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Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938)
15 Sensational Sense-Staggering Episodes!
Filmmaker(s): Ford Beebe, Robert F. Hill

When a deadly Nitron ray strikes Earth, Flash Gordon and his friends travel to Mars to battle Ming the Merciless and his new ally Queen Azura.

Magical I think I’d take a dozen of these for one Star Wars sequels. When you get down to it, Star Wars was four things: Kurosawa, Williams and Campbell folded into science fiction, but it was quite thin scifi. It posited a Manichean world — at least...


Published November 28, 2022
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King Corn (2007)
You Are What You Eat.
Filmmaker(s): Aaron Woolf

King Corn is a fun and crusading journey into the digestive tract of our fast food nation where one ultra-industrial, pesticide-laden, heavily-subsidized commodity dominates the food pyramid from top to bottom – corn. Fueled by curiosity and a dash of naiveté, two college buddies return to their ancestral home of Greene, Iowa to figure out how a modest kernel conquered America. With the help of some real farmers, oodles of fertilizer and government aide, and some genetically modified seeds, the friends manage to grow one acre of corn. Along the way, they unlock the hilarious absurdities and scary but hidden truths about America’s modern food system in this engrossing and eye-opening documentary.

Field of Dreams Modern documentaries fascinate me. In theory, the documentary category is an investigation, explanation or essay on something, presumably something both real and true. Because there is the supposition that the thing is interesting of worth hearing about for some reason, one assumes that most...


Published November 28, 2022
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Thirteen at Dinner (1985)
Filmmaker(s): Lou Antonio

Actress Jane Wilkinson wants a divorce, but her husband, Lord Edgware, refuses. She convinces Hercule Poirot to use his famed tact and logic to make her case. Lord Edgware turns up murdered, a well-placed knife wound at the base of his neck. It will take the precise Poirot to sort out the lies from the alibis - and find the criminal before another victim dies.

Suchet Sachet Suffers A new batch of old TeeVee Christie adaptations have become available on DVD. I’ve been marching through them valiantly, looking for anything of value. Here it is. This one is good. The story on which it is based is one of Christie’s more interesting...


Published November 26, 2022
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Ten Canoes (2009)
Ten canoes, three wives, one hundred and fifty spears...trouble

A story within a story within a story. In Australia's Northern Territory, an Aboriginal narrator tells a story about his ancestors on a goose hunt. A youngster on the hunt is being tempted to adultery with his elder brother's wife, so an elder tells him a story from the mythical past about how evil can slip in and cause havoc unless prevented by virtue according to customary tribal law.

Yolngu Goose-eggs Sometimes all you need is magic. At least it seems so, when you see the real thing. If you happened to see Baz Luhmann's ‘Australia’ and was confused, see this instead. It is the genuine article, about the magic, told with magic. It is...


Published November 25, 2022
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Three Days of the Condor (1975)
His CIA code name is Condor. In the next seventy-two hours almost everyone he trusts will try to kill him.
Filmmaker(s): Sydney Pollack

A bookish CIA researcher finds all his co-workers dead, and must outwit those responsible until he figures out who he can really trust.

Books, Binding Sidney Pollack recently died, and I dredged this up to watch. It is a strange relic of a time when we really liked these spy stories — and the stories were allowed to be simple. The characters had no life outside the confined story....


Published November 22, 2022
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Duel at Diablo (1966)
Yesterday they fought each other – today they fight together in a dead end canyon called Diablo!
Filmmaker(s): Ralph Nelson

While crossing the desert, a frontier scout, Jess Remsberg, rescues Ellen Grange from a pursuing band of Apaches, and returns her to her husband, Willard Grange. He is contracted to act as a scout for an Army cavalry unit. Willard, Ellen, and her infant son are along for the ride, as is horse trader Toller, a veteran of the 10th Cavalry. The party is trapped in a canyon by Chata, an Apache chief and grandfather of Ellen's baby. Willard is captured and tortured. Jess sneaks away and brings reinforcements just in time to save the day. Jess learns that the man he has been hunting is none other than Willard Grange.

Old Paint It is absolutely amazing to me how badly a movie can age. I saw this one in the theatres when new. I remember thinking it was acceptable at the time. There was an actress that I knew from Bergman. There was the surprise of...


Published November 22, 2022
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Happy Feet (2006)
WARNING: May Cause Toe-Tapping.
Filmmaker(s): George Miller

Into the world of the Emperor Penguins, who find their soul mates through song, a penguin is born who cannot sing. But he can tap dance something fierce!

Mad Maximum Motion You can parse this into three bits I think. The first is what people normally see, the story. Miller and many of the Oz New Wave don’t pay much attention to this. They put something there of course, otherwise we would get distracted. Here...


Published November 20, 2022
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Flash of Genius (2008)
Corporations have time, money, and power on their side. All Bob Kearns had was the truth.
Filmmaker(s): Marc Abraham

In this David vs. Goliath drama based on a true story, college professor Robert Kearns goes up against the giants of the auto industry when they fail to give him credit for inventing intermittent windshield wipers. Kearns doggedly pursues recognition for his invention, as well as the much-deserved financial rewards for the sake of his wife and six kids.

Wipeout There are all sorts of fabulous interminglings between film and life. At a general level, I study these things. But when “life” is meant in the sense of historical truth, and the film purports to represent that, then the examination gets a bits boring. Okay,...


Published November 20, 2022
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The Kovak Box (2006)
Filmmaker(s): Daniel Monzón

David Norton is used to being in control. As a best-selling author, he decides the fate of his characters, their lives and their deaths. But what happens when his fictional world becomes all too real?

Inverted Writing There is a standard form for a movie like this. It is so heavily imprinted that when you encounter a deviation, it shocks. We have a writer who wrote a book that comes alive. We expect that the relationship between book (the film within)...


Published November 9, 2022
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Paris, je t’aime (2006)
Stories of Love From the City of Love

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

Tombstones, Subways Recently, I walked through a Japanese cemetery that is several hundred years old. There is in this place a variety of tombstones, a very wide variety. There are stylistic similarities, weaving through eras, religious traditions (which are remarkably complex and subtle). The place is...


Published November 7, 2022
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