The Tree of Guernica

 1975 war movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: There's a war in Spain.

This was Fernando Arrabal's third movie after Long Live Death and I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse, a pair of movies that I didn't enjoy or understand. So I'm not sure why I bothered with this one because I didn't enjoy or understand it either. The thing's steeped in metaphors, some that I didn't understand and flew by like non sequiturs and some that were so obvious that they seemed juvenile. Also juvenile was a lot of sacrilegious imagery Ok, Arrabal, we get it. You don't like the church very much. I don't need to see any more characters wiping their ejaculate on a statue. There's a lot of war footage and its grotesque imagery mixed into the barrage of often disturbing imagery. There are also a lot of little people, one with a naked guy who later gets a sex scene while other little people towel him off. And there's a bullfight scene with one of the little people tied to a cart with a bull's head on the front, a scene that I swear lasted ninety minutes. And there's a scene with two guys tongue-wrestling that looked like something that could have been in a Will Ferrell movie. Oh, and a giant ear knife on wheels (I have no idea how else I could describe it) with naked children running around it and a lady saving herself from rape by hurling snakes. It's that kind of movie, and I actually started hating myself in the middle of it. A lot of this has the feel of a snuff film, and although I'm sure there's a point being made with the whole, it was well over my head and I really couldn't connect to anything that was happening enough to even care that I was missing out on something. I would not recommend you watch this although it is a little funnier than The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

Even Dwarfs Started Small

1970 movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Inmates at some sort of institution run amok.

This was actually the first I knew of Werner Herzog because I was on a crazy quest to get my hands on bizarre movies as well as movies that had little people. I was instantly a fan. What choice did I have? It's a cast of little people! I'm not actually sure what the point of that is. Honestly, I'm not completely sure what the point of the entire movie is. I don't think Herzog's focus is broad, and I don't think he's filming anything satirical. Instead, I think this has more to do with individual psyche, a kind of duel between the part of a person that wants to go by the book and follow the rules and be normal and the part of the person that wants to raise hell and burst seams and piss fire. Herzog films this almost like it's a documentary. There are several times when the performers--all, I believe, non-professionals--will look at the camera and presumably at Herzog, sometimes like they believe they might be in danger. It gives this an odd kind of realism. At times, they do look like they're in danger, especially Gerhard Maerz who plays a character named Territory. I believe that's the little guy who was run over by a car at one point during the filming and caught fire in another scene. He's the real stuntman of the group--climbing out of a moving vehicle to the top, etc. Herzog put these little actors and actresses through some stressful situations, so stressful that he promised he would jump into a bunch of cacti following the filming. None of these actors went on to have film careers. In fact, almost all of them have only this movie in their filmography. Pepi Hermine played "The President" in this and also played the president in Downey's Putney Swope. Helmut Doring was also in Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, and he's awesome in this, spending almost the entire movie laughing demonically. It's the kind of laugh that you'll hear long after the movie has ended, maybe in your dreams and maybe in somebody else's dreams. You really can't take your eyes off this guy. Doring is the tiniest of the bunch, and there's one scene where he spends about five minutes trying to get onto a bed. Of course, that's not the most interesting thing these characters do. They have a forced marriage ceremony, peruse dirty magazines, interrupt a blind duo's game, disrupt piglets' dinner, conduct an insect wedding, make a car drive in endless circles, destroy typewriters and rugs, start cockfights, have pointing contests with trees, and crucify a monkey. Other than that crucified monkey, there are other shocking and bleak moments involving animals. There's a one-legged chicken that Herzog's camera watches for a long time, a scene where some chickens play with a dead mouse, and a really disturbing scene with piglets suckling a dead mother. And the movie starts with a slow circular pan of the premises and then a shot of a chicken pecking at a dead friend. Herzog's always got great endings, and this one doesn't disappoint. In fact, it's one of my favorite movie endings ever--Helmut Doring laughing while watching a defecating camel. It's a shot which goes on way too long which, in my opinion, is just the right amount of time.

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (Redux)

1985 wacky children's movie

Rating: 16/20 (I forgot to ask the students I watched this with.)

Plot: The titular masturbator tries to locate his stolen bicycle.

I watched this at school on one of those days when we celebrate mediocrity. We got to pick our own movies, and I was showing them The Karate Kid. Unfortunately, the Internet stopped working around the time Daniel was buying Elizabeth Shue lunch, and since I was streaming the movie, we couldn't continue. Luckily, I had this as a back up.

I watched this the same day I got my evaluation rubric from my assistant principal. It's not good news. Turns out that I am a barely effective educator which sucks because I really do want to be good at my job. I'm convinced that I'm no longer wanted at the school that I work in. The administrator is mad at me because I wasn't wearing shoes one day when I went to pick up standardized test materials from the office. We had this conversation:

Ass. Principal, looking down at my feet: Do you have shoes today?
Me: Yes. My feel have been bothering me during softball season, so. . .
Ass. Principal: You need to fix this situation.

Then, he was mad at me because I was reading Elie Wiesel's Night, a book that I think all students should read. The problem is that it's on the 9th grade reading list. The problem I have is that nobody seems to read it in 9th grade. He also made a reference to me when conferencing with another teacher. "Shane's a good guy," he said. He also said, "Shane the Brain," laughed, and then repeated, "I call him Shane the Brain." I wasn't aware of this, and although it sounds sort of harmless, I'm not sure he means it in a good way. Combined with news I heard two days ago that my principal referred to me as an "oddball" when talking to a teacher I'll be working with next year, this is troubling.

I don't really want to teach there anymore, but I'm too expensive for any other school to have any interest in me. After all, who wants to hire a guy with as much experience as me who still manages to only be "barely effective"? And what else am I going to do? I'm an English major, and I now have a master's degree that any non-education people would be impressed with. I can't do anything else anyway! No skills whatsoever. I fear that I'm going to have to spend the rest of my professional life in a place where I don't feel appreciated and where apparently I'm only barely effective.

It really dampened the emotional high that you get from watching Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. I wrote about this movie somewhere else. Here, I'm giving it an extra point because of the raw sexuality displayed in the scene where Pee-Wee is wrestling with a shirtless Francis in a pool. Or maybe it's a large bathtub. Francis is Mark Holton who had arguably the greatest year of any actor in movie history with this movie and his role as Chubby in Teen Wolf. He's definitely a lot better than "barely effective." This movie's uneven and juvenile, and it doesn't seem to be too distant from current movies and television made for children that irritate me. That's a misplaced adjective clause because it makes the reader thing I'm talking about children who I hate instead of movies and television that I hate, but I'm leaving it because that seems to be the sort of thing a "barely effective" educator would do. Somehow, this manages to deliver more joy than irritation though. Absurdly large silverware, a Rube Goldberg breakfast, bicycle fetishism, the lonely meanderings of a middle-aged man-child, the juvenile exchange with Francis, bike gymnastics as impressive as any bicycle scene not involving Muppets, some teens stoic reactions after a Pee-Wee bike crash, the reference to "things you wouldn't understand" when talking to Dottie, the Hitchcockian music and nods to Vertigo when Pee Wee discovers that his bike has been stolen, Elfman's genius in helping this thing swim, Amazing Larry's plethora of trickery, Madame Ruby and her shoddy prognostications, Large Marge and animated Large Marge following an animal gag, a Harryhausen allusion, a tour through the Alamo sans basement, a hobo played by Burton-regular Carmen Filpi, the kid taking a picture of Pee-Wee after he asks about the basement and is answered with laughter, Satan's Helpers and Pee-Wee's answer that "Nobody hipped me to that, dude," a dream sequence involving clowns, elves, manic energy.

A quick question--Is Pee-Wee struggling with homosexuality? Is his "big adventure" the discovery of the unexpected pleasures derived from experience with female genitalia? Is Diane Salinger and Diane Salinger's voice enough to get an immature homosexual in a tight-fitting suit a little curious? Is "the basement of the Alamo" a euphemism? Is a dinosaur's mouth a yonic symbol? Am I overthinking things or not thinking about them enough?

My 8th graders seemed to like this movie for the most part. They laughed a lot. One of them, when we were still on the menu screen, asked, "Isn't that the guy who self-abused himself in a movie theater?"

I've never seen Big Top Pee-Wee which is strange because I like Pee-Wee and circuses. I'm sure there's a little person in it. I do have the soundtrack on cassette, but I'm not sure why.

The Dark Backward

1991 black comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Marty Malt, a garbageman and hopeful comedian, has exactly one fan--fellow garbageman and accordion-enthusiast named Gus. He stinks, but his career starts to go uphill when he grows a third arm out of the center of his back. The pair find themselves an agent and shoots for the stars.

This is a weird little movie, one that's the equivalent of a really great joke that is delivered so poorly that nobody really gets it. I like that it's rated R for "brief scenes of bizarre comic sensuality." I think that's the nice way of saying it's got naked fat people and Bill Paxton's rear end. Director Adam Rifkin wrote both the very good and very funny Mousehunt and the almost-criminal Underdog, the latter which I wrote should have cost people involved with the production their lives. I kind of feel bad about that now. The direction is uneven, but there's a definite charm to the proceedings. The setting is one of urban decay, and the set designers are absolutely committed to this filth, a lot of it shown with circus music in the background. The performers are terrific, almost all of them stepping out of what I'd imagine are their comfort zones. Judd Nelson is unrecognizable, and thinking about this slow turn he'd do after telling a joke in order to show the audience his third arm makes me laugh. Paxton straddles the line between offbeat and overly-crazed, and Wayne Newton almost reaches Slim Whitman-esque territories as a sleazy talent agent, and Rob Lowe, Lara Flynn Boyle, and James Caan are also in this for some reason. I have no idea what Rifkin might be saying about show business or fame or artistic endeavor or anything else. And the movie's plot not only doesn't really ever go anywhere but seems to take forever doing it. However, this surreally comic nearly post-apocalyptic little flick smells like enough of a cult classic that I'm sure a handful of people would really like it.

Best moment in the movie: Apples Yonahan, the man of a thousand faces. There's also a scene with gratuitous little people--five of them in sailor costumes played as a human xylophone. One of them is Tony Cox of Bad Santa fame. (Billy Bob Thornton is also supposed to be in this somewhere, unconfirmed. Of course, there's a Tony Cox and Bill Paxton's rear end connection there, so it seems possible.) And if you know this blog at all, you know I'm probably going to look up the other little people. Tonya Renee Banks isn't in a lot--Death to Smoochy and Bad Santa in which she's credited with stunts. Cindy Sorenson got to work with Adam Sandler in what I'm sure is a hilarious movie. Arturo Gil has been in quite a few things, including a Mary-Kate and Ashley Christmas special that has me imagining the hottest menage-a-trois I've ever imagined. And there's John Hayden who was only in this movie. That's a pretty disappointing diminutive quintet. 

Little Cigars

 

1973 little person crime caper

Rating: 12/20

Plot: On the run from gangsters, regular-sized Cleo hooks up with five diminutive performers who use their stage show as a front for some thieving. She and their leader Slick Bender strike up a romance as their crimes get more and more ambitious.

I love watching things that make my wife ask "What are you watching?" in a way that makes me think she'd ask "What the hell are you watching?" if she cursed more. She did that twice for this movie. I had to watch it in two installments, and she was confused by it twice.

The appeal for me, of course, was all the little people, especially shane-movies favorite Billy Curtis from The Terror of Tiny Town. Little Curtis is so angry through most of this. Look at this collection of lines:

Billy: Don't ever call a midget a dwarf.
Guy: What's the difference?
Billy: (in a whispery voice) Broken arm.

"Alright, you little perverts!"
"Is that the name of the game today? Teasing midgets?"
"If there are any heroes in here today, they're gonna be dead ones."
(After emerging from a crate with disheveled hair and a giant sweat stain on his shirt) "Boy, am I glad to be out of that son of a bitch."
"You don't have to tiptoe, you slut."
"Put me down!"

He also gets to fight a little bit in a bar, and it looks more realistic than half of Hollywood's fights. But there are other little people fights--including one where they gang up on one guy, another that is little-person-on-little-person, and a water fight that might be the hottest thing I've ever seen--and other little people. There's mustachioed Cadillac played by the great-voiced Jerry Maren who worked with the Marx brothers and got the chance to hand Dorothy a lollipop. He was also in the "Yada Yada" episode of Seinfeld. Frankie (Felix Silla) has the best voice of this crew. He fixes things in this movie but also played an Ewok, several aliens, Misquamacus in The Manitou, and Twiki in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century which is a pretty big deal if you ask me. Hugo is one muscular midget (I can use that word if there's alliteration--it's a rule.) and is played by Emory Souza who wasn't in a lot of movies but did do stunts in Dirty Harry. And there's Frank Delfino who looks a lot like Walter Matthieu and who played the Hamburglar in McDonalds commercials for over 20 years. A little guy named Buddy Douglas plays an attorney and is really awesome.

But who else is in this, albeit in a limited role? Angelo Rossitto, from Freaks. He's the smallest of a bunch of little people in a police line-up, and the only one of those guys to get lines, ramblings about being an honorary sheriff. Man, I love all 2 feet and 11 inches of that guy!

This movie's a hit 'n' miss affair. The biggest problem is that its makers don't seem sure what kind of movie they're even making. A black comedy? An action crime movie? It's dark without being funny too often. The capers don't make much sense, and the five little people and one statuesque blond woman seem a little conspicuous. It seems that the writers are playing a little game of "Let's see how many interesting places we can fit a little person," but all of the capers could be accomplished by just walking into a place with a gun and saying, "This is a stick-up!" like they end up doing anyway. The only thing silllier than their crime spree is the Little Cigars' act which might be the worst thing ever. Speaking of the statuesque blond, I do like her. She's Angel Tompkins and gets to be on screen in a towel and her underwear. Such a tease. She calls Billy Curtis a "piss pot" and has a fantastic wink. She's in this to look sexy and manages to pull that off. I loved one line of hers spoken to Curtis: "Because I'm an old lady, and I dig your little ass."

One other thing I really liked about this one was the ridiculous amount of off-screen asides, what I'm going to refer to "Attaboy, Luthers" from now on:

"Why, that cigar's bigger than he is!"
"That guy's shot!" (I love that one!)
"Watch out! Crazy driver! She's out of her head!"
"Hell, that's better than a waterbed." (during a Billy Curtis pillow demonstration)
"I'm gonna feed it to my bull!" (this one has to do with fertility candy bars)
"Like people with toy guns."

I enjoyed this, but it's not a very good movie. Check it out if you like little people in cinema as much as me. If that's possible.

The Wizard of Oz

1939 fantasy

Rating: 20/20 (Dallas: 1/20; Rodrigo: 1/20; Treslynn: 10/20; Osni: 19/20; Dutch: 1/20; Lance: 17/20; Breanna: 19/20; Ig'Enid: 20/20; Jonathon: 3/20; Kimberly: 9/20; Reinn: 1/20; Mary: 15/20; Jaidah: 12/20; Kuenton: 8/20; Justin: 2/20; Cierra: 20/20; Matthew: 20/20; Donnyha: 17/20; Daniel: 3/20; Sarah: 14/20; Tyler: 1/20)

Plot: The first movie ever made about the effects of bath salts! Dorothy, as a way of revolting against her elderly guardians who give away her dog, becomes a drug addict, shoe thief, and murderer. She also takes some apples that don't belong to her. She decides to run away from home in the most illogical way imaginable--via cyclone--and meets more little people than I'll ever meet in my entire life. She befriends a stupid scarecrow, an apathetic robot, and a chickenshit lion (Oz trivia: Originally, the Cowardly Lion was called the Chickenshit Lion.) and searches for the titular wizard so that she can get out of a coma.

Monkeys and Munchkins and talking trees--oh my! First off, yes I do have a student named Donnyha. We watched this as school to reward our students for a nine weeks of embarrassing mediocrity. One teacher suggested we watch Beastly, but I threatened to quit on the spot and this one was settled on. 8th graders were not happy that it was a) partially in black and white, b) filled with songs, or c) kind of "gay," but I was entertained as I hadn't seen the movie in a while, so who cares about them? They're all a bunch of punks anyway. I did love one conversation I had with a student:

Girl: What movie are we watching?
Me: The Wizard of Oz.
Girl: (Pause) The Wiz?
Me: No, not The Wiz. The Wizard of Oz.
Girl: Oh. I've not seen that. I've only seen The Wiz.
Me: Right. That makes perfect sense.

My students poked fun at the special effects, but check out that tornado! I think that's an astounding effect for the late-30s. It looks realistic enough and is such a menacing presence as it gets closer and closer. That tornado, something I saw every single year as a kid since this was on yearly, is one of the reasons I first started loving movies. So yes, this looks dopey in some places, but the painted backdrops, the fact that this is obviously made on a stage, and the dated effects give this a feel that Tim Burton has been trying to duplicate for years while knowing that he never will. That tornado has passed, Mr. Burton. And that color! When Dorothy opens the door, that color just splashes at you. Wonderful!

This also has to be one of the most arousing moments of all time, and I'm really glad that my lower half was hidden behind a desk in a semi-darkened room during this. It starts with Auntie Em. Yeah, she's bitchy, but she's also undeniably hot. And then there's Margaret Hamilton in those dual roles. That voice just does it for me. Don't even get me started on the Munchkins because things might get inappropriate. The good witch singing "Come out, come out" scene where the Munchkins "come out" might be the most arousing moments in cinematic history.

I remember watching this as a kid and thinking that all little people must sound like the Munchkins and always wanting to meet one. That impressive array of costumes and facial hair. And the Lollipop Guild. If I ever formed a street gang, I'd call ourselves the Lollipop Guild, and we would roll pretty hard. Billy Curtis is also in there somewhere.

The performances are so good in this. I've already mentioned Margaret Hamilton. If she's not the perfect witch, I don't know who it would be. That nose and that voice would be enough to get her in the Witch Hall of Fame if that existed, but her posture is also so perfect. My favorite Margaret Hamilton moment is when her image replaces Auntie Em's in a crystal ball and she starts mocking Dorothy--"Auntie Em, come back!" Oh, and that laugh! Frank Morgan is also great in his multiple roles, and he gets a lot of the best lines--his terrific alliteration, calling the scarecrow a "Doctor of Thinkology," the famous "Ignore the man behind the curtain" and the "Oh, you liquidated her" which should be just as famous. Ray Bolger's physical, elastic shenanigans as Scarecrow are fun to watch even for the 47th time. When you see him early on as "Hunk" (Hunk?), he seems like the worst actor of all time, probably because of the way he says "Finga," but then you find out it was Scarecrow foreshadowing and makes perfect sense. The foreshadowing in this is really neat, one of the reasons this is so much fun to watch again and again. I always thought Bert Lahr was one of the Stooges. Jack Haley is the weakest link, but he's still good.playing the more-than-likely gay Tin Man. Of course, there's Judy Garland as flat-chested Dorothy. Shirley Temple might have ruined this movie. What I like most about Garland's performance is that she never overdoes anything. She's the main character of the movie, but you never notice her all that much, and for whatever reason, that's the way it should be here.

The Munchkin hanging himself in the background of one shot (ok, so it's one of those weird birds), the irritable trees who really have a legitimate argument, the "Clever as a gizzard" line, all those flying monkeys that I'm still convinced are mostly real, the Cowardly Lion's "Pullin' an ax on me, eh?" followed by the "Whoo-uh, whoo-uh" growl which might be the worst growl of all time, that giant menacing green hall that leads to the Wizard, the first glimpse of the Wizard's disembodied head with all that fire and all that noise, the Scarecrow holding a gun in one scene (I never noticed that until I watched the movie this time--what the heck is the Scarecrow doing with a firearm?), the wack blinky bird effects, the army of Alan Thickes with their "Ooh-ee-oh" song that has always been my favorite song from this movie filled with all kinds of great songs (although that one Alan Thicke's voice when he says "She killed her" proves that they shouldn't have talked at all), Toto's impression of Lassie (did you know, by the way, that Toto made 125 bucks per week while the Munchkins earned less than half that?), the witch using the inefficient Hourglass Method of Murder which she must have gotten from the Batman Villain School of Villainy, the beauty of the unleashing of the monkeys scene and the dark scenery detail when the characters are atop the witch's castle, Morgan's uttering "Bless my buttons" and the Lion's expression right after. There's just so much here to love again and again which is probably why this should start being shown annually on network television again.

My only two gripes--

1) I've never liked the second solo the Cowardly Lion gets while they're waiting for the wizard, the "King of the Forest" number where it seems like Lahr had an "R-trilling" clause in his contract or something. It might include the great line "The chipmunks genuflect to me," but the song is about fifteen minutes long and just passes time.

2) The poppy field scene also has always seemed extraneous, just a silly distraction.

Other than that, this is perfect. And with the hefty little person bonus, it's easily a 20/20 for me.

Just spellchecked and am pleased that "Munchkin" is a word while "Donnyha" is not.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

1971 kid flick

Rating: 18/20 (Jen: 17/20; Dylan: 14/20; Emma: 17/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: The reclusive and eccentric titular candy maker holds a contest to invite five annoying children for a tour of his titular factory and a lifetime supply of his scrumptious titular confectionery treats. The tour ends early for some of the children who have poor listening skills. Grandpa Joe gets gas.

I just now realized that this movie is older than me.

Here's a link I stumbled across that suggests Gene Wilder had a lot of influence on the iconic character created in this. It's a great read, not only because it adds a bit to the genius of Wilder's performance but because it shows how classy that guy is. My 4 1/2 readers know that I love Johnny Depp and don't mind Tim Burton, but when I heard that remake was going to be made, the first thing I said was, "No, that's not right. Gene Wilder is Willy Wonka." And I know that I made the outrageous claim that this movie contained the greatest acting performance of all time, but that was actually wrong. The greatest acting performance of all time belongs to Gene Wilder for his work in this movie. Look no further than the wildly grotesque boat ride which not only gives Gene a chance to show his chops but just might be the greatest scene that takes place on a boat in movie history. That song, by the way, has lyrics that are from Dahl's book. I love all of Wonka's sneaky literary allusions which are not in Dahl's book: "Where is fancy bred--in the heart or in the head?" from Shakespeare, "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams" from O'Shaughnessy, Oscar Wilde, Ogden Nash, John Keats. It's like a sweet-toothed lit. major's wet dream! Wilder's multi-lingual tour guiding, the deadpan humor, the curly hair, the somersault, the schizophrenic tone switcherooing, the dance moves, his sweet singing voice, the fluidity of his movement. It's all so brilliant, one of the most whimsically dark characters. As I've said many times, Wilder's most fun to watch when his character is angry, and I try to find as many opportunities as I can in life to imitate his "You get nothing!" near the end. I'm also going to start each school year by saying my classroom is where "all my dreams become realities and some of my realities become dreams" before weeping uncontrollably. Anyway, enough about Gene Wilder and his character. You don't need me to convince you that this is the greatest performance in the history of acting.

All the kids are good, even if they're good in really exaggerated ways. You hate them all, except for Charlie, and you're supposed to. Violet's gum chewing and annoying voice, Veruca's whining, Augustus's general shape, Teevee's know-it-all attitude. You don't mind when terrible things happen to these children because they're really awful young people. Their demises work as little object lessons, too, the dangers of not taking care of one's body, of being too prideful or just a little snotty or mean, of greed, of ennui. Those Oompa Loompas. They'll get you, like enforcers of the consequences of the Seven Deadly Sins. If I counted correctly, there were ten Oompa Loompas in the credits. One was in Labyrinth, one was in The Elephant Man and Time Bandits, one was in fourteen of seventeen episodes of The Prisoner and Magical Mystery Tour, one was in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, one not only played three different characters in A New Hope but was in Willow and two Harry Potter movies, one was an Ewok and acted in both Labyrinth and Willow and Time Bandits, one was not only in one of those C.S. Lewis movies but played a character called Dwarf--Eater of Cars in something called Born to Boogie and was also in Magical Mystery Tour, and one was only in this move. And one of them was named Pepe Poupee (I shit you not!) and was actually a woman (I still shit you not!)! What's it say that all the winners of Wonka's contest are Caucasians, by the way? Anything? And I was surprised to find that Peter Ostrum is another of those great one-and-dones and that he didn't have a single other acting credit. He's as perfect for Charlie as Wilder's perfect for Wonka, and I think a lot of that has to do with his hair. Like Wilder, I guess. The only gripe is that Ostrum's belching is wack. If you're about to be dismembered by a ceiling fan because a carbonated beverage is making you float and you can only save yourself by belching, you need to do it like a man. I'll mention one more performance that I like: David Battley as Charlie's teacher, Mr. Turkentine. I used to think that was Paul Benedict, but it's not. He's hilarious anyway, and one of the funniest lines in the movie that nobody would ever mention is his--the "Well, I can't figure out just two!" when he's teaching percentages. Oh, wait! I am going to mention one more character--Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark is in this movie! Not the actor, the character--the dude who whispers to the children after they win. Or maybe I'm just on drugs.

Speaking of drugs, what a wonderful world the makers of this create without the need of computer graphics or a lot of special effects. The big candy room? 1/3 of it was actually edible according to Gene Wilder. That river? Yep, actual chocolate. Those wacky machines with their funky moving parts. So much color and so much fun. I'll take this old school set design over what Tim Burton did any day.

This is the second musical my family and I have watched for our summer family movie nights. A lot of the songs are great, too--"The Candy Man," a Sammy Davis Jr. staple; "I've Got a Golden Ticket"; "Pure Imagination," another great Gene Wilder moment; all the Oompah Loompah songs. Now "Cheer Up, Charlie" is pointless and shitty, and although Veruca Salt's "I Want It Now" isn't a terrible song, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Why does one of the children get a song before leaving while the others don't? This would be a memorable movie without the songs, but the songs make it even more memorable.

One of my favorite children's movies that are really made for adults. It's not for adults, you say? Well, go ahead and check for yourself what a snozberry is then. Oh, it's just so hard to not love Roald Dahl.

Bonus point for Pepe Poupee.

The People vs. George Lucas

2010 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A look at the titular director, the man who became a corporate machine--not unlike his samurai-influenced creation, Darth Vader. Well, Anakin didn't become a corporation exactly, but you get the idea.

That's one of the interesting points this another-Star-Wars documentary suggested. Don't assume this is all a (probably juvenile) fanboy attack on George Lucas, somebody who's just upset at the midichlorians and Jar Jar Binks or who-shot-who-first, though all three of those are ranted against quite a bit. Yes, most of this--the emphasis on Lucas as an ultra-capitalist, the seemingly endless tinkering with the "finished" films, the disappointment of the second trilogy--is negative, but the tone is often more sympathetic than vicious or attacking. There's a lot packed into this 90 minutes--tons of fan rants, a few famous folks chiming in, archive footage of people of doing nutty things like camping in line for opening nights or dressing like Ugnauts, fan tribute stuff. There's a lot of footage from Star Wars Uncut. A lot is made of Lucas's inability to leave his movies alone, but it also praises him for being open to fans dicking around with his stuff. My favorite moment, a clip that I had to fight hard to keep from giving this a 35-point bonus, showed none other than Wesley Willis singing a song about Jar Jar. And speaking of Jar Jar, there's a clip from Attack of the Clones where Jar Jar looks straight at the camera with this big goofy grin, a big FU from George to haters. And I have to get my hands on the Star Wars Holiday Special because that looks like the greatest thing of all time.

I watched this in honor of A New Hope's 35th birthday.

For Your Height Only

1981 little person James Bond

Rating: 5/20

Plot: The evil Mr. Giant has kidnapped some scientist and is planning on using him for some evil plan that never made any sense to me. There's only one little guy who can stop him and his band of ruffians--Agent Double-O! Mayhem ensues.

I've also seen the title of this as For Y'ur Height Only. I'm going to go ahead and go with what's on the poster since, you know, it's actually a real word and all.

A story behind this movie made me laugh. Apparently, Imelda Marcos put together the Manila International Film Festival as a way of showing off Filipino culture. Only one film sold though--this one! I'm sure that made Marcos proud.

This has one heck of a body count. Star Weng Weng (pronounced Wang Wang) kills about as many bad guys as James Bond does in all of those movies combined, I think. He does it with his guns, sure, but also with his lethal little hands and feet. As ridiculous as it might seem to have an action star of his stature (2'9", the shortest leading actor ever [Troyer, by the way, is actually an inch shorter but has never had a starring role.]), the guy moves fluidly, packs a tiny but strong-looking punch, and performs his stunts admirably. I assume it's Weng Weng doing his own stunts anyway. I doubt they found a 2'9" stunt double. That the fight scenes don't look completely ridiculous is really pretty impressive. Well, let me clarify. There are multiple scenes involving Weng Weng scooting across the floor and shooting people. It's like his signature move. And it's cool and all, but he's got to be covered in butter or something in order for that to happen. Still, I'm not knocking this little guy's action chops, and if you saw this bitchin' jump/kick/shoot thing, you wouldn't either. The makers utilize Weng Weng's stature to the fullest, and part of his spy skills involve him being able to get into places that spies of a regular stature wouldn't be able to squeeze into. One great scene involves Weng Weng climbing through an opening at the top of a fence. A pedestrian (an actual pedestrian, not a film extra) spots him and looks really confused. Mostly, this is played pretty straight with more than its fair share of sight gags. Sure, there's some silliness. For one, it rips off the James Bond theme which seems pretty ballsy to me. There's a Stooge-esque pie-throwing scene, an X-ray glasses gag that ended with Weng Weng covering his mouth to conceal a Pillsbury giggle (legendary, by the way), a scene involving a lethal flying hat that ended with that same giggle, and a scene where he uses a jet pack that forced me to conceal a little giggle. Other silliness involving a telecommunications device that is essentially a mirror with lights around it with a nearby action figure, the surprise of seeing the main villain Mr. Giant for the first time near the end of the movie, and a scene straight from Mary Poppins that had to have been extremely dangerous for the little dummy they used in Weng Weng's place made it difficult to take this seriously as an action movie. The numerous scenes where Weng Weng essentially trips a villain and incapacitates him also don't seem all that realistic. The real nuttiness is with the dubbing or poorly translated dialogue. I'm sure it's poorly translated anyway because I'm sure the people responsible for writing For Your Height Only had a top-notch script that would make the Philippines and Imelda Marcos proud. But check out these gems:

"Don't be a nosy Parker, Paco."
"Talk! Talk or you'll eat lead!" (Actually, you need to hear the dubbed bad guy voices. They all sound like they're straight out of 1950's gangster movies.
(Weng Weng's boss when going over the weapons/gadgets) "I like how you pay attention."

Or take this dialogue:

Big boss man: Nobody could begin to guess. There's a lot of dough in this dough. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Happy pushing. Happy pushing. The boss says to cover every kindergarten...and sandbox. We're gonna teach them something about pleasure.
A subordinate: Yeah, but what if Double-O should appear, huh?
Big boss man: You blast him into another world. You kill him. There's always a way.

This was another nice exchange, and I wonder if the translators rhymed intentionally or not:

Subordinate: He's a mass killer, that Double-O. Who will be the next to go?
Big boss man: I said shut your hole!

Or the line after they find a signalling device on the hot little female spy? "So this is how you communicate with your little Weng." Come on! Remember, it's pronounced to rhyme with dang.

Another good one:

Guy 1: That little man has done it to us again. He's made a monkey out of the forces of evil. He's as slippery as an eel. How the devil do you hold on to an eel?
Guy 2: To be beaten by a lousy eel! We must get him at all cost!
Guy 3: I declare war on that little stinker!

But nothing beats this exchange which might be the best dialogue I've ever heard in a Filipino little person spy movie:

Woman: You're a great person, ya know.
Weng Weng: You don't have to say. It ain't the size. It's the way you use it.
Woman: Maybe, but are you a sexual animal?
Weng Weng: I don't know.
Woman: I'm crazy about you, Agent Double-O. Why, I don't know. Maybe it's the way you strut your stuff. You know sex is like tequila. Take one sip and you're a goner.
Weng Weng: Shall we get it on?
Woman: Yes, darling. Bare your bod.


All in all, I really enjoyed this fun little (no pun intended) movie and look forward to seeing this pint-sized badass ("Pettite, like a potato," as one character says) in the handful of other actioners he starred in.

Best Worst Movie

2009 documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A look at Troll 2 and its cult following as a so-bad-that-it's-good-although-it's-in-no-way-really-good film. Michael Stephenson, the boy who pisses on hospitality in Troll 2, assembles most of the talent (Note: I'm using that word liberally here.) and the Italian director, explores the phenomenon of cult cinema, and returns to Nilbog (It's Goblin backwards!) for an often awkward reunion.

OK, I'm not seeing anything on imdb about Claudio Fragasso making a sequel called Trolls 2: Part 2, and I can't decide if I'm disappointed or relieved. I'm not sure this is magic you can just recreate.

I avoided watching this as I was afraid it would yank the Wizard's curtain away and reveal something that would somehow ruin the experience of Troll 2, but it really doesn't do that at all. It's comforting to know that everybody involved in this had every intention to make a movie that was actually good. Fragasso at least claims that he's almost insulted by people referring to this as a bad movie (he almost gives himself away during a screening where he's caught laughing) and the delusional actress who played the mom compared Troll 2 to Casablanca. My favorite scene involves her, by the way. George Hardy (the dad) and Michael Stephenson (the son and guy who put this documentary together) are at her house trying to talk her into showing up at some reunion thing. She nervously refuses and then describes noises she's hearing at night, presumably from Troll 2 fans. Hardy asks what kind of noise she's hearing and she unleashes this hellish scream. The looks on the faces of Hardy and Stephenson are classic. The rest of the principals seemed a little embarrassed or confused by their involvement in this. George Hardy's at the center of all this as the dentist with acting aspirations. The guy's enthusiasm is infectious, but things get a little sad when he starts forcing that "You can't piss on hospitality!" line on people at horror conventions who have never even heard of his movie. Also sad: the look in Robert Ormsby's (Grandpa Seth) eyes when he says, "I guess you could say I've wasted my life." I really enjoyed the antics of Don Packard, the guy who played the shop owner in Nilbog who had spent time in an asylum just prior to the filming of Troll 2.

Yeah, this is a movie about one particular movie and how it's because famous in unexpected ways, but it does a good job exploring the fandom with cult movies in general and, a lot like Winnebago Man, showing how the love people have for the stars of these kinds of oddball phenomena is genuine.

I might try to convince my family to make Troll 2 a Christmas Eve tradition.

Aladdin

1992 Disney cartoon

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A lengthy public service announcement in the French symbolist tradition about how teenagers should, instead of engaging in premarital sex, pleasure themselves. Aladdin grows tired of rubbing his lamp and getting his genie all over the place and decides to try to get in Jasmine's pants. After all, she seems willing with those little half shirt things and not even attempting to hide her pussycat. Eventually, Aladdin's "snake" gets loose and havoc is wreaked.

Seriously, Disney was so subconsciously dirty during this period (see Little Mermaid). Look at the symbols: soaring towers, water (female genitalia symbol according to most dream symbolism books), snakes, phallic genies with pubic beards, lamps being rubbed until they ejaculate, magic carpet rides (so that's what the kids are calling it these days?), a monkey transforming into an elephant (a boy's first erection?). Sick stuff, Mickey.

If you want a great animated feature with Aladdin in it, try The Adventures of Prince Achmed. If you want something a lot louder and a lot more colorful, go for Disney's Aladdin. This really is an entertaining Disney feature with a lot of fun visual gags and some really good songs. It rips off Superman's flight through the city with a magic carpet ride only Aladdin doesn't try to guess the color of Jasmine's underpants. (Or just pants as the say in some parts of the world.) Robin Williams' manic voice work is fun the first time you watch this, but subsequent viewings show you that he's just stomping all over the production. Still, it adds a spunk to what otherwise might have been a same-old/same-old version of this story. I liked Jafar as a villain when he was talking to Gilbert Gottfried and messing up Prince Abooboo's name, but when he turns into a genie at the end and starts making a series of puns that would make C3PO groan, it became clear that this script needed some editing. OK, I'm going to ask you to pause so that you can fully appreciate what I did with the C3PO reference there. I want you to let that want sink in a bit. Part of Disney's appeal is that they're able to take stories that are thousands of years old, inject them with some life, and transform them into something new. Despite a lot of annoyances that get in the way of this being really great, they do a good job with that. One thing I do like about this one compared to most Disney princess/prince movies: the romance is between a pair of well-developed characters rather than one developed character and a prop. Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty have a princess and a guy who might as well be a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a prince. Beauty and the Beast and this at least make the prince characters real, probably because they're titular. But my question: Is Aladdin really all that likable? Jafar's considered the bad guy because he's evil and all, but Aladdin is the one whose deceit causes all the problems anyway. As I say with a lot of Disney protagonists, kids could learn a lot more life lessons if Aladdin would have been punished in the end.

Gulliver's Travels

2010 comedy

Rating: 8/20 (Emma: 7/20; Abbey: dnf)

Plot: It's Jonathan Swift's classic piece of satire, filmed exactly as he intended it to be filmed. Jack Black, a mail room loser infatuated with the pretty girl on one of the upper floors, tells a few lies, plagiarizes a few lines, and winds up on a boat in the Bermuda Triangle to write a puff piece about his travels. He ends up shipwrecked and in the land of the diminutive Lilliputians. Oh, snap!

Wait a second! I was supposed to watch this in 3D, presumably because a three-dimensional Jack Black is going to be funnier than a boring old two-dimensional one. After a cute little animated opening which tricked me into thinking this would be better than I thought, we get Jack Black doing his Jack Black thang. Ad nauseum. You've got to give the guy a lot of credit--he tries really really hard. He takes material that isn't any good, hoists it upon his shoulders, and trounces across the screen in an attempt to carry it. His act's just gotten old though, and by the time his story in this reaches it's big musical conclusion, he's just become a giant parody of himself. The writers of this (you know, Jonathan Swift et. al.) fit the classic Jack Black pattern: make him really sad, then really loud, then repeat. After a preposterous set-up that is poorly written enough to take it completely out of reality, you get to the fantastical part of the story where some so-so special effects become the star. You get some really lame robot foreshadowing (How to build your own robot? Like that's gonna happen!) and the silliest product placement (a giant cola can) that you'll ever see. This also has to be the high point in Billy Connolly's career--being urinated upon by Jack Black. Connolly is the funniest thing about this movie, by the way, but his role is very small. Pun possibly intended. I liked Chris O'Dowd, too. He plays the villain and does a lot more with poor material than could have been reasonably expected. His character is the villain, but I'm not real sure how anybody's going to end up rooting for Gulliver in this. He lies, he's selfish, he's lazy. He commercializes Lilliput and gives bad advice to Jason Segel. When he's getting that wedgie from the robot (yep, that's the type of movie this is), you're almost rooting for the robot. Scratch that. You are rooting for the robot. At the end of this movie, the characters are trying to introduce a catch word "Boosh!" which I think might be a Cat in the Hat influence. Let me end this with a couple-few positives: 1) The stunt coordinator's name is Stink Fisher. 2) Anybody with a giant Amanda Peet fetish is likely to be satisfied. 3) There are some Lilliputian reenactments of Star Wars and Titanic (the funniest scene from Titanic where Rose tells Jack she'll never let him go and then immediately lets him go) that are kind of cute.

The Manitou

1978 manitou movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: A woman has a tumor on her upper back checked out and discovers that it's actually a fetus. Somehow, Tony Curtis finds out that it's an evil Indian medicine man attempting to come back into the world to probably do evil things. Curtis and that guy who may or may not have been in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest do everything they can to stop it! Based on a chapter in my autobiography.

Well, if nothing else, this movie can teach you what a manitou is. Maybe. I'm not sure the people who wrote this movie did much fact checking actually. Why would they need to? They had star power (Tony Curtis) and dazzling special effects. And a little fellow who looks kind of like an Indian medicine man who's made from caramel. Actually, I'm pretty sure he was supposed to be a cigar store wooden Indian medicine man. This doesn't work as a horror film. Nothing happens for the longest time unless you count a pulsating tumor's out-of-control growth while Tony Curtis runs around trying to figure out what movie he's in as something. Then, the little titular manitou makes his appearance and just kind of stands there looking like something you'd melt and put on your ice cream. And then at the end, there's some movie-makin' magic as things turn completely insane. I don't want to spoil it, but the ending involves outer space, bitchin' lasers, and explosions. It's like the makers of the movie discovered they still had a buttload of money in the special effects budget since they only spent about twenty dollars on generic-brand caramel to dump on a dwarf in order to make their horrifying monster and decided to go nutsy. I saw The Manitou, I figured Chief Wahoo, the Cleveland Indian perpetually grinning mascot, was as offensive as a pop culture creation could be to Native Americans. I think this might top it though. My favorite part of the movie, by the way, doesn't even have much to do with the medicine man tumor. No, that would be the hilarious scene where a floating old woman takes a tumble down a flight of stairs and smashes the banister like her head's a wrecking ball. That scene would make even that Indian who cries in that pollution public service announcement from the 1970s giggle uncontrollably.

By the way, as big as the manitou tumor gets, I'd like to point out that I've had cysts that are bigger. Not that I'm bragging or anything.

Dead Alive

1992 zombie funk

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A nuts monkey captured on Skull Island (probably not that Skull Island) winds up in a zoo where it bites a woman and turns her into a zombie. Her son, poor Lionel, has to take care of her while trying to nurture a new relationship with the gal who works at the market. It doesn't get any easier for Lionel as his mom begins to infect other people.

Peter Jackson's best movie? None of those Hobbit movies or the King Kong remake even had a guy using a lawnmower as a weapon. Discuss in the comments below.

If this had been around for me to see in high school, it probably would have been my favorite movie, something I could watch back-to-back with Evil Dead II whenever I needed to fulfill my splatter-comedy needs. This is definitely splattabulous, splatrageous, and splatterific, a lot bloodier than anything Raimi will ever do. It pushes the envelope and then pushes it more, pushing it so that it goes all the way through some guy's skull so that his brains and blood stain the walls. Does it straddle the line between violence and humor? No. It sort of stomps all over the line until the blood and laughs fuse together into this scrambled mess of joke-telling bowels and slapstick viscera. I felt completely silly doing it, but I laughed out loud so much as I watched this in the wee hours while lying in bed that I woke up my poor wife a few times. And I'll admit that it didn't feel right to answer her "What's so funny?" with "Oh, this character is throwing around this zombie baby!" or "Intestines are chasing a guy around his house!" The amount of gore in this thing has to be seen to be believed, and just when I think I've seen a zombie die in the most bizarre or creative way possible, Jackson gives me something even more ridiculous to see. A mind that conceives some of the imagery in this has to be a deranged one. Dead Alive (or Braindead elsewhere) has nothing at all to say about society. It makes no grand statements and really doesn't even tell its story all that well. But from the appearance of the stop-motion (?) monkey to the thrilling and sloppy climax, this doesn't let up, assaulting the senses with the most creative gore you're likely to see and some sick, sick laughs. Recommended to film lovers who haven't grown up yet or anybody who wants to see what Peter Jackson was up to before he started filming endless scenes of Hobbits and elves walking around.

Heavy Traffic

1973 cartoon for adults

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Michael Corleone (why does that name seem familiar?) lives in a too-tiny apartment in New York City with his parents. When he's not working on his pinball wizard skills, he spends his time huddled over a desk sketching the humans he's interacted with on the city streets, including his parents. He's an underground comic, and that's what they do. He befriends an African American prostitute.

I don't know. I definitely felt a little dirty after watching this. Heavy Traffic is the kind of cartoon you have to wash off yourself if you see it. I guess that's an appropriate feeling when you watch an X-rated cartoon though. This is Ralph Bakshi, the guy who did Fritz the Cat, those Lord of the Rings cartoons, and the terribly boring Wizards. It's more similar to the raunchiness of Fritz than the fantasy stuff though unless there's some scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo exposes himself to a goblin that I'm forgetting about. It really makes Bakshi seem misanthropic. He draws all these oddly-proportioned grotesque exaggerations of pimps, hookers, bums, and con artists. It's those seedy characters you can't really find in a metropolitan area unless you find a rock and flip it over. The animation style's straight from the unsavory 1970s for the most part, characters who move around like they're a member of Fat Albert's posse or are on their way to sing a School House Rocks type song instructing children on how to dispose of a prostitute's corpse, how to know when you're a dope fiend, or where to hide your pornography. There's also a fair amount of experimentation with a mix of live action and the animation. Seeing Bakshi's completely unnatural characters walking against photographs of the city streets does look pretty cool actually, and I liked some of that 70's funkadelica when the animator's shapes and colors go completely nuts. This is a little uneven and wears out its welcome before its seventy-six minutes or so are up, but it's not a bad little cult cartoon flick.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

2002 sequel

Rating: 14/20 (Dylan: 10/20)

Plot: Well, they'd already committed to making three of these things, and although nobody really liked the first one (Star Wars Episode I: Darth Vader Was Once a Little Kid) despite lovable new characters like Wotto, the fish-faced guys, and Jar Jar Binks; two lightsaber fights, including one extended one with three guys, that blow away anything in the original trilogy; Natalie Portman; and a really cool space battle that is only somewhat ruined by a little kid's presence, they couldn't just not make Episode II. So George Lucas and his pals, mostly puppets, had a barbecue at the Star Wars ranch (you haven''t had barbecue until you've had barbecued Gungan, by the way) and figured out ways to fix the franchise. They came up with the following list:

1) Less of the maligned (unfairly?) Jar Jar Binks
2) Replace the comic relief Jar Jar Binks provided with more scenes featuring the lovable robot duo of R2-D2 and C3PO. Everybody loves them! And everybody loves puns!
3) Bring on Boba Fett. Star Wars nerds love that guy, so they will naturally love to see him as a little kid.
4) More romance. The first trilogy had some romance, including a developing love affair between a guy with his own sister. And the characters in that original trilogy have to be conceived at some point, right?
5) A lot of political mumbo-jumbo, and numerous scenes taking place in a big room with outer space senators. After all, people love watching C-SPAN. They'd surely love C-SPAN in space!
6) Christopher Lee. That guy makes everything better.
7) A scene with a scantily-clad Natalie Portman chained to an obese, slimy green thing.
8) Give Obi-Wan a freakin' beard! He's got one in the original Star Wars, and it might confuse people when he doesn't have one in the prequels.

And from George Lucas's original notes and stick figure drawings, they penned a script in under an hour (Rocky time!), called up John Williams to see if he could compose the exact same music he'd already composed for the other movies, found some random guy working in a deli who really knew how to slice meat and sounded vaguely Jedi-like when he said, "Hello, my name is Hayden. How can I help you today?", and made the magic happen.

This movie loses points every time C3PO has a line. What the hell were they thinking? "I'm beside myself"? "This is such a drag"? Come on. I don't think that idiom is going to survive a long, long time or make any sense in most galaxies that are far, far away. And I don't think a distressed robot would say something like that. It's unbelievably stupid and probably represents what almost all original trilogy fans hate about this next generation of Star Wars movies.

However, this movie is a lot of fun, and I honestly can't understand why it wouldn't appeal to fans of the original trilogy. It's a bridge movie, much like The Empire Strikes Back, so it doesn't complete a story. It's got a saggy middle weighted down with politics and the romantic developments on Naboo between dopey Anakin and his not-very-sandlike love interest. But let's take a look at what it does have:

--my favorite shot from any of the Star Wars movies not featuring Akbar or his fish-faced friend when Portman's scratched by one of those Harryhausen-inspired monsters and the trade federation guy does this little celebration
--those Harryhausen-inspired monsters in that ridiculous arena scene
--a really cool chase scene through the Fifth Element-esque city planet "streets"
--pretty funny rapport between the great Ewan McGregor (and he's nearly as good as the great Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan) and Hayden
--a cool new bounty hunter
--Boba Fett's daddy, who looks like a shinier version of the Boba Fett we all know in love but who does a helluva lot more than his son did in Episodes V and VI
--a terrific and intense fight on the rainy planet between Jango Fett and Obi-Wan
--explanations for things in the original trilogy, like where Stormtroopers come from
--Obi-Wan slinking around like a noir movie detective sans fedora
--Christopher Lee as a Sith bad guy, classy and evil
--parallels between future-Vader and his son Luke
--Yoda yielding a lightsaber, hopping around like a banshee. Are you kidding me? I literally urinated in my movie theater seat when I saw that on the big screen.
--more lightsabers at once than you can count, slicing and dicing robots and those waspy-looking things
--some great new settings (the aforementioned rainy planet and the waspy-looking things planet) along with the beautiful Naboo

If you travelled back in time to before the prequels were made, found a diehard Star Wars fan, and told him that George Lucas was going to make more movies with those things in them, that Star Wars fan's nipple would harden. And it's all presented with the groundbreaking special effects you'd expect from a Star Wars movie. Is the story clunky? Probably. Is some of the acting really bad? Yes, and I'm looking straight at you, Hayden. Should Anthony Daniels have stopped the director and said, "Wait a second, boss. I'm not so sure C3PO would ever say this"? Maybe. But despite the film's flaws, this episode, like the other two in the trilogy, were fun enough to make me feel like a kid again, and I loved being able to experience the Star Wars universe with my own kids.

The Illusionist

2010 French cartoon

Rating: 18/20

Plot: The titular magician's getting old, and with the emerging popularity of rock 'n' roll musicians, so is his act involving a squirrely rabbit and various objects stuffed up his sleeve. He travels to Scotland where he befriends a young maid named Alice. She travels with him to England where he struggles with his art and uses his meager funds to buy her shoes and dresses.

Ventriloquist, by the way, is a "belly talker" as ventri means belly and loqu means talk. Latin roots. Engastrimyth is from the Greek and means "stomach talker." I figured you'd find that interesting.

I love Tati, I love French whimsy, I loved Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville, and I was pretty sure I would love this movie. I might not be right about a lot of things, but I was about that. There's a wonderful texture to Chomet's 2D animation. A scene near the end with a shadow makes me tear up just thinking about it, but there are all kinds of tiny details that I just loved in this--the radiance of a jukebox, shadows over golden grasslands, a twist of a coat in front of a mirror, window reflections, the clown nose of the downtrodden. The style and the settings make me nostalgic, and I'm not even sure why. I've never been to Scotland, France, or England. But there's just something about the way the places and backgrounds are drawn. I loved the way this film looked. And like Triplets, I love the way Chomet has his characters move. Again, he exaggerates the grotesqueness of human beings, putting the needle on the old quirk-meter well into red. The hup-hup-hupping acrobats. The melancholy clown (a scene where he listens to calliope music alone in his room is just beautiful). The little fellows who run the hotel. The ventriloquist and his dummy (loved that first appearance of the dummy!). The way the rock band sashays off the stage. They all interact in a nearly dialogue-free little world because words just aren't that necessary. All you need to do is watch a handful of silent films to find that out. This has that silent film funk but with a slightly more complex range of human emotions. Inferences need to be made, and there's definitely some wiggle room here, allowing for a variety of hunches about what's going on with these characters. I'm definitely the type of movie watcher who's moved more by imagery than words, and it's great how Chomet tells so much story without having to explain things with any superfluous language. And then you've got the Tati influence. It's Tati's story, personal and heartbreaking, and this medium is perfect for capturing the Hulot mannerisms, the Tati-type sight gags, and the overall flavor. Chomet does capture Tati's movements very well, from the way he chases after his rabbit to his careful maneuvering over an extension cord. It felt good seeing Tati again even if it was just an animated version of him. Maybe that's where the feelings of nostalgia come from. This might have a little more sentimentality than Tati's live action films, but it's that sentimentality of the aforementioned silents and therefore feels very comfortable to me. Comfortable is a good word for this maybe. The French have this way of making movies that you inhale instead of just watch. They're movies that are like old shoes, and this is a real old shoe of a movie, one that feels like it's just always been there, more beautiful because of its dust and scratches and the fact that it smells just like my old foot.

Jackass 3

2010 high art

Rating: 13/20

Plot: More comic mischief from the Jackasses. This time, they utilize 3-D technology so that it looks like the fecal matter is coming right into your living room! Huzzah!

Well, I felt like showering after watching this one, so that's something. I didn't watch this in 3-D, of course, but I can see where that would have been kind of fun. The colorful and gimmicky opening scene has the boys being pelted with paintball pellets, kicked in the face, and abused with little booby traps that might have been borrowed from Wily E. Coyote's attic. And they're wearing funny costumes. And some times it all happens in this slow motion. Now I don't possess a high-def television, but the images in this were impressively crisp anyway, fantastic news if you want to see every detail of a fat guy wearing some transparent plastic suit designed to make him ooze sweat. Or vomit. Or poop. Or urine. Or hair glued to somebody's palms right after it's been yanked from some other guy's chest. You get the idea. This is definitely not the movie I'd pick to watch with my grandmother if, following some miracle, she was resurrected and really wanted to watch a movie with me. Unless she picked it, of course. I'm not going to deny the dead the right to select a movie for movie night. There's something nice about seeing the jackasses willing to do all this gross or dangerous or gross and dangerous stuff despite their advancing ages. You get the sense that some are doing these things reluctantly though. And the stunts in Jackass 3(D) aren't as consistently hilarious as the ones in part two, the Empire Strikes Back of Jackass movies. I think they peaked (Wait a second. There's no way peaked is the right word here.) with number two. But I had more than a few chuckles, and as with the other stuff, I'm glad I watched it. I laughed most heartily at a scene involving a score or more of little people, one of their set-up/written gags. I'm a grade school kid in a thirty-seven year old's body though, so I, of course, enjoyed the slapstick as well. After all, if you can't appreciate video footage of a guy getting hit in the balls, you're just not a real American. There are people who could argue that the world would be a better place without these movies. I'm not sure I could successfully argue with those people actually, but I'm happy the movies do exist. Long live the Jackasses!

The Incredibles

2004 superhero cartoon

Rating: 16/20 (Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Bob and Helen Incredible, out-of-work superheroes, try to adjust to normal-person life after saving the world's been outlawed. Helen takes care of their three children while Bob works in a cubicle he barely fits into. On the side, Bob secretly meets with his friend Samuel L. Jackson to park and listen to police scanners and catch some motherfucking criminals. One day, he's contacted by a mysterious woman with a job offer involving the travel to an island and destroy a robot ball. Since Bob just lost his job, he eagerly takes the job but soon discovers that he might be in for more than he bargained for.

See, these are the characters the Pixar folk should be working to bring back to the screen. Those cars and those monsters were fine, but there are so many stories that these characters could be used to tell. Not that this is my favorite Pixar movie. It's not. But it is an exciting story, cool in a James Bond sort of way, and animated with a great attention to detail. The island scenery is realistic, and there's a depth to the animation, especially during scenes where the little fast guy is zipping around where it's impossible to see everything regardless of how much you slow things down. In 2004, it didn't seem like the CGI magicians had quite worked out making people or their movements realistic. Watching this on the big screen, I was impressed with the movements of the human characters, not just because of the semi-realism but because they moved, gesticulated, and grimaced with personality. I especially liked flamboyant Buddy (Jason Lee) and sarcastic and smirking Helen (Holly Hunter). There are still some moments where things just don't look quite right. Helen's butt looks weird in some shots (yeah, I looked), but that might be because I don't understand the physics of an elastic posterior. My favorite two characters are a pair of minor characters, both of diminutive stature. I love every hilarious moment Edna Mode's on the screen, and the fact that director Brad Bird actually does her voice is awesome. And the always-wonderful Wallace Shawn voices Bob's boss, a perfect depiction of Napoleon Complex. The narrative's exciting, tossing you around with some twists and turns, and the music is just as incredible as the titular Incredibles. As with all of Pixar's movies (now they really are all on the blog), there's a lot here for both big people and their kiddies to enjoy. Maybe the big people just a little bit more though.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

1937 cartoon

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A lunatic flees from another lunatic, breaks into the home of some mentally-challenged little people, throws a party with a bunch of filthy animals, and finally attacks the owners of the home with soap. The other lunatic locates her and tricks her into eating a poisoned apple by cleverly saying, "Here, eat this apple." She dies. [Spoiler Alert!] Luckily, the antidote seems to be the saliva of the notorious philanderer Prince Charming, a cat known for his sloppy smooches and wandering hands.

I don't want to trash a classic, but I really don't like this movie very much at all. When you compare it with other early Disney animated features (Pinocchio, Fantasia, even Dumbo), it just doesn't seem as good. Yeah, I know this was the first, and I know when you compare Snow White to modern cheapo straight-to-video animated crappings, it's way ahead of its time and very impressive for 19-freakin'-37. But with about thirty-five years of Disney animated features under my belt, I think the animation in this is hard to watch. The characters in the foreground (and they're always in the foreground) don't mesh with the backgrounds. The backgrounds look completely flat and lifeless. Snow White has unnatural physical features and almost no chest. I want breasts on my Disney princesses. I do like how the dwarves are animated; they've got character and move in a lively way. The dwarf (Wait a second--do they actually like being called that? Is that as politically incorrect as using the dreaded M-word?) movements combined with their individual personalities are where the Disney creative spirit is most evident. I always like how Disney animates animals, but the good animal stuff in this is merely foreshadowing for better stuff that would come later. I also really don't like some of the voices, especially the titular princess. The witch is fine though. The songs? "Someday My Prince Will Come" is a classic although the randy double entendre is uncalled for. The "Heigh Ho" song (Ho? C'mon, Disney!) has always been one of my favorites. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, for me at least, will always be one of those classics that is more important than it is fun to watch. In my likely blasphemous opinion, I think the Disney people should animate a remake. Snow White could look almost identical (with boobs), the dwarves and witch(es) could look exactly the same, and modern technology and better voice work could help make the story live up to the classic status.

Another idea--Disney should hire me as a creative consultant. I wouldn't even demand an outrageous salary or anything. Walt's head--if you're reading this, give me a call.