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