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HOT SHOTS! - REVIEW

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There were some great spoofs back in the day: Airplane! , Top Secret! , The Naked Gun . Hot Shots: Part Deux , I recall being pretty good also. But as for the original Hot Shots! nothing rang a bell expect that it was a Top Gun piss-take and that Charlie Sheen was once again the lead. One re-watch later and, although Hot Shots! does have its amusing moments, I wouldn't list it on the same level as the aforementioned bunch. Maybe I've just grown-up or maybe a lot of the humour hasn't dated terribly well, I don't know. Watching it now, it was more miss than hit I felt. One of the jokes sees an old Native American dude listening to a walkman and asking Sheen to bring back some AA batteries. I guess back then that was like the equivalent of an iPod reference or something (for the kids?). Thing is: random "modern" technology references in spoofs are rarely funny, they're just... there. Remember those ads the Scary Movie gang parodied in their franchise?

CARY GRANT'S BEACH MOMENT

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CARY GRANT'S FACE SLAP

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TO CATCH A THIEF - REVIEW

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Never quite my favourite Hitchcock film, To Catch A Thief has nevertheless grown on me these past few years. Similarly in tone to North By Northwest , it always felt like a slight, silly effort from The Master. And yet these days I find there's something irresistible about it. This is probably THE most chilled-out whodunit you'll ever see: there's little to no hurry. Characters have long chats while driving down the sunny French coast, stop by to have picnics, go for a swim... It's one big, long holiday with a freakishly tanned Cary Grant at the heart of it playing a cat burglar trying to find a copy-cat burglar in order to clear his name. But where the chillaxed nature of the film infuriated me as a kid, now I get the joke: take a typical Hitchock thriller and make it as lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek as possible, set the whole thing in the most inoffensive setting and get Cary Grant to wear horrible sweaters and scarves: voila! To Catch A Thief never pret

NORTH BY NORTHWEST - REVIEW

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  Alfred Hitchcock's lighthearted thriller may not always be number one in people's top Hitch-lists and it may have been overshadowed by more sinister and daring efforts like Psycho or Vertigo but North by Northwest was never meant to be anything more than good, suspenseful fun. Which it is. Cary Grant is wittier than ever in a role which sees him being constantly bewildered, drink driving, pursued by a plane, hanging off Mount Rushmore and causing a ruckus at a sales auction. But throughout, he never seems to take things too seriously and takes it all in its stride as we sit back and enjoy the Bond-style adventure he's been forced into. The film contains all the classic tongue-in-cheek Hitchcock traits: an unsympathetic mother, a tortured blonde love interest, a case of mistaken identity and, of course, suspense by the buckets. The final jump cut and joke right at the end cheekily reminding you one last time that North By Northwest is indeed mostly a fun, silly action