The Double Feature Weekly Wrap-up, 7/15/12

Welcome to this week's edition of  the Double Feature Weekly Wrap-up! A couple of tough ones this week but I think I made good choices in the end. Here are my self-imposed rules - rules I admittedly broke this week, but still....

1. No pairing of sequels. Obviously Watching Iron Man 2 with Iron Man would  be a good double feature, but that's so obvious I don't think it should count. Same with pairing it with another film in the Avengers series.
2. No pairing remakes with originals. Yes, it's tempting to pair the new Arthur with the original, but again that's too obvious.
3. No pairings with the same director or lead actor unless a REALLY persuasive case can be made.

So, without further ado, here's my double-feature pairings for the week:

• Safe House - This Ryan Reynolds/Denzel Washington action thriller has great acting and action but it's terribly predictable. All the reviewers at Netflix compared it to The Bourne trilogy, but watching this made me think of Hanna, an action thriller about another unlikely spy-hero against a seemingly unstoppable force.
• Vertigo - This Hitchcock thriller starring James Stewart is just perfect in pretty much every way. I know I said no matches with the same director or star, but this really needs to be watched with Hitchcock's Rear Window. Can you blame me for this? I think not!
• 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance - Haneke's experimental film crafts a brilliant story in a non-linear style with unconventional camerawork. Pair this with Look, another experimental film that solely uses shots from surveillance cameras to tell it's story. You'll thank for for this one - I don't think anyone really saw Look and it's truly brilliant. 
• Seven Up/Seven Plus Seven - Michael Apted began this documentary series in 1964, where he began checking in with his fourteen subjects every seven years. This disc has the first two films shot at ages seven and fourteen. Pair this first installment with Babies, a wonderful documentary that tracks the lives of four babies from vastly different geographical areas for the first four years of their lives.
• 21 Up - This second installment of the UP series checks in with Apted's subjects fourteen years from the first film at age twenty-one. This one would pair nicely with Born Rich, Jamie Johnson's documentary about the children of the extremely wealthy.
• Big Nothing - This squalid comedy tells the story of a reluctant criminal who finds himself committing a crime spree almost against his will. At it's core, this is just a poorly told version of Heathers, the cult hit with a similar plot and tone (except SO much better!).

Well, that's it for this week! Happy movie watching!