Happy Thursday, everyone! The weather is warming, football is over until August, baseball is still on hold because of the team owners and now I'm in a layoff situation so if anyone wants to pay me write stuff about pop culture, I'm here. So let's look at what I found this last week.
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The classy movie this week is Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages Of Fear, 1953). Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot and written by him Jérome Geronimi, this is a terrifying tale of post-WWII men in an an un-named country who are hired to move a truck full of nitroglycerin. Simple, right? Nope, of course it isn't. This really is one of the more tense movies I've ever seen. Of course there are all sorts of setbacks and obstacles and a bridge scene that's just plain scary as hell.
The Wages Of Fear is streaming on HBO Max, Kanopy and the Criterion Channel.
I've somehow never seen the William Friedkin remake, Sorcerer, but I'm curious to see if that's worth my time. It's available for rent and purchase at the usual places.
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Completing my set of The Wire season DVDs! For some reason, this is the season that people seem to have an issue with and I simply don't get that. This is the season that expands the world of Baltimore's cops and robbers and shows it is far more than just the cops and the corners; expanding this world to the slow-dying docks is what makes this show all the better. Now it's a show that's about more of Baltimore, not just about drug deals and swearing cops.
Plus, this season has Amy Ryan. That makes everything better.
The Wire is streaming on HBO Max.
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Hey, another series completion for me! This one, Heroes, I kind of fell off on during the second season so I have no idea why this series set looks like it takes place during a crazy carnival. For all I know, this is the Nightmare Alley season. But hey, a carnival is always a good place to set a horror/sci-fi show, since they're always kind of creepy. So hey, clowns and carousels and super powers! I'm totally sure there won't be a character named Barker.
There is totally a character named Barker.
Heroes is streaming on Peacock and also something called PureFlix, which...well, I can't vouch for that, but it sounds shady.
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This week's schlock! With Scream 5 recently out, I was looking through my DVDs and look, I cannot defend the movie overall but I just want to note how good Anna Faris is in her riffing on Scream and Sydney Prescott in this. Faris is an excellent comedic actress who I think has always been a little under appreciated (though I know she got good notices for the series Mom) and this series of movies gives her some fun goofiness to work with. A lot of the jokes are almost amazingly dated and there's some serious sexism going on here as well, but it's all about Faris for me.
Scary Movie is streaming on the various Showtime platforms.
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