The Darwin Awards
August 2nd, 2007
Not bad for a black comedy based on a website. We always like looking at Winona Ryder, and her insurance-adjuster romance with uptight Joseph Fiennes is plenty cute. But the meat-and-potatoes of the movie are the outrageous scenes of people killing themselves in idiotic ways. With David Arquette, Lukas Haas, Juliette Lewis, Tim Blake Nelson, and Chris Penn is various bit parts. Any movie in which both Metallica and Lawrence Ferlinghetti have speaking parts is ok by me.
The Darwin Awards made history in Muck’s World because it’s the first Netflix Movie-on-Demand we tried. I hadn’t realized that you get an hour of free streaming time for every dollar you paid on your regular subscription — to ease the transition, no doubt. Once I stopped grumbling about the fact that it doesn’t work with Firefox, the software installed without a hitch, and quality over a cable connection was great. It’s the way of the future! As a man who knows a thing or two about online movie distribution once told me, there’s a reason it’s called Netflix, not NetDVD.
The Darwin Awards. Finn Taylor, 2006. ***
Mafioso
September 27th, 2006
Presented in a restored print and hailed as a rediscovered masterpiece of black comedy, Alberto Lattuada’s 1962 Mafiosio tells the story of a Sicilian who returns to his village after having made good up north. Played by Alberto Sordi (The White Sheik, I Vitelloni), the poor man and his Milanese wife and children have to face many fish-out-of-water jokes involving Sicilian food, marital beds in the center of the living room, and hairy sisters, before his past catches up with him in the shape of the local Don. Despite the film’s winning tone and a fine comic performance by Sordi, I’ll confess to being underwhelmed by both the humor and the plot, which plays out just as expected.
Mafioso. Alberto Lattuada, 1962. **
[tags]film, 2 stars, italy, sicily, mafia, black comedy[/tags]
