Archive
Review: “Enchanted”
Directed by: Kevin Lima
Produced by: Barry Josephson, Barry Sonnenfeld
Written by: Bill Kelly
Cinematography by: Don Burgess
Editing by: Gregory Perler, Stephen A. Rotter
Music by: Alen Menken, Stephen Schwartz (lyrics)
Starring: Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Timothy Spall, Idina Menzel Rachel Covey, Susan Sarandon, Julie Andrews (narration)
Year: 2007
Every now and then, you just want to escape the cynical world around you and delve into a little bit of celebratory saccharine sweetness to make you a bit happier to be alive. Enchanted is a great film to unwind with, as I quickly found out tonight after this movie arrived in the mail and I decided to put it on in the background of my household cleaning, only to find myself laying down on the couch and absorbing the infectiously fun fish-out-of-water fairy tale about a naive princess who is transported into our world after being pushed down a magical well by an evil queen, only to find out that true love isn’t always at first sight. Read more…
Theatrical Review: “Wreck-It Ralph” / Sub-Review: “Paperman”
Directed by: Rich Moore
Produced by: Clark Spencer
Written by: Phil Johnston, Jennifer Lee (screenplay); Rich Moore, Phil Johnston, Jim Reardon (story)
Music by: Henry Jackman
Starring: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, Alan Tudyk, Adam Carolla, Horatio Sanz, Mindy Kaling
Year: 2012
Video games were probably my first passion. I’ve been a game player since my grandpa first introduced me to his Nintendo Entertainment System back when I was only 4, and while video games have largely become more of a rare hobby of mine since I left high school, I still love the medium and I try to find new favorites (the Uncharted series) while keeping up with my old ones (The Legend of Zelda primarily). So I was pretty excited to hear that Disney was making a film that many were calling the Who Framed Roger Rabbit of video games. Here was the world’s biggest animation studio finally acknowledging the mainstream popularity of video games by not only making a film centered around one, as they did with Tron, but actually making the film part of its prestigious “Disney Animation Canon,” placing it in the same ranks as the revolutionary Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the Best Picture Oscar-nominated Beauty and the Beast. Read more…
Theatrical Review: “Frankenweenie”
Directed by: Tim Burton
Produced by: Tim Burton, Allison Abbate
Written by: John August
Cinematography by: Peter Sorg
Music by: Danny Elfman
Starring: Charlie Tahan, Frank Welker, Winona Ryder, Cathernie O’Hara, Martin Short, martin Landau, Robert Capron, Atticus Shaffer
Based on the short Frankenweenie by Tim Burton
I’m going to say it, something that everyone’s been thinking and even saying for a while, but it bears mentioning again: Tim Burton has really lost his touch since the late 90s. Though he’s still since released some decent-to-genuinely-good films since then, none of them have been entirely original. His take on Alice in Wonderland was a garish bore, and while I truly enjoyed both Sweeney Todd and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, they weren’t entirely his own material, now, were they? I think that the best thing that we can say about Frankenweenie at this point in Burton’s career is that it falls somewhere in this latter category of truly enjoyable though not entirely original material. Read more…
The Ultimate Evolving Superhero Movie List – Part 3
It can be hard to discern which films are worth your time. Now, I’m no expert on comic books, having primarily grown up getting to know most of these characters from films, TV shows, and video games, but I do have a love for superheroes just the same, and I do consider these mediums to be a part of the ever expanding reach of these characters beyond their comic book origins. As I write this, I also admit I’m running on a superhero high these days, as I just came off a string of reviews for The Dark Knight Trilogy. Also of note is that The Viewer’s Commentary not only reached its 100th post with the first portion of this list, but it is also coming upon its first anniversary, and I figured that I would do something grand to celebrate!
Initially, I was thinking, “Why not do an updated Top 10 Superhero Films list?” but that just came off as being not grand enough, and doubling that number still didn’t feel ambitious enough. So I set myself on a much grander mission: To make an ever-evolving list of not just the best or worst superhero films, but of ALL the superhero films I had ever seen, leading to the creation of this list you see before you.
Currently, I am limiting this list to just theatrically-released films, as that still provides me with a lot of ground to cover, though it will definitely begin to include exceptions for non-theatrical features such as Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Furthermore, I am abstaining from listing films that I have yet to see or have not seen in quite some time and, thus, do not feel comfortable passing judgment on. As such, there will be omissions, some of them obvious, some of them not so much, but that’s the beauty of the idea behind this project: It’s an evolving list.
So, as I see newer movies, re-watch forgotten ones, and also discover the ones that have somehow gone unseen by me, I will continue to add them to this list, which is also being given its own all-encompassing page here on The Viewers Commentary. Films will be neatly separated into the five easy categories – The Awful, The Bad, The Average, The Good, and The Excellent – and each film within each category ranked from least to greatest in quality (all my opinion of course). Do not consider this list or the commentary to be definitive reviews, but if I do have a review for the movie, rest assured that it will be linked to.
In this, the third and final incremental portion of this list before it goes into periodic updates, I present to you the current films in the latter half of “The Good” films section and, finally, “The Excellent” films, as well. Read more…
Theatrical Review: “ParaNorman”
Directed by: Sam Fell, Chris Butler
Produced by: Travis Knight, Arianne Sutner
Written by: Chris Butler (screenplay), Arianne Sutner, Stephen Stone (story)
Cinematography by: Tristan Oliver
Music by: Jon Brion
Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tucker Albrizzi, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, John Goodman, Leslie Mann, Jeff Garlin, Jodelle Ferland, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Elaine Stritch, Bernard Hill, Jodelle Ferland, Tempestt Bledsoe, Hannah Noyes, Ariel Winter
Year: 2012
There are several things that I admire about this movie that I’m just going to highlight from the outset:
- The animation is impressive. I have no idea how they pulled off the visually (not to mention emotionally) charged ending effects, but I would really like to see the featurette on the home release on that.
- Getting back to the emotion, there are moments in the film that feel stunningly authentic, and that ending really does pay off.
- The filmmakers largely stayed away from obvious pop culture horror references that would be so prevalent in so many big studio film efforts. There are some, one of which is revealed in the trailers (“You want to play hockey?”) and another that is a lot more subtle than this (Norman’s ringtone is from The Exorcist), but, for the most part, the film is a much calmer, more self-contained experience than it could have been.
I lead into this review with those points because I don’t want to sound like I didn’t enjoy this film, because that wouldn’t necessarily be true. The fact of the matter, however, is that for all the things this film excels at, there are several things that hold it back for me from being the apparent critical darling that Rotten Tomatoes would suggest that ParaNorman is.
Theatrical Review: “Brave”
Directed by: Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman
Produced by: Katherine Sarafian; Pete Docter, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton (executive); Mary Alice Drumm (associate)
Written by: Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell, Brenda Chapman, Irene Mecchi (screenplay); Brenda Chapman (story)
Art Department: Emma Coats, Nick Sung (storyboard artists); Mark Cordell Holmes (graphic artist); Jason Merck (artist)
Music by: Patrick Doyle
Starring: Kelly Macdonald, Julie Walters, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson, Robbie Coltrane, John Ratzenberger
Year: 2012
Many have worried, and even after seeing the film continue to assert, that Brave is a step backward for Pixar in terms of quality and storytelling. The film’s current score of 75% on Rotten Tomatoes, while nowhere near as low as last year’s 38%-scoring Cars 2, still puts the film just barely above the first Cars (74%), and just below the recent Madagascar 3 (76%), and though I haven’t seen the latter, I doubt these films would ever be considered in the same league as Pixar’s masterpieces like Up, The Incredibles, the Toy Story films, and Finding Nemo. Audiences and critics alike are seemingly seeing signs that this studio, once heralded as being home to the kings (and queens) of their craft, is taking its first steps towards the abyss of mediocrity — an assertion only further enforced by the fact that Brave had Pixar’s lowest grossing opening weekend of any of their films, despite taking the number one spot. But is Brave really the harbinger of a string of “just average” films to come? Has Pixar lost its edge, its brilliance, its originality? To be quite honest, I don’t see Brave in that light at all. Read more…
Review: “Quest for Camelot”
Directed by: Frederik Du Chau
Produced by: Andre Clavel, Dalisa Cohen, Zahra Dowlatabadi
Written by: Kirk De Micco, William Schifrin, Jacqueline Feather, David Seidler, Frederik Du Chau (screenplay)
Art Direction by: Carol Kieffer Police, J. Michael Spooner
Music by: Patrick Doyle (original score), David Foster and Carole Bayer Sayer (original songs)
Starring: Jessalyn Gilsig, Cary Elwes, Gary Oldman, Eric Idle, Don Rickles, Jane Seymour, Pierce Brosnan, Bronson Pinchot, Jaleel White, Gabriel Byrne, John Gielgud, Frank Welker; Andrea Corr, Bryan White, Celine Dion, Steve Perry (singing voices)
Based on the novel The King’s Damosel by Vera Chapman
Year: 1998
I had been thinking of this movie for quite a while, contemplating whether I should watch it or not. Every now and then, the itch would hit, and I’d consider it, but then I would reconsider and decide to skip it for either a much better or (when the mood struck) worse movie. I’ve actually owned this film for probably over ten years, but, to be quite honest, I think the number of times I actually watched the disc could be counted on one hand, and for the longest time, the film kind of just stood in my collection as the lone Q in my alphabetized shelf, only to find its would-be partner, Quantum of Solace, stashed way up top with the rest of the Bond films in the B section (for “Bond” of course — I like my film series in sequential order, therefore U.S. Marshals is up there in the F section since it’s a sequel to The Fugitive. It makes sense to me!).
But before too long, the itch got too intense, and with the impending release of the Pixar film Brave, I figured it was probably about time that I gave this superficially similar-looking film its due before it was inevitably blown out of the waters of my mind by what is likely to be a far superior film. And so, like a forgotten relic rediscovered, I dusted off my old DVD copy in those awful cardboard snap cases Warner Bros. always used to use in the early days of DVD, set aside the old paper inserts still residing within that marveled at the wonders of this disc-based movie viewing technology, and threw the old double-sided disc (film on one side, special features on the other) into the PS3 to see if I could relive the magic… Read more…
Review: “The Thief and the Cobbler” (Miramax Version – a.k.a. “Arabian Knight”)
Directed by: Richard Williams
Produced by: Richard Williams, Imogen Sutton
Written by: Richard Williams and Margaret French (screenplay)
Art Direction by: Roy Naisbitt
Music by: Robert Folk, Jack Maeby (songs)
Starring: Vincent Price, Matthew Broderick, Jennifer Beals, Jonathan Winters, Clive Revill, Toni Collette, Eric Bogosian
Year: 1995
Now here’s an animated film that deserves the Blade Runner treatment. With a production spanning three decades, the film widely and originally known as The Thief and the Cobbler found its way to audiences in multiple versions and distributions: there’s the unofficial workprint version, the Majestic Films cut known as The Princess and the Cobbler, the Miramax version released in theatres as Arabian Knight, and, finally, the Garrett Gilchrist-led restoration project known as The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut, which can be found on your local internet bittorrent site and YouTube. The funny thing about all these different versions is that none of them are actually the completed project. “How could that be?” you might ask. The simplest way to explain why boils down to one word: hubris. Read more…
Review: “Yellow Submarine”
Directed by: George Dunning
Produced by: Al Brodax, Mary Ellen Stewart
Written by: Lee Minoff (short story), Al Brodax (screenplay), Jack Mendelsohn, Erich Segal
Music by: George Martin, The Beatles (songs, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr)
Art Direction by: Heinz Edelmann
Starring: Paul Angelis, John Clive, Dick Emery, Geoffrey Hughes, Lance Percival
Year: 1968
I’ve always told people that I was a fan of The Beatles from before birth, with my mother having played music to me since that time. I remember when I was very little about 4 or 5, I had a red Radio Shack-branded kid’s portable cassette player that I would listen to The Beatles’ red and blue greatest hits albums on. I even remember the disappointment in putting these into Teddy Ruxpin, only to discover that, no, he would not sing along with my favorite song at the time, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” And I also remember a long time ago, when I was still quite young and at a party filled with boring adults, the generous host of the party noticed how bored I was, coming up to me, and asking me if I wanted to head into his room and watch this Beatles cartoon he had. “Beatles? Cartoon? Sure!” was likely my thought process at the time. This cartoon, of course, wasn’t the child-centric American TV production, but was, in fact, one of the weirdest but also most fascinating cartoons I had ever seen up to that point (a fact that likely still holds true): Yellow Submarine. Read more…
More or Less: 5 More of My Favorites
Since this blog’s inception, I’ve posted 85 times, and while that is not necessarily one of those significantly recognized numbers like, say 25, 50, or 75, I must say, I didn’t know whether or not that I would stick with this blog for as long as I have, and while I’ve at times wondered if I could continue writing for this, 85 seems like a good enough number to definitively say to myself, “Yes, this is what I’m meant to be doing, even if it’s not for a living.”
You see, even though I might not be getting paid for what I’m doing here, there’s still a significant part of me that absolutely loves the cinema, even the crap movies sometimes, and I love discussing them with people when I can. Writing this may be a somewhat of a one-way street, as I’m still not entirely certain how significant my readership is here, but the more I write about it, the more I know that my audience will grow, and even if I’m not getting quite the comments level that I probably naively expected/hoped, hopefullyThe Viewer’s Commentary has at least helped in elevating this art medium that I love so much, if even by a small amount.
Going forward, I hope to have more reviews and commentary up more often. Going through a few sites around the blogosphere, I’m inspired to stop caring so much about the scope of my posts as much as I am posting from both my gut and heart and only worry about the high concept stuff when the mood strikes me just right. This will enable me to not burn out after work in trying to do a ton of research only to decide to abandon all plans to write that night. Less pressure, more pleasure, I guess you could say.
And, so, with this, the 86th published post, I’m going to make good on that promise to myself and my readership with a follow up to my very first article on the site — Here are, in no particular order, five more films that I would consider to be, more or less, my favorites!
The smug face of evil
Inglourious Basterds — I initially fell asleep during this movie. There. I said it. I blame my friend, who was also present with me during our recent viewing of John Carter — another film I fell asleep during. (Though, with that film, it was likely the fact that it was a midnight showing after a tame hockey-game bachelor’s party — that and it was also kind of a boring flick in general.) That bad luck for me apparently rubbed off once he got married, as he was also present when we went to go see The Avengers, and I was glued for that. (Honestly, Inglourious Basterds was also a late night showing during a very hectic and busy school schedule for me, so it wasn’t great timing.) But I’m digressing. Read more…
The Viewer's Commentary 