Tuesday, November 24, 2009

A Wonderful Little Film We Almost Missed ...

I'm a regular visitor to the video rental store ... and I regularly read every shelf of the 'new releases.' This past week, my search brought me to a wonderful little film I'd never heard of.

Nothing outrageous about THAT, really. There are a lot of films that don't make it to Midland-Odessa theaters, or make it into the pages of local media reviews ... that's why I read the shelves of new release so carefully, every week or so.

But you'd think a film starring Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman, William H. Macy and Marcia Gay Harden - all four of them Oscar nominees, and three of them Oscar winners - would have generated SOME buzz.

Submitted for your consideration,
The Maiden Heist ...

... a comedy centered on three museum security guards (Walken, Freeman and Macy) who devise a plan to steal the artworks to which they have become attached over the years, when they learn the collection will be transferred overseas to another museum.

According to
the film's write-up on Wikipedia, it had a tentative release date of May 29, 2009, before being shelved following the bankruptcy of its distributor, Yari Film Group. It made it to the large screen in June of this year, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, before going straight to DVD this month ... and to our television at home, where both My Favorite Landman and I enjoyed it, and planned to rent a copy of The Accidental Husband, a romantic comedy starring Uma Thurman, Jeffrey Morgan and Colin Firth that showed in British theaters, but disappeared into that same Yari bankruptcy void before it could cross the pond to American theaters, instead going direct to DVD.

3 comments:

Geo said...

Thanks for that review. TMH looks like a pretty good movie.

William Macy is such a tremendous actor. I watched "The Informant" recently, and it sure looked like Matt Damon was doing a William H. Macy "Fargo" impersonation.

Geo said...

Just looked at the IMDB site for Accidental Husband, and that looks like a good one, too.

Good eye, Jeff. Keep up the good work.

Jeff said...

Thank you, George, I will. And thank YOU for the feedback ... I share your tremendous appreciation for Macy, and what he brings to his roles.