Don't Panic

In Stephen Aubier and and Vincent Patar's low-tech animation explosion, A Town Called Panic, three platic figures, Horse, Cowboy, and Indian, all share a little plastic house. None of them come with any the cultural baggage that their names would imply, they just simply exist together. Horse is a love-sick, level-headed guy who drives a little yellow car. Cowboy and Indian seem to exist mostly just to give Horse and all of the other town folk hell. The lack of baggage could just be the directors appealing to our inner child, but it feels planned, like seeing those characters is meant to to make us sense an unjust innocence.

But really that's not important. What is is how cleverly these directors have strung together a series of stream of consciousness plot points and dialogue to make an incredibly engaging and hilarious 75-minute laugh-fest. It's like the coolest 5-year-old ever told the story. It's so "So they buy too many bricks, and then... they fall through the earth, and then...they land in the north pole, and then... a giant penguin robot, and then... snowballs!" It's beautiful in its simplicity.

I don't know what else really to say. This is just a magical and unique experience of a movie to see. It's on Netflix Instant. Get to it.

A Town Called Panic: 8.6/10



Since I've recently begun actually watching my Netflix DVDs again, I've been working on my effort to watch every film released by the wonderful Criterion Collection.

Yesterday it was Carol Reed's 1940 spy thriller Night Train to Munich, Criterion #523. It's clever, and the ending is amazingly tense in its silence; but I really felt that if you've seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, released only one year before, you've basically seen Reed's film. They share a screenwriter, and even those two hilarious British train passengers. Rex Harrison plays an English spy infiltrating the Nazi upper-crust to help a Czech scientist and his beautiful daughter escape Nazi capture. Most of the action takes place on the titular train.

I still really enjoyed the film, but who can compete against Hitchcock when the premise is so similar?

Night Train to Munich: 7.5/10

I'm going to try to make it through the special features on each Criterion disc (Netflix Instant available films obviously excluded), especially when they include short films and such. Night Train to Munich has only a conversation with a couple film scholars about Carol Reed and screenwriters Frank Launder and Sidney Gillat. It's informative, though not very interesting. This disc is surprisingly sparse on the features, especially for a very recent Criterion release. Usually these discs are packed.

The restored, High-Def transfer was solid, though the sound was patchy in a few places. They did not give this one a Blu-Ray release, as they have been doing for most of their releases now.

Overall, a solid entry in the Criterion cannon on an underwhelming disc.

Criterion #523: 6.3/10



And finally, my girlfriend and I started Grant Heslov's The Men Who Stare At Goats, but I have to say I may not finish this one. Half an hour in, I'm still waiting for it to start. Ewan McGregor seems to be continuing a boring streak, while George Clooney seems 100% invested in his wacky character, but his wacky character isn't too compelling.

Hopefully I come back and it surprises me with a great hour. Doesn't seem likely at this point.