"It is much easier to proclaim dislike for a popular movie than to admit liking an uncool movie."
So confesses The Self-Styled Siren, a most erudite and opinionated blogger, before admitting that she likes, among other certifiably uncool movies, Nicolas Cage in Valley Girl, The Enchanted Cottage (the 1945 Robert Young/Dorothy McGuire schmaltz that inspired a character in Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman), the 1940 Pride & Prejudice (with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier) and Leslie Howard. Flickgrrl isn't ashamed to say that she agrees with Siren in these four cases, despite being chastised by hundreds of card-carrying members of the Jane Austen Society of North America for her love of the 1940 P & P, which has Victorian interiors and costumes rather than those of the Regency era. (And despite laughing at Marlene's Dietrich's 1939 journal entry, after seeing the Technicolor Gone With the Wind: "Leslie Howard with orange hair! Now I've seen everything.")
What constitutes cool? Flickgrrl's intuition is that it's a picture or performer that doesn't care whether you like it/him/her. This is why Robert Mitchum is cool and Victor Mature not. Why Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married is cool and Hathaway in Princess Diaries is not. Why Denzel Washington is cool and Eddie Murphy not so much.
There are probably hundreds of movies and actors beloved of Flickgrrl considered uncool. For the sake of time and space, she'll name only one: Sofia Coppola's deliberately anachronistic Marie Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst as the unloved queen who stops embracing frivolity once her husband embraces her.
Your nominations for uncool movies and performers you love?
The working title of Almost Famous was "The Uncool". And the thing about the Internet is that you can always find *someone* who likes the same things you do, no matter how obscure or unpopular. That said, okay: One Crazy Summer, starring John Cusack and a then-not-known Demi Moore.— Adam B.- I think Shelley Duvall's Millie in 3 WOMEN is so superfabulous in her lemon-colored house/car/clothes, that I understand why Pinky (Sissy Spacek) admires her. Though her neighbors feign a cold to steer clear of her. And of course, I love Robert DeNiro and Sandra Bernhard and Jerry Lewis in THE KING OF COMEDY, a cringe-inducing black-hearted "comedy" that is THE KING OF UNCOOL.— garyk
- Where the definition of cool is "Make it look easy" and "Never take yourself or the world too seriously"... Victor Mature was way too cool... Applying for membership in the swank Los Angeles Country Club, Mature was turned down and told that the golfing facility did not accept actors as members. His response: "I'm not an actor - and I've got 64 films to prove it!" "Actually, I am a golfer. That is my real occupation. I never was an actor. Ask anybody, particularly the critics." Asked if it bothered him playing Samson's father in a TV remake of "Samson and Delilah": If the money's right I'd play his mother! Then there's the time Jim Backus and Victor Mature stepped off the set while filming a gladiator movie to handle a business errand, stopping at a local taproom on the way for a quick quaff, still dressed in gladiator regalia. Mature's retort to the stares of the bartender: "What's the matter, don't you serve servicemen here?" is classic! Mitchum's work was great but he was never this fast on the draw in real life. C'mon, with self-deprecating humor like this, Old Vic is at least as cool as Clint Eastwood!— factcheck
- Jeff Bridges is cool, but I always preferred brother Beau, who never had the cool factor, possibly because, back in the day, he was more of a young character actor than a leading man. Also: Clifton Webb, Lawrence Tierney and George Sanders, all cool in spite of themselves (and Sanders is way cool in "All About Eve"). Actresses: Martha Hyer, Betsy Drake and Maggie McNamara. I can't explain why but I love watching each of them - and that makes them cool for me.— Pash
- What's really uncool is liking John Wayne--despite his hawkish politics--for his work, no, his presence, in such masterpieces as John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and "The Searchers" and Howard Hawks' "Red River" and great trilogy, "Rio Bravo," "Rio Lobo," and "El Dorado." He wasn't half bad in his war movies, either, like: "They Were Expendable," and "In Harm's Way."— Nancy KC
- Factcheck: Thanks for reminding us of how funny the typically inexpressive Victor Mature could be.— carrierickey
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