Aeon Flux, Red Eye, The American Way, & Kiss of Death

Aeon Flux is a little show from MTV in the 90s. I know I'd seen probably most of the shorts, but I certainly didn't recall much of anything except the outfits and the dying. I am pretty sure I had given up on MTV by the time the half-hour episodes had started to air, so I don't think I ever saw them. I certainly don't recall anyone speaking on them. It's quite an interesting show, if you don't care for... sensical plots, reasonable characters, anatomically possible characters, or... umm... non-sexual references. Because there are lots of all of those in there. I do want to complain about the fact that the series is three discs, and the first two are the 10 half-hour episodes, and the last one is the pilot episode and the shorts, meaning that renting them and watching them in order just made me annoyed. Why couldn't they just put the first stuff on the first disc and the second stuff on the second disc and the third stuff on the third disc? Why must you make this into a DVD box set of lies?

Red Eye is a quick and effective little thriller from Wes Craven, with Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy (with able support from Brian Cox) as two people who meet cute and then it turns out one of them runs a hotel that the other one wants to kill someone in, so they have to go running around the plane, the airport, and a house to stop/cause some mayhem. I actually thought it was quite well done, and the people who recommended it to me were right. I also like that Kyle Gallner was in it, because it allowed me to scream "THE BEAV!!" and only feel silly afterwards. Man, I miss Veronica Mars already.

The American Way is sort of a The Watchmen but set in the early 60s rather than the late 80s. It's drawn by Georges Jeanty, who has drawn all the issues of Buffy Season 8 so far, so I saw his name and I was all, I know him! I'm turning into a comic geek! AHHHHH! Or something. It's not nearly as good as the Watchmen, because it's far less about deconstructing the motives and history of comics, and far more about a fairly simple comic book story of trying to integrate a collection of sort of superheros working for the American government, and then the southern group doesn't like that. It's good, but man, I really hate that I've basically ruined these sort of stories for me, by reading what is probably the best underwear perverts comic ever. Nothing can really compete.

Kiss of Death has the great line: "Dames are no good if you wanna have some fun." Apparently, someone has a different definition of fun than I do. Or maybe the guy who said it was just a typically closeted gay man in Hays code Hollywood. And the film has a woman in a wheelchair rolled down the stairs. It's notable mainly for Richard Widmark's strong performance as a crazy hitman. He does pretty well as a crazy person. The rest of the film is notable mainly for being a Charles Lederer and Ben Hecht script, the two men behind His Girl Friday, one of the best movies of all time.