Archive for the ‘Fantasy/Swords’ Category
Friday, October 7th, 2016
Asa Butterfield (HUGO) plays Jake, our protagonist and first person narrator, who lives a boring life in a Scissorhandsian Florida suburb until one day he finds his Grandpa (Terence Stamp, ELEKTRA, THE PHANTOM MENACE) dead in the woods with his fucking eyeballs plucked out. (The police soothe him by explaining that dogs ate ’em.) Also he sees a giant.
Kinda like BIG FISH, he finds himself tracing the seemingly-fantastical tales Grandpa told him and left behind in letters, journals, photos and maps. (Burton has been past his prime long enough that he’s harkening back to movies from past his prime.) He convinces his dad (Chris O’Dowd, CALVARY) to bring him to Wales to see this children’s home where Grandpa once lived. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Asa Butterfield, Chris O'Dowd, Eva Green, Jane Goldman, Judi Dench, Samuel L. Jackson, Terence Stamp, Tim Burton
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Thursday, September 29th, 2016
Enough with the cowboys. THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS is the sword and sorcery version of the SEVEN SAMURAI story. Obviously.
An evil Ming-the-Merciless-Halloween-costume-looking-motherfucker named Nicerote (Dan Vadis from EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE and ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN) who apparently has some kind of magic sorcerer powers threatens his own mother (Barbara Pesante) that he’s gonna come back and attack the village after the harvest. What a brat. So she sends Pandora (Carla Ferrigno [BLACK ROSES] in her movie debut) and three other women into town with “the mystical Sword of Achilles,” which can only be held by the worthy. Find somebody worthy and get him to come protect the village.
They find Han (Lou Ferrigno, also in his first movie, though he’d already done six seasons of The Incredible Hulk), a gladiator who is said to be immortal, but it’s not really explained very well. I guess he’s not strong or immortal enough to do it on his own, so he has to put together a team which includes some gladiator friends and a badass cynical mercenary lady named Julia (Sybil Danning, who had already been in the space version of SEVEN SAMURAI, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bruno Mattei, Cannon Films, Carla Ferrigno, Claudio Fragasso, Dan Vadis, Lou Ferrigno, Sybil Danning, Yehuda Efroni
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 14th, 2016
THE BFG is the latest BFD from Steven Spielberg (E.T., A.I.) and it’s an LSM (Lesser Spielberg Movie), but still won me over PDQ. Based on the children’s book by Roald Dahl (Charlie and the CF, James and the GP, The Fantastic MF), it’s the story of a 24-foot tall individual (Mark Rylance, BLITZ, BRIDGE OF SPIES) whose thing is he comes into town at 3 a.m. with a trumpet that blows dreams into people. But this time he’s seen by Sophie (Ruby Barnhill), a little night owl girl at an orphanage, and he doesn’t want her to burn his whole operation so he reaches into her window, picks her up in his palm and absconds with her to Giant Country.
I love the way this giant sneaks into town. It’s not one of those things where he’s invisible to people who don’t believe in him or something. No, he just comes in late at night and knows how to hide when people are around. He wears a cloak that he wraps around himself and he’ll move into the shadows, curl up on the bed of a truck or stand in the shape of a tree. I like that it’s not all that convincing of a tree, because it shows that there could be crazy shit going on right under our noses that we just don’t notice because we’re not looking for it. Nobody expects giants. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Hader, Jemaine Clement, Mark Rylance, Melissa Mathison, Penelope Wilton, Rafe Spall, Rebecca Hall, Roald Dahl, Steven Spielberg
Posted in Family, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 16 Comments »
Monday, June 13th, 2016
The opening of WARCRAFT seems promising. A booted foot steps over a skull. The camera arcs up dramatically to show an elaborately armored warrior picking up a shield and sword, stepping into a clearing for a duel. And then we see the guy he’s fighting. He is an orc. That means he’s a motion capture or animated type monster character who is like 8 or 9 feet tall with saber teeth, giant muscles, fists as big as your head, fingers that even seem too big for him, even though he’s a giant. A voice is narrating about the war between the humans and the orcs, but it’s a deep, distorted voice, because it’s not the human talking to us, it’s the orc.
In the next scene, the orc is laying next to his very pregnant wife, talking about their plans, what they will name the baby. She teases him about him having a big head. They laugh at each other. This is a fantasy adventure movie and minutes in we have a monster couple being intimate and loving! It’s like CLASH OF THE TITANS meets the end of FARGO when Marge and Norm are in bed talking about the painting he’s doing for the stamp.
This is why I came to this. A fantasy movie but from a monster perspective. This is beautiful! So as the metal letters of the logo float at me in 3D I am as excited as the nerds who cheered when the trailers started and one guy yelled “FOR THE HORDE!,” and went on to surprise me by gasping and clapping for the I-thought-unimpressive ASSASSIN’S CREED trailer.
Then the next scene is about some humans, standard issue guys in armor standing in castles talking about shit, and they are not as interesting as those orcs. But it continues to be about them for a while. And a while longer. And eventually you realize that the movie is gonna mostly about them. It’s like one of those movies about the civil rights movement or apartheid or something but they have a white guy as the main character. They don’t think non-orc audiences can relate to an orc protagonist. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Duncan Jones, Paula Patton, Toby Kebbell, video games
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 17 Comments »
Monday, April 18th, 2016
Disney’s 1967 animated version of THE JUNGLE BOOK was pretty much a hangout movie. A bunch of animal dudes kickin it in the jungle, occasionally singing songs. Like HOUSE PARTY but with snakes and shit. The tiger Shere Khan plays the part of Full Force.
Now modern Disney and director Jon Favreau (executive producer, GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS) have brought in more of the world and narrative of Rudyard Kipling’s stories for an excellent live action(ish) version that captures plenty of the spirit of the old one while also being totally different. It uses versions of the original songs and even evokes Disney animation with a painted version of the castle logo, but never feels redundant. It’s like putting on glasses and seeing that version in more detail, from the visuals to the story.
I have to admit, after COWBOYS & ALIENS I kinda thought maybe we got too excited about Favreau as a director because of IRON MAN. Clearly I was wrong. This is a movie I can’t imagine many directors pulling off. Like with IRON MAN he finds a perfect balance between nerdy love for the source material and clear vision of how to tell the story in a dramatic way we haven’t quite seen on screen before.
And it can’t be easy competing with the memory of Stephen Sommers’ 1994 version.
(That might be unfair. I haven’t seen it.)
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Kingsley, Bill Murray, Christopher Walken, Disney, Idris Elba, Jon Favreau, Justin Marks, live action remake of cartoon, Lupita Nyong'o, Scarlett Johansson, talking animals
Posted in Family, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 111 Comments »
Thursday, March 24th, 2016
MERMAID is the story of a dumb but not intentionally evil super-super-rich businessman playboy named Liu Xuan (Deng Chao, DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME), a sort of Pretty Decent Gatsby with lots of shiny suits, a John Waters mustache, whole teams of security guards, lackeys and sexy dancers kissing his ass at all times. He has a weakness for the ladies, giving the time of day to every female from his seductive business partner Ruolan (Zhang Yuqi, CJ7) to a youngster in a sloppy mermaid costume who gets suplexed by security after crashing his pool party to give him her phone number.
One thing he doesn’t know: the fake mermaid Shan (Lin Yun) is actually a real mermaid sent to assassinate him to avenge his sonar devices massacring and trapping a society of merpeople in the Green Gulf wildlife reserve that he recently purchased for billions of dollars. But they kinda fall for each other. It’s like THE LITTLE MERMAID if it took place in the modern day and Ariel was trying to kill Prince Eric.
It’s directed and co-written by Stephen Chow, but he’s not in it as an actor and it’s not a martial arts movie. It is, however, full of his kinetic Looney Tunes style slapstick action. Hopefully the people who have a problem with wire tricks and digital FX assists already saw SHAOLIN SOCCER and KUNG FU HUSTLE and know to stay far away from Chow. This is a movie with a skateboarding mermaid, an out of control jetpack, a half man/half octopus who’s often hanging upside down or crawling around on the ceiling, a mermaid matriarch who splashes water into animated shapes to tell stories. And of course some cartoon violence, including poisoned sea urchin throwing stars. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Hong Kong, Lin Yun, mermaids, Show Luo, Stephen Chow, Tsui Hark, Zhang Yuqi
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords, Reviews, Romance | 6 Comments »
Friday, March 4th, 2016
Alex Proyas’s new fantasy GODS OF EGYPT debuted at the top of the box office this week, ahead of ZOOTOPIA and DEADPOOL. Only in Russia, though. Here it’s a disastrous flop with merciless reviews.
Honestly this movie was dead the second they released a trailer. I don’t think I ever once saw it discussed in any context other than a criticism of “whitewashing,” since its lead Egyptian gods are played by white Europeans. Obviously a poor choice. Otherwise my take on the trailer was different from the conventional wisdom. I say appealingly weird, you say hahaha razzies haha sobaditsgood howdidthisgetmade haha.
Reading the headlines of the savage reviews, and seeing the weird stills accompanying them, pushed me to not miss it in the theater. At the multiplex here it opened with only two 3D screenings and two 2D each day. By comparison a nearby theater has three each of Stephen Chou’s THE MERMAID, for which Sony has been criticized for having too small of a release. (Sorry, I didn’t see that. I’m an asshole.)
The main thing here is that it’s Alex Proyas. I wasn’t gonna get my hopes up, but I didn’t trust the responses of normal people on a movie by him. Those guys said KNOWING was terrible too, for many of the same reasons I enjoyed it. In fact, his movies wouldn’t be as fun if they didn’t put some people off. They have a little bit of that “how did he get away with this?” appeal.
The good news is GODS OF EGYPT is not as bad as they said. The bad news is it’s not as crazy I’d hoped. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Abbey Lee, Alex Proyas, Brenton Thwaites, Bruce Spence, Burk Sharpless, Chadwick Boseman, Courtney Eaton, Egypt, Elodie Yung, Geoffrey Rush, Gerard Butler, Matt Sazama, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Rufus Sewell
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 126 Comments »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2016
“Elora, you don’t want me. Tell her. I’m short. Even for a Nelwyn.”
Like John McClane’ll tell ya, sometimes some shit happens and you just have to step up. For Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis, RETURN OF THE JEDI, THE EWOK ADVENTURE) it’s when his kids find one of those abandoned river babies (we all know how that goes) and then it turns out to be the Chosen One prophesied to kill the evil Queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh), so mean knights with packs of dog-like beasts are gonna keep attacking the village until they find her. Willow admits to the town that he has the baby they’re looking for, and he doesn’t argue when the wise wizard The High Aldwin (Billy Barty) appoints him to lead a party on a journey to give the baby back to the Daikini, the bigger people.
I say bigger because Willow’s village is all people under four feet tall. There are fighters among them, like Vohnkar (Phil Fondacaro, RETURN OF THE JEDI) or “Vohnkar Warrior” (Tony Cox, RETURN OF THE JEDI, CAPTAIN EO), but Willow isn’t one of them. A small man looked down upon even among the people of his size, he’s the underest of dogs. As a fledgling magician he screws up even his corny magic trick illusions, and now he finds himself going head to head with a real sorceress.
The first Daikini they find is Mad Martigan (Val Kilmer, BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS), a warrior imprisoned in a small cage who seems at first like a Jack Sparrowish rogue. When an army is headed their way and most of Willow’s party turns tail he has little choice but to free the man and convince him to help, like an action comedy set up. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Billy Barty, George Lucas, Joanne Whaley, Kevin Pollack, Lucas Minus Star Wars, Pat Roach, Patricia Hayes, Phil Fondacaro, Rick Overton, Robert Tessier, Ron Howard, Tony Cox, Val Kilmer, Warwick Davis
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 32 Comments »
Tuesday, December 29th, 2015
Jennifer Connelly’s first movie was Sergio Leone’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (as the young version of Elizabeth McGovern’s character). Her first starring role was Dario Argento’s PHENOMENA, aka CREEPERS. Then she did some normal teen movie, but the one after that was LABYRINTH, directed by Jim Henson, where she’s co-starring with David Bowie and about a hundred different puppets. That’s a crazy career already, years before she got an Oscar.
This one is pretty different from the Argento one. Yes, she still communicates with bugs, because there’s a worm in one scene who gives her a helpful tip and invites her in to meet his wife. But there’s no monkey going nuts with a straight razor, and no Goblin. Just goblins.
She plays Sarah, a teenage girl who one day during a bratty fit about having to babysit says some fantasy nonsense that actually summons goblins to take away her toddler brother Toby. Whoops. To get him back she has to make it through a labyrinth to the Goblin King (Bowie)’s castle in 13 hours. Except for the king, the goblins and the inhabitants of the maze are all puppets and special effects creations. Designed by artist Brian Froud (like Henson’s previous movie, THE DARK CRYSTAL), they still have cartoonish looks and personalities, but with more realistic texture and detail than Muppets. They seem like closer relatives to Yoda than to Cookie Monster. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Froud, Brian Henson, David Bowie, Elaine May, George Lucas, Jennifer Connelly, Jim Henson, Lucas Minus Star Wars, Terry Jones
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews | 51 Comments »
Tuesday, December 1st, 2015
You may not pick up on it, but I sense a strong anti-Ewok sentiment in our culture, even to this day. It might seem like an insignificant hatred compared to that of Gungans and Prequels, but it exists. I think it’s mostly people who were in their teens or early twenties when RETURN OF THE JEDI came out, and had to prove they were big boys by rejecting what they thought the kids liked. To this day they call this proud people who helped defeat the Empire “teddy bears” and other slurs. The Ewoks were just product placement to sell dolls and they ruined Star Wars by being too furry and cute, they say bitterly, before clicking “favorite” on an adorable cat video.
As I’ve argued before, this viewpoint is ludicrous. The cuteness is a deliberate juxtaposition – they’re cuddly, but they try to roast Han on a spit, they bludgeon Stormtroopers to death with rocks and use their helmets as drums. Saying they shouldn’t be cute is like saying Rocket Raccoon shouldn’t be a dumb little raccoon, he should be a big muscular tiger man. It’s missing the point. Furthermore, it’s not the first time this trick was used in the Star Warses. The Jawas were cute little dudes who make adorable squeaky noises, but also they were sleazy Droid-poaching pricks. It’s a Star Wars thing.
So I am staunchly pro-Ewok, but I can’t really defend CARAVAN OF COURAGE (or THE EWOK ADVENTURE as I seem to remember it being called when it was a TV movie in November, 1984). Still, I thought it would be worth revisiting before Disney’s Star Wars Episode 7 The Force Awakens rewrites history so that the war never ended, robbing the Ewoks of their signature victory.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Burl Ives, Carel Struycken, George Lucas, Jim Wheat, Joe Johnston, Ken Wheat, Paul Gleason, Phil Tippet, TV movies, Wilford Brimley
Posted in Fantasy/Swords, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit | 67 Comments »
