Every Monday, each of us will suggest a film that we feel too few people have seen.

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: Dororo

Okay, let’s see if I can do this… This is a movie about a baby whose body parts were cut into 48 pieces and sold to 48 different demons, but his eyeless squirmy head and torso were taken in by a kind man who built him fake body parts (outfitted with swords, naturally) so the boy could grow up into a samurai who goes on a quest to slay all the demons and regain his body parts one by one. Oh, and there’s a woman who insists she’s a man who goes on this quest with the samurai. (Did I mention that this movie was Japanese?)

The film Dororo is based on a manga of the same name, and I hear there is also a video game (oh my). I’ve only seen the film, and I can tell you that the film is a hearty helping of entertaining weirdness. It’s also easily available on Netflix streaming right now. Get thee some popcorn!

Windy’s Pick of the Week: Demolition Man

So, I noticed that my latest picks for this category of “underappreciated” are all movies with a strong vein of tongue-in-cheek wit and a heavy dose of social satire.

Also, I like action flicks.

Sandra Bullock stars in her breakout role – and she stood out immediately in this film! – as a young cop in the future where there hasn’t been a violent crime in at least a generation and “all restaurants are Taco Bell.”  The action is satisfying – it is Sly Stallone and Wesley Snipes, after all – but it’s the social commentary and satire that makes this a movie to add to your permanent collection.  Denis Leary also has a small, ranty part that is great.  A more subtle dystopian story than most, this is a movie that reminds us why “the nanny state” could be a very bad thing.

Every Monday, each of us will suggest a film that we feel too few people have seen.

Windy’s Pick of the Week: Wimbledon

This is the movie every “rom com” wishes it could be. Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany raise the profile of the lowly rom-com, but it’s the script that carries a delightful story about redemption and re-imagining just what we thought we wanted from our life. The romance is real and lovely – but best of all, the conflict (which is so often contrived in rom-coms) is believable and true to who these characters are.

Also – it’s an underdog sports flick.  And so it’s a double win.

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: Joe Versus the Volcano

The first time I saw this film, it opened Ebertfest, Roger Ebert’s annual film festival in Champaign, IL. When I saw it on the schedule, I said, “…really?” because all I knew of it were all the jokes made about it when it was released in 1990. And when I said on Twitter that it was the first film of the festival, everyone who’d never seen it went, “…really?” And then the four people who had seen it said, “OMG WOW YES YES YES.”

A few hours later, I realized what the folks in the know were talking about. Joe Versus the Volcano isn’t a dumb late-1980s Tom Hanks comedy, which is what most Tom Hanks comedies were in the late 1980s. Joe Versus the Volcano is a weirdly surreal, candy-colored, bizarrely artsy, Capra-flavored comedy featuring Funny Tom Hanks and Early Meg Ryan at the height of their powers. Tom Hanks plays a guy who learns that he is dying, so he accepts an invitation to throw himself into a volcano as a sacrifice to save a primitive tribe, and somehow Meg Ryan gets sucked along for the ride. It’s sweet and weird and it contains people like Abe Vigoda and Robert Stack and Amanda Plummer and Ossie Davis.

I saw the newly restored print of the film, and it was nothing short of dazzling; I am told it’s the same transfer that was used to create the Blu-Ray. Definitely worth seeking out.

Every Monday, each of us will suggest a film that we feel too few people have seen.

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: I Bury the Living

This no-budget 1958 gem is a favorite discovery of mine, since it feels like a lost Twilight Zone episode and occasionally reaches moments of true ingenuity. The plot involves a guy who manages to inherit a job at the local cemetery. While being trained in, he is introduced to a giant map of all the plots in the place, and to how white pins mark plots that belong to living people, and black pins mark dead bodies in residence. One day, he accidentally replaces a white pin with a black one, and that’s when the crazy begins.

I Bury the Living was directed by Albert Band, one of the legendary B-movie creators of the era. The film is also in the public domain, which means you can watch it completely legally right here.

Windy’s Pick of the Week: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

I love this film so much. It helps that it has Paul Bettany, of course. And it’s got Russell Crowe in one of his “I’ll be charming and charismatic without being a jerk” moods. But what it mostly has is tall ships. And a look at a life and a culture that has gone. And danger, derring-do, and a central relationship – the friendship between a doctor and a captain – that is intriguing and satisfying.