Seconds (with Lexi Amoriello)

Lexi Amoriello, creator of Movie Recs by Lex, visits the Oubliette and returns with Seconds – made in 1966 by John Frankenheimer, fresh off the Cold War fever dreams of The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, and here pairing up with the great James Wong Howe for one last, extraordinary black-and-white swan song apiece. Seconds is the sort of film that genre fans tend to discover a decade after everyone insists it was always a classic, largely because it wasn't: it was booed at Cannes, quietly dumped by Paramount, and left to rot for 30 years before Criterion and the National Film Registry got around to correcting the record. Adapted by Lewis John Carlino from David Ely's 1963 novel, it asks a disarmingly simple question: what if you could buy a second life, no strings attached? With a truly game Rock Hudson doing career-best work as the walking punchline to that question, the film spends the rest of its runtime methodically proving that there is, in fact, always a string attached. But does it deserve a second chance beyond the Oubliette? Find out!

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