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.

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

Windy’s Pick of the Week: The Core

This is my go to “over the top sci fi disaster movie”. You don’t have a whole category full of “over the top sci fi disaster movies”?

How do you LIVE??!

Aaron Eckhart proves that he is so charming and charismatic, you’ll forgive the ridiculous science he is spouting. Alfre Woodard has so much screen presence, it’ll make you start a petition to get her more roles. But best of all – STANLEY TUCCI. And a plot so wrong that it takes three left turns and becomes a RIGHT.

Plot: The earth’s core has stopped spinning and we’re all dead unless our intrepid heroes travel to the center of the earth and jump start the core spinning again.

See? Told you.

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: The Emperor’s New Groove

BOOM, BABY. This may be the only Disney feature that I love down to the very core of my being. It baffles me that Disney still has no clue what a gem this thing was.

Emperor’s New Groove scraps nearly all of the Disney tropes and instead serves up something that may have been the result of the creators getting high and watching a bunch of Warner Brothers’ animated shorts and Crosby/Hope road movies. Here we have David Spade in a role that is actually well-crafted to his usually-annoying presence, Patrick Warburton as a dunderheaded henchman, John Goodman being John Goodman, and the ever-amazing EARTHA KITT. Also present: the first pregnant woman ever seen in a Disney animated feature, llamas, and Tom Jones.

I worked many years at Suncoast Motion Picture Company, and during my tenure there, I must have watched this film over fifty times. We kept a tape of it in the back for whenever we couldn’t stand the other movies playing in the store. I can attest that it never, ever gets old.

Why does Disney pretend this film doesn’t exist? By all accounts, it doesn’t make sense.

(By the way, I did an entire podcast about this film over at A Reel Education. If you want to learn more about this oddball film, have a listen!)

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

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: The Set-Up

There are a few things as satisfying as a simple story that is masterfully told, and The Set-Up is a fine example. Directed by Robert Wise near the beginning of his legendary career, The Set-Up is a trim tale about a past-prime boxer, his concerned wife, and a wager. The film takes place in real time — the story and the film are both 73 minutes long — which is an unusual stunt for 1949.

Windy’s Pick of the Week: Bring It On

We know how much I love any kind of dance movie. And this one has Kirsten Dunst and Elisha Dushku! Doing cheerleading routines!

Like Josie and the Pussycats and Lake Placid, this movie is built on a solid foundation of satire and sarcasm. It’s a quieter sort of snark, but it’s there. Also, one of the flirtiest yet realistic scenes put on film – Elisha Dushku flirting by spitting great gobs of toothpaste. Seriously.

Spirit fingers!