By Tim Lucas
Published by BearManor Media
A while back we reviewed a collection of film criticism by Tim Lucas and pronounced it good. At hand today is yet another collection of film criticism by Tim Lucas and we pronounce it even better!
As before, by way of full disclosure, I should point out that I have known and admired Tim Lucas for several decades, although we’ve never been close friends. His late wife Donna used to sell me tickets to Cincinnati’s RKO Albee theater back in the 1970s. This book is dedicated to her.
Pause. Rewind. Obsess. is subtitled “One Man’s One-Year Escape into Cinema (2012).” The reviews contained herein are from a blog he maintained briefly a little more than a dozen years back.
As he emphasizes in his Introduction, the titles themselves are certainly not all from 2012.
In fact, few of them are.
Instead, what we get is a wonderfully eclectic collection of cult films and classics, of hit films and flops, of documentaries and art films, of all-American films and foreign pictures, of A. B, and Z grade films. If the reader is familiar with Lucas’s long-running (and much-lamented) Video Watchdog magazine, you’ll recognize his wide-ranging tastes and his style.
He writes always from a learned and intelligent point of view, treating all types of films with the same levels of respect, whether or not he thinks they’re good films. He calls ‘em as he sees ‘em, too, with very few movies considered all bad or all good.
As a film buff of long standing, I can humbly but honestly say I’m more familiar with a lot of this stuff than the average reader but one of the things I liked best about Video Watchdog is that every single issue introduced me to films or filmmakers I did not know. Pause. Rewind. Obsess. similarly offers a choice mix of old favorites and new-to-me suggestions.
Some true favorite films of mine that are reviewed include Horror of Dracula, It’s a Gift, Yellow Submarine, Suspiria, Charade, Joe Dante’s Movie Orgy, Sherlock Jr, Help!, A Face in the Crowd, Frankenstein, Dracula, and House of Dark Shadows.
House of Dark Shadows was the first film I ever saw at a drive-in back in the day and it has a special place in my memory. Tim rips it apart fairly and accurately but unmercifully. He points out its numerous flaws and mis-steps, its poor editing and over-goriness. Even then, though, he shows an understanding of its appeal and its nostalgic connection to the TV serial that inspired it.
Lesser films here that I quite like include some Hammer pictures, some spaghetti westerns, some blacksploitation, 1970s drive-in flicks, a few Tarantino pictures and even some still relatively recent superhero films like Kick-Ass and the early Marvel movies.
Unfamiliar films I now wish to watch include, among others, The Couch (1962), The Crazy Kids of the War (1967), the 1980 Fantomas films, Footprints (2009), and Harry Brown (2009).
I guess the important thing about Pause. Rewind. Obsess. or any book of Tim Lucas’s film reviews is that Lucas has ascended to a level of being above reproach. One may disagree with his reviews—as I often do—but he has earned the respect of movie aficionados everywhere for his smart, clever, and endearing writing.
Pause. Rewind. Obsess. is said to be the second in a series of such collections from Bear Manor Media, all of which will likely be just as enjoyable. Perhaps down the line, we’ll even get edited versions of some of Lucas’s many award-winning motion picture DVD and Blu-Ray commentaries. That could be fun!
Booksteve recommends.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login