Disc Type

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not really out to get you. That old axiom has never been more true than for David Vincent in the Martin Quinn series The Invaders. Quinn was best known for his police procedural shows like The FBI. At the time of the The Invaders, Quinn was coming going into the final season of one of his most popular shows, The Fugitive. While most people over the years has compared The Invaders to that Quinn production, they were really not as similar as all of that. In The Fugitive the hero, Richard Kimball played by David Janssen had a very specific mission. He was wrongly convicted of killing his wife and was on the trail of the real killer, whom he had witnessed.
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My very first impression was that this show was very ambitious from the gate. Perhaps the show’s fatal flaw is that it attempts to tackle far too many serious issues, complete with complex undertones, with the largest ensemble cast I’ve seen yet. Add this to the fact that the world is still a little sensitive to terrorist attacks, and you have a recipe for keeping your audience relatively small. None of these things are bad elements in and among themselves, and I’m certainly not suggesting that these issues need to be abandoned. I’ve been a high school teacher, and one thing any of us can tell you is that there’s only so much a person can absorb in a given amount of time.
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I’m going to pretty much start this off by saying The Manor is pretty much the horror equivalent of The Room.  When I write this I’m not sure if the comparison is a compliment or not, whether the film was intended to be this bad or not.  It’s possible to do a film that is so bad it’s good, this goes way back to the Ed Wood era with some B-movie classics and later on in years we got Troma films. Though despite many of these films later becoming fodder for Mystery Science Theater, there was still a level of quality or charm to them that made them watchable (usually in the late night hours when viewers are too drunk or stoned to care about what they were watching).  This brings me back to The Manor where I’m left questioning their intentions. Is this a film made to garner the same success that we’ve seen from The Room or is this film just bad?
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As with Vol. 4 of Film Movement’s Festival Picks, this grouping of films is tied together by a very specific theme: estranged father figures. On the whole, this set of films has a much better pacing than its preceding volume, but it is not without pockets of slow-moving story. However, I feel that there is something naturally compelling about an estranged family member within a narrative, as it provides a conflict that seems to write itself. The most interesting aspect of this collection is the different ways in which each relationship is reconciled. In Jermal, the relationship between father and son is repaired through hardships. In The Girl in Yellow Boots, the relationship is rekindled negatively. And in Entre Nos, the relationship is abandoned.
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The setting for Gunsmoke was the by-now-famous Dodge City, circa 1870’s. Phrases like “get out of Dodge” would enter the popular lexicon as a result of this resilient series. Marshall Dillon (Arness) was charged with keeping the peace in Dodge City. The only other character to see the entire 20-year run was kindly Doc Adams (Stone). Star Trek’s own Doc, Leonard McCoy, took many of his traits from Doc Adams. He was the humanitarian of the city, always looking to help someone. Like McCoy, he had a taste for bourbon and a soft heart underneath a rather gruff exterior and was always ready with free advice. Dillon’s love interest throughout most of the series was Miss Kitty Russell (Blake).
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Uber High is not what it seems, and it is up to the Lego DC Superhero Girls to prove it. At first the girls are seduced by the idea of less homework and more fun. However, it is a slippery slope that turns a hero to a villain. I have to say, if my daughter was in this situation, I’m fairly sure that she would go full-on to the dark side. But in her defense, I’m pretty sure that is most kids. I mean, come on, who actually wants to do homework? Of the Lego DC comics, I think this one has the most interesting story to it, as it allows characters who have been lifelong evildoers in various platforms the opportunity to be on the side of good, if they can resist the call of their darker impulses.
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Volume four of Film Movement’s Festival Favorites series features three films with female leads. While these certainly aren’t the worst films I have seen, the pacing of each of these films make them hard to watch; So Bright is the View especially. Each film has a significant social critique that might be worth the watch if you have the patience to find it, but it definitely takes a special kind of filmgoer to really appreciate these types of films. In addition to each film featuring a female lead, they each hail from a different country, which seems to be important for each film’s message. A Blast from Greece, Soldate Jeanette from France, and So Bright is the View from Romania.
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