Finding Dory Movie Review

The Pixar Animation Studio has been a little hit or miss with their sequels. The two Toy Story follow-ups are stellar, but Cars 2 doesn’t even measure up to its predecessor, which wasn’t great to begin with. Monsters University carried on the story in a really interesting way, going back to show us how Mike and sully got where they were. It enriches Monsters, Inc. So who knew what to expect with Finding Dory? The biggest error of Cars 2 was the belief that a great supporting character could be the centerpiece of a movie. Dory Added so much to Finding Nemo and she was the most beloved character there. But could her short term memory loss affliction carry an entire movie?

From My Collection: Swiss Family Robinson Movie Review

So as my son gets older I find myself wanting to introduce him to the films I found to be magical experiences when I was a boy. And so he’s seen the Star Wars trilogy and E.T. and The Wizard of Oz. But there’s one that I loved that was perhaps less well-known, certainly less popular compared to those blockbuster classics. Disney’s live action adventure Swiss Family Robinson won’t be making anyone’s list of the greatest films, but boy is it fun!

This movie has everything: a shipwreck; exotic locations; a menagerie of incredible animals; pirates; guns; coconut bombs; and the coolest fucking treehouse you’ve ever seen. That treehouse is so awesome, so wondrous that it became a beloved attraction at both Disneyland and The Magic Kingdom theme parks.

Romancing the Stone Movie Review

The movies you loved as a kid sometimes turn out to be classics (i.e. Back to the Future and Star Wars) while others, it turns out, were really just not very good. Ah, the undiscerning view from a child’s perspective. When you’re a kid, a movie is good or not because it has excitement, adventures, romance, and comedy. For some adults I guess that never changes. Before Robert Zemeckis directed Back to the Future, he had a big commercial success in Romancing the Stone, a sort of Raiders of the Lost Ark knock-off starring Kathleen Turner as a dowdy romance novelist and Michael Douglas as a roughneck who saves her in the jungles of Colombia.

Classic Movie Review: King Kong

One of the great pleasures of revisiting the really old classics is to see how concise Hollywood storytelling used to be. Watching the original King Kong from 1933, directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack and written by James Creelaman and Ruth Rose, I was amazed by how much adventure is packed into such a tight timeframe. It’s a little more than half the running time of Peter Jackson’s bloated remake from 2005, but their stories are virtually identical and most of the set pieces have the same basis.

Modern Classic Movie Review: Aladdin

It had been a very long time since I’d last seen Disney’s Aladdin. I was inspired to take another look at it because of the tragically too soon death of Robin Williams a few months ago. I’m not sure there’s any other Disney animated film that leans so heavily on the voice talent of one particular actor the way Aladdin does. That’s not to say it has nothing else going for it, but Williams’ voice work as the genie is so memorable, it’s hard not to think of the film as a Robin Williams vehicle rather than one in  long and proud tradition of animated feature films.

Silent Classic Movie Review: The Thief of Bagdad

Douglas Fairbanks was the original big screen cinematic swashbuckler. By the time he starred in and co-wrote The Thief of Bagdad – which is perhaps his greatest achievement – he had already played Robin Hood, D’Artagnan, and Zorro. To play a title character in a story from the 1,001 Arabian Nights was just icing on the cake. Two years ago I enjoyed Fairbanks in Robin Hood along with live musical accompaniment. At the time, I thought that movie was an impressive feat of sets, action, and stunts, but then The Thief of Bagdad, quite frankly, dwarfs it in scope.

Short Cut Movie Review: The Croods

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

I can’t figure out how The Croods, an animated film from Dreamworks, was nominated for the Oscar for Animated Feature over a couple of other options that were demonstrably better movies.

Emma Stone voices Eep, a typical American teenager in most respects excepting the fact that she lives in prehistoric caveman days. She whines and complains about not being able to leave the cave at night, her family is a real drag, and she goes bonkers over some new shoes. Her dad, Grug (Nicolas Cage) is an excessive worrier. Ugga (Catherine Keener) is the mom who goes along to get alone. Cloris Leachman is Gran, the hanger-on in the family, and Clark Duke is the dim-witted son, Thunk.

Epic Movie Review

One of the better (as in just above average) offerings in this last weak year for American animated features is Epic. It’s a largely derivative eco-conscious storyline that brings to mind Avatar by way of Ferngully with a touch of Alice in Wonderland. The characters aren’t entirely memorable, but there’s enough here that’s commendable that it’s not worth dismissing. How’s that for faint praise?

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Movie Review

Each of these dwarfs is just like the others...

As if the first chapter weren’t already interminable enough, the second part of The Hobbit has arrived. This one, subtitled The Desolation of Smaug, is the insufferable middle section of a trilogy that had no business being, at most, a single three hour movie. Like The Two Towers a decade ago, it’s a movie without beginning or conclusion and so it just feels like you’re awash in stuff that happens to characters. Only it’s far worse than The Two Towers because that was at least based on a book of its own whereas this is from part of a single book with lots of additional crap thrown in.

Short Cut Movie Review: Kon-Tiki

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

This is what happens when foreign filmmakers try to replicate big Hollywood storytelling, but fall just a tad short. Yes, this is the most expensive movie in Norwegian history, but its budget still pales in comparison to the studios. Directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg try their hand at epic adventure filmmaking. The calculation worked because the Academy fell for it and nominated it for the Oscar.

The true story of a Norse adventurer who set out to drift across the Pacific on a balsa wood raft is not new to the Oscars, however. The documentary on the subject won the award more than 60 years ago. Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen) wanted to prove (or demonstrate the possibility) that Polynesia was settled by travelers from South America and not, as science at the time believe, from Asia. The problem is that the Incas didn’t have ships. So Heyerdahl enlisted a crew of five, they built a raft using only materials available to the ancient Incans and they set out.

This is a typical story of a man with singleness of purpose, so driven that he loses his family in the process. You might be fooled by the Norwegian dialogue into thinking you’re watching a great movie. It looks good and all, but it’s really mediocre. I was put off by some early scenes of stilted pretension and poor writing. If this movie were in English hardly anyone would give it a second thought.

From My Collection - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Movie Review

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy must pack so much into those novels that it’s a minor miracle they were ever made into successful films. I’ve never read the books, of course, but you get a sense by the third installment of director Peter Jackson’s epic trilogy of adaptations that the final book is replete with an abundance of minor and secondary characters all requiring a closing to their arcs. The effect is a film that is bloated and overblown, but at the same time a visual wallop and a great piece of entertainment filmmaking.

From My Collection - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Movie Review

Eowyn tests Aragorn's fealty to his beloved in The Two Towers.

As much as I loved The Fellowship of the Ring is as disappointed as I was in The Two Towers. Except in its magnificent closing epic battle, it failed to inspire a sense of awe. Everything I admired about the first film was largely absent in the second. This includes the focused storytelling that had as its centerpiece a group of men on a quest. Now the fellowship was fractured, it felt like three different stories. And the toggling back and forth left me feeling impatient and restless. I don't know that there was any way for screenwriters Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Fran Walsh to get around that. It's a style of 'cutting' that works fine in the format of a novel, but for a three hour plus film it grows tedious.

From My Collection - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Movie Review

More than anything, I want movies to surprise me. I want to see something that I haven’t seen before, or see an old story presented in a unique way. I want my expectations to be exceeded. I never read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I wasn’t interested as a child. To this day, the genre of fantasy fiction doesn’t particularly appeal to me. In December 2001 I went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring because it was expected to be one of the biggest movies of the year. It was the subject of countless magazine and newspaper articles about the 15 month shooting schedule in New Zealand with Peter Jackson painstakingly creating a world on film that was already known to millions of loyal fans of the novels. I walked out of the theater both exceedingly surprised and deeply moved by both the story and the unbelievable craftsmanship involved in the making of the film.

Pixar's Brave Movie Review

Feature animation princess stories have long been the purview of Disney films. Those of us who are weary of the wholesome inoffensive entertainments they have created over the years had Pixar to turn to starting in the mid 90s. Not that Pixar’s films have been so subversive, but their consistently creative writing staff has at least attempted to honestly provide stories that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike. Their latest effort, Brave, feels more like a Disney animated film than any of Pixar’s previous 12 feature films.

Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood Movie Review

Apparently rentals of silent films have spiked since The Artist won the Best Picture Oscar last week. If you want to see where Jean Dujardin found the inspiration for his character of George Valentin, look to the classic silent film actor Douglas Fairbanks. Fairbanks was the original swashbuckler costume adventure hero to become a major star. He started in comic roles and then transitioned to adventure films with The Mark of Zorro in 1920, but one of his most impressive outings has to be Robin Hood from 1922.

The Adventures of Tintin Movie Review: Tintin, We Welcome You to America

The opening credits of Steven Spielberg’s motion capture animation The Adventures of Tintin is probably the most exciting opening credits since the same director’s Catch Me If You Can. The title designs are similar, both based on the classic Hollywood work of Saul Bass with spritely jazz compositions by the great film composer John Williams. His Tintin opening theme highlights such instruments as are not often heard in orchestras, but which lend themselves credibly to the time period (1930s) and setting (Europe) of the “Tintin” stories. Amid the fluttering flutes, dancing clarinets and staccato brass we hear accordion, harpsichord and bells all featured prominently. It’s a sequence that offers the promise of excitement and adventure to come. It’s been a long time since I had that feeling in the first moments of a movie. Unfortunately, what followed turned out to be a slight letdown.

Cult Classic Movie Review: Army of Darkness

This is my BOOMstick!

This review is based on the Director's Cut DVD I own, a disappointingly poor transfer with additional and alternate scenes, most of which don't match film grade, spliced in.


Army of Darkness is the end result of what happens when a group of friends makes a marginally successful cult film and then a major studio gives them a serious budget for a sequel. It is the sequel to Evil Dead II, itself more a remake than a sequel of Evil Dead. It is what happens when a series of sight gags mostly inspired by "The Three Stooges" get stretched too thin until it lies gasping for air on the floor. Okay, I'm exaggerating to an extent, but I found myself a little bit bored through most of the final half hour.

It more or less follows on from where the previous film left off – with Ash (still portrayed by the dashing, self flagellating Bruce Campbell) being thrown back to the Middle Ages where he is prophesied to deliver the kingdom from evil.

Shrek Forever After Movie Review: A Dying Franchise Gets a Final Reprieve

Puss let himself go a little bit

What is it about the shift from bachelorhood to family man that makes men suddenly wake up one day and wonder how they got themselves into a lifestyle that is the complete opposite to what they imagined as young men? Mid-life crises are often exploited for dramatic purposes and there are more than enough real-life examples of men who leave their wives for a younger woman or just an exciting fling. There must be something hard-wired in men that causes them to seemingly leap from the single life to married-with-children with little to no consideration for the intervening years.

Pixar's Up Movie Review

You have to wonder just how Pixar Animation Studios manages to churn out hit after hit – and not just money-making successes with highly profitable merchandising tie-ins, but quality animated works that never pander and are always thoughtful, interesting films even for the adults who accompany their children (or even those who just enjoy a well told story).

Robin Hood Movie Review: Get Ready for Robin Hood 2

I’m 32 years old now and it’s time for me to put away childish things. One of those is the idea that Ridley Scott, the visionary director of Alien and Blade Runner, will ever return to the kind of inspired filmmaker that started his career. Or will he continue being a Hollywood director-for-hire of genre pictures. Come to think of it, those two early films of his were genre pictures: slasher and science fiction, respectively. Since then he’s made fantasy, road movie, epic, thriller, war and romantic comedy, often with little critical success, but massive box office results which is probably his reason for continuing in this vein.

I liked Robin Hood a lot better when I was 13 years old and it starred Kevin Costner. Not that the newly updated version directed by Scott from a screenplay by Brian Helgeland from a story by Helgeland, Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris is all bad. And certainly not to suggest that the previous film was really good. The logical question to ask is, Why another film version of the Robin Hood legend?

The answer is that Hollywood loves returning to the same well again and again. Another possible reason is that this one, though it takes place at the turn of the 14th century, contemporizes the background elements. King Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston) is returning home from the crusades via France and sacking castles that stand in his way. The man who will later become Robin Hood is a mere archer for hire in his army, known initially as Robin Lonstride and played with typical brooding and smoldering intensity by Russell Crowe.

Unlike previous depictions of Richard I in this legendary tale, this one is more up front about the nature of The Crusades. They do not shy away from Richard’s nature, the fact that he went on an ostensibly religious mission to convert the pagans of The Holy Land to Christianity, impoverishing his own country in the process. Robin, of course, is established early on as morally virtuous, despite his involvement in the wholesale slaughter of Arabs. He relates to the king a moment during a massacre when a woman looked up at him not with fear or hatred, but with pity. Robin has the gall to stand face to face with the King and tell him that his Crusade was wrong. This doesn’t work out so well for Robin.

While I don’t think the screenwriters necessarily intend to draw a parallel between England’s Crusade under Richard I and The United States’ War on Terror, surely the seed for that story development came from contemporary history, all the way to depicting a country full of people who have given over all their tax money to fight an unwinnable war.

Maybe it’s obvious by this point that this is not the Robin Hood we all know from Errol Flynn to Sean Connery and the Disney animation. Sure, there’s Little John (Kevin Durand) and Will Scarlet (Scott Grimes), Friar Tuck (Mark Addy) and Marian (the lovely Cate Blanchett). Robin is not of Loxley, although he later has the chance to pose, for reasons far too complicated to get into, as Robert of Loxley. There’s even a scene in which Robin and his men (sometimes merry, but not yet Merry Men) steal seed grain in order to return it to its rightful owners, but this is not what Robin is about…yet.

An incredibly convoluted plot precludes the possibility of my explaining it effectively here, but I’ll provide the broad strokes. Richard dies in battle in France, but that doesn’t matter because he would have been ambushed and killed by Godfrey, an English double agent played by Mark Strong, who was also the one-dimensional baddie in last year’s Sherlock Holmes. Godfrey wants Prince John to be elevated to the throne and then wreak havoc across the English countryside in the name of King John so the land barons will rise up against him in civil war, thus paving the way for the French army to easily invade and conquer. What’s in it for Godfrey? Well it’s in service to the plot, duh!

Robin and his pals pose as knights to receive safe passage back to England. Incredible coincidence offers Robin a sword with a familiar inscription and then lands him in the home of the blind old Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow, trying very hard to maintain what’s left of his dignity by appearing in a film far beneath his talent) who may know something about Robin’s long lost father. Here he meets Marian, who was married to the man whose identity Robin has borrowed.

Prince John is portrayed by Oscar Isaacs in a performance that bounces from evil maniacal to foolishly naïve and then back. Why is it so difficult for Hollywood screenwriters to paint morally ambiguous villains? Why must we be bombarded with cartoonish venom? Mercifully Eileen Atkins signed on to play the role of John’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, so we have some reserved and professional acting to balance out the bombastic Isaacs. William Hurt is also along for the ride as the King’s Marshal, a trusted confidante of Richard’s summarily dismissed by John upon his ascension.

If you’re going for the action, there’s plenty of it. Although Scott has a good deal of experience directing big action set pieces there is nothing here on the level of Black Hawk Down or even Gladiator. Many of the battle sequences are marred by jarring close-ups that provide no sense of perspective on the action. Some of that blame should probably be placed on film editor Pietro Scalia, despite his great work on the two aforementioned films, even winning the Oscar for the former.

There’s little here to get really excited about. It just about meets expectations for a film of this nature. Do you think there will be a big climactic battle sequence? Do you think Robin and Marian will fall in love, even if the step from admiration to “I love you” is actually a leap? Do you think Tuck, a beekeeper in this incarnation of the story, will use his bees as a weapon at some point? And why the hell are Peter Pan’s Lost Boys running around the forest waiting to become saviors at the end?

Most disappointing of all was the realization at the end that this Robin Hood is nothing more than an origin story, a two hour commercial for the next in the series. Because that’s all they do in Hollywood nowadays: remakes, sequels and prequels. Hey, this one is two of those at the same time.