2008-02-24

Netflix is Nice [F H PG]

We rent movies from Netflix. I know there is nothing too profound in that, but what is interesting is that I had signed up "back in the day" but had dropped my subscription. With the writer's strike, I decided to rent movies to fill in the gap. One of my choices of Netflix over Blockbuster was the selection. I mean where else could one find: 

Rififi - This is a classic black & white jewelry store heist. You liked Tom Cruise suspended from the ceiling in Mission Impossible? Well, this movie was the originator of that scene, plus a whole lot more.

King of Kong - No, not "King Kong," neither the original, the abortion from De Laurentis, nor the decent Peter Jackson remake. This is about one man's quest to have the highest score in the arcade game "Donkey Kong", whether it be a "live" score or a videotaped score (I didn't even know there was a difference!).  The best line is the young daughter of a gamer, when he explains his quest to get in the Guinness Book; she says, "Some people sort of ruin their lives to be in there."

Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter - I mean, Jesus teamed up with masked Mexican wrestler El Santos, the saint of the wrestling ring - it does not get any better than this. This movie is so bad it is great. There is one fantastic scene where - as Jesus battles a group of lesbian vampires (I can't explain, see the film) on the shore of a lake, he yells to two priests, "bless the lake!" Once the water is thusly sanctified, any vampire thrown in the water is destroyed.

Pom Poko - This movie is simultaneously a great bit of the Japanese anime genre, and at the same time probably had Jew-hater Walt Disney spinning in his grave. It is about a group of raccoons who are being displaced due to house construction outside Tokyo. As they have the ability to "transform" into animate and inanimate objects (even clothed humans), they are going to scare away the developers. What I thought was odd was the rather, shall we say - detailed - representation of the male raccoons. That is until we see (according to Japanese legends?) that raccoons can inflate their scrotums to gigantic proportions and use them as weapons!! Released by Disney on DVD in 2005, I can just imagine someone picking this up for their kids: "Oh look at this Disney film, they are going to fight off the evil construction crew... wait, what are those raccoons doing. Omigod, Bill, turn off the TV now!!!"

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