THE BIRDS. By Alfred Hitchcock. The one where the birds attack. Good movie. He was a total bastard to Tippi Hedren but she was good in it. Her first movie. Then she raised Melanie Griffith and a bunch of lions.
Hedren plays Melanie Daniels, and what I definitely didn’t properly appreciate the last time I saw this as a younger person is what a great weirdo Melanie is. During the large portion of the movie where the disaster hasn’t fully made itself known it’s just a funny story about a woman behaving very unreasonably, and not giving a shit, because it amuses her. She’s fun to watch.
It starts in a San Francisco bird store, where Melanie is trying to buy a myna bird. A man named Mitch (Rod Taylor, 101 DALMATIANS, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS) starts talking to her like she works there, asking about buying a pair of lovebirds for his 11-year-old sister’s birthday. She plays along, but it turns out he knows she doesn’t work there, he’s a lawyer and recognizes her from a court appearance over some unknown prank she played that “resulted in the smashing of a plate glass window.” For some reason he starts giving her a bunch of shit about it.
“What are you? A policeman?” she asks.
“I simply believe in the law, Miss Daniels, and I’m not too keen on practical jokers.” (read the rest of this shit…)
I reviewed THE LAST BOY SCOUT (1991) 
EXTREME JUSTICE is a 1993 cop movie by director Mark L. Lester (
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE is a Golan and Globus production starring Dolph Lundgren, but it’s a little more mainstream than that implies because it’s for the children, it’s based on action figures and on a cartoon based on action figures. I was looking for that same authorial voice and unique perspective we saw represented in the TRANSFORMERSes and GI JOE, but it turns out that’s Hasbro, this one is based on the works of Mattel. That’s like mixing up H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. I feel like an idiot.
