Searching for Sugar Man (NF 2012) Malik Bendjelloul [1:26]
Searching for Sugar Man was one of those films everyone told me I should see, but no one told me about, which turned out to be the right thing to do. I will do the same, although by this time, you’ve probably already heard the story and don’t need me to reiterate it. Regardless, Searching for Sugar Man is one of those rare tales that manages to serve as an uplifting experience that’s not over-sentimentalized. I hope you’ll give it a try.
4/5
No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) Akira Kurosawa [1:50]
The first movie out of the box (and I’m referring to the Post War Kurosawa box from Criterion’s Eclipse series #7) is a winner. It was also a departure for Kurosawa, in that the hero of this tale is a woman (Setsuko Hara), the first and only time Kurosawa ever told a story with a female protagonist.
Yukie is a young woman enjoying a simple, uncomplicated life of ease until WWII breaks out, turning her into a social activist. With a little romance and politics thrown in, you might think you could predict how things will go, but I think you’ll be surprised. How refreshing to see post WWII from the eyes of a Japanese director. I’m very eager to check out the rest of the films in this set.
4.5/5
Phantasm (1979) Don Coscarelli [1:28] (2x)
When I was a senior in high school, we got HBO for the first time (which could account for why my grades tanked for awhile). One of the movies that aired on HBO that year was Phantasm, a strange combination of horror and sf that, to be honest, left my 18-year-old mind baffled. I remember being intrigued by it, but so disappointed with the ending that I quickly forgot everything about it except for the now famous silver sphere of death.
Let 30+ years go by and sometimes things change. And sometimes they don’t. Phantasm is still something of a mess in many ways, but it’s an intriguing mess with some great ideas. I’m intrigued enough to watch Phantasm II.
3/5
Ministry of Fear (1944) Fritz Lang [1:27]
4/5
The Devil’s Backbone (2001) Guillermo del Toro [1:50]
4.5/5
Night Tide (1961) Curtis Harrington [1:25]
It’s hard to believe Dennis Hopper was ever this young, but he was. This wasn’t even Hopper’s first film; you’d have to go all the way back to Rebel Without a Cause in 1955 for that. Most people have forgotten that Hopper was also in Giant. And would you believe that Hopper played Napoleon Bonaparte in The Story of Mankind? (It’s true.)
In Night Tide, Hopper plays Johnny Drake, a young sailor on leave who happens to wander into a carnival town, where he meets a woman (Linda Lawson) who stars as a mermaid in one of the shows. Johnny suspects nothing until he meets Captain Murdock (Gavin Muir) who runs the carnival sideshows and tells Johnny some strange tales. Are they true? Low budget to be sure, but Night Tide has a few good atmospheric moments and Muir is pretty good.
3/5
The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) Robert Aldrich [2:22] (2x)
A part of me remains reluctant to revisit the more blissful movie experiences from my youth. The years separating the memory from the fact usually bring with them disappointment and regret. So it was with great trepidation that I watched The Flight of the Phoenix (the 1965 version, not the 2004 remake, which I never plan to see) for the first time since I was a kid.
I am happy to report that the film still works as a great disaster/adventure movie with better-than-average performances. You could say that disaster movies have progressed by leaps and bounds since 1965 and you’d be right, but Aldrich understands that you don’t need explosions every few minutes to create tension. He gets it instead out of situations and good acting. (I’d love to see a good Blu-ray restoration of this one someday soon.)
4.5/5
Sleep Tight (2011) Jaume Balagueró [1:42]
Sleep Tight goes to show you that you need more than just a good premise to sustain a suspenseful movie. You need at least some level of believability and that’s where Sleep Tight fails. Luis Tosar plays César, a miserable apartment concierge whose goal in life is to make everyone around him miserable also. The film contains some creepy moments (especially one conversation between César and a tenant who owns cute little dogs), but I never believed César was smart enough or talented enough to successfully pull off everything he did in the film. Plus some of the narrow escapes are just too much to ask an audience to believe. Yet I would watch more from director Balagueró.
2.5/5
Les Miserablés (2012) Tom Hooper [2:37]
1.5/5
Garden State (2004) Zach Braff [1:42]
Thanks to my friend Drew for loaning me this movie, another in a long line of movies from the past 10 years that I missed. Garden State meanders a bit at times, but I enjoyed it, especially thanks to one of those all-too-rare scenes that stick with you on a personal level.
3.5/5
Dollhouse Season One (TV 2009)
The premise of Joss Whedon’s two-season show Dollhouse is easily grasped in the first episode and seems like it’s going to be a standard (but above-average) adventure show, but after a few episodes, the scope of the show becomes more rich and complex. The Dollhouse is an underground facility (actually a whole network of them, but this is the only one we see, at least in the first season) that provides Actives, people whose memories and skills can be supplanted by other memories and skills, anything a “client” needs for that Active to do for brief periods of time.
For the most part, we follow the life of an Active named Echo (Eliza Dushku) and for the first few episodes, we get an “assignment-of-the-week,” which is fine, but this is Joss Whedon, so we know we’re being set up for something bigger. And we are. Things heat up quickly as FBI agent Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) suspects the existence of the Dollhouse and seeks to uncover what’s going on there.
Watching Dollhouse can be a frustrating and a fascinating experience. From watching just a few of the special features on the Blu-ray and talking to my friend Orangerful Sam, I know that Whedon and the Fox network have had a strained relationship at best. Evidence of that shows up here in episodes that seem disjointed, playing a sort of tug-of-war with each other, some vying for stand-alone adventures, some attempting to achieve a story arc of depth and worldbuilding on a grander scale. For all it’s faults, I am fascinated with the concept and am definitely on board for Season Two.
3.5/5
Elysium (2013) Neill Blomkamp [1:49]
The year is 2154. The wealthy people of Earth have vacated the planet in favor of a space station called Elysium, while the everyone else has to settle for the poverty and over-population of what looks like a Third-World planet. Although the concept is certainly not new, Blomkamp does little to make it worth our time, giving us a pretty heavy-handed lesson in the way we handle (or mis-handle) health care. The majority of the characters are too stereotyped and cardboard-ish, but the actions scenes are actually pretty good.
3/5
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