From 1988 to 1992, no Hollywood director had more success than Penny Marshall. Her string of hits – both critical and commercial – included Big, Awakenings, and A League of Their Own. These days, Marshall directs TV movies and series. Sometimes, you just got to scratch your head. Watch Robin Williams and Robert De Niro in Marshall’s poignant drama, Awakenings, free of charge by clicking here.
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Major League Baseball games are simply too damn long. So is The Natural, a 1984 tribute to Robert Red– er, our national pastime. The movie is also at times peculiar and overly sentimental. But Golly Gee Willikers, if you were ever a kid who dreamt about hitting a home run in the Big Game, the picture’s climax is a real treat. Watch it for free by clicking here.
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Trainspotting was a huge hit in Britain in 1996, and eventually was named the tenth-best British film of all time by the British Film Institute. Director Danny Boyle’s exploration of young drug addicts in Edinburgh didn’t do quite so well across the pond (read my review here), but there is no denying its energy and originality. Check it out for free by clicking here.
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A married couple (Woody Allen and Diane Keaton) suspects a neighbor has offed his wife. If you dig Allen and Keaton, this is a movie for you, although this is not Allen’s best murder mystery – that honor goes to the dramatic thriller, Match Point. Click here to watch.
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I don’t know what went wrong with filmmaker John Singleton. In 1991, Singleton was the first African American to be nominated for Best Director, and his debut movie, Boyz n the Hood, was also nominated for Best Screenplay. Now Singleton makes junk like this year’s Abduction. Watch his powerful first film, the South L.A. crime drama Boyz n the Hood, free of charge by clicking here.
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Halloween’s around the corner, and there are two decent horror-comedies you can check out: Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (in theaters) and The Cottage (right here). Neither film is a masterpiece, but they both have their moments. Click here to see Andy Serkis as a bumbling kidnapper on the run from a deranged farmer in The Cottage, or go here to read my review of it.
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Just two words: The Beatles. Seven more words: Watch them for free by clicking here.
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Al Pacino is sometimes accused of chewing the scenery. But you know what? It can be great fun to watch Al chew the scenery. Pacino plays a lawyer who takes on the Maryland judicial system in this 1979 satire from director Norman Jewison. Click here to watch it for free.
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Believe it or not, I’ve usually seen the movies I select for “Free Flick of the Week.” That’s not the case this week, in which I’m plugging Brian De Palma’s 1976 thriller, Obsession. But I want to see it, because I love me some 1970s De Palma, and this Hitchcock tribute, in which Cliff Robertson (who died last week) plays a man who loses his wife and child to kidnappers, looks intriguing. So let’s all of us go here and watch it for free.
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Most movies have a scene or two that stick in the memory. What I enjoy recalling about 1993’s In the Line of Fire is the sight of poor Clint Eastwood, 62 and not so spry, sprinting after the bad guy (John Malkovich) – huffing, puffing, running his old heart out. I must be a sadist. But this thriller about a Secret Service agent (Eastwood) racing to halt a presidential assassination is mindless good fun. Click here to watch it for free.
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