Watching Movies 10/20

Starts off with a bang, turns into an unfocused drama, and then ends disappointingly without any surprises or much of a climax. It feels like two movies smashed together, and they don't mix well. It might have been more intriguing if I hadn't recently watched The Imposter, which I suspect this movie borrows from.

Yes, it's a horror story about a man who controls rats, but veteran director Daniel Mann keeps things light and focused on the characters. Bruce Davison does a great job as Willard, and it helps to have Ernest Bornine and Elsa Lanchester in the cast. I can see why this quirky, low budget film has cult status.

Changing the tone to straight horror and lacking any good characters or performances, Ben is the bad version of Willard, and the ending in the sewers is interminable. The only interesting thing is the showbiz kid and his enviable playhouse. Unfortunately, this one has the hit Michael Jackson song, which might make people think it's worth watching.

Telling the same story but changing the focus considerably, this is a superior remake that's more polished with a bit of a Tim Burton feel. It's bolstered by a great performance from Crispin Glover that's far more human and relatable and less weird than I was expecting. The recreation of the office set is a great nod to the original.

It's a good idea for a movie and the cast is great, but it's simply not funny.

By abandoning any sort of character development, they're able to gradually escalate from joking about a single spaceship landing rural California to world-wide destruction in a brisk 90 minutes, and keep the story plausibly focused on a single character the entire time, which is the kind of storytelling modern blockbusters could learn a lot from (Miracle Mile is one of the few that manages this feat). However, it's the production design of the aliens and spaceships and the sound effects that really make it all work. George Pal's effects always looked fake on purpose, and everything is iconic and memorable and the sense of utter doom is real.

This is a PBS documentary about the Orson Welles radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. It's informative about the events of that night, but of course it's hard to make video about a radio show, so they basically use every 1930s and 40s film showing people listening to a radio, and have costumed actors do mock interviews based on letters, so it's not the most compelling doc.