Jun 28
The Harry Potter film saga continues with 2002’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Directed by Chris Columbus, this picture picks up where Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone left off. It features the same basic cast, plus a few new friends, and delves more into the character of Potter. It also introduces a few more twists to Hogwarts and some of the teachers there.
Believe it or not, George A. Romero was originally tapped to direct and write Resident Evil. Yep. It’s true. In fact, the zombie movie god actually penned a screenplay for a movie to be based on the Capcom video game. The first draft can be found here. So what happened? The Capcom producers didn’t dig it and they fired Romero. They were afraid that the zombie movie god would screw up what the gamers were aiming at, so the project sunk into development hell until Paul W. S. Anderson was brought in.
Some documentaries are overcooked showcases of sleek editing techniques and computer graphics, while others are rather slim in stature. Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary is an unfussy motion picture that consists entirely of about 90 minutes of interviews with Traudl Junge. To overlook the barebones testimony of Junge, Adolf Hitler’s youngest personal secretary, would be a mistake.
There are some who may find the hour and a half to be lacking in bells and whistles, but there’s much more going on here than meets the immediate eye. In our day and age of attention deficits, real or imagined, it is often hard to convince people that they really ought to listen to what Junge has to say when she’s not saying it over an explosive musical score or in 3D.
Unconditional Love was supposed to have a theatrical release, but New Line kept putting it off and putting it off until it finally just premiered on television in 2002. I’m not sure how well the movie would have done in theatres, as it is a particularly strange piece of work. At the same time, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the mess.
Directed by P.J. Hogan, Unconditional Love assembles a weird collection of characters and puts them through the paces as a part of a housewife’s adventure to reclaim some pride. It’s all couched in this strange adult contemporary feel and is shamelessly cheesy from start to finish. Hell, any movie that opens with Jonathan Pryce dancing around in a glittery suit in the clouds with backup dancers is going to be greeted with more than a few raised eyebrows.
Wholly original and highly entertaining, Bubba Ho-Tep is based on a Joe R. Lansdale novella from The King is Dead: Tales of Elvis Post-Mortem. Directed by Don Coscarelli of Phantasm fame, Bubba Ho-Tep is a cool blend of comedy and horror that walks down some very interesting roads. It’s a bold movie, one that takes just a little suspension of belief to enjoy fully.
The suspension of belief begins immediately as we’re asked to consider that Elvis Presley is alive and lingering through his final jumpsuit era at a rest home. Of course, this Elvis is played by the inimitable Bruce Campbell. The backstory goes that Elvis got tired of the rigours of fame and switched places with one of many impersonators so that he could enjoy the rest of his life in peace. Real Elvis still got off on impersonating himself, though.
