Play Misty for Me

So what is this one about?

The beloved Netflix* tells us,

Silver-tongued radio disc jockey Dave (Clint Eastwood) can't help but notice the persistent calls from a female to "play 'Misty' for me." But when a chance meeting with infatuated fan Evelyn leads to a brief and steamy love affair, Dave quickly learns he's in for more than a little night music. Evelyn will stop at nothing -- even the return of one of Dave's old flames -- to have him all to herself. The film marks Eastwood's directorial debut.

Sweet, ain’t nothing I love more than one of those woman scorned/stalker psycho movies! (see Fatal Attraction, Swim Fan—especially good, The Crush, etc. And don’t forget that bizarre variant, the man scorned/ stalker psycho, see Fear)

*did you know that Microsoft Word recognizes Netflix as a proper noun and capitalizes it? Well it does!!

And how much did I pay to watch?

Gah! I think when I watched this I was also watching In Treatment, so maybe less because there was some serious disc shuffling. But, maybe I paid $16.99 (per month) Who knows?

And what did I think?

Well, if you didn’t know (I don’t know how that would be possible) I love Gran Torino. Kudos to Clint and all his amazingness! Then I watched The Changeling, which was also another awesome Clint movie. After that I decided to add a ton of Eastwood movies to my Netflix queue. This was one of them, I thought it sounded the most fun. Plus, it wasn’t a western, and it was his directorial debut. Well, let me tell you two things.

1) Clint Eastwood was a serious hottie when he was younger.

2) His directing skillz have VASTLY improved since his first days. And thank heavens for that!!

Play Misty for Me was so ridiculous I couldn’t believe it at times. It is funny when I watch a movie alone (which is where I watch most of them…you know, so I don’t get distracted by outside stimuli) and I laugh out loud at parts that aren’t even supposed to be funny.

I truly don’t know what Clint was thinking with this one. There is a lot of potential with the story—as we’ve seen in other movies—and the acting wasn’t horrible… Clint was good, the person who played crazy Evelyn was goodish, and the person who played his girlfriend was a little/lot annoying. But, the actual direction of visual shots and the addition of music was so irritating there were multiple times I almost (or did I?) fast forwarded through the visual/audio vomit I was experiencing.

What is that you’re saying? You don’t understand what I’m talking about since you haven’t seen this movie? I will give you an example, taken straight from Wikipedia. “The film features a romantic montage backed by Roberta Flack's recording of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."” And when you follow that link over to the song wikipage you learn that the flipping song is 5:22 long. JESUS. Is that really necessary?? A five minute+ long montage where two characters are making out/doing it in the forest? I will answer for you. The answer is NO. Never is that sort of thing ok. Well, maybe in a porno, but that would be a different blog all together.

Another example? Sure. Wikipedia says “It is also notable for its use of location shooting, mostly in the area of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where Eastwood has long made his home, and where he was elected Mayor in 1986. Additional scenes were shot at the Monterey Jazz Festival in September 1970, featuring jazz greats Johnny Otis, Cannonball Adderley, and future Weather Report founder Joe Zawinul.” All those location shots were overly long and romantical. Soft focus and all that shit. And good god, if there is one thing I hate in movies (even in movies I like, like the Sound of Music) it is flipping soft focus!! So, add up the overly long shots of boring scenery that adds nothing to the plot and the ridiculous use of crappy music and you’ve got a movie that Julia did not like!

So what is the rating? (out of 10)

Even Clint couldn’t save this silly movie from ending up in the bottom part of my scale. I will give it a 4, because even though it wasn’t even passable as a halfway movie, it did have Clint.

I swear. *shakes head*