Ghost Town

Ghost Town delivers the otherworldly goods. This is as good and as classic a film as Topper, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Heaven Can Wait or anything else you wish to shake a stick at. There's even a similarity to the character arc of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, another classic American comedy.
You know how if someone is a real asshole they think that everyone else is an asshole? That's the problem with Greg Kinnear (Frank) when we first meet him talking on his cell to his wife, then yelling at his realtor who thought his wife was his mistress. A second later he's hit by a bus. Not quite one of those Meet Joe Black car accidents and yet not quite the school bus hitting the chick in Mean Girls.
"Is he dead?"
"He's not happy," someone replies.
Frank is now a ghost and since ghosts wear what they were wearing when they die Kinnear goes through the entire film in a formal suit with bow tie. In order to unbind himself from the mortal coil, in this case a picturesque Manhattan, he enlists the aid of Ricky Gervais (dentist Dr. Pincus) who apparently can see ghosts after he died for a few minutes during a routine operation.
Frank wants Dr, Pincus to woo his wife (Tea Leoni) away from a lawyer who's her new beau. Only Dr. Pincus now has every ghost in NYC chasing him and asking for favors. Too bad Pincus is a bit of a misanthrope or as his next door dentist describes him "a fucking prick."
Ghost Town was written and directed by David Koepp and the alternating current of laughter and compassion makes this a big crowd pleaser. It's easy enough to see where the film will end up, but when Pincus actually starts helping the ghosts there won't be a dry eye in the house.
Not oddly, Koepp's first directorial effort was The Trigger Effect, a movie about what happens when the power goes out on a massive scale. Something to which anybody in Houston can truly relate. Koepp has written several Hollywood blockbusters helmed by top names, but has also written and directed four films himself, Ghost Town being the latest. The Trigger Effect examines the anarchy that breaks out when a mysterious electric failure forces suburbanites to head for the hills. When the film came out in 1996, the very weekend it was released there was indeed a power failure that shut down the entire West Coast.

I Served the King of England

I Served the King of England comes from the Czech Republic but spins a fable set in Czechoslovakia. World class director Jiri Menzel has made a film that, with its overt symbolism, copious nudity and love of the common man, moves like it was made in the 60s. Fans of classic cinema will embrace ISTKOE yet it seems like a throwback to a different era of movie making.
The lead is played by two people, young Jan (Ivan Barnev) and old Jan (Oldrich Kaiser). Old Jan flashes back to his youth as the story illustrates the changes in government under the Nazis and then under the Communists.
Young Jan works as a waiter at swank hotels and bordellos throughout the kingdom and his fortunes are blessed at first. The maître d' proclaims that he served the King of England. When the maître d' is too tall for the King of Abyssinia to crown with an honorary award the pendant goes to Jan. Eventually Jan earns the wrath of his countrymen when he sides with a voluptuous German femme, herself part of the Sudeten/German restructuring of Czechoslovakia but it's nothing like the harsh treatment he's delivered once the war is over and now as a hotel owner and millionaire he must turn his possessions over to the state and serve prison time.
There's a lyrical bounce that permeates the film. Many of the scenes have geometric composition. For instance, many waiters lined up behind each dignitary at a lengthy table, each pouring a glass of wine one after the other takes on the choreography of a Busby Berkeley musical number. There's a romantic tone to many of the scenes. The lighting is usually comedy bright and golden. In the end it's a fable with a moral twist. Menzel adapted the story from the book by Bohumil Hrabal.