#67 The Deer Hunter - My name is Bambi, oh if someone would have put me out of my misery I wouldn't have had to sit through this...

1978. dir. Michael Cimino, starring Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, Meryl Streep, John Cazale.

Seen it before? No.

One of my very good friends lost her brother to Russian Roulette. To her and to others who have lost loved ones to gun violence I must say, DO NOT WATCH THIS!!!! Three hours is a long amount of time for a movie...especially one that didn't have much going on for huge chunks. It was like ugh...and yet I managed to stay awake for the whole thing. Even the painful scenes where the men are forced to play Russian Roulette.

Meryl Streep is just beautiful...then and now. I couldn't tear my eyes off of her when she was on-screen. Oddly enough I watched the Oscars right after we finished the movie and there she was nominated again (her 16th nomination). She's probably one of my favorite actresses of all time...I've seen a LOT of her films...she's incredibly versatile. And she has a softer beauty that Glenn Close, talented as she is, doesn't have with her sharp features.

I liked DeNiro in this film...He brought the tough as nails but damaged by trauma characters together nicely. I was rooting for him to get together with Meryl Streep...but that was a bit of an odd love triangle with Christopher Walken, Speaking of Christopher Walken, he wasn't nearly as creepy in this early film as he is to me now...though his character was so damaged by Russian Roulette that he started making a living out of it...ARGH. That ruined his not-so-creepy factor for me. As for the third guy, John Savage, I kinda just felt bad for him...he gets married at the beginning, gets completely damaged by the Viet Cong during their shooting game, and then doesn't want to leave the VA hospital to be with his wife and kid...Talk about being put through the ringer...

I thought the guy who owned the bar was probably the sweetest character. He cooked for them, he took care of them (them meaning the crew from the steel plant) even when he himself was feeling sorrow and grief.

I can't put myself through this movie. The scenes with the Russian Roulette (yes, I realize it's part of the main idea of this movie) just were too much for me.
No I wouldn't own it.

#67 The Deer Hunter: This is this

1978. dir. Michael Cimino, starring Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, Meryl Streep, John Cazale.

Seen it before? No.

And so now we come to the sad tale of Michael Cimino, one of Hollywood's great one-hit wonders. Long story short, he made this movie, which was a critical and commercial success. He was given total artistic freedom on his next movie, Heaven's Gate, which was such a huge flop that it almost single-handedly bankrupted United Artists. He's apparently made a couple other movies since, but nothing remarkable or interesting.

But anyway. Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage play three steelworkers who live in western PA. They decide to go to Vietnam because I guess they think it will be a fun adventure, like when they go deer hunting. It ends up not being fun for anyone - they get captured by the Viet Cong and forced to play Russian Roulette at gunpoint. The trauma of the experience causes lingering mental problems for the three of them, particularly Walken's character, who begins playing the game on his own for money.

The Russian Roulette scenes are almost unwatchably tense, so good job on those, I guess... but why was this movie 3 hours long? The opening scenes, in which we get introduced to the characters via a wedding scene and a deer hunt, take up nearly an hour of screentime. Wedding scenes are tricky things for a movie. It's really hard to make them not boring. Otherwise you end up with a movie like Rachel Getting Married, which was like watching the wedding video of someone you don't know. I don't have a problem with long movies, per se; one of my all time favorites is Godfather II, which is 3 hours and 15 minutes. But you have to earn that extra length, and I don't think this movie did. It would have had a lot more impact if it was 45-60 minutes shorter.

This was one of the first major film roles for Meryl Streep, and her first Oscar nomination. Also, sadly, this is the final role of John Cazale, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer before filming began. (He doesn't look so good, the poor guy.)

Position on the list: 132
"Stanley, see this?: This is this. This ain't something else. This is this." Seriously, what the hell was that dialogue supposed to mean? I don't get it