Roald Dahl was my favorite author when I was a little kid, but I didn’t know his book Matilda because it didn’t come out until ’88. Watching the movie version again the story seems kinda sweet and wholesome by his standards, even though it envisions the world as a place full of cruel, crude idiots. Its warmth lies in its heroine, a smart girl who finds an angelically supportive teacher to help her through her difficulties. Similar idea, but a little more pure than a poor boy winning a chocolate factory. (I wasn’t that surprised when I read that an editor had to talk Dahl out of his initial version where Matilda uses her psychokinetic powers to torment innocent parents and help her teacher gamble.)
Director Danny DeVito (THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN) must’ve still been concerned about MATILDA (adapted by Nicholas Kazan [MOBSTERS, DREAM LOVER] and Robin Swicord [SHAG]) being a little mean, because he cast himself as the kind-sounding narrator to balance out playing the asshole dad, Harry Wormwood. Harry and his wife Zinnia (Rhea Perlman, CLASS ACT) somehow raised their daughter Matilda (the precocious Mara Wilson, MRS. DOUBTFIRE) to the age of six without noticing – or at least not approving of – her brilliance. She loves to read, but has to sneak out to go to the library. Harry, an unethical used car salesman, forces her to watch TV junk and refuses to let her go to school, because “Who would sign for the packages?”
She’s delighted when he finally enrolls her at Crunchem Hall Elementary, but unfortunately it was just to help sell a car to principal Agatha Trunchbull (Pam Ferris, MEANTIME), an abusive monster who has a dartboard with pictures of students in her office and frequently locks kids in an iron maiden closet she calls “the Chokey.” A former shot putter, hammer and javelin thrower who competed in the 1972 Summer Olympics, she uses those skills to throw children long distances. Somebody should do something about this, but nobody’s up to it. (read the rest of this shit…)
I’m not gonna waste your time pretending you need my opinion whether to see AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH or not. If you don’t like these movies, no, don’t bother. If you do, obviously you’re gonna see it, it’s a new AVATAR! A new James Cameron! You’re not a heathen. And he’s still pretty much undefeated. The streak continues.
If I were to offer viewing advice it would be to avoid HFR (high frame rate) projection at all costs. I recklessly decided to see it at my favorite theater (SIFF downtown, f.k.a. Cinerama) despite my hatred for that format, and as soon as it started my heart just sank. When projected in this format, what seems like the majority of the movie is presented with the ugly screen saver sheen of 60-frames-per-second, but it repeatedly switches back to aesthetically pleasing 24 fps and if you’re like me you sigh with relief until it goes back and then you start grumbling to yourself again. It felt like I spent the whole 197 minutes fighting over the remote control with some guy who wants the motion smoothing on, so my level of concentration was not ideal for maybe the first 45 minutes. I was so taken out of the movie that a James Cameron directed air battle dropped dead in front of me like some Stephen Sommers clatter. Should be illegal. I’m never doing HFR again. (read the rest of this shit…)
Steven Spielberg’s WAR OF THE WORLDS (original review)(2013 Summer Flashback review) follows the BATMAN BEGINS pattern for me: loved it at the time, loved it on rewatches, but watched it now and still found myself thinking holy shit, I forgot how good this is. In the set up it’s almost JAWS-good – the beautiful look and sense of place, the natural and economical ways it sets up these people and their relationships, the dread about what horrors are coming even though honestly I wouldn’t mind hanging out longer in this normality that’s about to be interrupted.
Tom Cruise’s character Ray Ferrier kind of seems like the inevitable results of living as one of the charming dicks he played when he was younger – regular Yankees-hat-wearing, working class guy, pretty likable, but fucked up his marriage and now lives alone in a little place in New Jersey. Definitely a deadbeat in the parenting department, and isn’t disciplined enough to get his shit together (until now, when it really counts, during an alien invasion). (Spoiler.) We first see him operating a crane at the docks in Brooklyn, it looks pretty challenging and his boss (Peter Gerety, Homicide: Life on the Streets) seems to think he’s the best at it, but it’s still funny when he punches out and roars into traffic in his Mustang like he’s convinced he’s the coolest motherfucker who ever lived.
Turns out his reckless driving is for a different reason: he was supposed to be home at 8 when his ex-wife Mary Ann (Mirando Otto, HUMAN NATURE) drops off the kids to stay with him during her trip to Boston. He pretends he thought it was 8:30 and doesn’t even say he’s sorry, so it’s not that surprising his teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin, TAKING LIVES) hates him, doesn’t acknowledge him, won’t take off his headphones for him. (read the rest of this shit…)
I am a human, but I love those apes and that planet they got. I really have enjoyed the entire PLANET OF THE APES series except for the Tim Burton one. Even that has amazing Rick Baker makeup and a beautifully goofy ending (that everyone else hates). But the original and all its ‘70s sequels are fun in different ways, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES reinvented it surprisingly well, then DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES and WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES pushed this incarnation into full on greatness.
This new one KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES builds off of the previous trilogy, but somebody could start here if they wanted to. I was surprised by the prologue, showing the funeral for central character Caesar (with a cameo by Maurice!). But it tells you all you need to know: that a virus made apes smarter, killed most of the humans, and Caesar was the first leader of the apes, but now he’s dead. This story takes place “many generations later,” when apes have established different settlements with their own cultures and Caesar is revered as “the first elder.” (read the rest of this shit…)
I love THE TERMINATOR, but I loveTERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. To me it’s one of the all time greats of sequels, summer event movies, action movies, movies in general. It came into the world at the right time to knock me on my ass, and has only grown with me. We’d never seen a movie like it; the technology had not existed for a character to do the things that the liquid metal T-1000 did, and no woman, not even Ripley in James Cameron’s own ALIENS, had returned to the screen as thoroughly transformed into an indelible badass as Sarah Connor.
At the time it seemed like the biggest, loudest, most over-the-top and technologically advanced action spectacle we’d ever seen. Now there’s a certain quaintness and groundedness to it. The then-show-stopping computer effects are only for a little bit of morphing – now we notice the huge amount of real stunts involving a semi-truck, motorcycles, a helicopter and various pyrotechnics that would never be so real in a modern movie. And the story is built on characters and emotions in a way that’s much more resonant to me than most subsequent movies of this type. (read the rest of this shit…)
Wow – WAR OF THE WORLDS holds up. I remember it being the most intense PG-13 movie ever, but I thought maybe with the escalation of that rating since the Joker stabbed a guy with a pencil in DARK KNIGHT maybe it wouldn’t seem as harsh by today’s standards.
Nope. This movie is a fuckin nightmare! It starts as an anxiety dream (oh shit, what if my kids come over and I show up late and forgot to clean up and my ex-wife and her husband see that I don’t have any food and…) then one of those ones where you see weird shit in the sky (a strange electrical storm) and in the distance (3-legged alien attack machines), and then it’s a disaster one (mobs attacking your car at night, thousands of people trying to climb onto the same ferry), then a war one (running into the hills at night as tanks roll in the other direction) and then a more intimate things-that-go-bump-in-the-night one (alien in the basement). All of this executed with the classic Steve Spielberg filmatistic chops.
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Recent commentary and jibber-jabber
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August 2, 1996
Director Danny DeVito (THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN) must’ve still been concerned about MATILDA (adapted by Nicholas Kazan [MOBSTERS, DREAM LOVER] and Robin Swicord [SHAG]) being a little mean, because he cast himself as the kind-sounding narrator to balance out playing the asshole dad, Harry Wormwood. Harry and his wife Zinnia (Rhea Perlman, CLASS ACT) somehow raised their daughter Matilda (the precocious Mara Wilson, MRS. DOUBTFIRE) to the age of six without noticing – or at least not approving of – her brilliance. She loves to read, but has to sneak out to go to the library. Harry, an unethical used car salesman, forces her to watch TV junk and refuses to let her go to school, because “Who would sign for the packages?”
I’m not gonna waste your time pretending you need my opinion whether to see AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH or not. If you don’t like these movies, no, don’t bother. If you do, obviously you’re gonna see it, it’s a new AVATAR! A new James Cameron! You’re not a heathen. And he’s still pretty much undefeated. The streak continues.
June 29, 2005
Tom Cruise’s character Ray Ferrier kind of seems like the inevitable results of living as one of the charming dicks he played when he was younger – regular Yankees-hat-wearing, working class guy, pretty likable, but fucked up his marriage and now lives alone in a little place in New Jersey. Definitely a deadbeat in the parenting department, and isn’t disciplined enough to get his shit together (until now, when it really counts, during an alien invasion). (Spoiler.) We first see him operating a crane at the docks in Brooklyn, it looks pretty challenging and his boss (Peter Gerety, Homicide: Life on the Streets) seems to think he’s the best at it, but it’s still funny when he punches out and roars into traffic in his Mustang like he’s convinced he’s the coolest motherfucker who ever lived.
I am a human, but I love those apes and that planet they got. I really have enjoyed the entire PLANET OF THE APES series except for 
I love 
