Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010)

Voices of Jim Strugess, Hugo Weaving, Geoffrey Rush

Directed by Zack Snyder

Adventure/Fantasy

Rated PG

The Story:

Young owl Soren and his brother Kludd, fall out of their tree and are abducted and forced into an into an army for an evil owl empire. Managing to escape Soren and his new friends seek out the ledgendary Guardians of Ga'Hoole for aid.

My Thoughts:

I cannot talk about this movie with stressing the beautiful animation and the astonishing level of detail. Each owl looks unique and each have their own expressive faces. The trouble is that it’s a bit hard to project yourself into an animal in a fully animated world built on fantasy world rules. Its also a little hard to swallow that the Guardians shrouded in myth so that none of the common owls are sure they exist, while conversely the Guardians believe that the evil Metalbeak is a myth too. Despite this, I really do like how they don’t sugarcoat or water down the situation for kids. Theres also a  spotlight on the dark Cain and Abel plot between Soren and Kludd. They make a big deal talking about how war isn’t glamourous hero stuff and shows signs of the consequences of conflict.  Only for our pretentious hero to receive glamourous rewards after an unlikely victory on the heels of a dizzying final fight with the big bad , which was only won because our protagonist "followed his heart". 

Very fast paced, but hard to process in a hurry. Zack Snyder shows great visual skills and incredible special effects, but a rather generic fantasy story that is so speedy is hard to attach itself to, isn’t going to make much of impact in my mind in the long run, no matter how great the effects, though their groundbreaking status will add at least another point the final score.

Final Score:

3 out of 5. Exceptionally Unexceptional.

The Omen (1976)

Starring Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner

Directed by Richard Donner

Horror

Rated R: Violence

The Story:

The last time I put on a scary movie, it was “Poltergeist”, a film that had a plot motivated by the love for a child. Here we have a plot that is motivated by fear of a child. Ambassador Robert Thorne uncovers a conspiracy and the haunting realization that his son is the Antichrist.

My Thoughts:

It is a bit difficult to accept our leads at first for not recognizing the unsettling events around them. Though as a jaded viewer I am all too aware of the genre conventions to watch out for, so I may be biassed, because the opening scenes following the growing family, really do put you off your guard. After a series of grizzly deaths, Gregory Peck and Daivd Warner travel the world on a quest for the truth about the boy, Damien. This is quite easily the best part of the movie as the tension heightens with each discovery and the frights in this part are subtle and subconscious. The exhuming of the graveyard ruin caused me to squirm in my seat more than any of the film's many graphic decapitation scenes. This makes the urgent conclusion, seem a bit meek by comparison as it involves more traditional set ups of a stretch of silence before something jumps out of the dark corner. I suppose I should be grateful such an old trope was limited and saved for the end.

By this time Gregory Peck is a weathered veteran, and tackles this part like the pro that he is, encompassing an uncertain hero with ease even after years of playing square jawed moral compass types. 

Director Richarad Donner sets the grim atmosphere perfectly, using a series of unique shots and camera angles to convey alienation and claustrophobia to staggering effect.

Jerry Goldsmith’s score is one that really puts him through his paces. The ominous Latin chanting probably being the most memorable, but can also bend emotions by starting off with a sentimental sound only slowly introduce untuned instruments to render the scene unsettling.

It that respect its a hard film to rate because it succeeds so well at being so displeasing and uncomfortable to the audience and I base my scores on the quality of the film, I also temper that with how much I enjoyed it as a whole.

Final Score: 

4 out of 5. Chilling.

Poltergeist (1982)

 

Starring Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Heather O’ Rourke

Directed by Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg (the latter uncredited)

Horror

Rated PG: Frightening Images and Peril

The Story:

The Freeling Family lives uneventfully in a quiet suburban neighborhood, until strange things start to happen. Lights flicker, furniture begins to move by itself and before malevolent spirits abduct their youngest daughter, Carol Anne. Driven to their whit’s end, the Freelings hire a team of paranormal investigators to bring her back.

My Thoughts:

The pacing is perfect. The film baits us with small feats to feed our paranoia before delivering the big thrills then giving us time to breathe in lighter, quieter scenes that contain Spielberg’s lighter “life force humanity” moments guided by Jerry Goldsmith’s kind and twinkling score, before elevating back to excitement. Each fright we are presented with escalates over the previous. Even though the movie has some very well known scares like the monster tree, the killer clown or the cadavers in the swimming pool, they are still quite startling. But despite all the amazing technical elements, the backbone of the story is the shock and grief at the unexplainable disappearance of Carol Anne and the desperate need to see her returned safely. The danger is ever present, as is the reason to stay, a perfect Catch-22.

Every element works like clockwork. The identifiable characters, the frightening situations, the precise music and special effects that still look amazing after twenty years.

Final Score:

5 out of 5. Superb.

Fantastic Voyage (1966)

Starring Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Donald Pleasence

Directed by Richard Fleischer

Science Fiction

No Rating

The Story:

When a defector from “The Other Side” of the Cold War barely survives an assassination attempt, a special team is sent in a miniaturized submarine and injected into his body to repair the damage against a ticking clock.

My Thoughts:

It became clear very quickly that this film was about the setting and situations and not about characters. We only get brief glimpses at the people assigned to go on this dangerous mission, and not much beyond their role in the operation. Grant, serves as the squared jawed All American strapping hero we is reluctant to accept the call of adventure at first but quickly falls into line. He briefly hits on Cora, the token female whom the generals are against sending on the voyage, despite her implied technical expertise. While she has the deck stacked against her, really her primary purpose in the movie is to look good in a scuba suit, because she does little else. We have a surgeon and a sub pilot whose names have already escaped me because once again, they serve no purpose other than their assigned roles. Finally, theres Dr. Michaels, the claustrophobic navigator, whose character gets the most depth only because Donald Pleasence is the best actor of the lot and can contribute much to such a scantily written part. He also commits sudden yet inevitable betrayal by the end, which isn’t to surprising given his typecasting in villain roles combined with the fact that if you’d been paying attention at all you’d have seen right through him, so the saboteur subplot doesn’t have a lot of depth to it. In fact that’s one of the film’s biggest faults. There isn’t a whole lot of tension for when our characters are in danger, because we just don’t have any characters that we care about to be concerned over whether they live or die.

Because of the urgency of the scenario the crew don’t have time to be trained or familiarized with their equipment and have to have it explained and prepared for them as slowly as possible. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the teams of beautiful super geniuses from the CSI dramas. At least there I can get a healthy serving of competence, science speak and inside the body camera shots. (Hat Trick!)

Once things get going, the crew seems to the encounter one obstacle after another. Each setback reads like the rapid-fire cliffhanger of an exciting Dan Brown novel, but in practice feels like a series of pit stops toward the ultimate goal. Each problem is solved with quick and easy MacGyver engineering with only small and limited consequences, so you’re just waiting for the next hurdle for them to jump over and then move on to the next one. The only time I was really shocked or scared was when Cora is attacked by antibodies and couldn’t breath (as she repeated tells us), but it wore off quickly when I saw their solution was to have four guys lean over her and start groping her chest.

The film is all about the voyage, and it’s an imaginative one at that, just not very well executed. The effects and sets are well designed and constructed, but haven’t aged well. You can see the wires in some scenes, but are fine otherwise so long as they don’t have too many shots of the crew standing in front of the rear projection windows engaging in dull surprise.

Final Score:

3 out of 5.  Interesting, but sadly not fantastic.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw

Directed by Joseph Sargent

Suspense

Rated R: Language, Violence

The Story:

A New York City Subway train is hijacked by four armed gunman who have taken hostages for a one million dollar ransom, now its up to traffic controller Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau) to negotiate for the lives of the hostages.

My Thoughts:

Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw are excellent in their respective roles. Matthau’s lack of chiseled A-Star looks with his round nose and tired eyes makes him completely believable as a working class schlub, but there is more to it than that in the performance. The camera holds back so that none of the main characters swamp any of the shots or the story. Frequently there are cuts between the train, the control station, the mayor’s mansion, and various police officers and such to remind us of the scale of the story and all the parts involved in it. A lesser movie might have turned Gerber into the big hero with a big showdown with the bad guy in the end but the large cast fits perfectly with the New York setting and the big city’s gleeful cynicism it employs serves as perfect levity. A big story with lots of parts to play and each one performs like clockwork. Suspense is key, each action propels the next until the thrilling conclusion

Final Score:

5 out of 5. Flawless.

The Majestic (2001)

Starring Jim Carrey, Laurie Holden, Martin Landau

Directed by Frank Darabont

Drama

Rated PG

The Story:

Jim Carrey stars as Pete Appleton, a Hollywood screenwriter working in B-Movies with high ambitions in the early 1950s. Things take a turn for the worse when Pete is blackballed on suspicion having Communist sympathies. After crashing his car, he winds up with amnesia, and wonders into the small town of Lawson were he is mistaken for Luke Trimble, an MIA war hero and favorite son of the town who hardly reacquaint him with his old life. He begins to accept it, until his past comes back to haunt him.

My Thoughts:

The film begins with some very clunky expository dialogue and some awful close up shots. Carrey’s aids how much we need to be told rather than shown about the character through a voiceover explaining his life to whoever he thinks is listening I suppose. I’m generally of the opinion that if you use a voiceover narration it needs to be incorporated into the whole film you’re using it to lazily tell us about the character rather than let us experience him for ourselves. Pete gets drunk in the bar explaining how his beautiful actress girlfriend left him, which would have been something good for us to see, so that we could see his sorrow first hand, but again, we have to be told about it. After that  he starts talking to a toy monkey to explain his emotions yet again. Then he bumps his head and gets amnesia and the telling finally stops.

Pete’s new identity of the heroic Luke is met with mounting praise. This is difficult to watch because we know hes not really who they think he is and everyone is suckered into it , making the inevitable “I always knew…” statements towards the end that much more painful.

Eventually Pete remembers whom he is and is dragged into court by a Communist Witchhunter who was only established early on but doesn’t have much stance as a bad guy since by this point we’ve all but forgotten about him. Carrey delivers a grand speech of “I stand for X and Y ideals” but it feels rather hollow and without weight or consequence, those present however, treat it with loud cheers, rounds of applause and slow tear drops. Carrey returns to Lawson with a crowd awaiting his return once again worshiping the ground he walks upon closing the film in a neat package.

The film is a homage to the sentimentality and triumph of the human spirit themes commonly found in a Frank Capra film such as “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Mr Smith Goes to Washington”. Using those themes here doesn’t work because we have to jump from Pete to Luke and back again so we don’t have a connection with the main character. The disappearing and reappearing antagonist makes this worse and the climax lacks any manner of subtly. Its hard to believe that this is from the director of “The Shawshank Redemption”, were all of Tim Robbin’s actions were subtle and quiet, building towards a greater purpose with a slow build up that generated tension and gave time to really get to know the main character. Here we are fed the line that Pete’s actions have greater meaning and are then told to applaud without really feeling the effects.

It’s a good idea on paper, and Jim Carrey does a good job with the material provided, but it feels a bit to packaged and processed in to building a “feel good” movie that it has almost the opposite effect.

Final Score:

2 1/2 out of 5. “Modest” but not Majestic.

Matinee (1993)

 

Starring John Goodman

Directed by Joe Dante

Drama/Comedy

Rated PG

The Story:

Gene and his little brother live with their mother on the military base in Key West, Florida while their father is deployed in the Navy in 1962 as the terror of the Cuban Missile Crisis begins to unfold. At the same time film producer Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) comes to town to promote his new monster movie “MANT!” Tension as the movies highly anticipated premiere approaches and development in Cuba grows grimmer as Gene learns about fear, both real and make-believe.

My Thoughts:

The film as a whole is a love letter to popular culture of mid century America. We’re reminded early on about how different ideas and attitudes of that era were, such as the importance of red meat in every meal and the imminent threat of nuclear Armageddon. This look back at the era is interrupted by the introduction of the waifish Sandra. She is wise beyond her years as she recognizes the futility of the school’s nuclear drills is also a crusader for social justice of the period. It feels like a bit of a jerk out of this reality of the decade to be given a politically correct textbook definition of the time rather than let the audience see things play out and experience the era for ourselves.

Gene’s story is hindered by the arrival of Woolsey, a film producer in the vein of William Castle, making movies into funhouse shows with gimmicks such as “Atomo-Vision” and “Rumble-Rama”. While we see his dishonest dealings used to promote his new movie, his encounter with Gene reveals just how passionate he is about storytelling and understanding the nature of fear serving as a psedo-mentor to the trouble teen. John Goodman steals the show with this performance.

Everything comes together in the third act at the première of “MANT!”, were all the movie’s wide array of characters all happen to meet and their personal demons begin to intersect not only with one another but with the plot of the “MANT!” itself. I can’t really say much more without giving the ending away expect that Robert Picardo hams it up his role as the neurotic theater manager. It is easily the film’s funniest part, but it feels a bit distracting from the big picture at times. The climax may seem a little goofy to some viewers, but it seemed so in tune with the kitsch charm that I was grinning from ear to ear.

I’d like to briefly compare “Matinee”’s structure with another film, “The Sandlot”. Both features were set in 1962, and were released in theaters within mere months of one another. In “The Sandlot” we follow a boy named Smalls, who like Gene in “Matinee” is new to town, friendless and without a father. While we spend “The Sandlot” following Smalls, the movie isn’t about Smalls so much as it is Benny’s Story told from Smalls’ point of view. “The Sandlot” was about both nostalgia and people, which is why I think it has become such a beloved classic. “Maintee” conversely is about culture and ideas. Gene is there to learn from Woolsey, whom Director Joe Dante uses a mouthpiece for to explain his own passion for movies and moviemaking. It is well written, but in execution feels unbalanced in certain places.

The film has all the elements of a classic coming of age movie. It is flawed, but funny and made with lots of affection and attention to detail.

Final Score:

4 out of 5. Matinee is a Full Price.