Kick-Back Friday: February 2010 Archives

The Honeymoon Killers (1969): It just goes to show you that a shoestring budget doesn't prevent the creation of really interesting shots. Director Leonard Castle and DP Oliver Wood are largely responsible for the look, sound, and feel of this black-and-white docudrama of 2 real-life lovers, Martha Beck and Ray Fernandez. The zaftig nurse and her Latin gigolo, played completely unapologetically by Stephanie Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco, became notorious in the 1940s for murdering a string of lovelorn women.

The DVD interview with Castle, a composer by training and profession, is mandatory.

Movie poster from Wikipedia reproduced under fair use law.

Hobson's Choice (1954): Inebriate Hobson (Charles Laughton) decides that his 2 youngest daughters will marry—leaving the eldest, queen of the up-sell, to manage his Lancashire bootery. However, the managerially gifted spinster, play by Brenda De Banzie (The Man Who Knew Too Much), has ideas of her own that combine matrimony with commerce. Directed by slouch filmmaker David Lean.

So what is Hobson's choice? The answer depends on which Hobson you're talking about.

District 9

(2009): On their visit to planet Earth, crustacean-like aliens don't hover over Manhattan or Chicago but stop, instead, at Johannesburg, where they are ultimately subjected to a lengthy and cruel apartheid (with evidently little interest from the international community). When the aliens' living conditions become too distasteful for even South Africans, the government—with the logistical efforts of a lackey official, Wikus Van De Merwe—begins their removal to a new camp.

District 9 is, more or less, a character study of the callous and self-serving Van De Merwe, who is made watchable by the curiously named South African actor, Sharlto Copley. But the story is also a very graphic union of depravity, violence, and technology, and its quick telling relies on easily recognized elements from a number of dystopic sci-fi stories, namely "V," Mad Max, The Fly, Aliens, and (God help us) Enemy Mine.

While District 9 isn't Best Picture material, despite its nomination, it is distressingly memorable.

I Soliti Ignoti

(1958), aka Persons Unknown or Big Deal on Madonna Street: If this farcical heist movie doesn't make you shrug, wave your hands, and argue in gibberish Italian with the nearest person, I don't know what will.

Marcello Mastroianni plays just one of several incompetent, demonstrative, thieving wannabes.

The usual nod and thanks to KTG.