PAPRIKA (2007) is the dreamworld avatar of a researcher who discovers her colleagues’ minds are being scrambled by a mystery villain using their mind-probe technology for evil, culminating in the Dream plane spilling over into reality. A very entertaining anime, though the dream visuals are more of a star than the story (but I must admit I didn’t anticipate the ending of the romantic aspect); The Cell would be a logical double bill. “Implanting dreams in someone’s mind is terrorism!”
DR. STRANGELOVE, OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964) started out as a perfectly straight story about a rogue general launching a nuclear war, then somewhere along the way, director Stanley Kubrick started thinking of it as a comedy … Which may explain how utterly deadpan much of the film is: Sterling Hayden’s opening speech to Peter Sellers isn’t that different from something you could hear in Failsafe or Seven Days in May, for instance. Great black-humored fun as Hayden tries to preserve his bodily fluid from Red contamination, President Peter Sellers tries to stop fighting in the war room and Keenan Wynne shoots a Coke machine (“If you don’t reach the president, you answer to the Coca-Cola Company!”). This special edition comes with a documentary on the film: Among other details revealed, Peter Sellers was going to play the Slim Pickens role of the bomber captain, but realized that four roles (flight officer, president, Dr. Strangelove and then that one) would be pushing it; and Kubrick was sufficiently alarmed Fail-Safe would be the more attractive movie, he launched a lawsuit to put it out of business (I’ve seen it—he needn’t have worried). But it shows the trouble with reconstructing history that while the documentary paints Kubrick as choosing Sellers, another short piece on the disc says he was imposed on Kubrick by the backers. The DVD also includes the original trailer, which is really amazingly well done (but hard to describe). “I reckon you wouldn’t be human beings if you didn’t have strong feelings about nuclear combat.”
SHARPE’S HONOR has Sharpe, still grieving for his dead wife, tricked into dueling an officer by conniving French spy Alice Krige as part of master spy Ducos’ plan to drive the English out of Spain once and for all. With Sharpe supposedly hanged for shooting his foe, Wellington then sends him out on a special mission to spike Ducos’ guns. As always from this TV-movie series, entertaining. “I’m off to commit adultery—lots of it!”
THE LOST ROOM is easily Sci-Fi’s best miniseries (yes, I know I’m setting the bar low, but it’s actually good) as cop Peter Krause discovers a mysterious hotel-room key that when inserted into any door, takes you to a motel room that no longer exists (“Some people say God died in that room.”). It also makes Krause the target of the countless cults, collectors and weirdos gathering the magically-enhanced objects that once sat in the room, with powers ranging from throwing fire to teleporting people to Arizona to perfectly hardboiling an egg (it reminded me a lot of the Friday the 13th TV series, but with much more imagination). And then Krause’s daughter enters the room … and doesn’t come out. Entertainingly weird and imaginative, it’s a shame this didn’t get a sequel (though it’s clearly set up for one)—then again, who knows if it would have worked twice? “For one object to be destroyed another must be created—the conservation of objects.”
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