Battleship Pretension

Tyler and David conclude their week of discussing Ridley Scott’s science fiction masterpiece on the Alien Minute podcast.

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Tyler and David discuss the movies and TV shows they’ve been watching, including:

Movies
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
LADY IN WHITE
BONE TOMAHAWK
THE STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM
MONEYBALL
MISS STEVENS
DR. STRANGELOVE
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
SULLY
JULIETA
OPERATION AVALANCHE
THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE
NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH

TV
ATLANTA
SOUTH PARK
PROJECT RUNWAY
SURVIVOR

The Rep-port is a weekly series highlighting the best and most compelling repertory screenings in the city.

Cinefamily’s epic series on 1980s independent cinema might have come to a formal end back in April, but they’re following up on their promise to show Wayne Wang’s era-defining Chan is Missing (1982, 35mm) Friday at 7:30 with Wang in person.

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Nathan H. Juran’s The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, out now on Blu-ray from Scream Factory, is a bad movie. I mean, it’s really, impressively bad. It’s so bad it’s funny. It’s the kind of bad movie you gather together with friends to laugh at while watching. In fact, you might even say it’s… a howler.

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Jocelyn Moorhouse doesn’t have time to wait around for you to catch up to her in the baroque, sultry, hothouse, widescreen neo-Western The Dressmaker. In the opening scene, a bombshell in a black dress pours out of a car and walks a few steps down the inky, dusty main street of a tiny outback town. She stops, lights a cigarette, takes one, luxurious drag and spits out these words: “I’m back, you bastards.” Things don’t get any more subtle from there. This scene is Moorhouse saying, “Get on my level” and if you’re willing to do so, The Dressmaker has some gorgeous, vicious fun in store for you.

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You’re likely to see Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson described as a documentary. That’s understandable, as it consists of nonfiction footage and will almost certainly compete in the documentary category in the upcoming awards season. In the texted prologue to the film, however, Johnson herself refers to it as her memoir. That’s more fitting but, to some extent, it still falls short of capturing this vital and intoxicating film. This is no mere journal or recounting of events. Johnson introspectively examines the very nature of her job, which consists of documenting real life, and then comes through the other side with a testament to life itself.

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Ross Adam and Robert Cannan’s documentary The Lovers and The Despot is about love, but many kinds of love. The romantic love between South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee are at the center of the story. But the loves for self-expression, power, country, and family also figure into the story. It makes for both an amazing romantic adventure and spy tale.

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Thank you for reading “Playing Nice,” a series of articles that will examine group dynamics in film. I’m not a behavioral psychologist or anything but I am an avid movie watcher and life-long member/observer of the human race. One of the things that have fascinated me over the years is how group dynamics are depicted in film and especially how they are depicted when the thin veneer of society is stripped away.

**This article will contain spoilers. I highly recommend you watch the mini-series first and then read the article if you care about spoilers.** In this article, I will be specifically referring to the 2015 Acorn/BBC three-part mini-series. This mini-series was adapted from one of Agatha Christie’s best mystery novels: And Then There Were None. It is about a group of ten strangers who are invited to Soldier Island by U.N. Owen where they begin to die one by one. The poem “Ten Little Soldier Boys” hangs in each of their rooms and the deaths occur in the same order and fashion as the poem. The guests realize they have all been asked to the island for different reasons and that the mysterious U.N. Owen is an unknown person bent on killing them all. They search the house and each other but no one can solve the mystery of who is the unknown killer.

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In this episode, Jim discusses the Wachowskis’ Bound.

Tyler and David return to the Alien Minute podcast to discuss Yaphet Kotto’s Parker.

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