Review - Cats

 This whole thing has a fascinating downward arc. It started with actual cats, which of course are excellent. Then in 1939 T.S. Eliot wrote Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The poetry collection was entertaining enough, though surprisingly twee coming from one of the godfathers of moody modernism. In 1981 Andrew Lloyd Webber turned Eliot’s poems into a popular musical that – for better or worse – revolutionized the portrayal of felines by people in leotards. And now this. Despite the opportunity presented by nearly 40 years passing between the stage production and this screen adaptation, many of the artistic decisions seem ill-considered. The story leads off with an act of animal abuse. The effects, makeup and costuming create things that look neither like cats nor like people but rather some horrid hybrid designed to appeal only to audience members with a highly specific fetish. Technical problems abound; most noticeable is the characters’ scale variation from nearly human size to cat size to hamster size. With the assembled ensemble of talented singers, dancers and actors, a much better movie should have been made. See if desperate.

Review – Prosecuting Evil

As a young attorney in the Army in 1945, Ben Ferencz was part of the team that set up documentation of war crimes. Then he served as a prosecutor during the post-war Nuremberg trials. He was later instrumental in the creation of the International Criminal Court. Do I even have to tell you that this documentary about his life is absolutely fascinating? Worth seeing

Review – Fantasy Island

As a childhood fan of the putative source material for this movie, I was expecting something else. Clearly I didn’t imagine the return of Ricardo Montalban and Hervé Villechaize, especially given that they’re both dead. But I didn’t imagine a mean-spirited “be careful what you wish for” with definite Saw overtones either. Because if I had imagined that at the outset, I could have imagined something else to watch. See if desperate