Thanking Hollywood

I wanted to write more about intriguing movie premises in my last post but I was cut short by Robot Chicken. There are many more movies that draw attention based on their concepts, and I'll mention a few now.

Pennies from Heaven is a musical from 1981, long after musicals stopped being prolific, which stars Steve Martin as a salesman during the Depression who has kinky sex fetishes. There are other details of the movie that I won't reveal because their revelation is half the fun; suffice it to say, the bright, flashy musical numbers are juxtaposed by the somber, disturbing subject matter, which makes Pennies from Heaven unique and surprising. Also, Christopher Walken has a dance number, for those of you who probably think they should digitally replace Ben Kingsley with Walken in Gandhi, and change all the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park into giant Christopher Walkens.

Another film with a bizarrely noteworthy premise is Wolf, a horror movie from 1994 starring Jack Nicholson as a publisher who gets bitten by a werewolf and slowly transforms into one. If you've ever wanted to see Nicholson and James Spader have a werewolf battle, this will probably be your only chance.

I've never seen Bugsy Malone, but I know it's a gangster movie from 1976 in which children, including a young Jodie Foster, play all the adult roles. That alone makes it rentworthy, for me.

Finally, Mr. Brooks is a movie scheduled to come out in March of next year. It's a thriller starring Kevin Costner as "a man who is sometimes controlled by his murder-and-mayhem-loving alter ego" (source: IMDB) played by William Hurt. That sounds weird, and badass.

I know this has sounded like some goddamn Entertainment Weekly fall movie preview, but I have a point. I'm thankful that Hollywood puts out strange films like these with daring premises because pedestrian stuff like Taking Lives and Underworld is nice filler but it doesn't stand out. I suppose I'm also thankful to average filler movies for allowing diamonds in the rough like Pennies from Heaven to shine.