what's important to me. I'm so grateful for all of the wonderful people whom I'm fortunate to have in my life. Here's to another year of making memories... in a largely retro &/or floral wardrobe. ;)
✌️🌸🩵
You know who's a stealthily great actor? Greg Kinnear. Revisited a few w/ him this year for research & when he moved away from the bland lead roles he'd been given to show us the pathos & panic behind that smile in AUTO FOCUS, THE MATADOR, & LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, it was awesome.
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#nw Sergio Leone's underrated, entertaining as hell, explosively edited, Ennio Morricone inventive AF scored Spaghetti western FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE. With artful shot composition, scene stealer Van Cleef, & that terrifying villain, it's even better than A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS.
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Thank you so much for taking the time to walk us through it.
I'm honored to have been asked to co-host a podcast episode for Slate this month on sex, gender, & masculinity in classic westerns.
I have a dozen films in mind but I wanted to crowd-source & ask you all to weigh in. Which films should I consider covering?
Podcast Tip: Invite WOMEN on your show! Every week, I receive messages from guys wanting to be on (that's cool & I'm flattered) but I have *never* had this happen w/ a woman. Too many insightful, funny, valuable female film minds aren't being heard. Diversify your guest list!
Happy Birthday #TimBurton! Digging out this SLEEPY HOLLOW collage I made for ages ago to honor of 1 our greatest filmmakers
Released #OTD in 1985: Martin Scorsese's AFTER HOURS. It's my favorite film to watch at the end of a terrible horrible no good very bad day (& you can check it out now on ). Made this collage several years ago for .
Underrated thing I adored about French New Wave filmmakers like Truffaut, Rohmer, Varda, & Godard was how much they loved books, championed writers, & romanticized reading. They made it hip to be smart.
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Adapted from a Danish crime novel by screenwriter Curtis Hanson (who wound up finishing the film for director Daryl Duke), #nw the underrated '78 Canadian thriller THE SILENT PARTNER for pod-prep. It stars Elliott Gould in quieter cerebral mode & a v. sinister Christopher Plummer
The level to which Charles Grodin fully commits to wanting Miss Piggy in THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER is hilariously genius.
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Show me two actors with insane chemistry. twitter.com/sunshinegirlw/…
No, thanks. I'll keep my uncensored Blu-ray. The best movies are the ones that respect our intelligence, they feature characters & storylines that are messy, challenging, flawed, complex, & force us to think about & engage with the world through what we're shown.
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Disney has apparently censored The French Connection by removing a line of offensive dialogue without notice, warning, or statement. This censorship carries over to The Criterion Channel and theatrical screenings. #Disney #TheFrenchConnection #censorship
hollywood-elsewhere.com/french-connect
Hi, it's me - the woman who audibly cheers whenever Ricky Jay first graces the screen in a David Mamet movie.
Now watching my favorite Mamet - HEIST.
I've only seen only a handful of movies where as soon as we meet the characters, I've thought, "these are my people," but the characters in WONDER BOYS are 100% my people. (I like them more than some of my relatives.)
This film not only gets writers; it gets me.
#NowWatching
To the guy who emailed me that I'd be hot but I'm just too pale, you're blocked but since you're probably on social, here's a bigger version of the same photo, asshole. Have a nice day!
Proof of another year: This is 41!
Not going to lie, the week has been a rollercoaster but every twist made me so very grateful for the network of family, dear friends, & cool colleagues I'm lucky & honored to have in my life. Love you all. Sending a virtual cupcake your way!
Do you ever just sit around on a Friday afternoon talking about how Peter Weir is one of our greatest & most unsung filmmakers or do you guys do like regular stuff? ;)
Anyway, Peter f***ing Weir, man.
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Think a big reason for his obsession w/ language - & in no way am I saying ⬆️ was right - might be bc he fought to learn every English word, listening to the radio for 12 hrs a day after he fled Hitler & came to USA. L8r he & his co-writers wld exhaustively debate every syllable.
New favorite photo:
Burt Lancaster in glasses is the Burt Lancaster we never knew we needed. (Oh & hey, Gene Kelly & John Garfield)
h/t Diana
Tonight's movie reminds us that sometimes the simplest premises are the best. Get in, tell yr story as crisply & economically as possible, hire cool ppl on both sides of the screen, & get the hell out. Or in this film's parlance? Drive it like you stole it. Also, the sndtk owns.
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Personally, I think film reviews & essays should be read AFTER you see a movie, or at least that's the way I approach it. I avoid everything - even more than 30-45 seconds of a trailer - just so I can go into a film without assumptions.
2/x
All you really need to know about me is that one of the movies I watched the most as a kid was MIDNIGHT RUN. You can probably guess how popular it made me at the time, but decades later, I'm #nw it again for a pod project I'm working on w/ . Who's laughing now?! ;)
Happy Birthday, Thelma Schoonmaker!
Bringing back this pic from '19 to say that I am quite a fan.
"This is me breathing."
There really are no words for how much I love GROSSE POINT BLANK, (which was released on this day in 1997) but I had fun putting together this thread last summer:
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Watching one of my late '90s favorites:
GROSSE POINTE BLANK
Note: Haven't seen in years but I watched it so much back in the day that I could probably turn the sound off & quote every line from memory.
BTW, when it comes to EYES WIDE SHUT, am I the only weirdo who was as excited to see Sydney Pollack as they were Tom Cruise?
Had a few people send me Michael's tweet bc his whole timeline is him doing this to other writers nonstop. It's cool, he's blocked - at least he knew he couldn't pull off my highly original phrasing! ;)
Whenever Walter Murch pops up in a film doc I'm watching, I can't help but wonder why no one has bothered to make a documentary on Walter Murch. He's brilliant, groundbreaking, cuts pictures as well as sound, & he worked on APOCALYPSE NOW so you know the dude has stories.
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The hottest film credit screen of ALL TIME
#MartinScorsese's brilliant AFTER HOURS was released #OnThisDay in 1985.
Celebrate w/ a collage I made for years back.
Oh, and fellow GOODFELLAS nerds, 50 years ago today, Tommy DeSimone took out John Gotti's pal William "Billy Batts" Bentvena of the Gambino crime family.
"Is this moron number one? Put moron number two on the phone."
Tonight: an '80s favorite.
#NowWatching
As most people bored senseless by my timeline have discovered, I've recently started watching all COLUMBO eps in order. Quickly, I became obsessed enough to start logging the experience in an ongoing thread.
Would love to hear from fans: which eps are your favorites? Thanks!
I'm all for filmmakers making whatever they'd like but it's kinda strange when dudes make movies about iconic women with artistic legacies they don't even seem to dig. See also: Sorkin talking about not really finding I LOVE LUCY funny during his BEING THE RICARDOS press tour.
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Replying to @christinalefou and @SightSoundmag
& here, I'm afraid, is an outtake.
Just watched the new VANILLA SKY Blu (first time I'd seen that film in forever) & between that, MUMFORD, & ALMOST FAMOUS, man, I miss that era when it looked like Jason Lee was going to be our next big character actor movie star.
