Double feature of the week: Small Town Murder

This is the week of the 11^th Annual Phoenix Film Festival. One of the films I got to catch was a very good Canadian film starring Peter Stormare (Fargo) called “Small Town Murder Songs.” It had a great mood, established and maintained throughout by some amazing music from the band Bruce Peninsula. So I would suggest you keep a lookout for this one. I believe it has already secured distribution and we should see a DVD release at some point. Well in reference to that film, I decided this week would be a good week for a double feature of small town murder films.


'Where is pancake house?'

Our first film is from South Korea’s most famous director, Joon-ho Bong. “Memories of Murder” (2003) is about a small Korean village’s first and only serial killer. The two local detectives are using primarily backwoods techniques and getting no result. A new detective is brought in from Seoul to help but the case proves to be much tougher than anyone had predicted. Joon-ho’s tense direction gives this film a tone of suspense that we have grown accustomed to doing without from Hollywood. At times this film is humorous, even downright silly, but it never fails to come back to its most basic feeling of neo-noir murder mystery.

Our next film is truly a modern classic. Edgar Wright’s “Hot Fuzz” (2007) actually is still my favorite of his three features. “Sean of the Dead” is great and I really enjoyed “Scott Pilgrim” but this one still takes the cake for me. I feel like with any great satire, the humor works best when the author of the joke has respect for what he’s making fun of. This is clearly the case with this film. Make no mistake, “Bad Boys 2” and “Point Break” are poked fun at plenty here. But as we discover in the end, the filmmaker wanted nothing more than to pay homage to the films he has probably watched hundreds of times. If anything, this film proves that over the top, ridiculous action can be intentionally funny….. Not just ironically (Michael Bay) funny.

Enjoy.