Weekly DVD Picks

This is a very good week. The December 7 schedule
has no fewer than seven serious contenders for the
pick of the week. Care to see which of them won out?

First, a huge list of genre releases:

Now, the non-genre releases:

Now, with all of those incredible entries up there,
some of you are
probably wondering what could possibly be left for
the pick of the
week. That will be M
in its second
release through the Criterion Collection. Those of
us who own the
single disk edition are the only people on the planet
with excuses for
not owning this two disk edition. It’s very
reasonably priced,
espeically for a Criterion release. More
importantly, it’s a
significant film. Have you ever heard of Peter
Lorre? This is why –
it’s his first starring role. Have you ever heard of
film noir?
Well, this was the first. It was also the first
German film with
synchronized sound. It was directed by Fritz Lang,
best known for the
1927 classic Metropolis. His techniques
here are amazing.
There are a number of innovations that Citizen
Kane
gets
credit for creating in 1941. Well, this film was
made eight years
before that, and you can see some of those
innovations here. Moving a
camera through a window? You’ll find it here. Using
extremely high
and low angle shots? While not as extreme as in
Citizen
Kane
, the low angle used to introduce the police
cheif and the
high angle used to reveal criminals under arrest are
very clear. Some
of the sets have visible ceilings, which is another
thing Citizen
Kane
gets credit for. I’m not saying that
Citizen Kane
ripped this off; given the political climate and the
German origin of
this film, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had never
been viewed in
America when Citizen Kane was made. I’m
just saying that
this should be considered a landmark of world cinema.
Not just for
the technique, either. The story is very dark and
exposed, telling
the story of the hunts for a man who murders
children. Yes, “hunts”
was meant to be plural. It seems that the police
have no leads, so
they’re just cracking down on everything and
everyone. Organized
crime doesn’t like this, so they decide to take it
upon themselves to
track the freak down and put an end to his actions.
I won’t pretend I
can estimate the number of movies I’ve seen in which
the suspense is
derived from wondering whether or not the police will
figure it out in
time. This is the only movie I’ve seen in
which I’m not sure
if I want the police to figure it out in time. Think
about that; it’s
been 71 years since this has been made, and it hasn’t
quite been
matched. (I’ve seen several movies in which the
police as a group are
villains, wittingly or otherwise, and I’ve seen
movies when individual
officers may or may not be villains, but I’ve never
seen one with this
ambiguity.) Throw an ending that obviously wants the
viewer to think,
created in a time when most movies wrapped things up
into a neat
little package, and you have a work of art.

At a conservative estimate, I’ve probably seen about
700 movies in my
life. This is easily among the top three.
SEE THIS MOVIE.

10 replies on “Weekly DVD Picks”

  1. Well
    On the one hand, I’ve never managed to finish the original Metropolis, it’s just too slow. Maybe I have attention deficit issues, maybe I’ve been brainwashed by MTV and videogames, either way, I just wish he’d get on with it, I get it, yes, they are walking to the factory, the factory is a monster, I GET IT!

    However, this M thingy looks interresting, and you seem to be quite adament about its virtues, so I’ll add it to my big mental list of movie I have to see.

    On a sidenote, Gilmour Girls, for a chick show, is surprisingly good. Even the obligatory “will they won’t they” romance isn’t nauseating… first time I’ve ever seen one of those without wanting to throw up.

    • Re: Well

      On a sidenote, Gilmour Girls, for a chick show, is surprisingly good. Even the obligatory “will they won’t they” romance isn’t nauseating… first time I’ve ever seen one of those without wanting to throw up.

      Gilmore Girls has actually become my favorite show currently on tv now that theres no more Joss on…which might have to do with them hiring a bunch of buffyverse writers. Or it could just be that Danny Strong is histerical in any role :)

  2. Species III

    Species III – Unrated Edition: This includes footage not included in the network broadcasts. Let’s face it; the missing footage was the footage most viewers were looking for, anyway.

    What, specifically, is in the missing footage?

    • Re: M

      Is there an English audio track on M, or is it just
      English subtitles?

      It has the original German audio with English subtitles.

  3. Ultimate Matrix Collection
    I just can’t justify purchasing this to myself. Revolutions was so . . . bad. My wife and I never went to see it in the theater (due to new parenting duties), but we did NetFlix it when it came available. The two things I recall about it are the extended and contrived denouement battle with Agent Smith, and the disgustingly syrupy death of Trinity that went on for so long . . . gah! I was MST3K’ing it before we got halfway through. We yakked on about Trinity dying, only to pay attention again to find . . . she’s still dying. Just freaking die already.

    The first one was fantastic. Had a sort of BladeRunner-esque what-is-life/reality thing going. Reloaded was viscerally fun, but Revolutions, sorry, they lost me.

    • Re: Ultimate Matrix Collection

      Revolutions was so . . . bad.

      Could’ve been a lot worse. The Trinity thing was so heavy-handed it made me nauseous, but there’s lots of neat chases and death and explosions, which is all we really came for anyway. The dock full of Zion-brand mecha shooting SquidBot SquarePantses for like 45 minutes was worth the price of admission all by itself.

      • Re: Ultimate Matrix Collection

        Revolutions was so . . . bad.

        Could’ve been a lot worse. The Trinity thing was so heavy-handed it made me nauseous, but there’s lots of neat chases and death and explosions, which is all we really came for anyway. The dock full of Zion-brand mecha shooting SquidBot SquarePantses for like 45 minutes was worth the price of admission all by itself.

        It would have, had it been all by itself. It’s the stuff around it that people were annoyed at.

      • Re: Ultimate Matrix Collection

        The dock full of Zion-brand mecha shooting SquidBot SquarePantses for like 45 minutes was worth the price of admission all by itself.

        I dunno, I mean, I can watch that sort of thing for hours. I don’t know if that makes it worth the price of admission (not that I paid that anyway – that month we went through about 15 to 20 movies, so we weren’t paying that much per disc). I mean, the only way the plot would have been worse is if someone said Neo’s powers were due to an excessively high midichlorian count.

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