This Week’s Underappreciated Movies

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

josieandthepussycats

Windy’s Pick of the Week: Josie and the Pussycats

Another podcast mention that makes the website spotlight, Josie and the Pussycats is brilliant satire masked in bubblegum and bright colors. How do you turn a forgettable Saturday morning cartoon into a smart and clever movie? This is how. (It helps to have a KILLER soundtrack – it’s my go to sunny spring day playlist!) Alan Cumming and Parker Posey are brilliant and Tara Reid gives a startling great performance – the best of her career. This would be an awesome double feature with A Star Is Born.

LiveandDie

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: To Live and Die in L.A.

Okay, I haven’t gotten into this yet on the podcast, but I am a wannabe gearhead, and I’m a sucker for a good car chase. To Live and Die in L.A. has one of the greatest car chase sequences of all time, masterfully directed by William Friedkin at the height of his powers. The movie around the car chase is pretty great, too: it’s a Secret Service vs. master counterfeiter 1980s cop drama that involves the likes of Willem Dafoe, John Turturro, Dean Stockwell, and candy-colored 1980s cinematography. What’s not to love?

Episode 9: Joy Flames at the Sides of My Face

Xanadu Sq LogoThis week, we talk about dumb action movies and why we love them!

This week’s wine pairing is a seriously amazing 2011 Victorian Claret from Guenoc.

And a quick note: remember to come to our web site and answer our listener questions! We haven’t yet started calling out to our listener responses in our podcasts yet, but only because we currently have about a six week buffer on our episodes. Listener responses will start showing up in the episodes in just a couple weeks!

But for now, we give you the greatest trailer ever made: STUNT ROCK!

Also, here’s proof that Melissa once met Alan Ruck:

Ruck - 2008-05-1714-44-57

Further show notes behind the cut!

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This Week’s Underappreciated Movies

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

HARAKIRI

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: Harakiri

I spent too many years of my life being unfamiliar with this magnificent Japanese film from the 1960s, so here I am to save you from the same fate. Harakiri is a film that examines — and dissects — the Bushido code of honor, constructing a slow-burn battle of wits that ultimately erupts into the sort of bloodshed modern viewers expect from samurai movies. But Harakiri is so much more than its grueling action scenes. It’s about a ronin who turns up at a manor, asking for permission to perform ritual suicide in their courtyard. The lord of the manor, both impressed and suspicious, tries to ascertain the ronin’s real agenda. It’s a smart, fascinating movie that also has swords

Lake Placid

Windy’s Pick of the Week: Lake Placid

We’ve mentioned this one on the podcast, so it’s time it made the website spotlight. This is the Best Giant Crocodile Film Ever. You didn’t know there was a genre called “giant crocodile films”? Well, don’t worry about it – Lake Placid has already nailed down the top spot. Watch it and you’re golden. This is a film that will have you laughing out loud, and also jumping a foot off the couch. Oliver Platt and Betty White have the diva parts, but don’t overlook the quiet comedy of Bridget Fonda and Brendan Gleeson. Eminently quotable, and a good reason to beg off swimming in any lake.

Episode 8: The Six Degrees of Seven Bacon

Xanadu Sq LogoThis week, we talk about… well, we started talking about something and then wandered merrily into Drunkland. I really can’t explain this episode.

This week’s wine pairing is a Ravenswood Wines Cabernet Sauvignon, Vinter’s Blend 2011.

Further show notes behind the cut!

Continue reading

This Week’s Underappreciated Movies

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

Holiday

Windy’s Pick of the Week: Holiday

Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn made a lot of classic movies together. For sheer lunacy, Bringing Up Baby. For more wit and banter, Philadelphia Story. Somewhere in the middle of that continuum falls Holiday, a film about wanting something different from your life than what others expect of you. Directed by George Cukor, with a great supporting cast (Lew Ayres, Edward Everett Horton), this movie is the perfect antidote to cynicism.

sound-of-noise

Melissa’s Pick of the Week: Sound of Noise

This Swedish film is a delicious mix of art and the hilariously absurd. Sound of Noise follows a tone-deaf cop, whose job it is to track down a team of anarchists who cause mayhem by turning everything into musical instruments. The plot goes from musical set piece to musical set piece, where you see everything from hospitals to construction sites turned into guerilla orchestras.

The team that made Sound of Noise also made a short film on the same concept, called “Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers”. It’s definitely worth 9 minutes of your time. Enjoy!