Movies Seen Recently: The I Inside, Prescription: Murder, Groundhog Day

The I Inside (2004) – Waking up in the hospital is disorienting for anyone.  Waking up to be told that it’s two years later than you thought is a lot worse.  And waking up to be told that you’ve been living an active life since you last remember — both getting married and having an affair, not to mention possibly killing your brother — is worse still.  And then throw in one of those open-backed hospital gowns? THE WORST.

Simon Cable is supposed to be an enviable rich young heir and playboy, but awakening in the middle of a life he doesn’t know sure takes the gleam off that chrome.  But then — because you know it’s got to get even more complicated — he finds himself back two years ago, the LAST time he was in this particular hospital after a car accident, before any of that stuff was supposed to happen.  And then, when he discovers that things he does in the two-years-ago frame can affect things in the two-years-later frame when he randomly flips back and forth…

It’s a fun little puzzler, which stays focused on a small cast and limited locations without feeling hemmed in.  Recommended.

Prescription: Murder (1968) – Here’s stuff I didn’t know: The first TV appearance of Lt. Columbo, as played by the inimitable Peter Falk, was not actually the first iteration of the character. Waaay back, this teleplay began as a 1960 installment of The Chevy Mystery Show called “Enough Rope,” with Hollywood workhorse Bret Freed (the police chief from the original Invaders From Mars) as Columbo.  It was then turned into a play bound for Broadway, but before it could be mounted, the star, recognizable Hollywood character actor Thomas Mitchell, died in 1962.  So it bounced around a while longer, became a TV-movie script, and the Columbo role was offered to a few known quantities like Bing Crosby and Lee J. Cobb before it landed with the relatively unknown Falk.  The character (and actor) was such a smash that a second TV-movie came along a couple of years later, followed by the regular series of several-per-year TV-movies.

Oh, this movie itself?  Pretty good.  It established the “open mystery” format that the series maintained, as well as painting Columbo as the intentionally unthreatening investigator that wanna-be criminal masterminds would continually underestimate.  Because this outing was conceived as a one-off, though, Columbo is allowed to turn a bit harder-edged in the second half, willing to show his mettle in instances when his camouflage of incompetence won’t get the desired results.

Groundhog Day (1993) – It’s been enough years (decades?) since I last saw this that I had forgotten most of it. Oh, I still remembered the premise, and some isolated scenes, and I remembered that the upshot was that Bill Murray’s character became a happy and fulfilled man, but I had forgotten the remarkable “everyman” parable that this is. Freed from the consequences of his actions, he first tries to find happiness in pleasure, even hedonism… but that ultimately rings hollow, as it does, leading him to an Orphean descent of despondency (or crawling through Satan’s buttcrack, if you prefer more Renaissance metaphors), because there actually are still consequences, to himself.  It is only when he becomes selfless — not in the Buddhist sense of achieving nirvana by negating the self, but in the Christian sense of living for the service of others — that he becomes truly happy.  When he has made that one day the most perfect it can be, then he is free to live the next day.

Abandoned movies: Z.P.G., Equilibrium, Final Days of Planet Earth