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Los cronocrímenes (2007)
Foreign film that deserves an American remake...please
Timecrimes (2007), titled initially Los cronocrímenes, is one of the best time-travel movies available. Written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo, it was made in Spain and performed in Spanish. Reading English subtitles will not distract, however, as much of the movie is visual, and the pacing is not slow but methodical.
The story revolves around Hector and starts at his house, which he recently moved into. He sees something in the woods behind his house and goes to investigate. He is stabbed, and while running away from the mysterious masked figure, he enters a secret lab in the neighboring field. While hiding from the masked figure, he is transported back in time one hour and makes some amazing discoveries about himself. What must he do, and what is he willing to do, to restore the life he had before his accidental time-traveling adventure?
The story illustrates the complexities of time-travel and what having multiple "you"-beings in existence at once can lead to. Very entertaining and a definite "much watch."
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)
Two simultaneous nuclear bomb explosions = entertaining movie
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) is about the people of Britain being caught in the middle of the U.S.-Russia cold war. When both of those countries accidentally perform two massive nuclear bomb tests, the explosions' force throws the Earth out of its normal rotation. It appears the result will be the end of the Earth as it is destroyed by the heat of the Sun, but the superpowers have a plan to detonate more nuclear weapons in order to return the Earth to a more stable orbit.
The story focuses on a newspaper reporter trying to recover from his recent divorce and its effect on his relationship with his young son. Though he turned to alcohol to cope with the situation, a new source and eventually love-interest causes him to change his outlook on life.
The film is a black and white movie, but the opening and closing scenes are tinted orange-yellow to suggest how hot it was getting.
Finally, the movie opens with a warning from the British Board of Film Censors that it was meant only to be seen by those aged sixteen and older. The likely reason for this is one scene where Janet Munro appears topless for just a second in a mirror.
Double Indemnity (1944)
The best film noir movie ever made
Perhaps the single best example of a film noir movie, Double Indemnity (1944), stars Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson. Based on a novel written by James Cain, the screenplay was co-written by Billy Wilder and the amazing Raymond Chandler.
Set in 1938 California, the story is based on the true-life 1927 murder of a married Queens, New York woman's husband who was killed by the woman's boyfriend after she took out a large insurance policy that contained a double-indemnity clause. In this movie, Phyllis Dietrichson (played by Stanwyck) takes out a life insurance policy on her husband with the help of insurance salesman-soon-to-be-turned-murderer Walter Neff (played by MacMurray). Robinson plays Barton Keyes, Neff's co-worker and a very suspicious claims adjuster who suspects Phyllis Dietrichson might have had something to do with her husband's sudden death.
This movie is an hour and forty-seven minutes of pure movie love. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards {Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Barbara Stanwyck), Best Director, Best Writing-Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Sound Recording, and Best Music (Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture)}, though it won none.
Le voyage dans la lune (1902)
A Trippy Trip to the Moon
A Trip to the Moon (1902), initially titled in French as Le Voyage dans la Lune, is director Georges Méliès' most famous film out of the more than 500 films he made. He stars as Professor Barbenfouillis, who, along with several other astronomers, boards a bullet-shaped spacecraft fired from a long cannon onto the moon's surface. Once there, the astronauts explore the moon, sleep under the open stars, and after a snowstorm, they flee into a cavern where they discover moon inhabitants (called Selenites after the Greek goddess of the moon, Selene). After being attacked, the astronauts return to their spaceship and fall from the moon back to the Earth, where they are welcomed as heroes.
There are multiple versions of this film, both in black & white and hand-colored versions. The 2010 "restored" version of this film is colorized, and it features a modern-day score by the French musical group, Air (with members Nicolas Godin, Nicolas Godin, Jean-Benoît Dunckel, Jean-Benoît Dunckel). This version is a surreal, psychedelic acid trip (which has a long-lost parade scene at the end of the film). The black & white versions, with traditional string scores (and often narration), are easier to watch.
This film gets 7 stars mostly because it was the earliest science fiction film and the earliest film containing animation which I have seen.