Challenge Week 27: After the Dark

Alongside the so-bad-it’s-good ridiculous pleasures of Birdemic, Ricky decided to give me something a little more cerebral, with this movie detailing a high school philosophy class’s thought experiment about how they would survive the apocalypse. I generally love cerebral movies about philosophy, so this was a good pick for me.

It’s the final class period of senior year, and their professor Mr. Zimit (James D’Arcy) posits a final exam of sorts, with the premise that a nuclear disaster is incoming, there’s a bunker that will protect 10 people (there are twenty students plus the professor) for a year so they can rebuild civilization after it’s safe to come out of the bunker. He gives them all cards at random defining their jobs (structural engineer, electrician, poet, opera singer, organic farmer, etc.) and, in a second round of the experiment, a secondary characteristic that may or may not change their “value” to the collective.

tf-classroom

Challenge Week 27: Birdemic: Shock and Terror

When I did the little preview post for this challenge with how much I was looking forward to various films, I listed this under “I’m Terrified” – not really so much because I knew it was supposed to be one of the worst movies ever made (I have a soft spot for so-bad-they’re-good movies), but because for some reason I thought it was like extra violent/gory/gross or something. I don’t know why I had that in my head, because it isn’t at all. It’s pretty tame, really, in that department.

So back to having a soft spot for so-bad-they’re-good movies. If you’re that type of person, THIS MOVIE IS AMAZING. It’s clearly supposed to be a sort of remake/homage to The Birds, but the incompetence, oh my. It makes the fake-looking rear projection shots in The Birds look like masterful special effects. It makes ‘Tippi’ Hedren seem like the greatest actress the screen has ever seen. (Before it seems like I’m bagging on The Birds, that movie is in my Top 100 – those are some things people complain about in it, but I do not complain about them.)

We start off following Rod, a Silicon Valley salesman. He sees Natalie at a diner and awkwardly picks her up (just assume that every verb I’m going to use in this whole post is modified by “awkwardly”, because everything in this movie is sublimely awkward). They go on some dates, his company is bought out by a bigger one, he starts a green energy company, etc. Oh, yes, the environment is a big part of this, so if you’re annoyed that The Birds didn’t give its birds a motivation, Birdemic fixes that.

tf-chatting-in-street

Challenge Week 26: Dinner at the Ritz

For this one, Naomi REALLY reached deep into the vaults, pulling out a 1937 British mystery I had never ever heard of. It’s fallen into the public domain, but the print I saw was pretty decent for being in that condition, and I had an overall good experience with the film.

Some of the story was a little hard to follow in the beginning, as it seems like it’s going to be some kind of relationship/marriage drama between French banker’s daughter Ranie Racine (Annabelle) and her beau, the Baron Philippe de Beaufort (Paul Lukas), but then quickly some kind of banking fraud plot is introduced courtesy of Ranie’s father, and then he turns up dead, an apparent suicide, but Ranie is convinced that it’s murder and heads out on her own to uncover the fraud ring behind it. Soon she’s joined by dashing David Niven and American detective Romney Brent (who also cowrote the screenplay).

tf-trio

Challenge Week 26: April in Paris

Naomi and I share a lot of the same taste, particularly when it comes to classic Hollywood – and musicals! I figured she’d try to give me something in that area, and I was right, but she had to dig through my seen and unseen lists for a while to do it!

This is one I don’t know how I missed growing up – I watched a ton of musicals, and nearly every Doris Day musical there was. I’d certainly heard of this one, but I think the idea of Ray Bolger as a leading man put me off a bit, because…I mean…the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz as a lead? And you know what, he did fine. He may not be traditionally handsome, but he’s confident and holds the screen anyway.

tf-aprilinparis-wrongethel

Challenge Week 25: Mon Oncle Antoine

I had no idea what this movie was even about when I went into it, or even whether it was French or French Canadian – though my Canadian friends set me straight on that in a hurry when I mentioned I was about to watch it. It’s set in a French Canadian mining community in the winter. Right off the bat, an altercation between miner Jos Poulin and the English-speaking bosses of the mine set him off to work as a logger over the winter instead. I kind of wished the film focused more on him, but his story is just intercut with the main one, which is about the general store owner Antoine and his family, especially his nephew Benoit, who works at his uncle’s store and through whose eyes we see most of the rest of the film.

It’s largely a down to earth slice of life story about this little town and the people in it, with a dose of coming of age for Benoit. He shyly flirts with the girl who works at the store, joins an older boy to peek at a customer trying on a corset, and then fatefully goes with his uncle to pick up the body of one of the Poulin boys, who live far away from the town (Antoine is also the community’s undertaker). Not a lot of note happens for a long while, really, but once the film settles in on Benoit, it’s quite enjoyable.

tf-mon-oncle-antoine-door

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