In honor of this week's retro-themed superhero film, X-Men: First Class, we at In the Mouth of Dorkness want to take a look at some of our favorite retro movies. There are so many good ones, it was hard to pick.
5. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: From the pacing to the stylized acting, this homage to classic movie serials had plenty to thrill this devotee. Little nods to classic adventure films like Lost Horizon and King Kong certainly didn’t hurt.
4. Black Dynamite: Absolutely, this movie is extremely funny. But it also frequently looks and sounds like it actually came out of the mid 70s. Not only the fashion and obvious stuff like that, but the editing, the color schemes, etc.
3, Down with Love: This send-up of the old Doris Day sex comedies of the 60s is far more charming that it has any right to be. Dashing Ewan McGregor is awesome as the man about town reporter, and the supporting cast is spot on. Renee Zellweger doesn’t quite work for me, but she’s not enough to sink the film.
2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: While I like the whole film, the sequence set during the 60s, where Ben and Daisy actually get together captured so perfectly that something special about an era. You can feel the world that enjoyed the first James Bond and marveled at the Moon landing is just outside of their love affair. What I found almost creepy was how exactly those scenes echoed my own childhood fantasies of growing up and falling in love (down to the mattress on the floor). It felt like the shots were plucked right out of 8 year old Matt’s head.
1. The Call of Cthulhu: Of course a low budget, labor of love would turn out to be the best adaptation of a Lovecraft story to date. But the makers kicked it up to 11 by making the film in the style of the time, black & white and silent. The actors do a fine job, several even looking like classic silent actors. And the primitive effects work very well within the whole. Excellent.
-Matt
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| Until next time, good night and good luck. |
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