Our regular survey of what the AllMovie staff has been watching features a typically eclectic list of projects that includes classic ’80s television, Uwe Boll madness, politics, and Jack the Ripper. As always, let us know what you’ve had on your screens.

Jason Buchanan:
Long Weekend
Deliberate, moody, and capable of making the most experienced outdoorsman think twice before taking that next trip into nature, director Colin Eggleston’s 1978 classic is a richly textured, fascinating watch for lovers of slow-burn horror. No cats jumping out of cupboards here, just thick, churning malaise from the opening frames to the final shocker of a shot. Long Weekend possesses an atmosphere of unease that permeates every aspect of the film, from the human relationships to the relationship between man and nature. Will mankind succeed in destroying both themselves and nature, or will nature intervene in a violent attempt to preserve the planet for the creatures that know better than to take their selfish frustrations out on the earth? Fans of “switch off your brain” style horror take caution, this is the kind of fright flick that boldly asks viewers to pay attention.

Lemora:A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural
Fans of Guillermo Del Toro’s frightening fairy tales would do themselves well to check out this nightmarish and genuinely haunting adult fairy tale that doesn’t skimp on the unsettling imagery in telling the tale of a little girl lost, and a village with a dark secret. Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith is spellbinding as Lila, the virtuous singing angel in search of her lost father, and Lesley Gilb is eerily irresistible as the vampire queen Lamora, who summoned the young girl to Astaroth, a remote village populated entirely by vampires. Things get off to an unnerving start when Lila sneaks out of her house in the middle of the night to catch a bus to Astaroth, only to realize that she is in grave danger when a horde of monstrous, feral vampires descend upon the bus and catch a midnight snack. Later, when Lila arrives in Astaroth and meets the beguiling Lemora, the already thick atmosphere doubles in density as the frightened but brave Lila navigates a treacherous world of darkness and danger. Lemora might just be the definition of a lost classic, and the fine folks at Synapse Films have done a fantastic job of bringing it to a whole new generation of fans. Gothic fairy tale fans looking to program a satisfying double feature may do well to screen Lemora alongside the supremely surreal Valerie and Her Week of Wonders.

Postal
Mark this one “Return to Sender” and drop it back in the mailbox before you make the same mistake I did and watch it from start to finish. Then, go pick up a Troma flick and see how it’s done right.

Nathan Southern:
Moonlighting: Season Five
In this editor’s humble opinion (and I’m not alone), Glenn Gordon Caron’s 80s-defining, detective-themed romcom checks in as one of the top five U.S. television series of the past 30 years, right up there with Seinfeld, Northern Exposure, St. Elsewhere and The Office. After all, what could match the inimitable bickering of David Addison (Bruce Willis) and Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd), the ingenious attempts to defy form (such as asides to the camera, Shakespearean send-ups and 40s-retro throwbacks), or the endearingly funny supporting characters of Agnes Dipesto (Allyce Beasley) and Herbert Viola (Curtis Armstrong)? Via the magic of DVD, I started rewatching the final season (1988-89) last week, after 20 years away from the program, and let it be said that Season Five is like a history lesson on the dull aftermath that followed season 4’s travails. (I quickly remembered, thanks to AMG fellow editor Perry Seibert, that Caron hit the road during the final season). Truth be told, the final 13 episodes never lived up to the precedent or high expectations established by prior installments, but were, and are, still enjoyable. Anyway, it jump starts with one of the most entertaining and unconventional hours of television I’ve ever seen, the “Womb With a View” episode where Maddie loses her baby. The episode, as some may recall, features an elaborate, choreographed song-and-dance number at the outset, with the cast saluting the network for giving them another season; it then presents the events surrounding the miscarriage from the perspective of Maddie’s unborn infant, “Baby Hayes” – hilariously played by Willis in baby jammies with a blue bow in his hair. His guardian angel turns up to induct him into life, with two glorious montage lessons on the good and evil in the world (the first set to Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”) Then the angel receives a call from the Almighty with a change in plan. I’ve seldom seen anything as heart-rending, moving or ingenious on television. The rest of the season was so-so at best, though the follow-up episode to “Womb,” “Between a Yuk and a Hard Place,” has a wonderful chase scene with Willis on top of a hot air balloon, set to Engelbert Humperdinck’s cover of Jimmy Webb’s “Up Up and Away.”

Tropic Thunder
I wasn’t nearly as taken with this as our own Perry, who thought it one of the funniest comedies of the year. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that it has numerous winning moments (the opening parody of Brokeback Mountain with Robert Downey, Jr. and Tobey Maguire as two gay Catholic monks is a riot and a half and packs in a fun little nod to Staying Alive). Downey is at the top of his form, Jack Black does some grade-A work as a desperate heroin addict, and director/co-writer Ben Stiller can’t be faulted for a lack of cleverness. But to whatever extent I laughed, the movie also hit me like a multi-leveled full-frontal assault (on both moral and sensorial levels), and I felt so gross after watching it that I wanted a shower; it feels like either an attempt to offend as aggressively as possible, or simply a great act of naivete, a scatological comedy by a director and writers so desensitized to everything that they no longer have any discernment. (And no, I didn’t see The Aristocrats). Step Brothers is nearly as risqué and profane as Thunder, but it lacks the dirty-fingered cynicism of this and never once feels assaultive, which makes Roger Ebert’s review of it (”In Step Brothers, the language is simply showing off by talking dirty. It serves no comic function, and just sort of sits there in the air, making me cringe”) seem absolutely insane to me alongside his unqualified praise of Thunder. Anyway, for me, Step Brothers remains the #1 summer comedy of 2008, and Thunder, while frequently funny and assuredly well-made, didn’t afford the pleasures of seeing Will Ferrell act like a pervert with the intuition of a six-year-old. But it does have Downey speaking Vietnamese in a jive accent.

The Killing of Sister George
Beryl Reid is suitably obnoxious in this intriguing but off-putting, Robert Aldrich-directed black comedy from 1968. She plays June, a thuggish, acid-mouthed, über-butch lesbian actress who spends her days screaming insults at everyone in sight. June grows paranoid that her nimble-brained character on a tired soap opera is going to be “axed.” And guess what? It happens. But you knew that from the title. The best thing in the movie (surprise, surprise) is the multilayered, complex and sensitive supporting portrayal by the eminent Susannah York as June’s lesbian lover Alice – a delicate, childlike character who has fallen into a sadomasochistic relationship with the mean old bag. York almost makes the entire movie bearable. The movie features a lesbian love scene between York and Coral Browne, with some very graphic woman-on-woman foreplay that must have shocked the pants off of everybody back in 1968 – and earned the film an X-rating. Oh, yeah, and Patricia Medina (then Mrs. Joseph Cotten) also turns up in a small part, looking so damned gorgeous that she stops the movie dead in its tracks.

Jeremy Wheeler:
Time After Time
Nicholas Meyer’s ficticious tale of H.G. Wells’ pursuit of Jack the Ripper into the present day (circa 1979) has always been a flick that I’d been dying to see. With the new Warner Bros. rerelease, I was finally given the chance – and boy howdy, did it deliver. A daft mix of charm and tension awaits the viewer as Malcolm McDowell and David Warner square off in this fish out of water thriller. Oh yes, and it’s a romance! A touching and irresistible one that further elevates my Mary Steenburgen crush. Dunno why this one slipped through my young HBO-viewing eyes growing up, but I can now safely say that it will live on proudly in my mystery collection – right alongside another underestimated ’79 jack the Ripper picture – none other than Bob Clark’s Murder By Decree. A fine double feature, indeed!

Smilla’s Sense of Snow
I have fond memories of the first time I caught this thriller on VHS nearly 10-years back. The cover always reminded me of a Kieslowski flick, thanks to the framing of star Julia Ormond’s fine featured face, though I’m probably not too wrong in stating that it’s a whole lot more fun! First off, the cast – Gabriel Byrne, Richard Harris, Robert Loggia, Vanessa Redgrave and the always wonderful Jim Broadbent – all of whom support Ormond in what could be one of my favorite roles of hers. While I’m the first to admit that her filmography isn’t quite the stuff of my dreams, I had a great time seeing her embody a hard-nosed noir character usually reserved for the opposite sex. That’s not to say it’s an easy time to see such a single-minded female character work her way through a case of a murdered boy – as a viewer, it’s quite alarming to get used to the gender-switching. There’s one move, however, that Binoche pulls off on her witch of a stepmother that nails both her character as well as the whole film. Yes, they went there. Yes, this character will stop at nothing to see this tale through till the end. Underrated and well deserving of another look, Smilla’s is a welcome case of wintry mystery to cool down the hot heat at the end of the summer.

Cammila Albertson:
The Adventures of the Little Prince
I’m about two What We’re Watching contributions away from convincing readers I received a Mitch Lemon-esque traumatic brain injury during a skiing accident in 1985, but my write-up this week has got to be about the Little Prince. I’m sure this reference calls to mind Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s children’s novella analogizing the simple truths of the human condition through an unassuming fable — but don’t worry, it’s only barely related. This animated series was based on the literal underpinnings of the plot: a sweet and idealistic little boy lives all by himself on the tiniest planet in the galaxy until the day he uses a butterfly net to catch a comet and fly to other worlds, which he visits in a state of unending wonder and delight. All the other stuff about life and the follies of man kind are mostly left out though.

This was one of those early 80’s anime series where they produced it in Japan and then imported it directly to France (see: Mysterious Cities of Gold). It made its way to the States a few years later and found itself in regular rotation on the then fledgling Nickelodeon. I’m one of those crazy people who not only collects but relishes these childhood remnants, so when I was home sick for a day earlier this week, I watched it for two discs straight. It still holds up, but I have to say that I never noticed before how every single child that the Little Prince befriends on his journeys seems to be inexplicably orphaned — left in the care of a grandfather or aunt. (I believe this same character-loop afflicted Shirley Temple.) Maybe it was just setting the stage for the next orphan-filled French anime early-Nick classic Belle and Sebastian.

Perry Seibert:
Chicago 10
With the convention coverage if full swing, I found myself turning to a couple of recent political movies. The ambitious documentary Chicago 10 fuses animated recreations of the infamous trial that resulted from the protests at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention with archival footage of the riot that ensued when The Windy City cops turned violent on the assembled masses. The use of animation drives home the cartoonish nature of the legal proceedings, and both Liev Schreiber, as attorney William Kunstler, and the prodigiously talented Jeffrey Wright, as Bobby Seale, turn in stellar vocal performances. These intriguing sequences, however, don’t quite gel with the more traditional documentary footage used to put viewers in the heart of the city during those momentous four days. While the film never quite feels like a unified work, it is an occasionally mesmerizing attempt to do something new with the traditional documentary.

Recount
The Jay Roach directed Recount, on the other hand, works smashingly as a traditional docudrama. The complicated legal decisions and maneuvers that transfixed the nation in the aftermath of Florida’s contested 2000 Presidential election are presented in a clear, straightforward manner that simplifies difficult legal concepts. Thanks to the solid acting of Kevin Spacey, Tom Wilkinson, Ed Begley Jr., and Laura Dern, Recount never feels like a history lesson, even though it is one.