Susan Granger’s VIDEO UPDATE for week of Friday, June 9th:
If you’ve got a taste for the eccentric, there’s Errol Morris’s sinister documentary “Mr. Death” about Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., a self-styled engineer who designs electrocution equipment. In the ’80s, he became the dupe of a neo-Nazi, Ernest Zunder, who hired him to visit Auschwitz and disprove the use of poison gas by the Nazis, thereby denying the existence of the Holocaust.
Writer/rapper/actor Ice Cube stars in “Next Friday,” a sequel aimed at the young, hip, urban audience, while “Backlash” is a suspense thriller about a hotshot federal prosecutor (Tracey Needham) who goes after a Colombian drug cartel with fatal repercussions. With the help of a homicide detective (Charles Durning), she uncovers a high-level government conspiracy and the only man who can save her is a convict (James Belushi).
There are four new “Taxi” videos featuring Andy Kaufman, the real “Man on the Moon,” plus “Andy Kaufman Plays Carnegie Hall.” They’re a tribute to the man whose comic genius influenced a generation of performers, blurring the lines between traditional comedy and avant-garde performance art.
For foreign film fans, there’s “The Eel,” Shohei Inamura’s sly, deceptively simple comedy about a Japanese man (Koji Yakusho) who kills his unfaithful wife and her lover and emerges from prison eight years later with an eel. He adores his pet because…”he listens to what I say…he doesn’t say what I don’t want to hear.”
PICK OF THE WEEK: “Girl Interrupted” is an episodic memoir, showcasing the acting talents of Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie as self-indulgent inmates at Claymoore, an upscale psychiatric hospital during the ’60s. Jolie won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance.