The rules are:
1. I can put a movie back if I've already seen it.
2. I can put a movie back if it's a sequel to a movie I've never seen.
3. I can opt to put all five movies back on the shelves and grab another batch, but I can only do this once per trip.
This is actually my first time seeing any of the HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME incarnations, but, like pretty much everyone else in the world, Quasimodo is a character who's always been engrained in my mind in the same way that Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster are. It's gotten to the point where someone can call another person "Quasimodo" as an insult and everyone within earshot will know what it means, which is a testament to how iconic the character is. As much as it shames me to say, a majority of Lon Chaney's work is a "blindspot" for me, so I was very excited to watch this one. I've scanned the shelves of my video store many times as us movie geeks are prone to do, and I didn't even know they carried this film. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised to see this in my hand after randomly grabbing something off the "Classics" shelf. It's like finding five bucks in an old jacket or something!
I'm not one who typically seeks out silent films; I have to be in the mood to watch one, or have a specific reason to check out a particular silent movie. That said, while I was glad to finally watch this, I didn't really know what to expect. Much to my surprise, HUNCHBACK OF THE NOTRE DAME is a lot more fast-paced than I anticipated. And even though I expected the film to be good (or at least have a great Lon Chaney performance), I didn't expect it to be as awesome as it ended up being. Have you ever heard the saying: "To make money, you have to spend money"? It's a true statement, and such is the case with HUNCHBACK. It was a rather expensive production for Universal, and it paid off in the long run; HUNCHBACK, at the time, became their highest grossing film. And the budget shows. The Gothic scenery in the film is quite stunning. Even more stunning is the fact that everything you see was built specifically for the movie. No, this wasn't shot in some European city; instead, Universal created a European city in their backlot.
Of all the movies I watched this week, I dreaded this one the most. I'm not too stoked on costume dramas. Oh well. Fortunately, this one turned out to be pretty good. LADY JANE is based on the true story of the Lady Jane Grey, who had a controversial reign as Queen of England for a whopping nine days. I don't know anything about British royalty and I'm not gonna bluff my way through it. At the core of the film is a love story involving Lady Jane (Helena Bonham Carter) and her husband Guilford Dudley (Cary Elwes). They were initially set up as part of an arranged marriage. With the current reigning King Edward on his death bed, Lady Jane becomes to victim of political maneuvering; she was forced to marry Edward so she could be named his heir before he dies, and, from there, she'll marry someone else of her family's choosing (Guilford), which will be their way of positioning themselves as rulers of England. Despite clashing personalities, Lady Jane and Guilford fall in love, but their relationship becomes doomed for reasons that I won't get into.
I'm not even supposed to be writing about this movie right now. I thought it would be cool to switch it up and pick something from the Family section of the video store (which I did), but I wouldn't have felt comfortable checking out the movie I ended up with. The lady who works there knows damn well that I don't have any kids, and the last thing I wanted out of that situation was for her to think that I was some pedophile or something. So I put it back on the shelf and went back to the ol' Action section and ended up with DEFIANCE.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a 2 hour and 4 minute straight-to-DVD werewolf movie. No straight-to DVD horror movie should be that long, so what makes WOLF MOON so special?! Well, whether it's "special" or not is subjective, but, story-wise, it's a surprisingly ambitious werewolf movie that spends a lot of time with its characters. The character relationships in this movie are like something out of a television series because of how they're developed and, ultimately, how they all weave together in one way or another. But let's make no mistake about it: underneath all the fancy character stuff (some of which is TWILIGHT-esque) is a cheesy low-budget horror movie with lackluster special effects.
No, this isn't an Osama Bin Laden biopic. OSAMA was shot in Afghanistan and it tells the story of a family of three women who are trying to survive under the Taliban regime - a regime that forbids women from getting jobs. But when you have no men in your family, what the fuck are you supposed to do? Simple! Cut the hair of the youngest and have her pretend to be a boy. It's like a culturally relevant version of JUST ONE OF THE GUYS set in Afghanistan. I kid, I kid. To be honest, I'm at a loss; I can't write about OSAMA and do it justice. It's a "slice of life" film that revolves around a culture I can't identify with. However, as a human being, I don't have to know shit about the Taliban to know that the treatment of the citizens of Afghanistan is awful, and that's something we see in OSAMA. What I appreciate about this film, though, is that it doesn't focus on the harshness of it all or exploit what's going on. It comes from a sincere place, and it's made by a filmmaker who loves cinema and wanted to tell a story.
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