You Don’t Know Jack

For years, Al Pacino has been coasting through his career playing roles that do little more than remind us how great an actor he was way back when he was young and hungry. This excellent HBO movie proves that it was the material, and not the man, that got lazy. Under the excellent direction of Barry Levinson, Pacino dives into playing the part of Dr. Jack Kevorkian so completely that you almost forget who you are watching. The emotional intensity of the story and the debate over the right to live or die you will have with people after watching it, pale in comparison to the sheer joy of watching Pacino give such a fine performance.

Japan’s Longest Day

Ask almost anyone how the Second World War ended in the Pacific and they will sum it up along the lines of something like America dropped the bomb and Japan surrendered. Kinhachi Okamoto’s excellent film from 1967 shows that the actual events surrounding the signing of the treaty to end the war were much more complicated; in fact, the world is lucky the war ended the way it did. There were plenty of factions in Japan who wanted it to go on until the last man, woman and child gave their life for their country.

Dirty Pair

While they prefer to be called The Lovely Angels, there’s something about Kei and Yuri – it may be their attitude, it may be their outfits or it may be the way they seem to leave a trail of total destruction in their wake wherever they go – that makes the world know them as The Dirty Pair. Set in the years 2138-43, the sci-fi action in the 13-episodes in this box set is entertaining and the 80s-style anime artwork is a delight, but it is the snappy banter between the two lead characters – not to mention their girl power attitude -- that really gives The Dirty Pair its spark.

The Pacific

In 2001, Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks joined forces with HBO and created one of the greatest television events of all time, the epic World War II series Band of Brothers which followed a group of American soldiers as they lived the events that lead up to the D Day invasion. Almost a decade later, they have regrouped to look at a different group of men fighting a very different kind of war in The Pacific. While there may be a similar stylistic feel to the two pieces, the stories told in The Pacific are totally different, and in a way far more intense, because of the completely different style of war fought by the Japanese. The battle of Guadalcanal in the series opener is a perfect example, particularly the firefight where the Marines go up against wave upon wave of Japanese soldiers to the point where they can’t see the enemy because the dead are piled too high. The battle scenes are, of course, epic throughout the series, but it’s the way each episode shows you how war impacts the individual soldiers that makes The Pacific so absolutely haunting.

Skeletons

This could be one of the strangest –and best -- films you see all year. Simon and Bennett (Will Adamsdale and Andrew Buckley) play a pair of mysterious strangers who you can hire to dive into your subconscious and discover whatever secrets you have hidden as a way of cleaning your personal slate to get a fresh start. Their skills get put to the test when a woman hires them to find her husband and Simeon and Bennett are forced to take their job a little too personally. The acting is top notch and the story filled with enough twists to make a slinky jealous.

Evening Primrose

After watching the way he treats his mother in Psycho, it’s difficult to imagine Anthony Perkins playing anything but Norman Bates. This classic ABC Stage 76 musical should help balance the scales in Perkin’s favor. In it, he plays a poet who hides out in a department store after closing to find a quiet place to write. He soon discovers a world of other people who live in the store after closing hours, people who are very strict about the rules of department store life. It’s a Broadway show set in The Twilight Zone, featuring the wonderful music of Stephen Sondheim.

Aaah! Zombies

Just when you think there’s absolutely nothing new to be added to the zombie genre along comes Matthew and Sean Kohnen to prove you wrong. It starts out with a basic idea of a bunch of innocent young adults being exposed to a toxic experimental drug, but instead of turning them into zombies it makes them super soldiers. Well, not exactly. They think they’re super soldiers destined to save the world from an unknown infection, but everybody else knows they are the walking dead. It’s a nice twist, even if it does get stretched a bit too thin at times.