Tuesday, February 19, 2013

#43 Midnight Cowboy (1969)

James Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, and Dustin Hoffman seem to be the actors I've seen the most so far on my countdown. Here's one with Dustin Hoffman.... I still first think of him as Rain Man, but looks like he plays other characters well, too.

I had never heard of this movie, and at first I thought it was a Western. I was relieved when I read this on imdb.com: "A naive male prostitute and his sickly friend struggle to survive on the streets of New York City."  Interesting... this one was rated X when it came out; it's odd that an X-rated movie would win three Oscars AND make this list.

The characters are absolute train wrecks. With the way it starts--optimistic Joe Buck leaving his dishwashing job in Texas hoping to become a successful prostitute in NYC--I figured maybe he would realize prostitution wasn't the way to go and that he'd find something better to do with his life. This was part of the story, but I couldn't have predicted the way it happened.

Rating: 7/10 (loved the music, even though we heard the same song 50 times)

Big Names: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight

Big Lines: "I'm walking here! I'm walking here!" #27 on AFI's top 100 quotes

3 comments:

  1. 7/10?? What did you like about it? My wife and I absolutely hated this movie, so I'm sincerely interested to hear what somebody else thought who liked it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think part of it was that I was so relieved it wasn't a Western. :) But really... I liked Joe's character and the way they did his flashbacks, I thought Dustin Hoffman played his role well, it wasn't predictable to me, and I liked that it was so very different from the other movies I've seen lately. Maybe 7 was a bit high, but I did like it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fair enough. Thanks for the reply! =o)

    ReplyDelete