VANISHING ON 7TH STREET (2010)

My pal Schifty recommends the strangest movies.  If I've never heard of it and he tells me to watch it, then it's a Schifty's Pick.

Well this is unusual.  Schifty recommending a film that was actually released in theaters?  That can't be right.  Hmm...  Well, it was only in six theaters in America.  Wow that's not very wide.  And it was only for four weeks.  Wow that's not very long.  And it only earned 22,917 dollars during that time.  Holy shit.  That's pretty goddamn low, especially for a real studio movie with three headline stars (John Leguizamo, Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton) not to mention a ten million dollar budget and a talented director, Brad Anderson (Session 9, The Machinist).  This movie could have earned more money if instead of making it they just had one guy work at McDonald's for a year.  I hope they didn't blow all that money on something extravagant like a Ford Focus.  Is this movie as bad as its limited release/immense box office failure would suggest?  Nope.  Don't get me wrong, it's not very good.  But it's not infamously shitty or anything.  Just run of the mill 'meh.'

THE CONSPIRATOR

This historical drama directed by Robert Redford from earlier this year demonstrates why you should always give the accused the full benefit of their constitutional rights even if they killed President Lincoln.  Oh Captain My Captain, not Lincoln!  Abraham Lincoln is so beloved in this country that we could never get rid of the penny because we couldn't bare to part with Lincoln's sturdy visage.  Other (older) countries have swallowed their pride and retired their smallest unit of currency, but we just love Honest Abe too damn much to attempt life without him.  Anyway the plot concerns the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination when the conspirators, who planned a larger attack that would topple the federal government, were hunted down and those that survived were tried not by a jury of their peers but by a secret military tribunal.  Ohh.... I get it.  It's topical!

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK

The monsters hiding in the vast darkness of the spooky, abandoned Blackwood Manor of spooky, abandoned Providence, Rhode Island are revealed very early on to be somewhat similar to the fairy tale of the 'tooth fairy' in that they desire children's teeth.  Later on we learn from a helpful librarian (who is a young man and not an old woman) that Pope Sylvester II negotiated a peace treaty with the prehistoric 'fairy folk' that set the terms we are all most familiar with: tooth goes under pillow, gets replaced with a coin, nobody eats any children.  Well that's plenty interesting, but the more we learn about these little devils, and the more we see of them, the less menace they provide.  They terrorize the central little girl endlessly, but since they always surround her and dance around instead of inflicting any harm, we start to doubt their bona fides.  Eat somebody already, ya little bastards!

FROM BEYOND (1986)

After director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna made the cult hit Re-Animator, the studio gave them a larger budget to adapt another H.P. Lovecraft short story, back when his best known creation Cthulu wasn't yet a household name.  The plot is a mix of pulpy B-movie mad science with other-worldly cosmic horror of the mutant monster variety.  Dr Crawford Tillinghast perfects the Resonator device designed by his mentor Dr. Edward Pretorius, which stimulates the pineal gland in the human brain allowing subjects to perceive indescribable monsters all around them, but unfortunately also allowing the monsters to see the heretofore unnoticed people all around them.  Before you know it, tentacles are exploding out of places and people are sucking one another's brains out through their eye-sockets.  Damn you science!

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (1956)

Looking over the list of the top ticket-selling films of all time, I counted that within the Top 50 I had seen all but 5 films.  So now I'm going to watch them.  This is # 2 of 5.  Ticket Sales: 64,615,400  It ranks #46 on the list just ahead of Bambi and just behind Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

This film is big.  It used the brand new wide-screen Cinerama format and ran in some New York theaters for 3 years?  Bigger than that.  The internets claim that the 1000+ credited extras are only for the scenes shot in Hollywood, and that all the international extras are uncredited, leading some estimates to climb as high as 65000+ people!  Holy shit!  In one movie?  Well I guess way back in 1956 the world was still pretty exotic and strange to Americans, cursed as they were with only three television channels, so a three-hour slap-stick comedy semi-educational travelogue bursting with 40+ cameos from fading/shining stars and 8000+ animals of all shapes and sizes means a little something for everybody.  If you have to find something for the whole family to enjoy, and it happens to be 55 years ago, this is the ticket.

KILL THE IRISHMAN

Here's another film that barely got a theatrical release and then got dumped onto DVD and Blu-Ray.  Why, oh why?  There's nothing wrong with it!  In fact, it's pretty good.  The story, based on a bestselling award-winning non-fiction book of the same name by Rick Porello, concerns Danny Greene, played by Ray Stevenson, whose potential box-office potential was probably sullied by whichever of the Punisher movies he was in.  Greene is an up-and-coming Irish criminal in 1960's and 70's Cleveland who butts heads with the established Italian criminal hierarchy when he starts muscling control unions that they had failed to infiltrate.  I'm not sure what this movie has more of, car bombs or character actors, but it never hurts to have plenty of those.

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU

This film is well cast and well made, but it's fucking stupid.  Matt Damon is a generic New York Congressman running for the Senate who keeps getting cock-blocked by magic-hat-wearing, water-fearing angels that include John Slattery, Anthony Mackie, and Terence Stamp.  The eternal quest of these semi-ageless Hatmen is to keep Matt Damon apart from the love of his life, Emily Blunt, because it will ostensibly lead to Matt Damon becoming President of the United States and Blunt becoming the most famous dancer/choreographer in America.  So they have to abandon their passionate love for each other so she can become Paula Abdul?  Uhhh....

FRIGHT NIGHT

This film is a horror-comedy, but it's not very funny and it's not scary at all, so I guess its a failure.  Everyone involved, cast and crew, is talented and hardworking enough to deliver a solid film, but I don't think anybody really wanted to remake Fright Night and hence any passion for the material is lacking.  The 3D effects also take a big dump all over everything, even if you see it in 2D like I did. I suspect 3D is to blame for the murky, dirty, foggy, indistinct fuzziness that coats most scenes, and I'm positive 3D is too blame for all the crap flying at the screen.  Why couldn't they just tell a nice story about a boy who thinks his neighbor is a vampire?

WINNEBAGO MAN (2009)

 Watch this film for free until August 25th courtesy of SnagFilms.

First of all, if you've never seen the video of the angry RV salesman you need to go watch it right now.  This movie chronicles filmmaker Ben Steinbaum's quest to find the man behind the violent torrents of profanity.  He discovers the subject's name quickly, Jack Rebney, and is easily able to collect the crew from that fateful shoot, now twenty years older but still happy to reminisce and laugh about a protracted sweltering shoot cramped inside an RV that was so nerve-wracking to pitchman Jack Rebney that he cursed his way right into history.  But will he find the man himself Jack Rebney?  Well the movie opens with footage proving that, yes, yes he eventually does, but the story's journey is much more interesting that its destination, and also incredibly hilarious and even a little touching in some parts but mostly just really, really funny.

THE ROBE (1953)

Looking over the list of the top ticket-selling films of all time, I counted that within the Top 50 I had seen all but 5 films.  So now I'm going to watch them.  This is # 1 of 5.  Ticket Sales: 65,454,500  It ranks #44 on the list just ahead of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and just behind American Graffiti.

This is a sword and sandals epic, with thousands of extras in colorful costumes, magnificent matte paintings for the backgrounds, immense sets with intricate columns and statuary, and a few cameos from familiar biblical figures playing out well known events just beyond the scope of our characters.  This film is part of the genre of Christ stories without Christ, like #13 on the list Ben-Hur or that other one.  The plot concerns a Greek slave and his Roman master who acquire the haunted death robe of Jesus Christ.  Someone even says of Jesus "Evil never dies."  Alright, I'm interested.

SUPER (2010)

This film is very realistic for a superhero movie; bullet wounds to the arms and legs don't prevent people from walking or carrying things, but other than that, the violence is very real, whether its played for laughs or gasps or both.  Usually both.  For you see, Rainn Wilson dubs himself The Crimson Bolt and then, after discovering that criminals can/will just beat him up, selects a wrench (get it?) for his weapon after considering zero other options.  Later, Wilson waits in line for a movie and runs afoul of some dirty line cutters.  Delightful anticipation builds, as you wait for the jerk to get his comeuppance.  But then realism.  Wilson busts the miscreant's forehead open like the melon he tested the wrench on, and whacks his vile shrew wife just for good measure.  Ohhhh.....  So this really IS a movie about what would happen if a normal person tried to be superhero.  They would violently overcompensate for petty personal grievances; sounds about right.

YOU DON'T KNOW JACK (2010)

The only real flaw with this HBO telefilm is the title; the behind the scenes featurette indicates that even the subject of the film, right-to-die activist and thanatron inventor Dr. Jack Kevorkian, thought the title was stupid.  Could you come up with a fluffier, more dashed-off title for a biopic of a singularly important and immensely controversial figure in American ethics and medicine?  I tried to think of a few: Hi My Name Is Jack And I Kill People, The Life And Death Of Doctor Death, Hide Your Grandma, Death Ain't No Way To Make A Living, and Dr. Kevorkian Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Assisted Suicide.  Hmm...  All my titles are better.  But this is still a damn fine film, with numerous excellent performances centered around the showcase of Al Pacino as Kevorkian.

30 MINUTES OR LESS

Isn't this title a bit antiquated?  Didn't pizza joints stop that offer after they got bad press for hurrying too much and running people over?  Why do pizza delivery guys in the movies always deliver one order at a time?  This movie has one bit of verisimilitude correct: the delivery guy is folding boxes when he's not on a run.  That delivery guy is Jesse Eisenberg, supposedly playing against type because when studio executives think of a slacker stoner pizza boy they probably imagine Jack Black screaming and shouting and shitting his pants with a pot leaf t-shirt, but for my money he fits the bill.  Danny McBride and Nick Swardson are two wannabe criminal kingpins who kidnap Eisenberg, fit him with an explosive vest, and instruct him to rob a bank.  Eisenberg teams up with his buddy, a sarcastic mild-mannered school teacher played by Aziz Ansari, and various madcap antics ensue.

THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU (1996)

You can pretty accurately judge the film from this picture

This movie ended up being pretty famous even though nobody saw it, because it inspired the early South Park characters of Dr. Mephisto and his little-man Kevin, but more importantly, it inspired Mini-Me in the 2nd Austin Powers film and now we know who Verne Troyer is instead of not knowing.  Its definitely one of those movies that's bad in a good way: occasionally over ambitious, chock full of memorably wacky performances, and it shows you something you've seen a million times before in a seriously freaky way you've never seen it before.  What else could we expect from a movie about Marlon Brando's private island of man-beast-mutants and muddle religious symbolism?  Nevertheless, the total madness of display is consistently entertaining and all the prosthetics and makeup work from SFX legend Stan Winston is impressively gruesome and hair-raising.

THIRTY TWO SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD (1993)

This intriguing biopic takes the unique form of a 32 part anthology of short films.  But this obviously isn't just any old collection of stories.  Director Francois Girard didn't want to deliver one distinct impression of Glenn Gould, so instead the viewer digests thirty two different versions of Glenn Gould, the famed Canadian concert pianist who gave up touring to focus entirely on recording, whose numerous eccentricities could have served as fodder for thirty two different full length films.  Canadian national treasure Colm Feore plays Glenn Gould, and although this unconventional film's 98 minutes are arranged somewhat chronologically, the segments are incredibly diverse; some are barely longer than a minute, some are as long as seven minutes, some are documentary interviews with friends and contemporaries, some are recreations of interviews or events, and some are as abstract as animated color spheres set to his music or a rapid fire montage of all the prescription drugs Gould took.

JONAH HEX (2010)

In honor of this year's failed attempt to mash-up the Western with another genre I thought I would watch last year's failed attempt to mash-up the Western with another genre.  At least that's what I think this is supposed to be; a horror-western of some sort, but the supernatural elements are surprisingly minimal, especially compared to the bevy of steampunk gadgets, guns, and doomsday weapons.  If you cut out a few ghosts/ghostly crows, this would almost feel like it took place in the same universe as the Wild Wild West movie, except viewed through a haze of Neveldine/Taylor testosterone, thrashing electric guitars courtesy of Mastodon, and judicious if not vicious editing thanks to panicked studio execs or a just and wise god.  Its only 82 minutes long and that's with opening and closing credits.  Holy shit.  Are you sure you cut enough out of it?

BLACK DEATH (2009)

This pick from my pal Schifty jumped a place in line; the third movie he recommended was Final starring Denis Leary but Netflix took that off instant-watch so the world will never know.  That means the first real star to appear in a Schifty's Pick is Sean Bean.  I don't know what Schifty's aversion to seeing films afforded a theatrical release is all about, but this film is definitely a few steps up in construction and coherence from the last two suggestions.  During the Black Plague, Bean is dispatched by the Church along with a rag-tag band of colorful knights to investigate reports of a remote village that has survived the troubled times by forging a dark pact with a sorceress who defies God's will by bridging the worlds or the living and the dead.  That's right, its a Men-on-a-Mission movie, and its not bad.  Is it good?  Yeah, it just might be.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

Better take the ferry today

Is this the best Planet Of The Apes movie yet?  I'm not really qualified to say.  I've seen the original (and re-seen it recently), I think I've seen the first two or three original sequels on the SciFi channel years back, and I saw the lackluster Tim Burton remake from a decade ago.  But now I've seen this one too, and its easily better than all those.  The 1968 original sadly did not hold up for me upon repeat viewing; sure, its fun to watch Charlton Heston with his feet up on the dash of a spaceship smoking a cigar, and the first twenty minutes or so after the crash is sorta neat, but once they find the ape civilization, its just an hour and a half of farting around until the justifiably legendary ending.  This film succeeds by gaining your sympathy for the apes and their uprising.  Make no mistake, the people are window dressing; this is an ape movie.  The first starring role for a totally CG character, and it won't give you painful Jar-Jar flashbacks of any kind.  His name is Caesar and this is his planet.  Hail Caesar!

THE NINTH CONFIGURATION (1980)

Just pretend it has the right title

William Peter Blatty wrote the novel The Exorcist which was adapted into a film by William Friedkin that became one of the highest grossing of all time.  The studio rushed a sequel, The Exorcist II, which is half blatant cash-grab and half bug-fuck-craziness courtesy of director John Boorman, a specialist in that genre.  Blatty himself directed the true sequel, The Exorcist III, a flawed but fascinating movie based on his novel Legion.  But before that, following the success of The Exorcist, Blatty re-wrote one of his own early novels, Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane, with a new title, The Ninth Configuration.  Blatty wanted to adapt the novel himself into a film, but no studio was interested, Blatty put up half the money himself and got the rest from Pepsico, who agreed to finance the project with only one steadfast stipulation: the production had to be based in Hungary, where they had extra money they needed to spend.  As long as Blatty filmed in Hungary, doubling for the American Pacific Northwest, he could direct any sort of weird-ass picture he wanted.  And quite the weird-ass picture he did direct; the DVD cover is of an astronaut on the moon watching the crucifixion of Jesus and yes, that scene is in the movie.

BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHT (2008)

This film was originally released about a week before The Dark Knight but if you have bat-fever now in anticipation of next summer's The Dark Knight Rises then this intriguing interquel might be just the bat-cure you're looking for.  Six mildly inter-connected tales that bridge the gap between the two Nolan Batman features are on display here, and despite featuring familiar talent in both the vocal and writing departments, this is unlike any Batman you've seen before, thanks to the distinctly Japanese animation style courtesy of six different Japanese animation houses; its Batmanime.

COWBOYS & ALIENS

This picture is more fun than the movie

The title delivers on its promise.  There are cowboys; real ones too, not just men on horses with guns, but men employed in the cattle industry.  And there are aliens.  But beyond that, it doesn't deliver much else.  The film is an awkward attempt to bridge two genres without having any fun.  For such a ludicrous premise, and one that gets infinitely more ridiculous as the film winds down, the film is awfully serious.  I can't believe that they decided to combine Men In Black with Wild Wild West and instead of saying 'Hey lets make it fun' they said 'Oh that's so badass we have to take it super seriously.'

THE LIVING WAKE (2007)

This absurdist comedy tells the tale of K. Roth Binew (co-writer Mike O'Connell), a self-proclaimed artist and self-proclaimed genius, as he plans the titular party for just prior to his imminent demise from a "yet to be named" disease.  His faithful manservant Mills Joaquin (Jesse Eisenberg) chauffeurs him by rickshaw around their surreal little town; the film's official description calls it a 'timeless story book universe'.  The film seems to deal solely in serious concerns that it does not take seriously, reflected by the fatuous, dandy, grandiloquent nature of the main characters, not to mention their wardrobes.  The faux-serious demeanor that K. Roth presents to almost every encounter might seem a little off putting at first, but it grows on you.  When he offers an neighbor an invitation to his party, and receives a haranguing for his trouble, he responds "That's the stuff Reggie!  First thing in the morning, I like to get empty threats from a shallow man, it gets my blood going."

JIGOKU (1960)

The plot concerns a young, weak-willed theology student, Shiro, his amoral doppelganger Tamura, and the web of sin they draw everyone around them into.  Strong enough for two remakes, the movie is sometimes also known as The Sinners of Hell, although the straight-up translation would be simply, Hell.  So you probably won't be surprised where all the main characters end up for the last third of the film.  You'll know whether or not you're hooked when this man appears and proclaims "I am King Enma of Hell, I am Lord of the Eight Hells of Fire, and I am Lord of The Eight Hells of Ice.  Hear me!  You who in life piled sin upon sin will be trapped in Hell forever.  Suffer!  Suffer!  The vortex of torment will whirl for all eternity!"  Don't worry, that vortex ain't a metaphor.