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Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Wonka

Monday, January 8th, 2024

I really wasn’t in the market for a Willy Wonka prequel, I did not think it sounded like a worthwhile idea, or that this new movie WONKA looked good, as much as I enjoyed director Paul King’s two PADDINGTON movies. So I wasn’t even planning to see it until it turned out to be the first thing showing at the SIFF Cinema Downtown, formerly Cinerama (1963-2020). It has been my theater of record for decades, but after owner Paul Allen died the people running his company wondered “What is there to gain from maintaining a beloved city institution?” and closed it shortly before the pandemic. We all assumed the worst for a couple years, but thankfully the Seattle International Film Festival organization acquired the theater (just not the name) and fuck it, if they were showing WONKA I was gonna see WONKA. I’ve seen so many Star Warses and Batmen and Tarantinos and 70mm retrospectives in there over the past 25 years, waiting in long lines, feeling the excitement of the crowded lobby as they take my ticket, but this is the first time the excitement was only about being in the building.

So I had no expectations for WONKA, but if I had, it would’ve exceeded them. It’s a sweet and funny old fashioned movie musical with a surprising amount of the Roald Dahl spirit. That includes not just inventing new whimsical confectionary innovations that make people hover, sprout green fur or grow the confidence to improve their relationships, not just colorful names and word play, but also a preference for the Dickensian poor over the arrogant rich, and a morbid fascination with ugly awful jerks worthy of the Twits, the Trunchbull, Aunts Sponge and Spiker, etc. When Bleacher (Tom Davis, PREVENGE), the lovelorn henchman of exploitative boarding house owner Mrs. Scrubitt (Olivia Colman, LOCKE), first smiled I realized that his craggy rows of teeth really looked like a scribbly Quentin Blake drawing. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Golden Seal

Thursday, August 24th, 2023

August 19, 1983

THE GOLDEN SEAL is a PG-rated movie about a 10-year-old boy named Eric (Torquil Campbell) who befriends a seal matching the description of one from Aleutian myth and local poacher legend. It’s directed by Disney-animal-movie veteran Frank Zuniga and written by John Groves (TARANTULAS: THE DEADLY CARGO), based on the book A River Ran Out of Eden by James Vance Marshall (a.k.a. Donald G. Payne, whose novels were also turned into SANTA FE, WALKABOUT, and THE ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD).

I expected this to fit somewhere in that cloying kid-and-animal subgenre we know today, and yeah, there’s a section in the middle with montages of seal frolicking. But it kinda leans more on being an old fashioned family adventure movie. There’s a remote island, a violent storm, a rope bridge, a cave, some rescuing, some father and son conflict. I kinda liked it. (read the rest of this shit…)

Warriors of Virtue 2: Return to Tao

Thursday, April 20th, 2023

Somehow I, a person fascinated with both Ronny Yu’s kangaroo kung fu movie WARRIORS OF VIRTUE (1997) and the medium of unlikely DTV sequels, lived for many years unaware of the existence of WARRIORS OF VIRTUE 2: RETURN TO TAO (2002). Once I did learn of it I found it in a DVD collection called “6 Family Fantasy-Adventure Movies” along with the other Miramax library titles PINOCCHIO (2002), NEVERWAS (2007), A WRINKLE IN TIME (2003), THE NEVERENDING STORY III: ESCAPE FROM FANTASIA (1996) and, in a strange coincidence, MERLIN’S APPRENTICE (2005), directed by Yu’s frequent editor and BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR 2 director David Wu. They also released it as a double feature with that version of BEOWULF starring Christopher Lambert. It has no Ronny Yu involvement and, worse, no kangaroo involvement, which I’m sure is why nobody ever heard about it. I mean, if there’s a movie where April O’Neill is trying to find the Ninja Turtles and when she does they “lost their powers” so they’re just people wearing different colored headbands then I never heard of that one either. Though I kind of want to.

But obviously it is my professional and ethical duty to extend my tangent from the actual Ronny Yu movies until such a time as I have reviewed this DTV spin-off. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Neverending Story

Wednesday, April 19th, 2023

I guess this is a weird reason to revisit a family fantasy classic that’s treasured around the world, but I felt like after spending so much time on WARRIORS OF VIRTUE I had an ethical duty to review another first-English-language-movie-by-an-internationally-acclaimed-director, THE NEVERENDING STORY. I saw it in the theater 39 years ago and I remembered it enough to know WARRIORS kinda ripped off its kid-picked-on-by-bullies-given-large-leatherbound-book-magically-connected-to-a-fantasy-world format. I did not remember that in this one the kid just reads about the fantasy world, he doesn’t go there. But there was another detail that did stick in my brain, one that I had to question because it seems so fucking crazy: could it possibly be true that there are no kung fu animals in this one at all? Believe it or not, that is true. What the fuck kind of lunatic wants a story without kung fu animals to never end!? It’s absurd! But somehow they make it work.

Watching it again, I laughed at how quickly it gets into it – not the fantasy world, but the theme song. Limahl and Beth Anderson crooning “The Neverending Stoooor-ryyy, ooo ooow ooh oooowoo ooh, the Neverending Stooor-ryyy…” over Giorgio Moroder synths and footage of clouds. One thing this opening sequence gets across very clearly is that if you want to see a movie called THE NEVERENDING STORY, you came to the right place.

The kid is named Bastian, played by Barret Oliver (Kid #2, UNCOMMON VALOR). We don’t see too much of his life, but we pick up on a few things. His mom died fairly recently. His dad (Gerald McRaney, MOTORCYCLE GANG) is emotionally distant and tells him to keep his head out of the clouds, which the credits already told us is the opposite of what you gotta do in a neverending story. (read the rest of this shit…)

3 Ninjas

Friday, September 16th, 2022

They used to say that August was the “dog days,” when all the shitty movies get dumped. Yeah, okay, maybe some of them. But August 7, 1992 was when they released one of the best movies of the ’90s. A movie I continue to watch every couple years and absolutely love. One of those movies that’s kind of seen as a commentary on its genre but really it’s just a high watermark for it. This was even the movie that won best picture that year. Oh yeah no I’m not talking about 3 NINJAS yet, I’m talking about Clint Eastwood’s UNFORGIVEN. I was planning to revisit it as part of this retrospective but jesus christ it’s September already, and I’ve already reviewed it before, I’ve even reviewed its Japanese remake before (it’s good!). If I was gonna write about it again I’d want more time to really focus on doing it justice and I can’t do that right now, I’d have to rush it. So instead here I am reviewing some real dog shit released on the same day. These are the choices we make as writers.

I had never seen 3 NINJAS before, but obviously I wasn’t gonna skip a movie that has three or more ninjas in it. It’s from director Jon Turteltaub (THE MEG), who had only done the Barbarian Brothers comedy THINK BIG (1990) and something called DRIVING ME CRAZY (1991) at this point, but somehow he got this released by Touchstone Pictures. Then he continued his Disney relationship by following it with COOL RUNNINGS (1993), WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING (1995), PHENOMENON (1996), INSTINCT (1999), DISNEY’S THE KID (2000), NATIONAL TREASURE (2004), NATIONAL TREASURE: BOOK OF SECRETS (2007), and THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE (2010). Man, he got lucky though, because this is some real bottom of the barrel dreck, almost as bad as any off brand DTV throwaway kiddy garbage you’ll ever encounter. I guess Michael Eisner only cared about that “we’re not spending DICK TRACY money on anything anymore” edict we discussed in the ENCINO MAN review more than he cared about finding movies worthy of showing to people. (read the rest of this shit…)

Pinocchio (2022) (the Robert Zemeckis one)

Tuesday, September 13th, 2022

Well, I’m afraid it seems my fellow people who write about movies were not open to a giant corporation treating an 80+ year old animation masterpiece as i.p. to remake in a modern style, especially coming from a once A-list director they’ve turned on in his later, weirder years. So they engaged in a hyperbole measuring contest to find out who could hate Robert Zemeckis’s PINOCCHIO (2022) most outlandishly.

I get it, I guess, but I don’t relate. I can see refusing to give in to the existence of these remakes, I can see not wanting them to do it to PINOCCHIO specifically (it’s my personal favorite Disney movie), I can see not liking the finished product. But I can’t see thinking it’s terrible, let alone the worst thing you’ve seen lately/in years/ever. That’s just silly talk.

Yes, that is correct, I liked it for what it was. I’ll get into it in a minute. Just let me pre-amble a little bit more. (read the rest of this shit…)

Honey, I Blew Up the Kid

Monday, September 5th, 2022

note: I am very much aware that I’m way behind and the summer movie season is over but I’m gonna keep going and finish this Weird Summer retrospective. Enjoy! Please?


July 17, 1992

HONEY, I BLEW UP THE KID is the first sequel to the 1989 Joe Johnston directed Walt Disney hit HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS. Last time, eccentric inventor Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis, STREETS OF FIRE)’s machine accidentally shrunk his and the neighbors’ kids to, by one kid’s estimation, “the size of boogers.” This time he accidentally causes his new toddler son Adam (played by twins Daniel and Joshua Shalikar) to grow in spurts until he becomes basically a kaiju.

It’s directed by Randal Kleiser (THE BLUE LAGOON) and written by Thom Eberhardt (writer/director of NIGHT OF THE COMET) and Peter Elbling (Mr. T’s Be Somebody… or Be Somebody’s Fool!) & Garry Goodrow (The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour). A story credit goes to Goodrow (who was also an actor in Shirley Clarke’s THE CONNECTION), so I suspect that means he was the one who wrote BIG BABY, an unrelated giant baby script that was rewritten to fit into the HONEYverse. In that sense, the HONEY saga is much like the DIE HARD series. (read the rest of this shit…)

Oz the Great and Powerful

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022

And now in our journey through the films of Sam Raimi we have arrived at a difficult spot. We have come to the film that was at the time “the new Sam Raimi” but for a few years became “the last Sam Raimi?” I enjoyed OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL well enough when it came out in 2013 (here’s my review), even though a big commercial Disney movie that’s an unsolicited prequel to a famous story wasn’t high on the list of what I wanted to see from him. And it definitely wasn’t what I wanted to see him go out on.

Luckily he has now actually filmed his next movie, so a comeback is on deck. But isn’t it crazy that it’s been 9 years since the last Sam Raimi movie? To remind you of how long ago this was, it’s when FURIOUS 6 and MAN OF STEEL came out. It’s when they were on the first film of MCU Phase Two, IRON MAN THREE. We’re talking seven David Gordon Green movies ago (he was on PRINCE AVALANCHE, starring Paul Rudd, who was not yet Ant-Man). It’s when Franck Khalfoun’s remake of MANIAC came out, and Spike Lee’s remake of OLDBOY, and Ryuhei Kitamura’s WWE Films joint NO ONE LIVES. Remember those? No? You weren’t born yet? That’s what I’m saying – it’s been a while. (read the rest of this shit…)

Bingo

Tuesday, August 17th, 2021

You may have thought I was done with the weird dog movies of summer ’91 after the ROVER DANGERFIELD (plus 101 DALMATIANS re-release) review last week, but if so you forgot all about the live action division. August 9, 1991 also saw the release of BINGO, a pretty odd movie about a kid whose family moves, leaving behind a dog he had secretly befriended, E.T. style.

It’s directed by Matthew Robbins, who as a writer contributed to George Lucas’ original THX 1138 short and Spielberg’s SUGARLAND EXPRESS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, and as a director gave us CORVETTE SUMMER, DRAGONSLAYER, THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN and *batteries not included. He doesn’t have a credit on the screenplay here – that went to newcomer Jim Strain.

Bingo is a dog who lives with a circus. One day he has to fill in for an injured poodle, but he freezes when he’s supposed to jump through a flaming hoop – a flashback tells us that his mother was killed in a pet store fire. (I sincerely love the shot of puppy Bingo mourning at his mother’s grave [with flowers!] like he’s Bruce Wayne or somebody.) His trainer Steve (Simon Webb, one episode of MacGyver) tries to shoot him, but Bingo escapes because Steve’s Peg-Bundy-looking-wife Ginger (Suzie Plakson, MY STEPMOTHER IS AN ALIEN) at least briefly sympathizes with him, telling him to run away and “Do whatever makes ya happy!

(read the rest of this shit…)

Frankenweenie

Tuesday, August 11th, 2020

Frankenweenie is a 26-minute long black-and-white Disney live action short that was not quite, as far as I can tell, a Summer of 1985 release. It was made in 1984, planned to play with a re-release of THE JUNGLE BOOK that summer, then production was delayed, moving it to PINOCCHIO in December, but when it received a PG rating they couldn’t play it with a G-rated movie, so it got shelved until playing with only the U.K. release of BABY: THE SECRET OF THE LOST LEGEND. I couldn’t find proof of a date, but if it was the same as the U.S. then it was in March of ’85.

But I decided it was an important backstory to fill in, because it keeps coming up. It was one of the projects then-25-year-old Disney artist Tim Burton switched to after the company didn’t use any of his designs for THE BLACK CAULDRON. It was the short they considered releasing with MY SCIENCE PROJECT. And it was what brought Burton to the attention of Paul Reubens to direct a classic Summer of 1985 movie we’ll be discussing tomorrow.

It’s a simple story. Barret Oliver (D.A.R.Y.L.) plays Victor Frankenstein, a normal suburban kid who enjoys making Super-8 monster movies with his dog Sparky. But one day while playing fetch, Sparky is run over by a car – off screen, in a beautifully crafted sequence of visual storytelling that ends with a baseball rolling to the curb and Victor rising to his feet in shock. (read the rest of this shit…)