October 7, 2008

Some Flicks to "Visit" on DVD This Week!

Hey all, it's that time of the week again (Tuesday), so let's jump right in. My PICK OF THE WEEK is a film that is generating a bit of Oscar buzz for the lead performance. The film is:
The Visitor
Richard Jenkins is brilliant in this subdued character study. The movie is very good, but he is much more than that. See it for him alone, if nothing else.
-Also out worth a look is Gus Van Sant's latest film Paranoid Park, which is not his best film ever, but it's certainly very interesting, and Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising. He made the film available for free online for a few weeks, and while it's probably my least favorite of his "documentaries", it still makes a great point about the importance of the youth vote and is worth a look.
-Hitting shelves as well is The Happening, which spoiled a great concept and ended up being almost laughably bad, and You Don't Mess With The Zohan, which has its moments but overall is rather poor.
-My vintage pick is Do The Right Thing. My second favorite Spike Lee film (25th Hour holds the #1 spot), this Brooklyn set drama lays out the issues with race relations in a way that had never really been shown before. A worthwhile movie to watch in every sense of the word.
-What will you guys be watching this week?

5 comments:

  1. 25th hour?!?! The only other movie worth watching from Spike Lee other than Do the Right Thing is He Got Game.

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  2. difference of opinion I suppose...my current film class is solely on the films of Spike Lee, and while I find his work to be wildly uneven, he has certainly made more than 2 quality films

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  3. Honestly, Spike Lee is so arrogant and stupid that I can barely sit through even his good work. I enjoyed "Inside Man" and "Do the Right Thing", and "Malcolm X" was OK. But honestly, the more he talks, the more I hate him. Every time I go to IMDB there's some new column in the celeb news about how he's calling someone racist. One day it's Quentin Tarantino (a far superior filmmaker) for using "n*gger" in his films, specifically "Pulp Fiction". Then it's the Academy for not nominating "Malcolm X" or "Dreamgirls" for Best Picture. Then it's Clint Eastwood for not including black soldiers in "Flags of our Fathers" or "Letters from Iwo Jima", even though everyone knows there were no black soldiers in the unit that rose the flag and took the photograph. I mean, who appointed Spike Lee the racism police of Hollywood? Who appointed him the spokesperson of African Americans? Why doesn't Spike Lee go and spend more time making a good film, instead of complaining about everyone else's great films that don't appeal to his ideals of "racial fairness".

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  4. Oh and there's also the special edition re-releases of Vertigo, Rear Window, Psycho, and Touch of Evil to check out.

    Vertigo = epic win.

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  5. when it comes to Spike, I just seperate the film from the filmmaker as best I can....he definitely isn't for everyone, and as a person is less than likeable

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