Movie – Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

I could try to sum this movie up in one sentence by saying that it’s “Elvis and JFK vs. an ancient Egyptian mummy in an old folks’ home”, but that would convey only a small part of what the movie is about.  It does convey that it’s a comedy, but it doesn’t let you know that it’s also a bittersweet look at how old folks are marginalized both by their infirmities and by the people around them.  It also doesn’t let you know that it’s a reasonably respectful portrayal of Elvis, rather than a roast or parody of him.  Finally, it doesn’t let you know that it is a sometimes touching look of what it means to be a hero.

Movie – The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

This movie title is sometimes shortened to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, or even just Buckaroo Banzai.  No matter what you call it, it is just plain demented.  This film is the very definition of a cult movie.  Watch this to see the kind of movie that could never be made today.

It has a large cast of characters, many of whom are early roles for actors like Peter Weller (Robocop), John Lithgow (Third Rock from the Sun), Ellen Barkin (The Big Easy), Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park), Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future), and Carl Lumbly (Alias.)  The movie also has comedian Yakov Smirnoff and character actors Clancy Brown, Vincent Schiavelli, Dan Hedaya, and Jonathan Banks.

Movie – This is Spinal Tap (1984)

This is Spinal Tap is a fake documentary about a British rock band’s ill-fated tour of the United States.  It is often credited with creating the mockumentary genre.  It is eminently quotable (“These go to 11”), has a number of scenes that have become part of pop culture (i.e. getting lost backstage), and is a favorite among the very musicians that it is making fun of.

Movies with Commentaries Done in Character

“Man, I don’t drop character ‘till I done the DVD commentary.” – Kirk Lazarus, Tropic Thunder

Some of you may not care about the extras that come on DVDs and Blu-rays.  You may just watch the movie and be done with it.  When you do this you are only getting half of the experience from buying/renting one of these disks.  Most of them usually have some extra content on them and these extras can be quite entertaining.

One of the more common extras is a commentary track.  This is an alternate soundtrack where you can listen to people telling you things about the movie that you might not pick up on yourself.  Sometimes these are really boring tracks done by Important Hollywood Directors that go on and on about what camera lens they used and what the weather was the day they shot a particular scene.  Some, like Roger Ebert’s commentary for Citizen Kane, can be both very informative and very interesting.  Some, like the original five children in Willy Wonka and Chocolate Factory doing the commentary for their movie, are hilarious.

Every now and then, some people decide to get creative with the commentary tracks, too.  One I shut off had a couple people pretend to get into a fight with each other and quit.  Another for a musical (Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog) actually had “Commentary: The Musical” where they sang songs about the movie in the commentary.

And there have been three movies I have encountered where the commentaries were done in character.  By this, I mean that we are supposedly listening to the characters from the movie, commenting on their own movie as if they were real world people.  The three movies that have done this are This is Spinal Tap, which is narrated by the band members; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, which is narrated by one of Banzai’s crew members/band members; and Bubba Ho-Tep, which is narrated by “The King” (Elvis.)

You can find my posts for these movies here:

This is Spinal Tap

Buckaroo Banzai

Bubba Ho-Tep

On to the reviews…