Vibes

1988 romantic adventure comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A pair of psychics, one aided by a friend from the other side and a psychometrist who can know the history of objects by touching them, are recruited to travel to Ecuador in search of a guy's missing son. They find out that that guy, Harry Buscafusco, isn't being completely honest with them. Then, it's adventure time!

Wow, that might win a shane-movies award for worst movie poster. And believe it or not, there was another that was worse. That one had separate pictures of Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper holding a hand up with the brilliant tagline "Put your hands on our hands and feel the. ..VIBES." Now I know what you're thinking, dear readers--a movie with Jeff Goldblum Goldbluming it up combined with the acting talents of one Cyndi Lauper? And wait just a second! Peter Falk is in this, too? How the hell can this miss? And don't get me wrong--this might not be a great movie, but it is kind of a fun movie. It's a Babaloo Mandel/Lowell Ganz screenplay, and yes, I'm only pointing that out because I wanted to type the name Babaloo. I also noticed during the opening credits that Googy Gress has a part in this. And getting tiny amounts of screentime are Steve Buscemi and Van Dyke Parks, but their names aren't nearly as funny as Babaloo and Googy. Boy, is that Cyndi Lauper a presence. Of course, I would find it difficult to act naturally next to Goldblum, and besides, she probably just took this part because she wanna have fun anyway. Falk's as awesome as he always is, and there are a few good lines even if the story gets int the way of the fun too often. There's just enough wackiness for enough people to latch on and throw his into the cult classic category. Goldblum's got a cult following anyway, doesn't he? Goldblum makes a variety of weird faces which makes me wonder, as much as I like the guy, how he ever had a serious career in Hollywood. There's also a moment in this that made me really uncomfortable where Goldblum touched Cyndi Lauper's rump. He only did it once though, not time after time. Oh, and there's a baseball-playing monkey if that's your thing. He out-acts Cyndi Lauper actually.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark Redux

1981 adventure

Rating: 20/20 (Jen: 16/20; Dylan: 20/20; Emma: 16.5/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: The titular archeologist/professor globetrots in search for Noah's boat. He runs into some Nazis, a group of people who historically weren't very nice.

I've already written poorly about this movie twice, but Abbey picked it for family movie night. It's not one that I'll complain about having to watch again. That's part of the beauty of the thing. It's more than likely the film that I've seen the most times with the possible exception of Toy Story. Anyway, I'm dividing my thoughts into three categories for this--questions, noticings, and things-I-freaking-love.

Questions:

How can this be rated PG? It's got face melting/exploding. Face exploding, by the way, would be a horrible way to go, wouldn't it?

What's the body count? Next time I watch this, I'm counting.

Where the hell did Belloq get that goofy outfit and that staff? The only thing I can think of is that there must be a Ark-Opening Clothes "R" Us on that creepy island.

Speaking of that creepy island, how's Indy ride on the outside of a submarine for the distance shown on the map? Dylan explained that submarines are faster when they surface, so they probably wouldn't have gone under. If not, then why would they even use a submarine in that situation?

Is that Ralph Macchio preparing dates?

Why don't the Germans wonder why there are people off digging in a different place from everybody else? Belloq eventually notices them, but you'd think somebody would walk up to them and ask, "What the heck are you digging here for?"

How do you get a monkey to Heil Hitler salute? Or are monkeys just naturally hateful creatures? I wouldn't put it past them.

How many extras were in this movie? The big dig, the streets of Cairo. There are so many people in this!

How can Indy fans have so much of a problem with aliens and refrigerators in the new movie but not have a problem with melting faces and burning crates in this one? And speaking of the swastika burning scene, what's up with that rat? He looks like he's about to boogie.

Was Shooby LaBoof conceived on a submarine? I'm going to have to check the date for that fourth movie! If he was, it explains a lot.

Noticings:

All these movies start with monoliths, don't they? Or maybe just a plain rock.

There's a lot of man screaming in this movie. 1) The guy with the stocking cap screams at the statue as they're trudging through the forest. 2) Alfred Molina screams like a woman at a skeleton. I also freaking love how that skeleton turns his head to glance at Molina. 3) Toht (a role turned down by Klaus Kinski if you believe a word that guy says) gives his first girly scream when he grabs the hot medallion. Hot Medallion would be a great band name, by the way. 4) Random guy with turban screams when the Well of Souls is opened. Then there's Sallah's "Eeahahahhaheh" which, at the very least, isn't all that feminine. 5) The cobwebby skeletons in the Well of Souls scream. That makes even less sense than all of those different kinds of snakes living in there. 6) Toht gives the best scene of the movie during once the spirits from the ark start wreaking havoc until 7) the guy who screams after him manages to top it!

Scream bonus: The Wilhelm Scream is used when a dude spills from the back of the truck in the big chase scene.

The natives with their spears and blowguns are as accurate as the stormtroopers in the Star Wars movies. And a bonus question. There were a lot of spears being thrown in that chase scene. Once you're an extra in that scene who has thrown his spear--you know, shot your wad--do you keep chasing? You were probably handed another spear, right?

The guy trying to outdrink Marion looks like George Wendt, Norm from Cheers. I don't think that's a coincidence. All guys who look like that are big drinkers.

Indy almost consumes that "bad date" several times. It's a neat little detail.

The map room has an obelisk. I'm too lazy to see if that is architecturally correct. I had Indiana Jones actions figures and a map room, by the way. That's a really cool scene in the movie with the beam of light and Indy brushing away sand, but it wasn't all that fun to reenact in your bedroom. Also, there's one building in the map room that looked like it had been tagged. Was a street gang down there at one point or did the Nazis mark it?

Things I Freaking Love about This Movie:

That first shot of Indy--absolutely iconic. Framed by waterfall and mist, quick edited shots of bullwhip frenzy, Jones stepping out from the shade. So awesome. To think that Indy was almost Tom Selleck makes me slightly ill.

Indy's shadow on the wall of Marion's bar. Also so awesome. And I love their dynamics in that scene with dialogue perfection. You find out just enough about their past without it seeming like it was written in a script just so the audience could catch up.

Sallah: "Why does the floor move?" At this point, by the way, Jennifer informed me that she had never seen this movie all the way through. What the hell?

Toph! Love his beady little eyes. His little giggle--once when he walks past Belloq after they seal Indy and Marion in the Well of Souls and later after the ark is opened. And his hanger is the most bad ass hanger in movie history. And yes, I'm including the hangers in Birdemic: Shock and Terror. And that bald head of Toph's? It's nefarious.

I love how Indy fights so dirty during the brawl with that big bald Nazi guy--dirt in the eyes, using a chunk of wood as a weapon, the old point-at-your-opponent's-shoe-to-divert-his-attention trick.

How Belloq says "idiot."

Head explosion!

"It's not the years. It's the mileage."

The way Indy saves Molina by grabbing his belt. Poor Molina, by the way. This was his first movie, I think, and he starts his career by having tarantulas all over him, screaming like a girl, and getting killed by a booby trap that he had already seen which makes him one of the dumbest characters ever.

That gunfight in Marion's place? The best ever, the type that can make me type in hyperbole! But that motley crew of thuggery, the "Whisky?" from Indy, a guy punching with an arm that is on fire? All sans music, just the crackling fire, the rat-a-tat gunfire, breaking bottles. What a terrific scene.

Another action sequence--the Cairo street brawling. It's lively and exciting in the midst of an adventure story, but there's such a personality with the fight scenes. There's humor mixed in with the mayhem, all while Harrison Ford's got the runs.

And that guy who Marion threatens with a pan only to watch him pull out a knife? The dude's teeth are even scarier than his blade!

I love the mystical guy with the high-pitched voice they visit. You know he's a mystic because he's wearing bright blue and has his own telescope.

Terry Bradshaw's "Waa-ehh" as he gets run over. And before that, the "Let's see how you like it!" toss out the front window. Indy's so pissed. Before that, there's a shot of a guy on the windshield and Indy and his passenger look at each other and laugh. That guy's expression and the shared laugh of enemies makes me smile just thinking about it.

Indy putting his hat on against a sunset backdrop--just beautiful. That is one evil-looking sky as they find the edges on top the Well of Souls.

Not everybody likes the music in this (I'm eyeing you here, Laurence), but I love it. It's the soundtrack for my childhood outside play. That's the music I heard when I ran around my backyard with a fake gun and an invisible whip, and it's the music I heard when I stepped up the plate in the last inning of a baseball game in college with a chance to drive home the winning runs. In this movie--the familiar music when Indy, fleeing from 15,000 natives while dust from the cave flies off him in that terrific scene, swings from a vine like Shooby LaBoof and dives into the water. Boom!

After the booby-trap-packed cave climaxing with a fiberglass boulder chase, I'm hooked forever. If you're not, you're a child without a heartbeat.

Top men. Endless boxes. Where was that shot? That place has to really exist. What's in all the boxes? Other than dead alien bodies, of course.

What did I miss? What do you love about this movie?

The Goonies

1985 slice o' childhood

Rating: 11/20 (Jen: 13/20)

Plot: Two brothers are about to lose their house and hangout of the titular gang of dorks because some land developers want to get their hands on the land. Luckily, they conveniently find pirate One-Eyed Willy's treasure map in their attic and decide to go treasure hunting. It's an adventure that leads them to the hide-out of escaped criminals.

"But Jen, you've got to see The Goonies! I can't believe you didn't see this as a kid!"

I'm not sure why I said that. I hadn't seen this movie since I was twelve, and it wasn't really one of my favorites anyway. As an adventure story, it sufficed between installments of Indiana Jones maybe, but this isn't really something that I remember enjoying all that much back then or that made me nostalgic now. I guess I was just surprised that my wife hadn't seen it. Chances are, some of the kids in her neighborhood watched it on their VCR's, and if that's the case, I'm sure my wife would have at least heard the movie as a child since it's probably the loudest movie of all time. If you want the experience of a daycare with much older children but don't want to leave the house, pop The Goonies in. It's an hour and forty minutes of prepubescent boys screaming as loudly as they can. Sometimes they urinate. Sometimes they curse. Now I'm no prude, but with the amount of shits in this movie, I had trouble figuring out who the audience was supposed to be. I don't imagine older children would like it, and I don't think 1980's parents would be too happy with the potty mouths. I don't know. Maybe I am a prude. More offensive than that is the acting of Jonathan Ke Quan, Short Round himself. I can tell you why that kid didn't have a more fruitful acting career--he's fucking annoying. Midway through this movie, I was hoping that scary guy from Temple of Doom would pop out and rip his heart out. And every single scene that features one of his dumb inventions manages to top (or bottom) the previous one. Corey Feldman's annoying in a different way, but the other kids aren't all that bad. Oh, wait. Jeff Cohen's Chunk is obnoxious, too. There's another guy who Hollywood thankfully decided didn't deserve to be in more movies. The guy who played Sloth even got more work than him. Actually, I'm surprised there wasn't a sequel called Goonies 2: Sloth and Chunk Gay It Up. And before you tell me--yes, I am aware that this has a sequel. I don't think my eardrums could tolerate it though. I did like most of the adult actors though. Joe Pantoliano and Robert Davi make good bumbling crooks, and the always-fetching Anne Ramsey's as nasty as you'd expect her to be. There's another sequel that should have happened, by the way--Goonies 3: Mama Fratelli's Bedroom Adventures in 3-D. Robert Duvall could have been in that one. Or a Quaid brother. Or both Quaid brothers! That son of a bitch would almost write itself, wouldn't it? Opening credits. A bunch of gratuitous sex scenes. Sloth busting in on Mama Fratelli and Dennis Quaid doing "The Double Kangaroo" and yelping out, "Hey, you guuuuuuyyyyys!" Roll credits while some Cyndi Lauper song plays. Boom! It's a billion dollar idea. This movie is disappointing because in the hands it was in, it really should have ended up a classic adventure story for kids. Instead, it's annoyingly loud, inappropriate, and not nearly as much fun as it should be.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

2002 horse movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A cartoon horse runs around the prairie, is captured by a guy with a mustache, escapes with the help of a Native American, hooks up with a girl horse, and listens to Brian Adams' music obsessively.

Is it just me or does it seem like half the movies I write about on here are cartoons? This is another old-school flat-D animated feature that, like The Iron Giant, more people should have bothered seeing. Actually, I have no idea how this one did in the theaters or with its subsequent dvd release. I do remember it coming out and the commercials boasting that it had "more action than Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" which Dylan and I thought was pretty funny at the time. Spirit: Stallion of the Blah Blah Blah doesn't even have Yoda! This does have a lot of solid action scenes though, enough to make it a horsey movie that boys would probably like. Vibrant music and animation perfecting capturing the American West circa when we was killin' all the Indians make this fun for both the eyes and ears, and I liked seeing the historical fiction narrative through the eyes of a horse. I liked the protagonist, voiced hunkily by Matt Damon back when he was skinny. Honestly though, one more Brian Adams song, and I would have left the house to find a horse to kick as hard as I could. This has a nice lively story with good themes for both the little ones and their parents. Dumb title though. It probably failed at the box office because nobody wanted to ask for tickets to see something called Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

Captains Courageous

1937 boat movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A spoiled and likely neglected rich kid has his silver spoon yanked right out of his ass when he's expelled from his boarding school, takes a tumble from his daddy's cruise ship, and is put to work by a crew of fishermen. It's comeuppance time for young Harvey as he befriends crusty fisherman Manuel and learns how to not be a complete pain in the ass.

What do I hate more than anything else in movies? Child actors from the 1930s! And Captains Courageous has an annoying kid (Freddie Bartholomew) playing an annoying character. I suppose we're not really supposed to like Harvey (Why do I keep wanting to call him Nathan?) throughout the first half of this movie, but I don't like him so much that I find it impossible to like him during the second half of the movie, too. I actually broke bones in my hand taking punches at my television screen during a scene involving ice cream. The other children at the beginning of the movie are equally bad. They probably all tried out to play Nathan, and director Victor Fleming just threw up his hands and said, "Whatever! They're all annoying. Just pick out the one with the best face and keep him the hell away from me!" I really liked when one of the kids asked, "Did you call me a sissy?" in a voice that makes him sound like a big sissy. I was really surprised that I didn't really hate this movie, a Cory recommendation, and Spencer Tracy gets all the credit for that. I really think all you have to do is give me a movie where Spencer Tracy is on a boat, and I'll be cool with it. His Manuel is funny, almost like a Marx brother with a little of Groucho's bite and a lot of little of Chico's voice. And he reminded me that I really want my own hurdy-gurdy. I really liked his character, and the bond between the annoying little brat and Manuel is realistic and touching. I'm also immature enough to crack up every time he sang, "Yeah ho, little fish." Once little Nathan is on the boat, this movie picks up, probably because bad things start happening to a bad little kid. I liked watching life on the fishing boat, too. This is the type of movie that kind of makes you wish you were doing what the characters were doing, and after a while, I kind of wanted to work on a boat with a bunch of smelly fish and probably smellier fisherman. Basically, I just want a job where I don't have to shower anymore. I'll even take the occasional hook in my arm if it means I don't have to shower. I also really liked the fisherman trash talk, and Lionel Barrymore as the grizzled captain delivers those lines well. All in all, this turned out to be a nice little adventure story on the high seas with believable characters and the right amount of heart. Yeah ho, little fish! Yeah ho!

Mr. Robinson Crusoe

1932 silliness

Rating: 10/20 (Dylan: 7/20)

Plot: A tough guy bets his buddies a thousand dollars that he and his dog can survive on a deserted island. He befriends a monkey, a parrot, and at least one goat and uses his ingenuity to make his short stay as comfortable as possible.

Ever want to see a monkey milk a goat? This is the movie for you! Want to see Douglas Fairbanks bounce around like an idiot juiced up on caffeine pills? This is also the movie for you! This was on some non-profit cable channel while I was at my parents, and it made Dylan and I laugh for all the wrong reasons. You get an overly enthusiastic Douglas Fairbanks (did he really transition to the talky era this poorly?) talking to all of these animals and building these sometimes-clever contraptions with unrealistic speed. You see him spend twenty minutes building a hammer, and then twenty-six island days later (that's how many days are in June, by the way, if you go by his character's calendar), he's got this entire city built. The references to Robinson Crusoe got tiresome, and this has a really lame depiction of tribe life that looks like a cross between Hawaii and Africa. Also, I'm not sure if it's because this thing hasn't been cleaned up or if the technology made it difficult to film on an island back in the early-30s, but this looked and sounded terrible. The actors all sounded like they were speaking their lines into a can while standing in a cave. I think the script must look something like this:

Douglas Fairbanks' character: Mmubua hayaba vvummbar!
Saturday: Mwey hrtung phungby.
Douglas: Phungby? Ha ha ha! Mmum pood mroth yort!

I know what the parrot was saying though. He said, "OK!" About a dozen times. Couldn't they have found a parrot with a larger vocabulary? This movie also has a scene with bananas that might be the single dumbest scene involving bananas that I've ever seen. Favorite line, spoken by Douglas Fairbanks' friends as stand on their yacht and use binoculars to watch some natives: "Oh. Mama spank." At least I think that's what the guy said.

The Right Stuff

1983 airplane and spaceship movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Traces the advances of flight and the U.S. space program from the time Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier to the training and travels of the Mercury 7 astronauts.

Der Stoff Aus Dem Die Helden Sind is a thoroughly engaging, light-hearted breath of fresh air. There were a lot of ways this material could have been approached. This movie almost fictionalizes the events and characters, and never steers away from an opportunity for a little humor. Instead of inflating the hero aspect, the script makes these pilots and astronauts very very human, and I really liked all the scenes with the bumbling politicians. Their scenes aren't far off from Abbott and Costello routines or an Ionesco play. The scenes with the flights are very realistic without being overly special-effecty, and even though anybody with even a rudimentary knowledge of this period of history knows what happens with the characters, they still manage to hold the tension. At six hours and forty-three minutes, this movie is very long, but it's never boring. The music was a bit much a lot of the time, and the sudden narration at the end is weird. Overall, I really enjoyed this very warm look at the Cold War, a movie that puts a human face on the wacky and wild world of space travel. If nothing else, this movie may have inspired me to incorporate horses into my sex life.

Cory always wanted to be an astronaut as a little boy. Or a shark. Watching movies about them was the next best thing. He recommended The Right Stuff.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

1972 movie

Rating: 19/20

Plot: Mr. Aguirre leads an expedition with his pals to find gold. It's an almost identical plot to Disney's The Huffalump Movie except it takes place in South America in the 16th Century. And Tigger has been replaced with a crazy man.

Cinematic poetry! My favorite movies are those that are uncategorizable, and although Aguirre, the Wrath of God is very clearly a movie, it's just not a movie that is like a lot of other movies. Werner Herzog's penchant for filming in impossible locales and his eye for filming those locales very well makes the Peruvian rain forest just as important as any character in this thing. In fact, since you don't really get to see much of the natives who attack Aguirre and his posse, at times it almost seems like the conflict is with the setting. The location is hauntingly beautiful, violent, and lawless and adds to this mysterious feel that pervades the film. The wonderful Popol Vuh score also contributes to that feel. Herzog not only has an eye for filming on location, he's got a willingness to allow his camera to film happy accidents, to deviate from the script and allow some of the fringe details to evolve spontaneously. One of my favorite of these moments is an extended--and seemingly pointless--scene with a guy jamming on a pan flute thing while Aguirre stands next to him. He allows the story to meander, and the story, I think, is more mythic and more mysterious because of it. Klaus Kinski's performance is a scary one even though this isn't anything like a horror movie. He's the perfect picture of madness, delusional and paranoid and megalomaniacal. As I've probably typed in these pages before, it all starts with Kinski's eyes. But as Aguirre, he's required to do so much physically, like Nic Cage in the Bad Lieutenant movie. Aguirre often seems more insect than human, walking with an awkward limp and a hunched back and with an expression on his countenance that makes it look like his mind hurts. I love his performance here, and knowing a little of the legends behind the filming of it (see: My Best Fiend or watch Aguirre with Herzog's commentary) adds a new dimension. Herzog is always good with endings, and the denouement of Aguirre is memorable and moving, definitely one of my favorite movie endings ever. It's one of those cases where you think, "How was this even filmed?" but then you just stop thinking about it and decide to just be glad it was.


I don't want to alienate my four and a half readers, but I've thought about making a rule that there are certain movies you just have to watch if you want to read my blog. This would definitely be one of those movies. I've decided not to make that rule, by the way, but you should see this movie anyway so that you can see Klaus Kinski pick up a monkey. That's something that every cinemaphile needs to see.

Back to the Future

1985 time travel classic

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Marty McFly, a guy who apparently is on an eight-or-so-year high school graduation plan, zips to 1985 via his eccentric scientist friend Doc Brown's Delorean/time-machine. He saves his future dad from injury by pushing him out of the way before his future grandfather hits him with a car. Unfortunately, that's how his parents met, and Marty McFly has inadvertently changed the course of history. He has to get his folks together before the rest of his body disappears like his hand does when he's trying to play guitar and sing a Chuck Berry song, all while Doc Brown tries to figure out a way to send him back to the year 1985. It's a thrill a minute!

I haven't been able to get the music of Huey Lewis out of my head since I watched this. I'm not talking about the last time I watched it either. I'm talking about since I watched it in 1985. But since 1993 and the release of Robert Altman's wonderfully-depressing Short Cuts, I haven't been able to not have Huey Lewis's music stuck in my head without it being accompanied by the image of Huey Lewis's penis. And the really interesting thing is that on certain days--stormy ones when my hair is longish and unkempt--that combination of Huey Lewis's music and penis actually seems to have the power to send me into the past or into the future. No, I've not been able to harness this time travel power and go wherever I want. Once, I went to 1985 and watched Back to the Future in a theater with my younger self (no, my younger self didn't see my current self) and my friend Vernon. Once, I traveled into the future, the year 2025 to be exact, and found out that I turn into a fat guy. (Yes, my future self did see my current self and couldn't keep his hands off me; we may have made out.) But anyway, this is one of those movies that gets a hefty nostalgia bonus as well as the Crispin Glover bonus. It's not perfect film-making, but it very well might be close to perfect story-telling. Self-referential and endlessly surprising (unless you've seen it a dozen times, I guess), this has great character development and a contagious creative energy. I absolutely refuse to pay attention enough to stick my fingers in the (probably numerous) plot holes because this is the type of movie you really want to watch with the innocent gut of a child instead of the mind of a snobby adult. Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd have great chemistry. The former is perfectly likable and gives a performance that makes this easy to watch countless times. The latter's performance is inspired and perfectly loony. Of course, Crispin Glover is great because he's always great, but this movie has one of my favorite Crispin Glover moments, his character's big turnaround. It makes me cry every time. I also like Thomas F. Wilson as the villain here. This movie is a tremendous amount of fun. And it's only the first part of a trilogy! I'm sure the next one has to be great, too!

The Man Who Would Be King

1975 adventure

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnehan, two big-balled former British soldiers dicking around in India, decide to cross dangerous Afganistan (where the Taliban hide in caves) to reach Kafiristan, a heathen land where they plan on becoming kings. They teach villagers to use some guns they brought along, and after Daniel is struck with an arrow during battle but does not bleed, the Kafiritanians decide that he is the son of Alexander the Great.

God's holy trousers, what a fantastic film this is! Connery and Caine have great chemistry in what's essentially a buddy/road movie. The dialogue's fresh and witty and enriches the adventure yarn. This isn't exactly a comedy, but there are a lot of times where you get a whiff of a controlled Monty Python with the two leads like a mature Abbott and Costello type comedy team. The greatness with The Man Who Would Be King is that it spits in the eyes of tradition, genre-crossing like a She-Devil in plaid pants, unhinged and groovy and barely holding together with absurd poetics and half-assed histories. Snake charmers, dudes with insects on their faces, dope smokers, holy men, and filthy beggars line streets pre-credits, splashes of brown and more brown and crazy ethnic musics and an antsy camera helping them shiver on the screen. It paints an exotic picture right off the bat. John Huston found some nice places for this story to sit, and the shots of snow-covered mountains, desert battlefields, bottomless chasms, and towering temples help give it all a unique personality. And so many extras! There are very few times when the screen isn't stuffed corner to corner with stuff to look at. The Man Who Would Be King grabs your ears and eyes, tickles the pickle, mesmerizes. This is the type of movie you want to consume entirely, absorb. Costume design, a great score, cinematography. Yeah, you can chew and chew on this one. It's a lot of fun, but there's a poignancy just below the surface of the action and humor. Great stuff.

Note: Reportedly, this is Ass Masterson's second favorite movie. (Wikipedia)

Dersu Uzala

1975 story of friendship

Rating: 17/20

Plot: It's 1902, and Russian captain Vladimir Arseniev and some of his pals are dicking around in the Siberian wilderness. They find themselves discombobulated but luckily run into Yoda who helps them in their exploration and even saves Vladimir's life because Vladimir doesn't know how to make shelter with grass on his own. Eventually, Yoda and Vladimir, now BFF's, part ways only to meet again on another of Vladimir's outings later on.

Great story of friendship and survival told simply and gracefully by Master Kurosawa. Those Japanese fellows sure can photograph nature, and Kurosawa's got the eye to make the icy Siberian wasteland look simultaneously beautiful and treacherous. The characters are terrific, and their relationship wonderfully develops through the actions and expressions of the character rather than through unnecessary language. There's not as much action as you might expect from a movie calling itself a survival tale, but when there is action, like during the scene where Dersu and Vladimir have to collect grass to protect themselves from a harsh winter's night, the details are meticulous and the situations are tense. I really like those characters, especially wacky Dersu, and I was disappointed that the ending couldn't have been a little happier. I'm not typically the kind of guy who requires a happy ending, but these just aren't the type of characters who deserved the unhappy one. Although I love Kurosawa, this wasn't one of his movies that was on my radar, so I'm really glad Winter Rates recommended it.

The Thief of Bagdad

1924 silent adventure movie

Rating: 15/20 (Abbey: 15/20)

Plot: Things are bad for the title thief. Poor guy can't even afford a shirt. This is the story of his quest to find a way to cover his nipples, a quest during which he must face monsters, evil princes, and a running time of almost two-and-a-half hours. Luckily, his nipples turn out to be magical, and when rubbed (only in a counterclockwise motion), magical things happen.

I'm sure I've seen other Douglas Fairbanks movies, but I don't remember him gesticulating this wildly. He really stands out in this movie, not just because he's much better looking than anybody else but because of his uncontrollable flailing and other completely unnatural movements. The most impressive thing about this version of The Thief of Bagdad is the grand set design complete with enormous doors, cavernous caverns, and ambitious palaces. The sheer size of all that is amazing. There are also some ingenious effects, especially for 1924. The monsters are fairly well done, and magic carpet/invisible cloak trickery looks good. I was most disappointed in the action sequences as I figured Fairbanks would be involved in a lot more stunts. I thought that was what he was known for. But the action sequences are few and far between, and there's such a lengthy set-up to a lot of them that it becomes frustrating. I really wish I could have just watched the highlights from The Thief of Bagdad. The camera also does very little in this movie with almost all of the action taking place from side to side which, at times, gives this about as much fluidity as a film strip. At times, I felt my eyes droop, and Abbey, although she was initially fascinated by Douglas Fairbanks' nipples, eventually lost interest. Still, future films had a lot to borrow from this early adventure movie.

Nanook of the North

1922 narrative documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Anthropologist Robert J. Flaherty goes where the huskies go and avoids the yellow snow while filming an Eskimo family in their quest to survive in the harsh Canadian climate. The title pater familias hunts for walrus and seal, which the family devours raw, and builds an igloo. He also tries to eat a record.

The first feature-length documentary is a good one. The amount of staging makes this seem far from factual (in fact, Nanook's wife wasn't really his wife), but this still looks like an accurate depiction of what life in this particular brand of wild would be like. Of course, it's not like documentaries since Nanook have exactly been 100% objective. It's probably more exciting as a historical document than a movie, but there are some exciting moments--Nanook's struggles with a seal beneath the ice, the intricacies of building an igloo, Nanook molesting a walrus. I really like the scene where Nanook and his family are shown a phonograph. It's such an odd moment, one that arguably doesn't even need to be in the film, but the strange little detail adds some personality and makes Nanook really easy to like. He's also got these fuzzy pants that I'd like to buy, not only for myself but for my entire posse. Nobody's going to mess around with a gang in large fuzzy white pants. Flaherty wasn't exactly a filmmaker, but you wouldn't know it by watching this silent film. I expected shivering to get in the way of quality cinematography. I would have liked to see more of the Northern Canadian landscape, but the focus was kept on the family and their struggles with that landscape so I can forgive that.

Another Cory recommendation.

Up

2009 movie

Rating: 16/20 (Jen: 17/20; Dylan: 11/20;Emma: 18/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Lonely widowered Carl Fredrickson is about to be shipped to an old person's home because he's a menace to society. Instead of losing the home his wife and he constructed out of memories and love, he decides to transport it to a waterfall in South America, both as a way to escape the retirement home and to fulfill a promise he had made to his Ellie a long, long time ago. Unbeknownst to Carl, a boy scout has accompanied him. They make it to South America where they run into exotic birds, talking dogs, and a childhood hero with a zeppelin.

I fully expected this movie to end in what I thought was a predictably unpredictable way. Instead, it threw me off by unpredictably ending in a predictable way. The movie is better with my ending, I think, and I'm sticking with my slightly different "reading" of this one. I can't really say anymore about that without spoiling things. Lovable characters, solid animation (not as stunningly sharp as Ratatouille though), and a quirky little story add up to another Pixar win. Like Wall-E, I think the action bits go a bit too far (that's part of my "reading" though), but the humor works throughout with lots of visual and verbal gags and the colors and details make this a feast for the eyes. It's also a very touching film, managing to make me weep within the first ten minutes which is probably a new record. Lots of little details are going to make this a movie that you can return to again and again although, like Ratatouille, a large chunk of this one is more for adults than children.

Note: I did not see the 3-D version of this movie. 3-D is for suckers.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the Eighth Dimension!

1984 science fiction adventure movie

Rating: 10/20

Plot: The title character is a rock star, a surgeon, a scientist, and a superhero. After successfully entering the 8th dimension in his fancy rocket car, he and the Hong Kong Cavaliers must battle aliens from Planet 10 who are trying to destroy earth.

This is one of those cases where you can use the word "unique" and not mean it in a very nice way. This movie is a mess. There are some dryly humorous moments, but the plot is so sprawling and the characters just seem to be there to add decoration and aren't developed much at all. The acting is hammy (Lithgow is really out of control) and the special effects are about as good as you can find in a Power Rangers episode. The acting and special effects are supposed to be like that, but there's just this lack of fun and energy that flattens this movie. The bizarrity is over-the-top and distracting. I remember not remembering watching this as a kid. I doubt that I liked it then either. I actually expected to like this cult classic a lot more than I did.

The Lost World

1925 silent adventure story

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Based on a novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, this tale of adventurer Professor Challenger and his claims that dinosaurs inhabit an area near the Amazon. It all makes perfect sense when you think about it. The media has a field day as Challenger becomes the laughingstock of London. He assembles a team to travel back to the area and hopefully rescue somebody's father. When they get there, they find a monkey man, a Porkosaurus, a Dinklesaurus, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a Chunkysaurus Rex, a Borbotamagus, a monkey, crocodiles or alligators, a person, trees, a Brontosaurus, and a Gizmosaurus. They're amazed.

The special effects in this mid-20's adventure yarn are extraordinary for their time, excellent stop- animation stuff recalling later Harryhausen. Indeed, this is the first movie to use stop-animation to make monsters come to life. Detailed sets add a certain realism to the proceedings although the camera is often too detached from the far-off dinosaur-on-dinosaur action for the viewer to really feel any real fear or get any kind of boner whatsoever. The whole thing lacks the iconic imagery of King Kong, but it's safe to say King Kong wouldn't have even existed without The Lost World. The acting and story are pretty much what you'd expect from a silent adventure story; there's a superfluous romantic side-plot and some really dippy character development. However, for an 85 year old special effects extravaganza/adventure story, this one amazingly still works and manages to be entertaining beyond the historical importance of being the first loose-monster-causing-mischief-on-the-streets movie. And you've got to love that monkey man!

Ice Age

2002 liberal propaganda

Rating: 14/20 (Abbey: 19/20)

Plot: The Ice Age cometh, and all the animals are forced to goeth south. Diego, a saber-toothed tiger, succumbs to peer pressure and agrees to kill a human child in order to impress his friends. A surly wooly mammoth named Manny and Sid, a pea-brained sloth, decide to team up to protect the child and take him back to his father. Diego decides to "help," and along the way, as they battle the elements, the trio discover that they are all, to put it in contemporary terms, gay for each other. Meanwhile, Scrat the squirrel has all kinds of trouble with his nuts. Perhaps he needed a sack.

An obvious attempt by the liberal media to introduce the gay agenda to children. This cartoon has multiple gay relationships (all male) including gay rhinos and gay characters who have apparently adopted a child, and the film even builds to a rather awkward mammoth-on-tiger-on-sloth menage-a-trois. This is, of course, after proving that they can raise a child on their own. That this film was made during Bush's administration is unbelievable to me. You've also got all kinds of nutty environmental messages in this. Other than that, the characters are likable, the story has heart, and about half the animation is really top notch. Weather, water, and landscape looks absolutely terrific in this movie, but although the animals usually look ok (at times, suffering from that same rubberiness that the animals in Madagascar have), the people look really jacky. I also like the voice talents in this, a sort of who's-who of homosexual Hollywood. This was the second movie of a sort of double feature I watched with Abbey when she was sick. She also watched a creepy Barbie movie, but I tried to look away as much as possible and will not be reviewing that one.

The African Queen

1951 classic movie

Rating: 13/20 (Abbey: 1/20)

Plot: During World War I, a Canadian mail man and a missionary spinster travel down an unnavigable African river via the title vessel, another obvious phallic symbol. They fight white water rapids, waterfalls, crocodiles, German soldiers, and the elements. The mail man performs hippopotamus impressions until the woman (I can't remember their names. If only the characters would have used the names before or after every single line they spoke or something!) can no longer control herself and pounces upon him like a hippopotamus on a sexy dwarf. Between the physical manifestation of their sins (i.e. frequent boinking), they concoct a stupid plan to construct a torpedo or two to take out a big German ship off the coast of Africa.

Seriously. Is anybody going to deny that Bogart won the Best Actor award only because of that hippopotamus impression? This movie has more flaws than memorable moments. Not once did it feel like these characters were facing immediate peril. When the crocodiles were sliding down the bank into the water? No, they were safely in a boat. When the Germans were shooting at them from that fortress? No, the movie wasn't ready to be over yet. When the expert boatswoman Hepburn had to maneuver the ramshackle boat through dangerously violent waters? Hippo, please. I did enjoy the obvious green-screen effects. I didn't enjoy watching the impossible-to-buy romance between the leads. More believable would have been a romance between Bogart and the leeches. I'll give this some credit for the on-location filming as well as the dangerous in-studio filming. That alone can't save this from drowning in its own silliness though. Any movie that doesn't earn the 20 rating from Abbey has to be pretty bad.

Jason and the Argonauts

1963 mythological romp

Rating: 16/20

Plot: All young Jason wants to do in life is put together a slow-pitch softball team that ccan ompete for the national title. What's standing in his way? An addiction to medication for hyperactivity and his own phallic hallucinations. Not having any previous problems with hyperactivity, the medication slows him down significantly as it makes him hypoactive and languid and forces him to pay far too much attention to things, sometimes waiting for days for somebody to finish a story that was already long finished. The hallucinations (a giant phallic bronze statue, harpies, a multi-phallic lizard, a grotesquely lopsided dildo, a talking phallic figurehead) also slow him down in his quest to find softball talent as he's thrown him trembling into the corners of his phallic ship. Can he find a starting pitcher before the big tournament begins?

It's too bad there's so much cheese on the edges of this epic. At the heart, you've got some of Harryhausen's best work. The story is pretty stupid and sprawling with that mythological goofiness. There's not a lot to love when there's not monsters on the screen. I'm not sure this story would even make a lot of sense to anybody without at least some background in mythology. The characters are also wooden, and they aren't helped by trite dialogue. But it's easy enough to forgive that when you've got classic action sequences like when the giant statue guy pops out from behind the mountain or when those skeletons start doing their skeletal thang. Bitchin' stuff! Despite its problems, it's at least as good as anything Peter Jackson's done with the possible exception of Meet the Feebles.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

1926 (possibly first) full-length animated film

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Based on The Arabian Nights stories. An evil African magician conjures up a flying horse, part of his plan to marry the princess. Prince Achmed is tricked into taking off on the flying horse, and it takes him to China which, apparently, is a land full of demons. There, he falls in love and has numerous adventures including battling the demons in order to save his love interest.

This is stunning and needs to be seen by more people. It goes far beyond the historical value of being (maybe) the first animated feature-length movie. The look is a unique one, the animation of silhouettes on psychedelic backgrounds. It sort of reminds me of shadow puppets, but the details are exquisite and the figures are artistic and creative. It's easy to appreciate the amount of time and care that went into this. By far the best animated movie I've seen with the character Aladdin.