You Should Watch This: SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS
I honestly don’t know if this is something that I am going to do as a continuing thing, but I decided to start writing down my recommendations for lesser known or vaguely remembered films that deserve to be watched, so that people might actually remember that I said, “Hey, this movie is good.”
SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS
It’s a darkly comic mind bomb about a national lottery where six regular Americans are chosen to fight to the death on a reality TV show. It’s the seventh series and the champion, the last survivor of the previous series, has to continue until either they win three series or die. The redoubtable Brooke Smith plays the current champion, Dawn Lagarto, who is in the last stages of pregnancy. It’s written and directed by Daniel Minahan, who has spent the last two decades directing shows like Game of Thrones, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, and True Blood. He has also directed a number of episodes of Halston. It also stars Connie Trabucco, Jeffrey Norman, Anthony Reilly, Franklin James, Lindsay Berns.
Seriously, it’s really good. You should watch it. It’s not on streaming and out of print, but there’s a copy on YouTube. Somebody should give it a Blu Ray release. I mean, look at this picture. I love that Brooke Smith, who’s a great actress, is the lead and a stone cold killer who is heavily pregnant, smart as Hell, and, yes, still has a heart. This is for all those guys, like David Hemmings' character Marcus in DEEP RED, who go on about how soft and gentle women are.
Ha.
