Matt’s Week in Dork! (7/21/13-7/27/13)

    A slow start, but a nice finish.  Good week.

Red 2:  Not quite as cute or charming as the first film, this sequel still dishes out morbid humor and silly action aplenty.  Everyone seems to be having a good time, and they sure go to a lot of nice places.  But the tension never quite ratchets up, and the plot feels a bit too meandering.  Still, not a bad sequel and worth watching if you enjoyed the first film.

MST3K: The Incredible Melting Man:  “Don’t shoot!  I’m Ted Nelson!”  One of my favorite episodes, Mike and the Bots rip into a truly dreadful movie.  Another ‘guy goes into space and comes back a monster’ movie.  It’s great.  They’re all on fire as they unload with both barrels.

Your Highness:  “Just punch the top and twist it.”  A very, very crass fantasy film about a crappy prince and his dashing brother on a quest to rescue a pretty girl from a devil wizard, it‘s often uncomfortably funny.  Pot smoking, butt sexing, and all kinds of goofing.  Great actors team up with not so great actors to abuse decency.  And I love it.

Night Passage:  Jimmy used to be bad, but now he just wants to play the accordion and maybe work for the railroad.  But he’s got a history and history has a way of creeping up on you.  There’s nothing especially amazing about this Western, but it’s solid and well made.  Nice character actors and a good action resolution.  Worth checking out.

River of No Return:  I just don’t go for Marilyn Monroe, and that’s a large part of what this movie is pushing.  She’s charming enough, I guess.  And Robert Mitchum is nicely terse.  Their adventure together doesn’t break a lot of new ground, but it’s good clean fun.  That is, until the attempted rape (“I didn‘t mean it.”  What?!).  The blue-screen work, though.  She ain’t so good.  Overall, a good but not great Western.

    I read the current issue of the magazine Classic Images, because it had an extensive article on one of my new favorite classic actresses, Ruth Chatterton.  Annoyingly, many of the movies the article picked out as being especially good are not on NetFlix and are going to require deeper searching and perhaps pocket digging.  There was also a good write-up on the recently deceased character actor R.G. Armstrong.  It prompted me to queue up a few more of his films, and kept my Western thing alive (I’ve been on a bit of a Western kick lately…though I’m not gonna try to do an official month or anything).

Queen Christina:  “Must we live for the dead.”  A bawdy tale of a tomboy queen who loves her country, desires peace, and wants to love on her own terms.  But duty drives.  Garbo exudes life, lusty and joyous.  The sequence at the inn, with the shared room, the discovery, and the aftermath are totally worth the price of admission.  And my goodness, somehow she makes eating grapes look like the most intensely sexually charged act.  It felt like something too intimate to be watching.  Crazy.  Though the overall movie isn’t amazing, it’s a very fun film.  I wish there was more to the third act, I guess.  I don’t know.  Events just sort of happen and then it’s over, without much heart.  But the first two thirds of the film are great.

    Friday night we ended up using a kind of fill-in book for our graphic novel club, Locke & Key, which was pretty last minute and surprisingly seemed to win everyone over.  This marks only the second time (I think), where everyone was in agreement and happy with the book (the first was Blacksad).

Bridget Jones’s Diary:  “Oh f*%$ I love Keats.”  A cute romantic comedy about several broken people struggling through love.  There’s nothing especially new or interesting, but the cast is charming and there are some good bits.  I appreciate the liberal F-bomb dropping.  One thing that is perhaps a bit disturbing is that Jones is supposed to be/feel fat.  I remember a lot was made of Renee Zellweger putting on weight for the role.  But she looks perfectly normal.  Not plump.  Just normal.  If she were any thinner, she’d look weird.

Disgusting. She must be an almost healthy weight. For shame.

Nick Carter: Master Detective:  A short, fairly uneventful mystery about saboteurs at an aviation plant, this is more fun as a time capsule of a paranoid era when all foreign people were trying to destroy America.  Vague, unnamed organizations with evil on the mind and limitless resources and personnel have infiltrated…well everything.  Nobody can be trusted…except maybe old, creepy beekeepers.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone:  “Nope…You’re a dude.”  There are some very funny bits in this mostly by the numbers comedy.  Nothing especially shocking or new, but an OK outing for all the cast, who seem to be having a fun time.  Jim Carry hams it up, as usual, and I could have dealt with about 60% less of his character.  Otherwise it was fine.

    On Saturday night, Lisa, Brad, and I headed to the AFI Silver to see Phantasm and Phantasm II (yeah, I’ve seen Phantasm II on the big screen…I can honestly say I never expected that to be a thing I could say).  The first film was presented by local celebrity movie presenter and commentator Count Gore De Vol.  Much fun was had.

Phantasm:  It doesn’t get a heck of a lot weirder than Phantasm.  Not just because it’s a horror movie that’s really a science fiction movie…maybe.  Not just because it features rabid jawas, flying spheres with drills and blades, a stripper-hooker who might also be a cold hating Tall Man, a giggling old seer, a kick-ass ice cream man, and a tuning fork dimensional gateway.  No, not just for those things.  It’s also so jarringly edited and aggressively scored that it never lets you rest, never lets you get your bearing, and never lets you in on quite what the hell is going on.  And it’s great.  The music is completely over the top, the acting ranging from stiff to wooden, and the story…well, it’s complicated.  But somehow, it all works when it really has no right to.  I’ve mentioned this before, but if the stars are right, Cthulhu walks the Earth, and we have become as the Old Ones (read: a shift in reality big enough to put me in control of a Hollywood motion picture), Phantasm is one of the properties I would absolutely love to get my grubby little hands on (along with Hellraiser and The Creature from the Black Lagoon).  Reggie, man.  Reggie.

Phantasm II:  The sequel has some issues, but is still quite cool.  Part of the charm of this series is its rampant continuity confusion, and this film has it aplenty.  But the wacky editing is gone, making the film less uncomfortable and challenging.  The idea of the Tall Man and his dwarfs is expanded a bit, and the hints of a greater, growing disaster facing the world begin to drop (laying the groundwork for III and IV).  Reggie takes up the mantle of badassery.  And the music continues to be a major part of the experience.  Overall, not as good as the first film, though it is more professionally made and of more consistent quality.

Reggie's makin' friends.

    That’s about it.  Still listening to a bunch of Prog Rock.  Still poking at the Bible and trying to get more reading in.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (7/7/13-7/13/13)

    A Dork’s lifestyle can be challenging.  Sometimes, one is forced to really reach down and test one’s metal.  By which I mean, I stayed up WAY too late to catch two movies in theaters this week, and I’m darned tired.

True Grit:  “Please don’t fire.”  Ugly people and beautiful landscapes dot this oddly funny but very grim film.  Jeff Bridges is about as ornery an old cuss as ever there was.  It’s a nice epic quest film with a revenge plot woven in.  While the Western genre seems to have gone largely into remission, there are occasional outbreaks of these quality films.  Taking the best of movies of the past, mix it with modern sensibilities and excellent, quality craftsmanship, they rank among the best.  Gone is the Duke, wobbling his way across the screen in his tidy little shirt.  These Westerns feel more lived in.  I like it.

Bend of the River:  Jimmy Stewart is a guide with a shady past, trying to get on with his life.  Farming.  Maybe ranching if he can find some cattle.  Through the wilderness, on a riverboat, against dangerous men, he will do his darnedest to get the wagon train to their new home.  Keep your eye out for a very young Rock Hudson, a not so young Henry Morgan, and the ever cute Julia Adams.

    Sunday night, Brad and I headed up to the AFI so I could finally see one of my all time favorite films on the big screen.  Yes, it started at 7PM, is just shy of 4 hours, and I had to get up at 5AM the next day.  But worth it.

Lawrence of Arabia:  What can I say about Lawrence of Arabia that dozens or hundreds of film critics and fans haven’t already?   Beautiful, grand, sweeping, poetic.  The music, the cinematography, the acting, the script.  It’s a perfect film.  Seeing it on the big screen for the first time was quite a treat.  With the music swelling and the screen encompassing my vision, I could almost feel the sand in my eyes and the Sun on my skin.  I absolutely love watching Peter O’Toole as Lawrence, a weird guy with a grand vision, a madman ready to create a new world.  No surprise to me this film is in my top ten of all time.  Absolutely amazing.

Things to Come:  Many, many years ago, when I first had access to a VCR, I acquired a VHS that had both Metropolis and Things to Come on it.  Metropolis was something for sure.  But this would have been a horribly cut, low quality print (I remember it didn’t even have music).  But Things to Come was a particular revelation.  It felt epic and sprawling, though it’s actually not very long, with several major segments that cover various time periods.  And it combined well with my love of broken civilizations and utopian dreams.  Seeing it again, for the first time in many years on a very nice, cleaned up DVD, I was carried away again.  Raymond Massey is at his Shakespearian best, pumping out grandiose soliloquies in celebration of Human potential and condemnation of those who would hold us back.  I absolutely love this film, and seeing it in such crystal clear quality…Excellent.

Pacific Rim:  I’ve gone on at length about this with co-Dork Brad.  I had a sad realization sometime last year, I guess in the early buildup to this film, that I am actually not a Guillermo del Toro fan.  I thought I was, but I’m not.  I like a couple of his movies, but I’m often more disappointed than anything else.  I am, however, a big kaiju movie fan.  I think, in part because of the trailers and in part because of my del Toro realization, I was not really excited about this film.  CGI monsters don’t thrill me like rubber suits.  And CGI robots even less so.  But, like The Lone Ranger, this movie was much better than the trailers led me to believe.  Yes, the CGI is kind of off-putting, but it looks a heck of a lot better than the Transformers films (I can actually tell what’s happening 90% of the time).  The script is pretty basic (Top Gun).  The actors are fine, I guess.  I don’t think much of Charlie Hunnam.  He’s painfully generic.  But otherwise, it’s pretty good.  The film does capture some of that awe and crazy of classic kaiju.  I do wish more of the movie were like the Tokyo flashback (or Australia footage), which I think is probably the single best bit in the film.  The constant rain and darkness was a bit much.  It’s rated PG-13, but unless your kid is a total wuss, it’s the kind of movie a 9 or 10 year old would LOVE.

Something Weird:  “Do you like…TV acting?”  Well, the title sure fits.  This movie is so awkward and weird.  It looks like old family films from the 60s, hacked and taped together with little sense of story or pacing.  Several shots last way too long.  A whole bunch cut off too early.  The dialog is clunky and painfully delivered.  And the story is nutty…to say the least.  It’s worth watching for sure.  This is the kind of movie MST3K was made for.  So, electricity makes a guy a psychic, he hangs out with a witch, the FBI (or somebody) passes him LSD, and murder.  OK.

Why am I in this movie?!

Flower Drum Song:  “You don’t get ‘em like that over here anymore.”  The first thing that struck me about this film was that the cast is actually Asian, not just a bunch of white people in awkward make-up, as I expected.  It’s an interesting look at generational changes among the Chinese community of San Francisco.  Fresh off the boats, first generation families, second generation kids, and the tensions between them.  Plus lots of songs and 60s glam.  Overall, I was just impressed that a whole cast of Asian actors played well rounded characters in a film that neither fetishized nor dismissed the community.  These were neither the mustache twirling villains, nor the ultra-wise sages.  These were romantic men, lovelorn women, and just normal folk (with singing).

The Far Country:  Jimmy Stewart and a bunch of grizzled old faces get into some problems on the Canadian border.  A corrupt sheriff with too much control over his town, Jack Elam, and lots of folk want Jimmy’s cows.  Some good ruggedness, with Stewart playing a pretty unlikable guy.  Love the scenery.

Summertime:  “We are all that hungry.”  Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi are ridiculously charming in this beautiful movie.  Hepburn is adorable as the lonely spinster trying desperately to have an exciting adventure abroad.  Brazzi is the classically smooth Italian willing to awaken her passions.  And Venice, with all its pocks, faded colors, and ancient wonders makes for an amazing backdrop.  So nice to see two mature people falling in love in a mature city.  The camera is like another lover, longingly gazing on the actors and the city.

    Capping my week with another David Lean film was nice.  A good ending.  However, on Saturday, I also caught about 10 minutes of The Big Bang Theory.  What’s wrong with you, America?  I’m not going to say it’s the ‘worst show ever’ just that it’s the same show they’ve been doing for decades.  In 10 minutes, I heard jokes going back at least as far as Who’s the Boss?, but probably back to Barney Miller and beyond.  GAH!!!  Anyway, I haven’t been doing too much reading, though I have made it further into my re-read of the Bible.  Reading Genesis is like watching a bully picking on a kid.  “Stop hitting yourself,” God seems to say, as he’s making Man slap himself in the face.  He’s like a kid pulling the wings off of flies, except that he doesn’t just discard the twitching fly when he’s done, he demands that it loves him.  Crazy.  I’m almost through Genesis, so we’ll see what horrors are in store in Exodus soon.

-Matt

Brad's Week in Dork! (2/19-2/25)

Well, I definitely didn't crank out as many movies this week as I've been doing lately but that's probably a good thing for all of us.  You can only steam ahead at that speed for so long before you burn out.  That being said, I still caught a lot of great stuff this week and even started reading Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars.  But the highlights of the week centered on The Wife & I finally completely Twin Peaks and the AFI Silver's screening of Fritz Lang's Metropolis accompanied by the Alloy Orchestra.  These guys were amazing and the idea that my first experience with the Fritz Lang classic was on the big screen with a brilliant accompaniment pounding away to the visuals fills me with great gobs of geeky joy.  If you haven't already you should check out there site and purchase their stuff for your silent film collection.

Got some sad news this week.  My favorite restaurant in the whole dang world, The Tortilla Factory, will be closing March 1st.  The place has been in my neighborhood for the last 37 years and I've been eating there for the last 16.  Since hearing the news I've hit the place up everyday.  I had to make sure that I got my fill of the #5 Beast Feast: A burrito w/red chile sauce, a taco, two enchiladas, and a heap of beans and rice.  It's funny, but as much as I love the place none of my friends or my Wife share the crazy love like I do.  Why is that?  The food is Tex Mex, but it's a Tex Mex that might have been popular in the 70s...your grandma's idea of Tex Mex.  Every time I enter through the doors there's a little bit of a time warp going on.  The loss of that feeling brings genuine sadness to this Week in Dork.

My Last "Beast Feast"

This week also saw the 1 Year Anniversary of In The Mouth of Dorkness.  Seems like a few of you guys out there in Internetland have been enjoying our ranting, but probably not as much as Matt & I have  had with this personal bit of insanity.  Not only has this blog brought us closer to a lot of likeminded madmen and got us an incredibly fantastic regular gig over at cineAWESOME! but it's spared a lot of our friends and coworkers from suffering our Movie Rants/Rages.  To sum it up, this blog makes me as happy as Chewbacca standing behind Marilynn Monroe in a bikini.

"Let's Par-Tay!"

TV OF THE WEEK!

The Walking Dead "Triggerfinger":  Things are starting to go all Dawn of the Dead on Rick & Company.  The retrieval of Herschel from the bar in town became a lot more difficult with a shoot out confrontation with The Others and this week it escalated in some serious gunplay.  But this appears to be just a taste of the hell that's about to come down on The Farm, and I imagine this building to a Human War on par with The Governor battle in the comics.  But will we get The Governor this season?  Is it Michael Rooker?  Who knows, but I doubt it.  And I seriously doubt this season will end with everyone holding up in the prison.  At least I hope not cuz they've done enough holding up at Herschel's place.  Time to get on the road.  And time for Lori to die already.

Supernatural "Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie":  Another week, another fun and silly episode of Supernatural.  Feels like forever ago that we dealt with the Leviathan problem and this season definitely lacks some focus, but if these monster-of-the-week episodes are going to be as fun as this one than I really don't mind.  Sam & Dean investigate the death of a batch of parents and it leads them to the Chuck E Cheese terrordome of Plucky Pennywhistle...and you guessed it, there are plenty of Pennywise-like clown demons to rule your nightmares, or at least Sam's nightmares.  The episode also provides for one of this silliest chase-takedowns I've seen as you can witness in the above image.  I really hope Supernatural never ends.  I want these boys to be hunting goblins & ghouls for the rest of my life.

Justified "When The Guns Come Out":  Three seasons in and we finally hit an episode of Justified that I really just did not like.  Bummer.  But before we get to my complaints let me sing at least one praise.  The confrontation between Timothy Olyphant's Raylan and William Mapother's pimp was plenty fun.  Never bring a knife to a gunfight.  And I hope we see more of Mapother this season.  But most of this episode is wasted on a poor excuse to get rid of Natalie Zea's pointless love interest.  I don't know how she reaches the conclusions that she does after her profession of love to Raylan last episode.  And the final scene of this ep was the sorriest excuse of screenwriting we've had from this usually brilliant series.  Hopefully, this is just a hiccup and next episode will put everything back on track.

Twin Peaks Episodes 26-29:  The Wife and I finally completed our epic run of Twin Peaks and even though I enjoyed the trip immensely (granted, I knew how dark things were going to be left off), I cannot say the same things for her.  As Season 2 builds to a climax and Agent Cooper and Windom Earle march towards The Black Lodge the humor and charm of the series start to fade into the background.  And the final episode of the show is pretty damn scary as Coop navigates the red curtain walls of Bob's kingdom.  The pulsating strobe light, Laura Palmer's screams, Bob's visage.  It's incoherent and rather terrifying.  And as the final episode ticked away, The Wife could sense the very dark place where she was going to be left off at--but even then, she was not prepared for the utterly bleak prequel movie...

MOVIES OF THE WEEK!

Twin Peaks - Fire Walk With Me:  ‎"I am the arm." I completely understand why fan & critical reaction was so harsh towards Fire Walk With Me. In a lot of respects it is a slap to the face of loyal viewers after the shocking cliffhanger climax of season 2--I don't want to go back to the final days of Laura Palmer; we got all that jazz outta our system! Let's see The Black Lodge! Let's see Windom! Let's see Agent Dale Cooper! So, yeah, Fire Walk With Me will illicit your basic prequel rage explaining plot that didn't need explaining and even mismanaging several key characters. However, I definitely appreciated the Chris Isaak/Kiefer Sutherland's opening investigation, the weird David Bowie phasing, and the tiny glimpses of The Black Lodge that float in and out of the mumbled narrative. Still, it's been 25 years now and I'm ready for David Lynch to finally conclude the Twin Peaks story...a pipe dream? Yeah, but one worth having.

Silent Tongue:  ‎"Insanity is a sorry thing." After his Indian bride dies during childbirth, River Phoenix goes mad with grief refusing to bury his love; he stands guard over the elements hollering at the wildlife and possibly communicating with the dead. His father, Richard Harris travels to the medicine show where he originally bought the squaw for three horses and attempts to barter for Alan Bates' other halfbreed daughter. Things get freakier from there. Silent Tongue is an excellent Weird Western from playwright Sam Shepard that stands on its varied performances and rich dialog. River Phoenix died just months before it's Sundance premiere and it only took in a few thousand dollars at the box office. If you're looking for something different in the genre look no further.  And, as usual, check out cineAWESOME! for my latest Western Review.

Anonymous:  The True Story Of William Shakespeare The Fraud as directed by the man who brought us Independence Day, Godzilla, The Patriot, and 2012. And it doesn't suck. But the story of the Shakespeare conspiracy does not really engage this particular viewer either. Rhys Ifans is rather good as the Earl of Oxford, but why bother with the Derek Jacobi framing device? Is it's purpose to give the plot an air of truth? No, it's just obtrusive and rather silly. Still, I suppose it's good to know that Roland Emmerich can put a film together that's somewhat emotionally engaging, and contains only one good EXPLOSION!

Hard Hunted:  ‎"We Were Never Lovers and I Faked That Orgasm!" *Machete To The Stomach* The seventh film in Sidaris's Malibu Express Saga starts off a little slow, trading the tropical locals of Hawaii for the rocky deserts of Arizona where Agents Donna & Justin are sunbathe-waiting for their friend to be killed by Al Leong's Raven helicopter. But once the T & A espionage gets back on track in Hawaii the crazy dune buggies, hovercrafts, jetplanes, and speedboats bring these ridiculous characters into explosively odd dialog collision. Seriously, where does Sidaris get all these wonderful toys?

Metropolis:  It's taken 32 years, but after last year's tributes to the silent cinema (Hugo & The Artist) and a few key Criterion releases, an interest in cinema's original art form has taken a serious hold. And it's impossible to be a fan of film without knowing a little about the history of Fritz Lang's Metropolis and I've owned the Kino release of the 2010 restoration since it's publication. However, when I heard that the AFI Silver would be screening the film with the Alloy Orchestra I made a pact to wait and experience the sci-fi classic on The Big Screen with a Sold Out crowd. I am so glad I did. Similar to my encounter with Citizen Kane a few years back, watching Metropolis for the first time was a revelation. It is indeed the Masterpiece that you've heard about. But unlike Kane or Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, the plot and most of the visual flair of the film had not been spoiled to me via years upon years of pop culture saturation. Yes, I had seen several of the key images depicting Hel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge's Rotwang, and the myriad of fantastic expressionistic sets. But I was unaware of Fritz Rasp's creepy Thin Man. Or Brigitte Helm's seven sins dance. Or the entire plot involving father vs. son. Metropolis on the Big Screen was an amazing experience and will be the movie event to beat in 2012. And Alloy Orchestra's score was stunning; sitting next to them as their music thumped and pounced was similar to living in the film itself.  And yeah, I absolutely had to purchase their score to sync with my blu.

Anatomy of a Murder:  Law & Order's Dick Wolf owes his entire career to this quintessential courtroom drama starring America's Actor Jimmy Stewart as Defense Attorney Paulie Biegler presiding over the not-so-innocent life of Ben Gazzara. Anatomy of a Murder is a long haul story, that draws over all the particulars of the plot with a fine tooth but it's serious eye puts the audience right in the courtroom and it must have been quite an experience for someone who wasn't raised on endless reruns of Sam Waterston's speech of the week . Top notch performances from all involved and it's a beautiful looking film despite being stuck mostly in courtroom benches.  And ya gotta dig Duke Ellington's score.

COMICS OF THE WEEK!

I Killed Adolf Hitler by Jason:  Well, as to be expected, this was a weird one.  Norwegian artist Jason applies his puppy dog style to this science fiction story depicting a future world where anyone can hire hitmen to kill the human pests in their lives.  It centers on one hitman, recently separated from his longtime girlfriend, who accepts a job from a scientist with a time machine to kill the Fuhrer.  Things don't go according to plan and this quick read will supply you with lots of cute pictures involving animals shooting out each other's brains.  Plus Hitler.

Who Is Jake Ellis? by Nathan Edmondson & Tonci Zonjic:  Lots of folks at my local comic shop have been recommending Who Killed Jack Ellis? to me for a while now.  I finally conceded and gave it a read.  It's a fun espionage story with a science-fiction (or supernatural) twist.  Ex-CIA Jon is on the run from both The Americans and a shadowy organization, but it's no big thing cuz he has Jake Ellis living inside his head.  And Jake knows when he should duck and when he should plug a guy.  The first trade could be read as a single story and it's almost tempting just to leave it at that, but I might give the next volume a read in a week or two.  So yeah, good but not a new obsession or anything.


BOOK OF THE WEEK!

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs:  If I hadn't been so darn tired I could have easily read the book in one sitting, but as is all I got was fifty pages into the classic pulp adventure story.  I first read the John Carter books nearly 20 years ago but my memory of the tales of Barsoom has pretty much faded completely.  And I have to get this book consumed before the March 9th release date of the new Andrew Stanton movie.  I will say that 50 pages in you can already see where the new Disney film is taking liberties.  The White Apes of Mars are gonna be a whole lot bigger than their novel counterpart and the Attack of the Clones thunderdome seen in the trailer is a cinematic creation that probably should have remained a storyboard concept.  But what's amazing about these books is how fresh they feel for having been written in the early 1900s.  Sure, there's a lack of quotation marks and the dialog is just sorta told at you, but the imagination, the language, and the imagery found inside still holds up.  I do hope we get a good portion of The Old West before the spaceward journey.

--Brad

New Release Tuesday!!! (2/21/12)

I'm a few days late here, but I've been busy, busy.  Quite a few discs to check out this week, and the only reason there is not a Must Buy is cuz the top disc is a film I have not seen yet, but an error I'm really looking forward to correcting.  In fact, the only film released this week that I've actually seen is the Oscar nominated Puss in Boots, a fun film but I don't know if it's necessary to own.  

Buy!

ANATOMY OF A MURDER (CRITERION BLU):  Here's a courtroom classic that I've never had the opprotunity or excuse to check out before.  Now I have two:  1) You can never go wrong with a Criterion pick; even their weak/odd choices are worth checking out.  2) In reading the multiple obituaries for Ben Gazzara, the film that got name checked the most was not Saint Jack, Road House, or The Big Lebowski but Anatomy of a Murder.  And one of my secret cinema shames is that I've seen not a single Otto Preminger film (I do love his Mr. Freeze though).  This I guess, is as good a place to start as any.

FORT APACHE (BLU):  I've heard mixed reviews of Fort Apache and they've kept me away for a little while.  But I find the pairing of John Wayne & Henry Fonda to be a fascinating idea especially in the hands of the great John Ford, who delivered the best performances from both actors in The Searchers & My Darling Clementine.  And that's why a disappointing outing together in Fort Apache could be a real shame.  But it's time to finally check it out in this new Blu.

Rent!

PUSS IN BOOTS:  This was a much better film than it had any right to be; I've only seen the first Shrek film but disliked it immensely and walking into the theater with the wife for Puss In Boots I had very little hope for humor.  But Antonio Banderas had the day cuz who doesn't love a badass kitty.  And Salma Hayek as his animated love?  Puss in Boots was much more the satisfying Desperado sequel than Once Upon A Time In Mexico.

J EDGAR:  Here's another mixed-reviewed flick that I didn't see in theaters.  Honestly, Clint Eastwood hasn't made a movie I've thoroughly enjoyed since Gran Torino and after the horrid Hereafter I was not desperate to dive back into his cineam and especially one involving a heavily makeuped Leonardo DiCaprio J Edgar Hoover.  There probably is a good film in this subject matter but I have my doubts that this is the one.  Personally, I really enjoyed Billy Crudup's Hoover in Michael Mann's Public Enemies.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE:  The only reason I want to see this film is John Hawkes.  That man needs to be in more movies, or at least he needs to have some seriously cool leading roles.

WORLD ON A WIRE (CRITERION BLU):  Epic German Science Fiction from the director of the BRD Trilogy?  Yes please!

Avoid!

TOWER HEIST:  Will Ben Stiller ever make a film I care about again?  Maybe.  Will Eddie Murphy?  I seriously doubt it.  Either way, I sure as hell don't care about this Brett Ratner flick.

--Brad