What I Watched, What You Watched: Installment #113

Upon hearing the news Christopher Nolan, Michael Bay and Alfonso Cuaron were on Warner’s shortlist to direct a new Twilight Zone movie I decided to watch the original 1983 movie, which I rented from [amazon asin=”B000SZS3VU” text=”Amazon’s Instant Video service”]. I think I may have seen a couple of episodes of the television show a long, long time ago, but this was the first time I can remember ever watching anything “Twilight Zone” related and I can’t say I was blown away, though the fourth segment, Nightmare at 20,000 feet, is excellent. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there a “Tree House of Horror” episode on “The Simpsons” that basically copied this segment with Bart on a bus with a gremlin attacking the wheels? I tried looking it up on YouTube, but couldn’t find it.

I bought this [amazon asin=”B0057UA4CW” text=”on Blu-ray”] when it came out back in August and finally had a chance to give it a watch. Outside of Stanley Kubrick’s early, early work such as The Seafarers, this was the last film of his I had never seen and in fact I love looking at my Blu-ray collection and realizing I own every single one of Kubrick’s post-The Seafarers films in high-definition.

As for Lolita, it didn’t blow me away but I really enjoyed the creepy vibe even though Kubrick never shows you anything too seedy. The whole cast, however, is excellent. I love how James Mason gives himself over to the story, Sue Lyon is great as the title character, Shelley Winters made me want to go watch The Night of the Hunter again and Peter Sellers is brilliant as ever. I may not have loved this film, but as an unabashed Kubrick lover I am certain I will return to it.

I just received a copy of Universal’s [amazon asin=”B005EVY8MQ” text=”Alfred Hitchcock: The Essentials Collection”], which hits DVD shelves on Tuesday, October 4 and contains the master’s most notable films — Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho and The Birds — and while it had me wanting to watch a Hitchcock film, I have seen all of those so many times I wanted something new. So, I turned to my [amazon asin=”B001D8W7EA” text=”Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection”] which I picked up at Costco about a year ago and watched Lifeboat, which I had not seen yet.

The film centers on a group of survivors whose boat has just been hit by a U-Boat torpedo. The U-Boat was ultimately destroyed as well and one of the survivors pulled into this particular lifeboat just happens to be the captain of the destroyed German sub.

The standout here, for me, was Tallulah Bankhead who turns in something of a Bette Davis meets Marlene Dietrich performance as she’s pummeled with 5,000+ gallons of water. It’s an interesting film as it looks at humanity in a positive light until evil proves no amount of kindness can cause it to change its ways. Also, be on the lookout for Hitchcock’s cameo, it’s a good one.

The only one of Whit Stillman’s films I had not seen was Barcelona and now that it’s on Netflix Instant I was finally able to remedy that hole in my movie-watching filmography and while a few people on Twitter told me it was their favorite of Stillman’s films I think mine still remains The Last Days of Disco, which, to me, is his only cohesive narrative. Metropolitan is great, great writing but I think it gets to be a bit too talky and full of itself, Damsels in Distress I saw in Toronto and it is probably the weakest of his four feature films and Barcelona is probably my third favorite behind Metropolitan.

Barcelona is very much a Stillman film with its smart, biting and witty dialogue, stuffy characters and bits of innocent pomposity, but it just doesn’t have enough edge for me. It definitely gets better as it goes on and John Thomas’s photography is beautiful, but I can’t say it left me with much of a lasting impression. If I’m going to return to a Stillman film this won’t be the first on my list.