Love this movie.🍿

A charming movie.

And I didn't see EITHER of them! Thanks!

but found it on Tubi. Will be watching, Pedro Pascal is a terrific actor.

1999, by Tim Robbins

The night Thomas Reilly was born, his parents were in an accident with a bus. The passengers on the bus were killed and as ghosts they were tied to Thomas from the day he was born. As a baby and a child, he could see and hear the ghosts and the ghosts loved him. But the also got him in trouble and Social Services was called to talk to his parents. The ghosts decide to "vanish," much to the displeasure of young Thomas, but they're still with him. About 25 years later, the bus driver returns to take them away. He tells them they were supposed to have worked out their personal problems. Now, the ghosts decide to reappear to Thomas to get him to help them resolve the problems in their lives. Thomas is shocked by their reappearance but reluctantly agrees to help them causing him to get into a number of embarrassing and comic situations all the while trying to resolve his own relationship problem with his girlfriend.

And a great plot line. Everyone in it was terrific.

I recommend it too.

Good call!

n/t

Still haunts me in the best way.

A British film about 12 year old kids who want to get married. Written by Alan Parker and Starring Jack Wild and Mark Lester who previously starred together in Oliver! and features music by the Bee Gees and a great closing scene using Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Teach Your Children". Just a charming little film told from the viewpoint of the children.

A truly great but little-known film by Andrei Tarkovsky

Trailer:

More of a return, really, but glad to once again mix in to some of the convos here, in this time of the Great Unravelling!

It stars Marisa Tomei and Vincent D'Onofrio. Marisa stars as Ruby Weaver, a woman with a history of relationships with troubled men who she feels compelled to "fix". She meets a guy named Sam who seems sweet and quite normal until he tells her...
I'm not going to give away what it is that he tells her or how things play out afterwards. I will however stress that if you should come across this movie streaming somewhere and decide to watch it (or if you simply look it up) DO NOT read the synopsis. Every synopsis I've seen of this movie reveals what it is that Sam tells Ruby about himself. I was lucky enough to have read only one review of the movie before I saw it and that reviewer did not spoil things. It's a lot more fun that way. I highly recommend this movie.

I've always thought it was a little jewel of a comedy. Well written and pretty accurate, according to those who actually worked on My Show of Shows. Peter O'Toole is funny and tragic as an aging Errol Flynn type. All the writer characters had equivalents in real life.

Three dimensional characters rather than the caricatures that Platoon made of the soldiers.

Jeanne Crain & Ethel Barrymore in Elia Kazan's "Pinky" (1949)

The whole film is right on YouTube

Excellent recommendation. Pinky is a great movie. Came out my birth year.

— Ron

a similar approach set in East Berlin https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/

NB there are several unsuccessful suicide attempts central to the plot main character.

Tom Hanks is a favorite actor, but the Swedish version is like the book by Fredrik Backman of the same name, (really good!)

and I just loved Rolf Lassgård, the actor who played Ove. Truly a gem! Highly recommend both Backman's book AND the Swedish film.

I haven't read the book but I will someday when my "to read" stack is smaller.

…with Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen. One of my favorite movies.

A movie about how a California winery beat all of the French wineries in 1976 in France during a blind tasting test. Chateau Montelena beat all of the other wines to be named the best Chardonnay in the test.

It's based on a true story, but is very entertaining with Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman and Chris Pine as stars. But you will also fall in love with the supporting cast.

Chateau Montelena is in Calistoga, part of Napa Valley.

The French were shocked at just how good the American wines were.

If you have ever enjoyed a good wine you will enjoy this movie.

A very close friend of mine wrote it. 🤓

I loved the fact that it wasn’t some kind of wine-centered flexing contest, with the vintner equivalent of a training montage set to “You’re The BEST!”.

The Napa Valley people were just like “We’ve always made wine this way. You’re just now noticing?”

Fictional story of author Dashiell Hammett. Co-starred Peter Boyle, Marilu Henner
and in a nice touch Elisha Cook Jr. from the Maltese Falcon.

The Wall is one of the best science fiction movies ever made, IMHO. Also one of the best foreign language movies I've ever seen. And I don't know anybody who's ever seen it, or even heard of it. I think you can watch it for free on YouTube.

— Ron

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1745686/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_10_tt_7_nm_1_in_0_q_The%2520Wall

"Benny & Joon," and, "What's eating Gilbert Grape." Gilbert has the best performance I have ever seen out of Leonardo DeCaprio.

I'll look it up!

It was Waters second "mainstream" film after the original Hairspray. It's pure Waters camp, so if one doesn't like camp (or musicals), you won't like this movie. It's one of Johnny Depp's first movies and he's terrific in it. A great eccentric cast (Rikki Lake, Traci Lords, Iggy Pop, Willem DaFoe, Patty Hearst, and a bunch of 50's actors and actresses). And a great soundtrack. One of my most unexpectedly favorite movies - went in with low expectations and ended up loving it.

I liked the songs so much, I bought the soundtrack album.

"Electricity killed my parents!"

Benny and Joon was wonderful (hope I spelled those right, typing with a cat across my arms), I agree on all of those.Benny and Joon was really a nice show.

different type of movie, but entertaining

I’m glad I watched it, but I won’t watch it again.

It’s about food, and a lot more.

“SINK YOUR TEETH INTO THE ASS OF LIFE!!!”

n/t

Love can be as simple as cooking an egg for someone.

Stanley Tucci was shown to be such a good actor, writer and director in this movie. Being an Italian I could see my Dad and his brothers in this movie. The ending gets me every time.

This is a beautiful movie with a musical score that includes "O Mio Babbio Caro" which is a lovely aria.

...the true story about an old guy from New Zealand who sets a world land speed record at Bonneville with his vintage Indian motorcycle.

Full movie, for free on YouTube:

Story by Edward Abbey, screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, starring Kirk Douglas.

I'll add an obscure Vietnam war movie : Go Tell the Spartans

A couple of forgotten comedies : A mighty Wind or Top Secret (the airplane groups spoof of spy movies)

I think it is one of the funniest yet poignant movies I have ever seen

On paper it sounds like a really bad idea. A naive boy in WW2 Germany idealizes Hitler and daydreams Adolf as an invisible friend. Meanwhile, his mother is in the resistance and harbors a young jewish girl.

Both funny and heartbreaking it walks an incredible tight rope on such a sensitive subject.

Really great film. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2584384/

From Criterion.com https://www.criterion.com/films/28805-meantime

A slow-burning depiction of economic degradation in Thatcher’s England, Mike Leigh’s Meantime is the culmination of the writer-director’s pioneering work in television. Unemployment is rampant in London’s working-class East End, where a middle-aged couple and their two sons languish in a claustrophobic public-housing flat. As the brothers (Phil Daniels and Tim Roth) grow increasingly disaffected, Leigh punctuates the grinding boredom of their daily existence with tense encounters, including with a priggish aunt (Marion Bailey) who has managed to become middle-class and a blithering skinhead on the verge of psychosis (a scene-stealing Gary Oldman, in his first major role). Informed by Leigh’s now trademark improvisational process and propelled by the lurching rhythms of its Beckett-like dialogue, Meantime is an unrelenting, often blisteringly funny look at life on the dole.
FILM INFO

United Kingdom
1984
107 minutes

I've watched it at least 20 times.

All the characters in the band did their own playing, except for Joey "The Lips" Fagan.

Andrea Corr, of the Irish Folk/Rock band "The Corrs" played Jimmy Rabbitte's sister.
Her brother, Jim Corr appears briefly as a member of the skating rink band, "Avant-Garde-A-Clue"

Oldman is one of my favorite actors, but Lena Olin makes the movie!! "He loves those toes."

Lena Olin gives me chills in this. That laugh!!!

They started following their subjects when they were seven years old. They are now 70.

This series of films fascinates me. You can plainly see the seven-year-old's personality peeking through the eyes of the sixty-three year-old.

(It was a great film)

The Glass Bottom Boat, Quest for Fire, Cyberworld 3D

He did an 8K restoration and played it in theaters for its 25th anniversary.

which was made in 2002 by Spike Lee. Stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ed Norton, and Rosario Dawson.

This great but little-known gem won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film...

note: some of the science of the wolves is unfortunately fiction.

Norwegian. Surprisingly, the dubbed version is excellent.

with a young Patrick Dempsey & Jennifer Connelly. Set in Quebec during Christmas time. About a young man in love with one of three sisters. He comes to visit her at her familys home things get odd.

Also,

Map of the Human Heart (1992)
A really moving story of a friendship forming between two children at a Canadian boarding school in the 1930s. And follows their relationship into their adulthood. The two child actors are just fantastic.

I thought Jennifer Connelly was beautiful in “Labyrinth”. I was gobsmacked when I saw her in “Some Girls” in that black sable fur coat and hat!

Full disclosure: She’s only a year younger than me. My attraction is appropriate.

Poor Patrick Dempsey. LOL

Yeah. She was just like on a young Liz Taylor level gorgeous. What a great flick. She was perfect for that role. It made his love sickness and ultimate transformation absolutely believable.

Also want to add Once Were Warriors.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0110729/

Also Bon Cop Bad Cop and
Bon Cop Bad Cop 2 are favorites of mine.

Based on the Harlan Ellison novel. Great storyline.

It's in Finnish. A little bit scary at times, but ultimately heartwarming. One of my favorite Christmas movies.

A couple have already been mentioned:

- Trollhunter
- Dave Made a Maze
- True Romance (bloody but very good)
- Chompy and the Girls
- First Time Caller (power through the first 20 minutes of shock jock dribble -it's worth it)

starring Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland. A comedy set during the French Revolution.

It’s about the crew of a Soviet tank in Afghanistan in 1981. It’s widely considered by tankers and tank enthusiasts to be the best tank movie of all time.

Outside of those circles, though, it’s barely known. For some reason, the studio buried the film on release, opening it in a tiny number of theaters for a short time before sending it to video.

If you love Paris. Sweet and funny.

Robin and Marian
Paint

I had just seen the Disney Robin Hood a year or so earlier. I was shocked to see an older, embittered Robin Hood. And Marian poisons him and herself while he’s dying after being wounded in his fight with the Sheriff.

That was pretty heavy stuff for a kid.

Very adult emotional content. I just loved seeing Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn together.

An Irish film about a young girl who is sent to live with a cousin for a summer in the 1960s. Absolutely gorgeous film.

Also, Small Things Like These which is set in Ireland and is about the Magdalene Laundries and a man who grew up with a single mother (Cillian Murphy).

A sci-fi movie about a 14,000 year old man who has never aged and the reaction of his closest colleagues when his secret is uncovered. It is all dialogue, but the ideas in the movie are mind-bending. It does not support the mainstream Christianity story, so it could be disturbing for some folks.

Silence Running is another old sci-fi movie with Bruce Dern. The pacing is slow, but it is about an astronaut crew caring for ecological space pods that are supposed to someday re-seed a totally ecologically devastating Earth. When earth politicians cdecide to defend the project, moral dilemmas arise. Dejan vu all over again...

The film is a dark fairy tale masterpiece.

Last edited Tue Mar 3, 2026, 09:40 AM - Edit history (1)

starring Robert Hays from "Airplane",

Waking Ned Divine When local wag Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen) discovers that one of his neighbors in the village of Tulaigh Mohr is a lottery winner he sees a chance to share in the wealth. Things get complicated when Jackie and his pal Michael O'Sullivan (David Kelly) discover that the winner, Ned Devine, died of shock at the very moment he learned of becoming a millionaire. Undaunted, Jackie and Michael dispose of the lucky stiff and hatch a plot to impersonate him and claim the prize. Soon the whole village is involved and the plot rapidly thickens.

Steal Big, Steal Little Ruben and Robby (Andy Garcia)are twin brothers from Mexico, adopted by Mona, (Holland Taylor)one of the wealthiest - and most eccentric - women in Santa Barbara. Ruben is devoted to Mona, but Robby is more devoted to her money. When Mona leaves her fortune and estate to Ruben it starts a battle between brothers that soon leads to madness, mayhem, and even attempted murder.

The Grand Seduction: Residents of a small fishing community in Newfoundland charm a doctor into becoming the town's full-time physician in order to secure a vital factory contract.

Christmas in the Clouds: During the holidays at a ski resort in Utah run by a Native American tribe, the overworked manager and a widowed woman from the big city overcome mistaken identities and intrusive guests in their pursuit of romance. Beautiful movie with great characters, some neat little side plots and Graham Greene stealing every scene he is in.

American Dreamer: Frustrated housewife/writer Cathy Palmer ghostwrites a story about Rebecca Ryan, a dashing international spy, and wins a trip to Paris. While there, she is involved in an accident, and awakens in the hospital believing she IS Rebecca Ryan. Much craziness ensues as she meets the writer of the Rebecca Ryan books, thwarts real international spies, and eventually gets her memory back. It is very funny and sweet. JoBeth Williams and Tom Conti star.
We loved this movie and actually sat through it twice (back in 1984 you could do that in Evansville Indiana) I can't find it anywhere to stream or buy.

But only people who write fiction understood what was going on. But if you're a writer, it's a great film!