Time Sensitive

While searching my dvd's for a movie 90 minutes or shorter in my dvd library, a struggle that took a little longer than expected, I settled upon Stanley Kubrick's The Killing for a viewing before trying out another movie later I haven't seen before.

Today's films:

The Killing (1956)

Galaxy Quest... maybe (1999)

The Killing

This was a tough viewing. I had forgotten that the movie doesn't really get interesting until the last third, and there is an odd voiceover that seems to have been forced into the movie by the studio, but Kubrick's composition, use of Sterling Hayden and Timothy Carey as actors make the engaging enough to bring the audience into the final act.

Hayden and Carey are interesting actors that Kubrick enjoyed working with later, there is a lot more Hayden than in most movies and less Carey than I remembered from previous viewings. I probably remember Carey's part as bigger because it is an incindiary scene of racial tention. In a twist, the character uses as a tool of his criminal activity and not out of intollerence to scare away a black attendant at the race track so that he can try to be incognito as he shoots a horse mid-race. The actor has an oddness in him that comes out in each part I've seen him play, that becomes the character.

While I was watching the movie I tried to find the Critirion Collection box art to use as the picture in this post (I try to only use art from Wikipedia as a product of an intellectual property class I took drilling it in our heads to not steal images) and found an interesting series of articles. They have a list of people who give their top ten Critirion films and in there was Marc Maron. It was interesting to see him on there because I had heard him on the WTF podcast saying that The Killing is one of the movies he goes back to every year to rewatch and it ended up on his list. I had a little fun scrolling through and seeing top ten lists of many actors and directors and finding some of them enjoyed movies that also made an impression on me as well as many more movies I had never heard of. I don't think I would ever see all the movies that perked my interest from these lists because some Critirion movies are long slogs to get through and they can be very expensive to invest in.

Galaxy Quest

I may update this later but watching Galaxy Quest is becoming insanely frustrating because my internet keeps slowing down and kicking me out of the movie. I haven't seen this movie before and it's been showing up in articles of sci fi movies. Alan Rickman passed away today so it was only fitting to give it a shot. So far, it seems okay (the connection is getting better so I might make it through) it is definitely reminiscent of the book Red Shirts which was a bit of a more interesting take ont he premise of a sci fi TV show turning real. I remember when it came out Galaxy Quest did not look very good and I had no interest in watching it and the special effects did not age well but it's not too bad for a special effects movie from the '90's. Hopefully my connection will hold up and I'll get through it tonight before dozing off.