Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: Gor

1987 fantasy movie

Rating: 4/20 (Fred: 7/20; Libby: 14/20; Carrie: 5/20; Ozzy: fell asleep, though he was saying that he didn't think this was a bad movie)

Plot: After his girlfriend breaks up with him, a college professor uses a magic ring to transport to the titular planet where he teams up with some villagers who just had their ugly pink crystal stolen by an evil dictator.

Despite this being a rather titillating PG movie with more than its fair share of taint (Libby's observation) and haunch action, this is a pretty dull movie. I think it might have more walking-per-square-inch than a Hobbit movie, and that, friends, is a great deal of walking. It's really a movie about walking, interrupted with some of the most poorly choreographed swordfights you'll ever see and some scantily-clad women wrestling around. Those fight scenes make it seem like everybody's afraid of hurting each other. Oh, and there's some dancing, and although it's choreographed slightly better than the fight scenes, it really just takes up time. This barely has a plot at all, and the most important things that happen would probably take up about seven minutes of movie time. I didn't really like the main characters very much. I had trouble getting past the main character's name: Tarl. The gal traveling with him on Gor is shapely enough and has big 80's hair just like I like. Fitting right in with that decade is the hair of another member of the posse whom my friends and I just called Mullet. And there's an old guy. Oh, and a little fellow named Hup pokes into the thing about midway through. I figured I'd see his name in the credits playing little fellows in other 80's fantasy classics, but he's only in this movie and the sequel. Apparently, Hup didn't want to mess around with anything that wasn't Gor.  Usually, when I don't like the good guys, I can root for the bad guy, but this one is awful. His dialogue is unintelligible (seriously, I watched with the subtitles, and it frequently said [unintelligible dialogue]) and he alternates between whispering and growling. The best thing about the bad guys is their hat variety. In fact, I'm fairly positive that 3/4 of the film's budget was spent on hats. The variety, I'm guessing, is because they wanted to sell more Gor action figures. It's the same reason, I suppose, that there were so many different Ewoks. My favorite thing about this is that Jack Palance is listed third in the credits but is barely in this at all. At first, it even seems like they're just using Jack Palance stock footage or stealing shots from anther movie. He's in this for about two minutes and really only to set up the sequel which was apparently filmed at the same time as this first movie. I can't wait to see the follow-up!

Chicken with Plums

2011 movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Renowned violinist Nasser Ali Khan is distraught after his violin is destroyed. Since he's unable to satisfactorily replace the instrument, he decides to retire to his death bed. His wife is unhappy with the decision.

This is a beautiful story, whimsically and imaginatively told. It toys with your emotions a little bit, starting out as a fantasy of sorts before transforming through flashbacks and flash-forwards into something that is borderline devastating. The main character is imperfect, but he's imperfect like most men, especially the artistic ones, and I had no trouble at all connecting with him. Mathieu Amalric is just about perfect in the role and reminds me of a character who belongs in an Aki Kaurismaki movie. Maria de Medeiros plays his wife, juxtaposing mousey with bitchy very well. I thought the name was familiar, and it turns out she was the beauty in Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World. I also liked Golshifteh Farahani. She's got a great face and an even better name. The real star of this show, however, is its flavor. The source material is an Iranian graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, and it's directed by her and Vincent Paronnaud, the same team that put together Persepolis. Unlike that, this is mostly live action, but it's about as close to animation as live action can be. I don't know if it's the graphic novelist's visual sense or what, but there's a style to this that I just loved. An exotic and fantastical world is created from what is really a simple story. There's some magical realism with a shopkeeper's magic wand, a visit from a twenty-foot-tall Sophia Loren, and a visit from the Grim Reaper are more out-there sequences, but even everyday things like the way a bus curves through mountainous roads is displayed in a way that makes this seem like it comes from a fairy tale. There are some cartoonish special effects that don't come close to adding to any realism but still manage to fit. There's also some stylistic variety in a hilarious black and white flashback where a teacher compares the main character to his brother and encourages his classmates to boo him and a flash-forward where an animated version of the protagonist's son shoots a buffalo out of the sky before the story morphs into a sitcom that might poke fun at the United States a little bit. There's a variety with the animation styles used, too. And there are puppets, and as my regular 4 1/2 readers could tell you, I'm a sucker for puppets. Again, this isn't all whimsy and surreal vignettes. There's a heart to this movie--"The love you lost will be in each note you play."--and it hit me just right.

I think fans of Amelie might like this.

The City of Lost Children

1995 fantasy

Rating: 18/20

Plot: An evil guy, with the help of six clones and a little person, attempts to extend his life by stealing the dreams of children. One of those children is the "brother" of a strongman who teams up with an orphan thief to save him.

Hot damn, how I love this movie! Everything about it! From the whopper of the opening with the multitudinous Santas, a chilling little nightmare with wobbly visuals, to the happy little ending, the director duo of Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet use the film medium to show us things that we've never seen before. And there's just something beautiful about that. They build a world, an unknown time and an unknown place, that we've never seen before. There's a ton of brown, dilapidation, decay, general stickiness, and it's the perfect place for this little story to take place, this grotesque little fairy tale without a glimpse of a single fairy. There's a little Dr. Caligari in the landscapes, a little sci-fi, a whole lot of imagination. Love the details, especially all the stuff in the background of the bearded original Dominique Pinon's underwater home. Speaking of Dominique Pinon--how brilliant is he in this? There are seven of him, often on screen at the same time, and his facial contortions and slapstick silliness are hilarious. Daniel Emilfork plays the evil Krankg, and he nails evil but not without a bit of humor. The scene where he becomes Santa is uproariously hilarious. Emilfork's got the perfect head for this movie and this character. I also love the Octopus twins choreography, and there are plenty of sight gags with those two, my favorite being where the one smokes a cigarette and the other blows out the smoke. I'd also watch a cooking show hosted by those two. I think Tati would have appreciated the Octopus. And then there's Mireille Mosse, a little woman with a giant head. It's another example of perfect casting, maybe one of my favorite little person roles ever. And that's just for the line "Good bye, Grasshopper." This movie is just pure child-like imagination unleashed. Flea hypnotism, Cyclops men forcing a fellow Cyclops man to watch his own murder, a talking brain in an aquarium. It's one of those rare stories where nothing that happens feels borrowed. Also, it's the type of story where nothing simply happens. Instead, you get all these Rube Goldberg shenanigans. The demise of the Octopus and Miette's breaking into a room are the best examples. Add Badalamenti's beautiful score, and you've got yourself a classic! I do believe, by the way, that this thing is symbolically chunky, a story about innocence and what happens when childish innocence is corrupted by things in the adult world. It hurts my head trying to pick this thing apart, however. For me, it's a movie to just absorb. I can still remember the first time I saw this; it put a smile on my face for weeks. Subsequent viewings are just as rewarding. It's one of those movies that I really can appreciate more because I don't remember any of my dreams. This, and a litter of other movies from the Lynches, Jodorowskies, Maddins, and Svankmajers of the world, are substitutes for dreams and nightmares that float away from me before I wake up. Just beautiful, imaginative stuff.

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.

How to Train Your Dragon

2010 animated movie

Rating: 14/20 (Abbey: 20/20; Buster: ??/20)

Plot: An inventive but dorkish Viking, a boy who happens to be the son of the most famous and gifted dragon hunter on the island, wants to be a a dragon slayer himself. His name's Hiccup though, so it's unlikely. During a dragon raid, he manages to wound a Night Fury dragon, one of the scariest and most difficult to kill. They end up becoming first friends and later lovers causing Hiccup to question his people's hatred of the beasts.

I got bored with these characters, their story, and, strangest of all, the action sequences really quickly, but this one grew on me a little as it went. I never did like the main character, most likely because of his voice (Jay Baruchel), but Craig Ferguson almost made up for him. Astrid, the girl probably added in the script's second or third draft so that girls would have a reason to watch a movie about a bunch of boys and men fighting dragons, was arguably even more annoying. And I didn't like Toothless the dragon either. But for a movie with a bunch of characters I didn't care about or like, this wasn't that bad of a movie. That's mostly because of the animation which blows everything else I've seen from the Dreamworks people out of the water. The landscapes are terrific, the human characters are realistic without being overly realistic, and the textures of things like dragon skin, tables, clothing, fire, and the geography give this not only a realism but an artfulness. I really liked the look of the movie, just not the rest of it. Attempts to inject a little heart into this cartoon about dragons seemed really contrived, and even Buster rolled her eyes a few times. Yes, I did give this the customary Craig Ferguson bonus.

The Fall

2006 fantasy thing

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A paralyzed stuntman in a 1920's Los Angeles hospital meets a girl with a broken arm and begins telling her a story about five vengeful heroes and a monkey. She enjoys his disjointed tale of a search for the evil Lord Odious, but the storyteller might have ulterior motives.

I had to take a point away from this because the director, Singh, chose to go by a single name, Tarsem, for this production. And then there's the issue of this poster which is one of the ugliest things I've ever seen. I've seen The People's Tongue album covers that are easier on the eye than that. But then there was a really nice tribute to silent film stuntmen with Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd Movement that teared me up a bit. Of course, it made me wonder if that particular piece of music, which I plan on dying to some day, is overused these days. It's no "Beyond the Sea" yet, but it's getting there. This is a movie with so much beauty in its individual parts that it's almost overwhelmingly sloppy. The sheer amount of locations the filmmakers would have had to travel to is impressive enough. Tarsem's visuals are often stunning, and the swimming elephants, dazzling colors, butterflies that morph into islands, and human meat chandeliers can remind a person why they watch movies in the first place. Unlike Alexandria, played by Catinca Untaru in a child performance that ranged from touching and with surprising depth to sort of annoying, I didn't care much for the story the guy was telling or its flat characters. But I was enamored with the visuals, these characters traveling to places that movies can usually only take us through the magic of CGI. I'm just going to assume computers weren't involved because it makes me like the movie more. Just as this movie's story and its story-within-a-story are all over the place, this is thematically all over the place as well, touching on dark thematic issues like depression, child labor, immigration, and suicide and happier ones like the powers of imagination. And movies. This doesn't always work and feels a little too long, but when it connects, it's almost magical. Buster makes a few appearances in that stuntman montage, by the way.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II

2011 franchise finale (until somebody figures out a way to squeeze more money out of this character)

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Heroic Harry and his helpers hunt for Horcruxes while warring wizards wrangle. A guy with nose envy prowls around in search of Potter. It's like an elaborate and magical (read: Satanic) game of hide and seek. Meanwhile, barely pubescent boys' magic wands wiggle as they discover Hermione's cleavage, and combined with all the spells and supernatural silliness, there's enough to piss off the Christian church for years and years. A choir director is heard saying, "What? They're kissing each now? I thought they just performed magic!"

I don't remember what I gave the last boring entry in the Harry Potter series, but I'd like the series to be around a 14 or 15. It's solidly entertaining, and the actors do such a good job of bringing these characters to life. It's a shame Richard Harris couldn't stick around for the duration, but I really am glad they were able to get these things spat out while everybody else was young enough. This last movie is packed with action, and the special effects are really good. I love that opening shot with the black ghostly things hovering over and around Hogwarts, and the destruction of the school, so whimsically magical in those first few movies, is shocking. I don't like watching wizard duels nearly as much as I enjoy a good lightsaber battle, but at least there aren't any of those jerky-camera fight scenes like in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. I still think, despite this last book being split up into two lengthy-movie chunks, that things move a little too quickly at times. A lot of important characters die in these things, but the next big plot development has to be hurried along which takes away some of the emotional jolt. Snape's exit should have been a big emotional moment, and it's the one thing I really looked forward to after reading that last book. In fact, I might have given up on the movies if it wasn't for the anticipation of that scene. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I thought it was just another example of the makers taking movie shortcuts and taking away some of the power of that scene. Rickman's so good as that character though, and I thought it was cool that Rowling filled him in on his character's whole story after making him promise that he wouldn't reveal the secrets. Voldemort--is it just me or does his character become more comic the more we see him? He goes from the mysterious Villain with a Name You Can't Say to a bit of a doofus, doesn't he?

One of these weekends, I think I'll throw a Harry Potter movie marathon party, invite all of my friends over, and watch all eight of these movies in a row. I'd like to look at my ratings again. At the same time, it's nice to be done with all these movies. Maybe I should just move on with my life instead.

The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao

1964 Tony Randall tour de force!

Rating: 14/20

Plot: It doesn't matter. Tony Randall is a force to be reckoned with.

At the one hour and thirty minute mark, there's a scene where a Loch Ness monster eats a cowboy while these insane bagpipes blare. And not even that can top what Tony Randall is doing throughout the movie. He's a melting pot of dialects, and that's only when he's the titular character. He plays all seven faces here, and every one of them is hot in its own way. Of course, seeing Randall sans shirt rock a Pan flute would make even the most stoic housewife quiver. Randall's goofily off the wall in this and only slightly racist. The story's not entirely coherent, but it's still a lot of fun. I liked the quaint special effects with the snake and that Loch Ness monster, but my favorite scene takes place at Merlin's magic show when there's an extended shot of a kid playing pocket pool. There's another great bit of child acting during Mike's (Kevin Tate) juggling speech. "I can do it! Look, Dr. Lao!" Right there, that's really what acting is all about. This is corny and dated, but it's not a bad addition to the Western fantasy genre. And Tony Randall, if I didn't make this clear earlier, is a force to be reckoned with.

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie # 19: Season of the Witch

2011 witch movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: While looking out his window at the many sights to see and the different people to be, Mr. Leitch decides that he has to pick out every stitch because a rabbit's running in the ditch. Oh, no! Must be the season of the witch! He looks over his shoulder, and summer cat is looking over its shoulder at him. It's strange.

A movie based on a Donovan song? Starring Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman? With the cute-as-a-button Claire Foy spending the majority of the movie in a cage? Sign me up!

Nicolas Cage rocks the long hair and pretty much makes that face that you see on the poster up there throughout the entire movie. He and co-star Ron Perlman, the latter who should be pissed since I didn't see a single poster with him on it although his character is equally important, both swing a mean sword, slicing off goon-monks' heads and watching the life poof out the top of them in CGI dust spirals. I'm also not going to complain about getting to see Ron Perlman headbutt Satan because that's pretty awesome. But their performances are really wooden in this completely stiff period horror film. Ron Perlman's also only got a single facial expression. They and the entire movie are flat, devoid of personality. You know what this movie is like? It's like one of those t-shirts you can buy at a gas station, one of those with a giant cougar against a backdrop of stormy skies or a pair of dolphins penetrating a wall of bitchin' fire. It looks like the best shirt ever until you actually put it on and realize you bought it a two sizes too small and that your nipples distort the cougar's face and the fabric gives you a rash. And then you're sitting on the curb after finding out that you're four dollars and thirty-five cents short of being able to afford a sandwich at your favorite sub sandwich chain and that's the exact amount you spent on the shirt. A little girl and her mother pass by and the little girl says, "Mom, look at that crying man's shirt," and you decide that you're going to take your own life. That's what this movie is like. Dopey dark special effects puttering around during action sequences with outcomes that I have no interest in. All with this really big music whenever anything happens, apparently because my eyes alone can't tell when something really big happens. I hate that. It's like the filmmakers think that I'm stupid. There is the aforementioned headbutting-the-devil scene and another scene where, if you use your imagination a little, kind of looks like Nicolas Cage having sex with Satan. But you have to ignore the fact that they're both being really stabby throughout the whole thing. I also dug those bird gas mask things. But now I'm working pretty hard to find anything to like about this movie. It's a pretty joyless experience.

Question [Spoiler Alert!]: How did the girl end up naked at the end? Did I miss something?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

2010 monkey-maker

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Harry Potter and his buddies are on a hunt for pieces of Voldemort's soul and the sword that will destroy them. If I had to divide my soul into seven bits, I'd hide the pieces in the following: my disc golf bag, my beat-up copy of Revenge of the Lawn, my autographed picture of Peter Mayhew (That's right, bitches!) that my brother gave me, my koala cup from the zoo that I drink tea out of, my Samurai Jack action figure, the souvenir penny with a picture of the three-eyed guy that I got at a Ripley's Believe It or Not, and Harry Potter's forehead. Then, I could fulfill a life-long dream of playing hide-and-seek with Hermione.

I am glad that Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint were able to do all of these movies. I wish Richard Harris would have been able to Dumbledore his way through all of these, but them's the breaks. This entry in the series is really dull and very poorly paced. As J.K. became more and more verbose with her books, the movies stayed about the same length. Chopping inevitably had to occur. This book is, I believe, a little shorter than the book or two preceding it, and most of the book describes camping. Camping is really kind of boring anyway, so to stretch this into essentially a five-hour movie doesn't make much sense. Well, unless you're trying to fill Hermione's magic bottomless bag thing with wizard cash, I guess. This juxtaposes scenes of the wizard trio camping with some jumpy and barely coherent action sequences. Director David Yates really only has one trick up his directorial sleeve (like a wizard's sleeve only without the perverse connotation): jerking the camera around. During a wand fight, the camera whirls higgledy-piggledy, and things get so wobbly during a chase through a forest that I'm pretty sure I would have had a seizure if I had seen this in the theater. I'm glad I wasn't a kid when these movies came out. I would have probably run around my big yard with a stick while screaming, "Halitosis bonerificus!" and jerking around so much that my neighbors would have thought I was epileptic. The special effects are still really good for the most part, the exception being when some good-looking CGI in the dark suddenly turns into a car chase thing that looks like it came right from Matrix II where the light makes the CGI look terrible. But the whimsy of the early movies is completely gone and replaced with nothing but dread. No, I don't think the tone of these last couple movies should match the first few, but it does suffer from not having the emotional versatility of some of those. There's a scene I really want to see in the final installment of this cash cow, but I'm not in a hurry. Speaking of that, was Alan Rickman in this movie for less than five minutes or was that my imagination?

And before you ask--No, my autographed picture of Peter Mayhew is not for sale. Neither is my soul. J.K. Rowlings' soul might be though if the price is right.

The Last Airbender

2010 soul-sapping experience

Rating: 5/20 (Abbey: 13/20)

Plot: A little kid with a blue glowing arrow tattoo on his bald head is the chosen one or something and as the titular last airbender, has to journey to far-away lands to learn how to bend water and fire and dirt. Fire-bending people are trying to get in his way.

Abbey's a fan of the television cartoon series that this is based on. I kept having to ask her questions about what the hell was going on in this piece of supernatural crap, but honestly, I didn't really care all that much and was just trying to stay awake. This was probably the most bored that I'll be with a movie all year. The characters were flat, and they might as well have been played by statues. That's about how much personality they all had. And I just didn't get this bending thing. The characters made these little kung-fu moves, and through the magic of special effects, crap moved around. I got that, but the fight scenes didn't make any sense to me. I kept trying to apply logic, paper-rock-scissors type rules, to the whole thing, but what element beats what? It seems like water would beat fire. What beats air? At least closing my eyes and trying to figure that all out kept me from having to see this movie. It looked synthetic, synthetic and ugly. And like Drive Angry, the criminals responsible for this have tried their best to take advantage of that fad with swooshing water and flying fire. No type of glasses will help this look any better though. The biggest issues here are with the storytelling though. This fantasy-adventure tale is told by a person who has no idea how to pace a movie or write dialogue. And who might that person be? M. Night Shmaltzydong, of course! And he tells this story so humorlessly. I've seen bits and pieces of the cartoon, and there's some humor in that. This thing is sickeningly stiff, as if somebody wanted this epic tale of bending crap to be super-serious and decided to suck out anything that could potentially cause the audience to have fun. And the best news? There are at least two more installments required to finish this story. I won't watch those with 3-D glasses either. In fact, I'd rather have somebody poke my eyes out than watch any more of this shit.

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs

1997 acid-washed fantasy

Rating: 10/20

Plot: I don't know. I think it's got something to do with people who can only have sex outdoors with an audience of ostriches.

How can I not like this? It's a Guy Maddin joint, in fact the first Guy Maddin joint that I don't love. It's got the enchanting Shelley Duvall and the even-more-enchanting Frank Gorshin in it. It's a visual feast. It's colorful, although it's got this gauzy thing that, I guess, gives it a weird fairy tale vibe. It's got ostriches. It's got a little of Maddin's typically dry humor. Despite all that, it just never clicks. The acting is about as bad as acting gets. I think Maddin generally goes for awkward and overly-emotive, the latter as an homage to silent cinema, but it just doesn't work in this one. Actually, it works to make the whole thing seem pretentious. The actors just look like they've been drugged, probably loaded with painkillers to endure the lines they're forced to deliver. After watching all the virtually silent Guy Maddin movies, this one's talkiness was bothersome. At one point, a character delivers the line "With a tongue that cuts like yours, Doctor, you hardly need a scalpel to operate" and then looks directly into the camera.
Icky. This is a triumph in set design, beautiful when it's not nauseating, but it's not nearly enough to make this worth anybody's time.

Apologies to Anonymous who I believe watched this one after I recommended Guy Maddin to him and then told me, "I don't like Guy Maddin."

Where the Wild Things Are

2009 piece of garbage

Rating: 10/20 (Jen: 5/20; Emma: 5/20; Abbey: 1/20)
[Original "6" rating traded for a "10" with my brother.]

Plot: Max is youngster suffering from schizophrenia and endangering the lives of those around him. Where the Wild Things Are is a glimpse at his battered mind, a trip to his world inhabited by CGI-furballs. If there is ever a Where the Wild Things Are II, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that there is either no God at all or that He has abandoned us, it would most likely be about Max's experiences in an asylum.

This might be one of the most joyless film experiences I've ever had. There wasn't a single moment in this movie where I was glad I was watching it. In fact, I wouldn't have finished this if I had been watching it alone. And I had high hopes for this one, curious to see how Spike Jonze would be able to stretch a fairly thin picture book into a full-length movie. Turns out, he doesn't. This has virtually no plot, existing only as jumbled symbolism or half-assed allegory. The people part of the movie is depressing. The wild things part of the movie, a part I eagerly awaited as I figured it would be filled with fantastical imagery and whimsy, was somehow even more depressing. And the imagery? It just looks stupid. The monsters don't always move fluently, especially when they leap, and there's never enough background to make this look like a finished movie. All attempts to attach any of Max's fantasy to his real-world problems--childhood fears of things like war, the eventual demise of the sun, global warming, etc.; alienation; growing up fatherless--come across as offensive. There is absolutely no reason for children to see this movie, absolutely no reason for adults to see this movie, and absolutely no reason why this movie should have been gotten the greenlight in the first place. See that monster behind the tree in the poster? I can only imagine that he's trying to hide from embarrassment at his involvement in this movie. I sincerely hope this is the least enjoyable experience I have with a movie this year.

My brother tried to warn me about this one. I didn't dream it would be this abysmal.

9

2009 animated movie

Rating: 13/20 (Mark: 16/20)

Plot: A miniature burlap man wakes up and goes outside. He meets another burlap man, and they're attacked by a robot kitty. The second burlap man, appropriately named 2, is captured. The first burlap man, the title character, finds some other burlap men and talks one of them into journeying to some smoke stacks to find 2. They find some other burlap men and one burlap woman, and then 9 puts a bottle cap into a machine and chaos ensues.

Well, I really liked the nightmarish, apocalyptic imagery in this, the dilapidated structures, the tattered backgrounds, all the dismal grays. The setting sets a tone here, and the animation is really beautiful. I also like the antagonist, a menacing giant insect-like machine and all of its wild creations. The creativity involved in creating this little world is astonishing. I don't, however, care for how the little burlap people move around. And worse, they don't have enough individual personality to make them real characters. They're all inventive, one of them is sort of a bastard, one of them is a tough guy/bully type, one of them is a warrior. But they lack depth that would have made me give a damn when one of them was threatened or when some of them perish. The flat voice work, with the exception of Crispin Glover (America's greatest actor), also didn't help. I really didn't understand this movie. As my brother said, the geography doesn't make sense at all. These burlap people were created and then didn't move more than a hundred yards before 9 finds them, and then they're all of a sudden zipping around this little world? It doesn't make sense. Neither did the majority of the rest of this. Souls? Satanic rituals? Soul-sucking robots? Burlap ghosts? Magical bottle caps? Still, the experience is worth watching. It's easy to get lost in this weird little world and wonderful to watch the explosion of creativity on the screen. I just wish it made more sense.

Zu Warriors

2001 martial arts fantasy

Rating: 3/20 (Jen: 1/20. She didn't even give it a chance though!)

Plot: Some guy covered in special effects wants to destroy the Zu Warriors, possibly because he's jealous of their special effects. They have a contest to see who has the best special effects.

This reminded both Jen and me of the Power Rangers television shows that some of our children watched. It looked about that tacky, but to be fair to the Power Rangers, at least they made perfect sense all the time. This was just about the grossest thing I've ever seen. About 90% of the movie was ugly CGI. It was like humans trying to wade their way through a video game or maybe a screensaver. I've decided that I just don't like these martial arts fantasy things, but really, I'm not sure I can accurately label this a martial arts film. The characters kicked (mostly at the air) and made some kung-fu poses, but those kung-fu poses just ignited some special effects wizardry--giant rings flying from hands, metallic wing things swooping through the air, iridescent tornadic swords. I had no idea what was going on about three minutes into the proceedings. I couldn't tell when characters died or remember who certain characters even were. What makes it worse is that I didn't even care. I have no idea how I even finished watching this. It definitely wasn't pleasant and quite possibly my worst movie-watching experience of the year.

Spirited Away

2001 Japanese cartoon

Rating: 19/20

Plot: Chihiro and her parents are moving to a new home in a new town. She's only ten and doesn't really want to move, but children don't get to make those kinds of decisions. On the way, her father detours and takes the family to an abandoned theme park. While there, her parents gluttonously devour the goods at an abandoned restaurant and turn into pigs. A boy named Haku tries to convince her to leave, but it's too late. Spirits gradually arrive and frequent a bath house. Chihiro has to find a way to transform her parents back into parents and finds out that getting a job at the bath house is the only way. A big-headed witch, a stinky spirit, a six-armed boiler room man, anthropomorphic dust mites, a magical ghost thingy, and dozens of other unusual character help and/or get in her way.

It's really difficult for me to articulate why this film connects with me like it does. For whatever reason, it seeps into the lobes. I think I would give this a 20 if I were Japanese. I'm sure there's some references to Japanese folklore, Japanese customs, or Japanese history that I'm not hip to that unfortunately probably hurts my chances of ever fully understanding this. I can appreciate the real sense of wonder and dreamy mystery, the gorgeous animation, the originality of the characters, and both the gentle fragility and thematic depth of the story. Like a Japanese Alice in Wonderland, it doesn't actually have to mean anything at all to succeed, but like all great works of art (and this is a great work of art), it's completely open to interpretation and does mean several things at once to difference audiences. Is it a coming-of-age story? Is it a critique of the greed and thoughtlessness of contemporary society? Is it about the contrast between the innocence of childhood and the futility and confusion of adulthood? Who knows? But it is exactly what an animated fairy tale should be. If dreams were as good as this, I would never want to wake up. Miyazaki has borrowed from the world we inhabit and managed to create an entirely new world, one with its own rules, its own logic, its own norms. Enchanting and wonderful and vivid and rich and magical and fantastic, this world in Spirited Away is impossible to forget and a joy to ponder. It's easy to feel lost but at the same time absorbed, and that's exactly what makes this animated movie about as good as animated movies can get.

Beauty and the Beast

1991 Disney movie

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

Plot: Belle is a beautiful but lazy nerd who does nothing but read about dragons. She's the daughter of a kooky inventor. She catches the eye of Gaston, a burly hunter who hangs around with a midget. He nudges the midget one day and says, "Midget, check this. I'm going to hit that." Attempts to hit that prove fruitless. Belle's dad gets lost on the way to an inventor's contest and ends up the prisoner of the Beast who lives in an enchanted castle with talking furniture and a horny candlestick. Belle sacrifices herself for the freedom of her father, and eventually they fall in love and everybody lives happily ever after. Except for Gaston, who aside from having a bad case of blue balls also plummets to his death at the end.

Beauty and the Beast is a good enough movie. It's got lots of nice color and some great animated landscapes. There's Disney's typical creative energy bubbling below the surface of this telling of the classic fairy tale. Unfortunately, it's got lots of problems. First, it's an old school musical complete with dancing and furniture choreography, but there's really only one great song. This is a short movie, but there are still a lot of extraneous moments, most of them songs. The worst offender is the song about Gaston which does nothing but pound home what we already figured out about him. I don't like him much as a villain anyway. Actually, I don't really like any of the characters. The romance happens much too quickly, too quickly to really feel anything, so the ending, which should have been magical and beautiful, ends up as a ho-hum moment with really lazy animation. Belle is just another Disney princess; she's got nothing to offer other than being a pretty prop. The Beast is a jerk who deserved what he got anyway, and his transition into a loving and gentle creature is really contrived and unrealistic. I always imagine that once he's a prince again, he runs off and finds somebody better since he's obviously just using her to break the spell. And there's not really a likable or memorable talking inanimate object either. They're there mostly for comic relief and are more annoying than necessary. I was really hoping Belle would accidentally drop the little teacup (Chip?) and end that misery. And despite some really beautiful animated moments, there are just as many times when the characters and the scenery don't mesh, making it look more like one of those straight-to-video deals than a Disney big-budget theatrical release. Cocteau's version of the fairy tale, although flawed, is better than this one. And I still don't get the ending to the fairy tale. Why does he need to turn back into a prince? Isn't the point that she loves him for who he is and not what he looks like? And why were all the inanimate objects punished by the sorceress? What did they do wrong?

Star Wars: A New Hope

1977 space samurai movie

Rating: 19/20 (Dylan: 14/20; Emma: 14/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: This first installment in the Star Wars franchise mainly focuses on the adventures of intergalactic space hero Jek Porkins who, for the bulk of the movie, is hiding in the background or in multiple disguises. He's hard to spot as a fat Jawa, Jabba the Hutt (special edition only), as a fat stormtrooper, a droid, as Darth Vader, as a musician in the Mos Eisley cantina, as Princess Leia's left bun, etc. Porkins finds himself in a situation where he almost singlehandedly must save the galaxy from the Empire's brand spanking new space station--the Giant Ball of Doom. It's round and it's creepy and it can destroy planets by shooting them with a green light. Luckily, the bad guys built the thing with a long trench that leads to a space station's equivalent of an Achilles heel so that Porkins can lead the rebels in its destruction. Kablooey!

I don't have much to say about this one. I love it and always will. There are always things I look forward to seeing every single time I watch this movie--Alec Guinness's sly little smile the moment before he dies, when Luke interrupts a meeting to brag about shooting womp rats, the surreal visual of C3PO walking across the undulating sands of Tatooine, the climactic assault on the Death Star, almost everything Han Solo says, the sand people. And there always seems to be something new to notice. This time, it was noticing that one of the Jawas is a hell of a lot taller than the others. He's the Manute Bol of Jawas apparently. Check out the leg Princess Leia is showing on that movie poster. And Luke's chest? I bet women were really disappointed when they accompanied their boyfriends or husbands expecting to see a hunky hero and being stuck with "But I was going to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!" Dylan wanted to watch this.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad

1958 adventure

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Oh, snap! A bald magician with a lust for lamps has turned Sinbad's average-sized girlfriend into a really tiny girlfriend. Sinbad must return to the mysterious island where the giant cyclops lives in order to get a piece of a two-headed bird's egg so that his girlfriend can once again return to normal size. It's adventurous!

Ok, so the story is really goofy. And the acting is about as bad as it gets. But once again, Harryhausen's ingenious effects are there to save the day. A horned cyclops with fuzzy legs, a breathing and tail-swinging dragon, a four-armed green woman, two-headed birds, another swashbuckling skeleton. What more could you want? The film climaxes with a fight between a cyclops and a dragon which, along with the dinosaurs fighting in Gwangli, makes it completely obvious that Harryhausen was just an imaginative little kid who made his playtime available for everybody else to watch. My biggest gripe about this, other than the acting which is truly horrific, is that the genie is played by a little kid when a midget could have easily been substituted. Right up there with Argonauts and maybe even more enjoyable as it has just as many monsters while not being as long.

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

2007 family film

Rating: 11/20 (Emma: 17/20; Abbey: 19/20; Dylan: Missed 1st 20 minutes and stubbornly refused to rate)

Plot: Approaching 250 years of age and on his last pair of shoes, the title proprietor of a magical toy store is ready to leave the earth. He's passing his legacy to the store's manager, Natalie Portman. But will the departure of Magorium cause the store to lose its wonder? Can a little kid who collects hats and a workaholic accountant help save the store?

There are things I really wanted to like about this. Lots of potential. Unfortunately, it ended up looking like a strangely half-assed production, extremely predictable and trite. I'm most offended by the terrible puns and schmaltz, but there are also some special effects that were just embarrassing. The movie also jars you with whimsical but pointless dopiness butted up against forced poignancy and reflective bits of dialogue. The scene that typifies the movie? Natalie Portman's character laughs at Dustin Hoffman's character as he dances on bubble wrap for approximately twenty minutes. I'm not sure if I'm exaggerating or not, but exaggerating doesn't seem like something I ordinarily do. After that twenty minutes, different music starts up and they have a conversation about death. Then it's time for another scene, probably something involving a monkey, a giant ball, or something that is funny because it's moving around in a way that it shouldn't move around in. There's also a lack of character development that actually distorts the movie's central themes. Natalie Portman's character and the little kid don't grow; the accountant's character changes far too abruptly. I actually was optimistic about this one but it's another one of those films that is not as good as its opening credits. It really reminds me of Jumanji or, especially, the sort-of sequel Space Jumanji, and that is not even close to a good thing.