What is your favourite “watching” movie or show?
From our founder, Col Needham: "Provide your favorite "watching movie" defined as any movie or show where one character is watching / following / spying on any other so including spy films, private detectives and so on.
To help build your own list this advanced search may help or try other similar keywords around watching or spying. Clearly Hitchcock has some watching issues given a sub-plot of Vertigo, a scene in Psycho and several other watching-them-watching-you-watching-them scenarios in his movies
To help build your own list this advanced search may help or try other similar keywords around watching or spying. Clearly Hitchcock has some watching issues given a sub-plot of Vertigo, a scene in Psycho and several other watching-them-watching-you-watching-them scenarios in his movies
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- DirectorAlfred HitchcockStarsJames StewartGrace KellyWendell CoreyA wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his Greenwich Village courtyard apartment window and, despite the skepticism of his fashion-model girlfriend, becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.CN: Since I am fresh back from another Hitchcock movie in London overnight, I’ll go with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) in which James Stewart may or may not have seen something sinister while watching his neighbours a little too closely from the rear window of his New York apartment block, ably assisted Grace Kelly in one of her best roles; neatly summarised by this photo.
- DirectorGriffin DunneStarsMeg RyanMatthew BroderickKelly PrestonMaggie's and Sam's former partners are in love; she wants revenge and he wants his lost love back, so they work together to break up the happy couple.L Z-E: This film came to mind, sweet, romantic and very funny what they did to the poor Frenchman…
(Meg Ryan’s lips were still normal and she looked cute) - DirectorFlorian Henckel von DonnersmarckStarsUlrich MüheMartina GedeckSebastian KochIn 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.KA, EB:
- DirectorMcGStarsReese WitherspoonChris PineTom HardyC.I.A. operatives wage an epic battle on each other when they discover they are dating the same woman.CP:A movie where characters played by Chris Pine and Tom Hardy are CIA operatives spying on each other as they date the same girl, Reese Witherspoon. This movie always gets me thinking, if I had to pick between both guys myself which one would it be!? Obviously Tom Hardy is extremely cute, but if I was to marry Chris Pine then I wouldn’t have to change my surname all that much to go from Ms Pinn, to Ms Pine.
I’m going to need to give this some more thought…. - DirectorFrancis Ford CoppolaStarsGene HackmanJohn CazaleAllen GarfieldA paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered.Keith Simanton I’ll go with Francis Ford Coppola’s overlooked masterpiece, “The Conversation.” It’s about a “paranoid and personally-secretive surveillance expert [who] has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that a couple he is spying on will be murdered.” The film is very much about voyeurism, scopophilia, and, presciently, how technological advances can destroy our sense of privacy and can simultaneously enhance, pervert, and misconstrue communication.
It has a cast of nobodies in it including Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Frederick Forrest (why has this great character actor not worked in 6+ years?) Robert Duvall, and Harrison Ford in a small, but critical role. Cindy Williams is also in it, post “American Graffiti” and pre-“Laverne and Shirley.” Her presence is, I admit, a bit jarring at first since she’s so serious, with no Kitty Boo-Boo in sight (another reason why actors are wary of becoming TV stars, they become so very tightly associated with their TV personas).
John Cazale, whom you likely know as Fredo from “The Godfather” and “The Godfather, Part II,” is incredibly good in the film, as he always was. He’s famous, among other things, for appearing in five feature films in his career, all of which were nominated for Best Picture (though he, tragically, never received an Oscar nom).
Cazale was waging a losing battle with lung cancer while completing his last film, “The Deer Hunter.” Though the director Michael Cimino knew he was terminally ill before production started the studio did not. The story goes (and we have this in our trivia) that Lew Wasserman at Universal found out that the actor was sick as filming commenced and the studio subsequently requested/demanded that he be removed from the picture. Cazale’s girlfriend/lover at the time, and the lead actress in the film, Meryl Streep said if Cazale was fired, she would quit.
He was kept on and died shortly after filming wrapped. He was 42. - DirectorMichelangelo AntonioniStarsDavid HemmingsVanessa RedgraveSarah MilesA fashion photographer unknowingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park.CG: Antonioni's Blow-Up baby!
While it doesn't have to do with surveillance, per se, it features a "mod" London photographer (as our Plot summary says) noticing something awfully suspicious in a series of photos shot in a park, and his obsession in getting to the bottom of it. He spends an awful lot of time obsessively "looking" (which is similar to "watching" right?) at blown-up shots he has taken.
I love the movie because it's raw and gritty and quite crudely made and features a crazy, hedonistic 60's London that would have made Austin Powers blush and also Vanessa Redgrave makes an appearance in one of her earliest roles.