Archive
REVIEW: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
Directed by: Bryan Spicer
Produced by: Haim Saban, Shuki Levy, Suzanne Todd
Written by: Arne Olsen (screenplay), John Kamps, Arne Olsen (story)
Edited by: Wayne Wahrman
Cinematography by: Paul Murphy
Music by: Graeme Revell
Starring: Jason David Frank, Amy Jo Johnson, Steve Cardenas, Johnny Yong Bosch, David Yost, Karan Ashley, Paul Freeman, Paul Schrier, Jason Narvy, Nicholas Bell, Robert L. Manahan, Peta-Maree Rixon, Richard Wood, Jamie Croft, Gabrielle Fitzpatrick, Julia Cortez, Barbara Goodson, Mark Ginther, Robert Axelrod, Kerry Casey, Kerrigan Mahan, Jean Paul Bell
Year: 1995
Ah, the Power Rangers! Probably one of the first TV series to expose me to the fact that a lot of adults could get paranoid over quite a little bit. Remember that story about how Power Rangers inspired kids to stab one another? Or that one about how it encouraged kids to jump off balconies? I sure do. It was also one of the first series many of us likely experienced backlash over, as Power Rangers was a series that kids who felt that they had passed some agreed upon threshold where it was no longer acceptable (or even never was acceptable) to watch the series would tease kids like me who (usually) openly admitted to watching it. Naturally, the Power Rangers’ first theatrical film was a big event for some of my friends and me. It was also the reason for the only time I recall ever being able to make myself cry in desperation. Long story short, my friend did something to piss off our babysitter, and she threatened to not take us to see it. He called her bluff, and she actually called it off. Frustrated because I hadn’t done anything, I worked up a lot of tears, and, yeah… I earned some sympathy points, and we went to see it anyway. Read more…
REVIEW: Free Willy
Directed by: Simon Wincer
Produced by: Lauren Shuler Donner, Jennie Lew Tugend, Richard Donner, Arnon Milchan
Written by: Keith A. Walker, Corey Blechman
Edited by: O. Nicholas Brown
Cinematography by: Robbie Greenberg
Music by: Basil Poledouris; Michael Jackson (theme)
Starring: Jason James Richter, Lori Petty, Jayne Atkinson, August Schellenberg, Michael Madsen, Michael Ironside, Mykelti Williamson, Michael Bacall, Keiko
Year: 1993
Man, I remember a time when I could watch this movie and not think of all the horrors that went on at SeaWorld, don’t you? Thank you, Blackfish, for making the message behind Free Willy so devastatingly real now that I’m a grown man. I hate you.
All kidding aside, however, this was probably one of the first pieces of media with an activist message kids from my era ever watched outside of a “very special episode” of one of their favorite TV shows. (And that was probably the episode of Fresh Prince where Carlton bought the gun after Will was mugged.) Free Willy was the movie that dared us to care about the remarkable relationship between a troubled young boy named Jesse who just desperately needs someone to love him and set a good example for him and his unexpected friendship with a tenacious whale who was taken away from his own family and put on display for a world that doesn’t fully understand him. Read more…
REVIEW: Space Jam
Directed by: Joe Pytka
Produced by: Ivan Reitman, Joe Medjuck, Daniel Goldberg
Written by: Leo Benvenuti, Steve Rudnick, Timothy Harris, Herschel Weingrod
Edited by: Sheldon Kahn
Cinematography by: Michael Chapman
Music by: James Newton Howard; Soundtrack produced by R. Kelly
Starring: Michael Jordan, Billy West, Dee Bradley Baker, Danny Devito, Wayne Knight, Bill Murray, Kath Soucie, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Shawn Bradley, Larry Johnson, Muggsy Bogues, Theresa Randle, Bob Bergen, Bill Farmer, June Foray, Maurice LaMarche, Colleen Wainwright, Frank Welker
Year: 1996
Space Jam, that wonderful marketing ploy that fooled audiences into handing over $230 million to a studio for an overlong concoction of advertisements and which made us all love R. Kelly in an innocent time where that was still an acceptable thing to do. Seriously, the film is a commercial for itself – the marketing synergy between the two entities who merged two completely unrelated but massively successful franchises together to resemble something like a movie, and yet that is honestly also the film’s main draw. It asked us a question nobody outside of a corporate think tank would have ever asked in their right mind – “Who doesn’t want to see Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan play basketball together?” – and convinced us that this was, come to think of it, actually something that would be pretty entertaining to watch! Read more…
REVIEW: An American Tail
Directed by: Don Bluth
Produced by: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman, John Pomeroy; Steven Spielberg (executive producer)
Written by: Judy Freudberg, Tony Geiss (screenplay), David Kirschner, Judy Freudberg, Tony Geiss (story)
Edited by: Dan Molina
Production Design by: Don Bluth
Music by: James Horner
Starring: Phillip Glasser, John Finnegan, Pat Musick, Cathianne Blore, Nehemiah Persoff, Amy Green, Dom DeLuise, Christopher Plummer, Neil Ross, Madeline Kahn, Erica Yohn
Year: 1986
I got pretty excited recently when I discovered that this movie was coming out on Blu-Ray. This was a childhood favorite of mine, and I grew up pretty much singing a few the songs featured in the film along with Disney songs that have since proven to be far more enduring and are likely far more recognizable today – even if Community did that awesome reference to “Somewhere Out There” in that one episode. However, I only ever owned the movie on VHS, never upgrading to the DVD, and it got to the point where I decided I’d hold out for a hopeful Blu-Ray release. The patience paid off. Sure, it was a barebones disc, containing a sing-along and a theatrical trailer and little else, beyond an almost superfluous digital copy, but I finally owned An American Tail, once again, now in glorious HD!
It’d been a while since I’d seen the film when it finally arrived in my mailbox. I believe it was once part of the Netflix streaming catalog, as I had actually watched it once a few years ago, but even before that, it’d also been an even longer amount of time since I had seen this Don Bluth-directed classic, so I still had my nostalgia goggles on when I popped the disc in to my PlayStation and settled in. Read more…
THEATRICAL REVIEW: The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ)
Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki
Produced by: Toshio Suzuki
Written by: Hayao Miyazaki
Edited by: Takeshi Seyama
Cinematography by: Atsushi Okui
Music by: Joe Hisaishi
Starring: (Japanese) Hideaki Anno, Miori Takimoto, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Masahiko Nishimura, Steve Alpert, Morio Kazama, Keiko Takeshita, Mirai Shida, Jun Kunimura, Shinobu Otake, Nomura Mansai; (English Disney dub) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Martin Short, Werner Herzog, William H. Macy, Darren Criss, Mae Whitman, Mandy Patinkin, Jennifer Grey, Stanley Tucci, Elijah Wood, Ronan Farrow, Zach Callison
Based on the manga Kaze Tachinu by Hayao Miyazaki, the novel The Wind Has Risen by Tatsuo Hori, and inspired by a true story
Year: 2013, 2014 (US)
Review is based on the Disney/Touchstone English dub.
Touted as the last film to be directed by legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki, The Wind Rises understandably will carry a lot of weight with fans of the director, Studio Ghibli, and animation in general, with the film even being nominated recently in the Academy Awards’ Best Animated Feature category. The director has, since the 70s, made a name for himself as a whimsical filmmaker with a fine attention to detail, both visually in the work his crew puts out and within the worlds and personalities of the characters he portrays in his films, which rarely feel anything like the stereotypical animé Western audiences are more familiar with, and yet also so distinctly different from Western animation from any era. Understandably, he’s going to be missed, and while Studio Ghibli has plenty of talent to build off of and directors who have proven to be more than capable of creating films in the same mold as the elder Miyazaki, it’s unlikely that we’ll be seeing the like of his work ever again (so long as he’s actually serious about staying retired). Read more…
THEATRICAL REVIEW: The LEGO Movie
Directed by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Produced by: Dan Lin, Roy Lee
Written by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller (screenplay)
Edited by: David Burrows, Chris McKay
Cinematography by: Pablo Plaisted
Music by: Mark Mothersbaugh
Starring: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman
Year: 2014
I actually saw this movie weeks ago. Like… I couldn’t stand the wait and saw it the opening weekend, in fact. I was just so freaking excited for the movie, and it was going to be my first post-“2013 IN REVIEW” review, and – well, it still is, but not nearly as early as I intended. (Hey, life gets in the way. I’ve been working more from home, getting more tired at work, and then my sister had the audacity of getting married, which required some clothing search. ANYWAY…) Read more…
REVIEW: Tokyo Godfathers
Directed by: Satoshi Kon, Shogo Furuya
Produced by: Masao Maruyama, Masao Takiyama, Shinichi Kobayashi, Taro Maki
Written by: Satoshi Kon, Keiko Nobumoto (screenplay); Satoshi Kon (story)
Edited by: Takeshi Seyama
Cinematography by: Katsutoshi Sugai
Music by: Keiichi Suzuki, Moonriders
Starring: Aya Okamoto, Toru Emori, Yoshiaki Umegaki, Satomi Korogi, Shozo Iizuka, Seizo Kato, Hiroyama Ishimaru, Ryuji Saikachi, Yusaku Yara, Kyoko Terase, Mamiko Noto, Rikiya Koyoama
Year: 2003
It’s funny how so many Christmas movies are about rich, good-looking people celebrating this time of giving together and learning life lessons and/or finding love together. You would think that more movies would focus on those who are most in need, right? I think the problem is that somewhere in the movie making system, someone thinks that nobody wants to watch a story that might potentially depress them during a time of year when a lot of people actually are struggling and suffering, and so instead we get tripe like The Family Stone, wherein a rich awful family emotionally tortures a rich career woman who is dating their golden boy son in the confines of their ideal home, and somehow we’re supposed to grow to like these snobs. (I thought of reviewing the film this year, but I gave out so many negative reviews, I couldn’t possibly bring myself to subject you and me to that, so let this be a little teaser, perhaps, for next year.) Read more…
REVIEW: The Nativity Story
Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke
Produced by: Toby Emmerich, Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Cale Boyter, Catherine Hardwicke, Mike Rich, Tim Van Rellim
Written by: Mike Rich
Edited by: Robert K. Lambert, Stuart Levy
Cinematography by: Elliot Davis
Music by: Mychael Danna
Starring: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Oscar Isaac, Stanley Townsend, Clarán Hinds, Shaun Toub
Year: 2006
“Jesus is the reason for the season.” That’s what you always hear this time of year, isn’t it? And yet it seems like it’s pretty hard to find many movies exclusively based on the story of the birth of Christ, as opposed to His entire life or crucifixion. The Nativity Story is undoubtedly one of the few that does focus on this one aspect. I had actually meant to review this film long ago, when I first started this blog, but the movie’s always been checked out indefinitely this time of year on Netflix and Blockbuster (back when they, you know, actually did the whole physical movie renting). This was the first year I actually managed to be proactive and get a copy, and so I guess it’s only appropriate that I actually make good on that and finally review the film, right? Read more…
REVIEW: Bad Santa (Director’s Cut)
Directed by: Terry Zwigoff
Produced by: John Cameron, Sarah Aubrey, Bob Weinstein; The Coen Brothers (executive producers)
Written by: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Edited by: Robert Hoffman
Cinematography by: Jamie Anderson
Music by: David Kitay
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Lauren Graham, Bernie Mac, Brett Kelly, Lauren Tom, Cloris Leachman, John Ritter
Year: 2003
Perhaps the movie that was on my radar the longest, as far as holiday movies go, was Bad Santa, which was originally released all the way back when I was in high school, which also meant that I was absolutely unable to get a hold of a copy at the time, seeing as how I still lived at home, and I am not certain that the kind of comedy there within would have held up well should anyone even hear what was being uttered on screen, and it’s also not exactly the kind of film that, as I got older, would have been viewed in a family setting. It was in my queue for a while in all past Christmas Movie Months, never reaching me thanks to the stupid freaking “Long Wait” with Netflix and, may they rest in peace, Blockbuster. This year, however, I finally got my hands on a copy! Finally, I would gaze the apparent treasure that everyone else was raving about all that time ago (and even today)! I popped in the disc, and… there were two cuts: Bad(der) Santa, the unrated cut, and Bad Santa the director’s cut – but no theatrical cut. Read more…
THEATRICAL REVIEW: Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas
Directed by: Tyler Perry
Produced by: Tyler Perry, Ozzie Areu, Matt Moore
Written by: Tyler Perry
Edited by: Maysie Hoy
Cinematography by: Alexander Gruszynski
Music by: Christopher Young
Starring: Tyler Perry, Anna Maria Horsford, Larry the Cable Guy, Tika Sumpter, Kathy Najimy, Chad Michael Murray, Eric Lively, Alicia Witt, Lisa Whelchel, Noah Urrea, JR Lemon, Jonathan Chase
Adapted from the musical play by Tyler Perry
Year: 2013
I used to think that this would be a sign of the apocalypse – Tyler Perry teaming up with Larry the Cable Guy to make a movie together. When I joked about such a thing happening all the way back in January when I was reviewing the films of 2012, I mentioned that if such a thing were going to happen, I would be among the first to see such an event take place, and it would be my first Tyler Perry film that I would spend good money on to see in theatres. Then, a few days later, God showed that He had a smug sense of humor with me when He deemed that such a thing would happen. And that it would not be released during the apocalypse, but rather during the celebration of His Son’s birth, and yet also on the official release date of December 13, 2013 – which, if you’re reading this far from now, you may not immediately know is also Friday the 13th. Very funny. You win again, God. Also, would you look at that? We’re all still here. I guess I should’ve known that not even Satan himself wouldn’t want his big finale to be upstaged by such a massive bomb as this. Read more…
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