Friday film roundup: The Indie Doc Comes Out on Top
This week’s film roundup from Past the Popcorn:
In a light week of theatrical releases, the lightweight challenger knocks out the heavyweight studio contenders. Seth Gordon’s low-budget documentary, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, engagingly tells the story of a Redmond, Washington, man’s quest to break Billy Mitchell’s 20-year-old world-record score on the arcade game Donkey Kong. In an era when financial income from gaming is poised to overtake that of the cinema, it’s fascinating to see a documentary focus on the geeky subculture from whence that industry sprang. Greg Wright says not to be put off by the “absurd” and “preposterous” PG-13 rating. “If you have teens who are gamers and into the whole retro arcade thing, have no worries at all about taking them to see this movie. I have recommended this film to more people in just one week than any film I have ever recommended.”
The big studios don’t fare so well. The Invasion, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, is a big-budget remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers which manages to be competently entertaining but largely uninspired. Says Jeff Walls, “I left the theater wishing they had just re-released the original,” rather than remake it as an R-rated thriller.
Jeff was pleasantly surprised by Death at a Funeral, though, a British comedy that’s finally made it over to this side of the pond. Despite it’s R-rated nudity and dirty jokes, Jeff laughed frequently at its “old-fashioned” comedic timing and “perfectly timed” storytelling.
On the other hand, there’s the gratuitously (if “realistically”) potty-mouthed R-rated teen sex-comedy Superbad, about which Mike Brunk can’t find much positive to say. At least films like this remind us that R-rated comedies don’t always have to be this vulgar.
