The good news is that it’s as hilarious as it’s ever been. The bad news is that its title still lacks the necessary apostrophe. (Perhaps that’s only bad news if you’re a writer/editor.) How does it stay fresh and funny? By not adhering to any pesky distractions like “story arcs” and “character development.” Each episode […]
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The Bletchley Circle
When the meekest of them (Anna Maxwell Martin) notices a pattern in a string of Jack the Ripper-esque slayings plaguing back together, so to speak. London, she gets the band back together, so to speak. If they couldn’t tell anyone about their wartime efforts, they certainly can’t tell anyone now; after all, what could housewives […]
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Blancanieves
Once upon a time, the idea of a film being silent, foreign and — steee-rike three! — black and white equated to box-office poison. Then 2011’s The Artist won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture; earned $133 million worldwide; and lived happily ever after. Hoping for the same storybook ending is Spain’s Blancanieves. While every […]
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The Town That Dreaded Sundown
Like Boggy Creek, 1976’s Sundown states it is based on a true story. Unlike Boggy Creek, Sundown actually is. Better late than never, it makes a simultaneous DVD and Blu-ray release courtesy of Shout! Factory. Set in postwar Texarkana, the film depicts the fear that gripped that the heretofore optimistic town of 40,000 after a […]
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The Arrested Development Documentary Project
Well, it left this fan with an unpleasant aftertaste. At first, I was uncertain who the doc was for. While it certainly is accessible enough for the uninitiated, those people aren’t likely to run across it or even be interested if they do. And since I didn’t learn anything from it, the already converted aren’t […]
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Mold!
Opening with President Reagan’s infamous crack speech, the 1984-set Mold! unfolds in a secret facility deep within the Arizona desert. Scientists there have spent two years of funding on developing a strain of mold (they call it “stacky mort” to shorten its long, boring name) as an ecological weapon to destroy the Colombians’ drug fields […]
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Who’s Minding the Mint?
It finally has made its DVD debut thanks to the Sony Pictures Choice Collection. Jim Hutton (TV’s Ellery Queen) is one huge reason. An unheralded Everyman of comedy (because he died too young to get the respect he deserves), he plays Harry Lucas, a U.S. Mint inspector whose boss suspects he’s on the take. He’s […]
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ID:A
The Danish thriller is worth watching for its twisty premise and the La Femme Nikita-level strong lead performance of Tuva Novotny (Eat Pray Love) as Ida, the amnesiac who, as she gradually emerges from her mental fog, comes to fear she may have been involved in the assassination of a politician. The truth is far […]
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H.P. Lovecraft’s Cool Air
They have something to do with a 5,000-year-old Egyptian relic called the Horns of Werethekau and one Dr. Torres who has the power to resurrect the dead, but you’re likely to have forgotten that when the opening credits finally finish up four minutes later. And you’re equally likely to forget the entire movie 82 minutes […]
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Police Story / Police Story 2
It’s the next one that does. Fast-forward at least a decade later. In college, a friend showed me a VHS tape of an episode of The Incredibly Strange Film Show, a British documentary miniseries. Chan was that ep’s subject, and clips from 1985’s Police Story — and maybe even 1988’s Police Story 2, if memory […]