Review – The Harryhausen Chronicles

Fans of special effects legend Ray Harryhausen will probably enjoy this documentary about his life and work. It’s a little short and more than a little superficial, but it does manage to supply at least some interesting behind-the-scenes insight. The stuff from his early career is especially fascinating, not because it’s outstanding work but because it shows the development of his art through the influence of Willis O’Brien and George Pal, not to mention his own experiments with stop motion. The interviews with Harryhausen are also worth watching. However, most of the rest of it is trivia well familiar to anyone who knows much of anything about the subject. Mildly amusing

Review – Scrooge

Despite dating all the way back to 1951, the Alistair Sim version of Dickens’ most famous work remains the favorite among many audience members, including me. Sure, Sim gets a little carried away at the end when he turns good and all, but he does a delightful job as the nasty Scrooge toward the beginning. This version also includes most if not all of the stock elements without trying to do anything excessively clever with them. Perhaps that’s why it’s endured as well as it has. It’s just the story, nothing more and nothing less. Worth seeing

Review – Missing

Ah, this takes me back to the days when U.S. involvement in South American right wing military coups wasn’t quite the matter of public knowledge it became years after the fact. For that matter, those were also the days when the public might actually be expected to give a crap about U.S. involvement in coups. As usual with Hollywood productions, the tale of the overthrow of Allende is told almost exclusively from the perspective of U.S. citizens. However, in this case it’s done to make a point rather than just to make the story more accessible to domestic audiences. At several points throughout the picture we’re reminded that the protagonist, a middle-aged businessman played by Jack Lemon, wouldn’t be paying any attention to Chilean affairs if his son hadn’t somehow gotten caught up in them and ended up missing. Hey, whatever it takes to get folks to care about what’s being done in their names behind their backs. Though this is a big-budget Hollywood production, it still has much of the look and feel of director Costa-Gavras’s earlier work. Worth seeing

Review – View from the Top

For the first two acts this is a pleasant little piece of fluff about a poor white girl (Gwenyth Paltrow) from small town nowhere trying to break into a more fulfilling life by becoming a flight attendant. Her trip from cheap-ass gambling junket flights to a major airline is full of moments that are entertaining enough in a Beverly Hillbillies kind of way. Even Mike Myers turns in a relatively understated (for him at least) performance as the lead instructor at the flight attendant training academy. But when we make it to Act 3 – in which our heroine confronts her nemesis co-worker and struggles to resolve conflicts between her personal and professional lives – things start to bog down a bit. That’s Hollywood for you. Always disrupting simple comedy with unwelcome message nonsense. Mildly amusing

Review – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Prediction fulfilled. For the most part this is on par with the first two movies in the set. I’ll confess a slight preference for the second one, but that’s at least in part due to the source novel. For instance, the big battle in number two was a lot more compelling than this one. It’s the same epic special effects, but in number three the tide turns in favor of the good guys after they enlist the aid of an unbeatable ghost army, which almost seems like cheating. On the other hand, by now we’re accustomed enough to the characters that they don’t have to work so hard to sell them. In particular, Viggo Mortensen seems to have settled into his role a bit better (or maybe I’m just used to him at this point), and Liv Tyler’s barely in it at all. The plot takes its time getting started, and it takes its time winding down as well. That added to a few slow spots in the middle make this a somewhat questionable choice for kiddie entertainment. Otherwise this is solid Hollywood fantasy film-making just like the first two. Mildly amusing

Review – Life of Brian

Though a lot of Monty Python fans prefer The Holy Grail, this one’s my personal favorite. It might be a name thing, or it might be that I admire the amount of chutzpah it takes to parody the gospels. But on the other hand, it might be my favorite just because it’s an exceptionally funny movie. The stoning sequence is at least semi-legendary. Anyone who’s ever dealt with academics and/or revolutionary wannabes should get a solid kick out of any of the scenes involving the People’s Front of Judea. And of course if you ever had to take Latin (and even if you didn’t) you should get a chuckle out of the graffiti sequence. Then there’s the closing musical number. And then there’s … well, you get the point. It’s the usual collection of Python skit comedy centered around a send-up of the life of Christ. Buy the disc

Review – The Last Samurai

Usual disclaimer: if you don’t like samurai movies as much as I do, you may well walk away with a different opinion of this than I did. However, I enjoyed it a great deal. Like Shogun, it suffers from the inherent weakness of showing Japanese culture in its effect on a westerner rather than strictly on its own terms. On the other hand, it does an excellent job of building respect for traditionalist resistance to the Meiji reformation. Sure it’s one-sided, but at least it’s one-sided on the side opposite the usual American take on the subject. Tom Cruise does a reasonably good job as an Army veteran with PTS from the wars against the Indians who takes a job training imperial Japanese troops to fight an anti-reformation insurgent and his forces. Taken prisoner, Cruise’s character comes to appreciate the merits of samurai training and commitment. Eventually he joins the rebels in their futile fight against cannon and Gattling guns. The fight scenes are well-choreographed, and the cinematography – while not quite up to Kurosawa’s standards – is nonetheless solid. Worth seeing

Review – Gregory’s Girl

Not many directors are good enough to shoot a comedy about the awkwardness of teenage romance and actually pull it off. Fortunately Bill Forsyth is just such a director. Though this is one of his earlier projects, fans of his better-known movies – particularly Local Hero – will recognize Forsyth’s unselfconscious, quirky wit. If I were to try to summarize the plot, I’d describe this as the story of Gregory, a Scottish teen infatuated with the new girl playing on his soccer team. But that makes this sound more like a John Hughes movie, and nothing could be further from the truth. The delight is in the details, the odd little jokes with no attempt at explanation that set this far apart from the countless rounds of Hollywood tedium on the same general subject. My only regret is that I didn’t see this when I was an adolescent, because there were many times in my own younger days when I would have relished a frank acknowledgment that even though the whole high school thing sucked there were at least some times when it wasn’t all that bad. Worth seeing

Review – A Christmas Carol (1938)

Like most television owners who grew up in this society, I’ve seen several versions of Dickens’s best-known story. Of all the productions I’ve seen so far – or at least of all of them that tried to do a straight job of re-telling the story without re-setting it in Las Vegas or re-casting it with Woody Woodpecker or some such – this one is my least favorite. The film-makers appear to have been working with a much shorter running time than usual, and thus they seem to have had some tough choices on what to leave in and what to leave out. The result, unfortunately, comes across as a Cliff’s Notes summary of the tale. And that doesn’t work for me, because my favorite parts tend to be the small touches that each movie does a little differently, or in this case frequently not at all. They’ve also cut out a lot of the character development during the Ghost of Christmas Past part that helps make Scrooge seem less like a cartoon miser and more like a person who might have a normal human need for affection and repentance buried within him somewhere. And even if Jacob Marley doesn’t exactly make or break the whole show, he does at least set the stage. This has got to be the most lackluster Marley I’ve ever seen. Anyone who objects to the wailing, chain-rattling histrionics of the usual portrayal should see this one just so you can get a taste of how bad understating the character can be. See if desperate

Review – The Reagans

I can’t for the life of me see what all the fuss was about. If anything, the folks who made this three hour biography of Ron and Nancy were far too kind to the both of them. For example, they left out the scene where the Gipper made his famous pact with Satan that guaranteed him perpetual popularity despite every rotten thing he ever did to the country. Seriously, the film-makers portrayed Reagan in the most charitable light possible. He’s shown as a kindly old dimwit, an actor who cracked jokes and dished out jellybeans while the people who really controlled the country committed everything from petty stupidity to high treason. Considering the alternative – that he was a brilliant statesman who masterminded everything from record-setting deficits to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of AIDS victims to the sale of weapons to our enemies – the light that shines on him here is more than a little flattering. Honestly, it’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for Alexander Haig. On the other hand, the movie’s reasonably well crafted, particularly for a made-for-TV production. In particular, James Brolin does a solid job as Ronny. Mildly amusing

Review – What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

I’m honestly not quite sure where this movie goes wrong. Actually, it really isn’t even fair to imply that it goes wrong at some point. The script is solid. The actors do a great job, particularly the supporting cast of relative unknowns. Even Leonardo DiCaprio turns in an impressive effort in his big screen breakthrough role, admirable despite the whole actor-earning-points-by-playing-a-mentally-disabled-person thing. I expect the theme – small town boy who may have to forego romance and other personal interests because he’s stuck taking care of his wacky family, particularly mentally damaged brother and drastically overweight mother – will naturally appeal to a fairly large audience. I even liked the production’s quirky sense of humor. I admit I thought it got a little too sentimental in parts, and occasionally quirky fell flat and turned into silliness. But otherwise this wasn’t a bad way to spend a couple of hours. Mildly amusing

Review – Like Water for Chocolate

I suppose if you’re going to make a movie about the joys of adultery you might at least toss in enough quirky humor and fine dining to make it worthwhile. The adultery is excused by the plot point early on that our heroine’s cruel mother prevents her from marrying her true love. Who instead marries her unattractive sister. So I guess that makes it okay. That aside, the characters are engaging and the plot reasonably clever. The writing and direction work well together to add amusing twists and turns to what would otherwise be a tedious Mexican soap opera. Mildly amusing

Review – The Night Porter

Though a bit dated and more than a bit heavy-handed, overall this is an interesting import exploring the relationship between sex and fascism. An ex-Nazi working as a night porter in a hotel is surprised to find out that one of the hotel’s guests is a former inmate at the concentration camp where he worked. Further, he had a kinky sexual relationship with her, a relationship they resume after some initial awkwardness. But all is not well in sadomasochistic paradise; our protagonist is also on the verge of being cleared by the courts, officially declared a non-Nazi. His old SS buddies want this to happen, and they’re willing to kill any and all potential witnesses who might make things go awry. Unfortunately that sets them about the task of eliminating his sex partner. As art flicks about obsessive attraction go, I’ve seen a lot worse. However, the story gets stale awhile before the director runs out of film, and the graphic sex and violence don’t quite manage to prop it up. Mildly amusing

Review – Gothika

Here’s one Halle Berry’s may want to buy up and hide at some point later in her career (assuming she’s got any money left over from buying up Die Another Day). I liked Dark Castle’s remake of House on Haunted Hill, but ever since then they’ve gone downhill. And this one’s no exception. The story here is a trite bit of fluff about a psychiatrist who ends up in her own mental institution. Everyone thinks she’s crazy, but actually she’s in touch with a vengeful spirit who wants something or other from her. The protagonist’s efforts to unravel the mystery don’t keep the movie going for its full running time. As usual with mid-budget horror movies, this one’s got a fair number of booga-booga shots, some of which work and some of which don’t. Mildly amusing

Review – Mishima

Aficionados of the outré Japanese author should find this outré biography of Yukio Mishima quite entertaining. Director Paul Schrader interweaves three narratives into one: a fairly straightforward biography of the author, a recreation of the events leading up to his sensational suicide, and a triptych of stylized dramatizations of three of his books. It goes without saying that the homosexual sadomasochism and Japanese nationalist militarism are laid on fairly thick. But even if you’re among the many who – quite rightly – find Mishima’s life and work depressing, this production’s still worth it for the art direction alone. Worth seeing

Review – The Razor’s Edge (1984)

Anyone who’s read the source novel must immediately be charged with a simple task: abandon the notion that the movie is based in any meaningful way on the book. Once you’ve got that thought out of your head, you should find it a lot easier to relax and enjoy the show. In a way it’s odd that Bill Murray – who supposedly loved Maugham’s novel so much that he took a role he didn’t want in order to get the studio to back this production – would stray so far from the original work. Of course some simplification was necessary. But changing the story into Larry Darrell, The Motion Picture seemed like a strange thing to do, unless of course one has an ego big enough to play Darrell to begin with, let alone feature him even more prominently than Maugham did. It doesn’t help that Murray – despite obvious effort on his part – seems constantly on the verge of reverting to his usual persona. Every time Darrell is called upon to say something profound, I found myself waiting with dread to find out if Murray would deliver the line or let fly with “Zooly you nut, let me talk to Dana.” Those problems aside, however, this is a reasonably entertaining tale of a man seeking and finding spiritual enlightenment during an age in which the stuff was in short supply. Mildly amusing

Review – The Killing Fields

It seems a profound shame that Sidney Schanberg has to be such a major character in Sidney Schanberg’s account of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975. It isn’t that his story is dull; quite the contrary. Sam Waterston does a solid job portraying the journalist’s transition from arrogant foreign correspondent to human being deeply concerned about a missing friend (of course no end of twists and turns bring about the change, but that’s a story best told by the movie itself). It’s just that the story going around the reporter and his friend is so large that it can’t help but overpower one American’s crisis of conscience. This conflict is also mirrored in the music, which is often needlessly dramatic at points when a simple, straightforward re-creation of events (perhaps even with no music at all) would have sufficed. As with most movies created either by director Roland Joffe or producer David Puttnam, it’s way better than most of Hollywood’s more recent product. It’s just not a finest moment for either of them. Worth seeing