Comments on: Million Dollar Movie

By: Mr OK Jazz Tokyo

Mr OK Jazz Tokyo — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:57:44 +0000

[7] Pretty low bar there, isn’t it? But I need to watch Diner again, saw it once many years ago and it didn’t really stick.

By: Boatzilla

Boatzilla — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:39:38 +0000

Mathis or Sinatra?

There’re so many great lines in that flick. However, I think the “Sonny Test” is better than the Colts test.

My wife failed the Sonny Test and I’ve been suffering ever since.

By: Jon Weisman

Jon Weisman — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:44:44 +0000

[11] I think that’s a computer bug or something – in the actual review, it’s “Levinson.” Not all the pre-web Variety files got transferred to the web cleanly.

By: Alex Belth

Alex Belth — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:23:03 +0000

Funny to remember a time when Guttenberg was good. Love the scene with his mother in the kitchen. What a dick. LOL

By: bags

bags — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:49:01 +0000

Haha. so if you click through to the article and then follow the link to the original film review in Variety you’ll see that they refer to Barry Levinson as Barry Le Vinson throughout.

Le Vinson.

Like he’s some sort of French auteur. Hilarious.

By: Jon DeRosa

Jon DeRosa — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:10:38 +0000

[8] Ok got it, I was just worried that there’s yet another parental measuring stick out there against which I’ll come up short:)

I did see it, probably on VHS in 1983 when I was 7, but I was too little to remember any details except the most extreme ones. And too little to appreciate it for better or worse.

By: bags

bags — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:01:18 +0000

one of my favorite movies. and i love the record filing scene.

they’re both so right. and so wrong.

By: Jon Weisman

Jon Weisman — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:54:32 +0000

[4] Oh, I was just teasing about for all my flaws as a parent, at least I will make sure to guide my kids to watching Diner. (I had gotten the impression from your first comment that you hadn’t seen it.) Anyway, the joke was funnier in my head than in the execution …

By: Alex Belth

Alex Belth — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:32:12 +0000

I think it’s Barry Levinson’s best movie.

By: Jon DeRosa

Jon DeRosa — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:24:26 +0000

[5] The one enduring impression I have from the movie is that the guys did not deserve the girls. Especially whichever character devised the football trivia test. And that must have been from me, since I was not discussing the film on those levels with my brothers friends, who were undoubtedly expelling me from his room at the time.

But with Belth and Weisman behind it, I’ll have to give it a go.

By: Alex Belth

Alex Belth — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:13:49 +0000

There’s a great scene between Daniel Stern and Ellen Barkin about his record collection and it works so well because you can see where both of them are coming from. It doesn’t just side with Stern. You just see how little he knows about women, how little she cares about his obsessions and how difficult it is for them to be intimate with each other.

By: Jon DeRosa

Jon DeRosa — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:01:03 +0000

[2] I don’t quite follow that – what does pareting have to do with taste in movies?

Regardless, it wasn’t parenting, poor or otherwise that sent down that instruction. It was a friend of my older brother’s, who most have been around 15 and I must have been about 7.

When I read your article, I realized I don’t remember a lot of the movie and I’ve allowed this kid’s (whose name I don’t remember) opinion of the film to stand in for mine.

By: Alex Belth

Alex Belth — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:51:51 +0000

It was just that we were from such different worlds. 1) So worth watching again. And what is great is that it takes place on the eve of the 1960s. The pill wasn’t out yet…This was about guys still clinging to their adolescence. They don’t know how to be around women yet so they hang out with each other. I’ve often wondered what their lives would have looked like 10 years later at the end of the Sixties. Much, much different.

By: Jon Weisman

Jon Weisman — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:26:41 +0000

I’m feeling better about myself as a parent for the simple reason that I would never tell someone a movie this great was crap.

By: Jon DeRosa

Jon DeRosa — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:05:16 +0000

I was instructed that Diner was crap before I was old enough to have my own opinion, and I’ve never bothered to re-check for myself. I remember a relationship predicated on a Colts test and a movie theater dong-bet.