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For this Friday Movie Night, first up is Underground (1995), a Serbian black comedy about a pair of friends who join the Communist partisans during WW2; after the war, one becomes a party bureaucrat, while the other hides in a bunker for decades until re-emerging in the 1990s, during the Yugoslav Wars. Darkly comedic antics ensue along the way. This won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1995 and is currently ranked at #188 on Letterboxd’s Top 250 films of all time. Director is Emir Kusturica, whose wedding comedy Black Cat White Cat (1998) we previously watched; this is generally considered his magnum opus.

After that is The Gunfighter (1950), a Western starring Gregory Peck who wants to leave his reputation as Fastest Gun in the West behind. Unfortunately for him, his old beau wants nothing to do with him, and bad guys keep hounding him at every turn. Can’t he just live a peaceful life? Not in this movie. This is more-or-less an anti-Western that deconstructs the whole cowboy archetype, and one of the earlier films of its kind; here, instead of a build-up to a big gunfight, the main character just wants to stay out of it, but it comes to him anyway. Considered one of the best Westerns of the 1950s, and the best film of director Henry King, who otherwise did a whole bunch of middling studio fare.

We’ll start at 8PM EST on Hextube, right here:

https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies

Be there, comrades!