The All Movie Staff Presents: What We’re Watching
June 27th, 2008 | 5:32 pm est |
As one passes by the cubes of the All Movie staff, it is not uncommon to hear overlapping conversations with subjects ranging from Altman to The Office to the newest blockbusters at the theaters or even The Muppets. Some chats are friendly and some are heated, but one thing is for sure — this is a staff with a great range of varied tastes that somehow find common ground with each other, if only because we all love the filmed and televised mediums so much. So as the weekend looms, here’s a quick list of the stuff some of us have been ingesting over the past week. Enjoy.
Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson play sisters that look nothing like each other who each lay with the King of England. Come to think of it, neither of them looks like they could have come from the womb of Kristin Scott Thomas either. For an hour it’s like a fun high-school version of Dangerous Liasons, but anybody who knows their history will have checked out long before the final head, let alone credit, rolls.
Charmingly modest comedy from writer/star/producer Adam Carolla about a middle-age carpenter who finally grows up by finishing the promising boxing career he abandoned as a teenager. It’s surprising how funny he can make the La Brea tar pits.
A futuristic take on the book of Genesis filtered through the Eurovision Song contest. It might be the worst film ever made, but that should not diminish your need to see it.
There’s something magic about a muggy Michigan afternoon and a 1980s sports montage. The wood chopping action of Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV may be perfect for a cold winter’s night, but waxing on and off in preparation for an inevitable triumphant ass whooping is like an air conditioned room for the soul.
I paid for HBO when Six Feet Under was running, and that’s saying something. In an age when discounted copies of ‘The Secret’ are being hawked from mall kiosks across the globe, the underlying message of the show – that life is a crapshoot of a clusterf**k from which we are to construct our own meaning – is a morbid sort of comfort. It’s also arguably unbeatable when it comes to series finales; the conclusion of Six Feet Under is the polar opposite of the infamous Tony Soprano Black Screen of Doom, and one of the most satisfying, if tearjerking, television experiences I’ve had.
I meant to start preparing for the release of The X-Files: I Want to Believe long ago, but I procrastinate and I’ve got day job mucking up my nerd leanings. Better late than never, right? The important thing is that this is where it all started: Fox “Spooky” Mulder languishing away in the FBI equivalent of a broom closet for incorrigible youngsters, and red headed science geek Dana Scully assigned to render him good, debunked, and fired. Aliens, monsters, 90s computer technology, and the dawn of nearly a decade’s worth of unresolved sexual tension – what more could you ask?
Here’s eight hand-picked episodes from series vets Chris Carter & Frank Sponitz that sets to prep audiences for the awkwardly-titled, yet deliciously mysterious I Want To Believe X-Files sequel – and not a moment too soon. My mouth has been watering for some Mulder & Scully action for a while now, so this was just what the great geek doctor ordered. Plus finally being able to catch Peter Boyle’s brilliant turn in the Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose episode again was a sheer joy. Recommended for casual fans whose shelves aren’t adorned with the box sets, film slides or stiff McFarlane toys from the last flick.
Burt Reynolds directed himself to be a sensitive object of women’s desires in this 1981 outing, which finds the mustached one pining over a hooker when he’s not using his own brand of two-fisted “hard love” to win her affection. Stranger still is the other half of the schizophrenic picture, which doles out the crass in one staggering mouthful after another, thanks to the hilarious Richard Libertini, who supplies much of the film’s crazy crude dialogue.
A time capsule of pure, sheer boyhood delight filled me upon hitting play on this 1986 animated gem. The opening sequence alone had me doing flips in my ez-boy as the forces of Cobra and Joe duke it out atop the Statue of Liberty in an outrageous animated sequence that is almost too good to be true. Also worth it for Don Johnson’s highly misogynistic turn as Lt. Falcon – a skirt chasing loser that was sadly never given a chance to do a public service announcement on how kids shouldn’t show off top secret installations to hot terrorist tail in disguise as southern belles.
Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan: The Complete Third Season
From pink poodles with pee problems to lumbering bulldogs with territorial issues, the world’s finest dog psychologist, Cesar Millan, takes viewers on another season of educational adventures in doggy land. A feel good alternative to National Geographic’s Dogtown: Second Chances DVD – itself a fine ode to the dog rescuers of the world, yet brimming with a bit too many heartbreaking stories of canine woes for my taste.
A spectacularly visual contemporary giallo in which all of the shortcomings of the notoriously muddled genre are amplified to near incoherent levels. If Argento still had all his marbles he’d make cinematographer Luca Coassin his regular director of photography, because this sick little thriller has morbid style to spare. Still, allow yourself to get too bogged down in the specifics and you’re bound to walk away disappointed. As with most great giallos, the best way to enjoy this one is to throw logic out the window and simply marvel at the savage beauty of it all.
Don’t be fooled by the occult robe draped over this counter-culture curiosity, because Simon, King of the Witches feels more like an eccentric psychedelic drama than a proper horror film. That said, it would make for a damn fun weekly comic strip in which Simon finds his repeated attempts to achieve godhood thwarted by the ineptitude of man while his gay prostitute sidekick gathers the materials needed to the master’s latest incantation. Magnetic, electric indeed!
Cackling witches, pig women, flying disembodied heads that eat babies… what’s not to love? Sure, the special effects may be “special” in all the wrong ways, but this outlandish little shocker alternates between unintentionally hilarious and unexpectedly creepy in a way that’s actually disarmingly effective.
Even the third time through, I still couldn’t help but flinching when that staircase becomes a crimson waterfall of free flowing lifeblood. This is one flick that doesn’t forgive, and it’s impossible to forget.
A suspected witch is hurled over a cliff and resurrected by a mysterious hermit who implores her to seek vengeance on the people who wronged her in life. She may be a reluctant witch, but that doesn’t stop her from raising some serious hell. Good low-budget Indonesian horror from the fine folks at Mondo Macabro.
To be honest, this one came at the tail end of a twelve hour marathon and by that point I was kind-of dozing off. Why was everything so red?
This one seems to split Argento fans right down the middle, but I stand by my opinion that while it certainly pales in comparison to the first two films in the “Three Mothers” trilogy, The Third Mother stands as one of the most over-the-top examples of Italian horror since the golden era of the 1970s. It may not be the surreal and supremely terrifying conclusion to the trilogy that fans had been patiently holding out for these past few decades, but there’s not a dull moment to be found in this depraved tale of witchery.
Encounters at the End of the World
I’m still working on a proper review of Werner Herzog’s latest documentary, but in short it’s absolutely mesmerizing – by all means see this film on the big screen if you have the opportunity! The sublime beauty of the Antarctic landscape serves as a fascinating contrast to interviews with scientists who are truly passionate about their work, and the sights and sounds that the viewer experiences while visiting their frigid iceberg base are breathtaking in their transcendent beauty. This is the story of a small group of dreamers living in a world that most of us could never imagine, and who better than Herzog to serve as our guide into this strange and beautiful universe?
The (unsubtitled) Swedish DVD compilations of The Little Man Who Didn’t Want to Grow Up and Magister Flykt (aka Professor Flykt)
There’s nothing as funny or as entertaining as watching foreign cartoons without the subtitles – or as instructive; Kurosawa recommended always approaching a film first without translation, and I agree that it’s a purer way to look at the movie, though it results in some hilarious misunderstandings. The above animations are Swedish classics; I bought them on two DVDs after reminiscing about seeing the Anglicized versions on Nickelodeon when I was a kid. The former deals with a pointdexterish fellow named Ragnar who fantasizes constantly about his carefree boyhood, the latter tells of an elementary school instructor saddled with a motley bunch of kids, including Siamese twins who share a single desk, and a befuddled, bespectacled little girl who is cross-eyed, and who always seems to get into inconvenient situations. Of the 10 or so episodes on these discs, my favorite has to be the one in which the little Ragnar puts a sign with his name around his neck and ends up leading a conga line of oddball Swedish people down the street, each of whom greets him by shouting: “Alllo! AllllO!” It’s impossibly cute and a total riot.
The Man Who Loved Women (1977) by Francois Truffaut
I’ve seen it ten or twelve times, but I’ll never tire of this gentle and lyrical fable about a Montpellier-based womanizer (Charles Denner) – a fable that rests on a single adage: the problem with a man who loves all women is that he can never love only one woman. To be certain, Truffaut’s movie has its share of real laughs, but a deep poignancy lies at its core, capped off with a final revelation involving an ex-girlfriend played by Leslie Caron. And it retains a wonderfully modern feel rooted in its depiction of Gallic domesticity. The Burt Reynolds/Blake Edwards remake looks okay if judged on its own, but compared to the original, just forget about it. This one’s a gem.
“Kurosawa recommended always approaching a film first without translation.”
That works really well with action films, silents, and I suppose cartoons, but try watching a film like 12:08 East of Bucharest without the benefit of the dialogue — it results not in misunderstanding, but complete incomprehension.