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REVIEW – Anastasia (1997)
Directed by: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman
Produced by: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman
Screenplay by: Susan Gauthier, Bruce Graham, Bob Tzudiker, Noni White
Edited by: Bob Bender, Fiona Trayler
Score by: David Newman
Songs by: Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty
Starring: Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Kelsey Grammer, Christopher Lloyd, Hank Azaria, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters, Liz Callaway, Jonathan Dokuchitz, Jim Cummings, Kirsten Dunst, Lacey Chabert
Year: 1997
So it’s pretty much a done deal that Disney is buying out 21st Century Fox and all its assets, so I suppose now is as good a time as any to review Fox’s 1997 Disney cash-in before its parent company’s nuptials to its future evil stepmother takes place, right? Read more…
2014 IN REVIEW: My Top Films of the Year
I saw so many movies this year, I honestly couldn’t pick the best movie. The selection was so wide because I saw so many, I honestly couldn’t pit movies I just enjoyed versus films I admired. So, this year, I’ve decided to do something different — I separated them into genres. it’s not exactly what you might expect – Guardians of the Galaxy isn’t in sci-fi, for instance, because it’s much more of an adventure film in space.
I’ve ordered these based on gut instinct overall, however, and so you’ll be able to see what I (currently) favored over others. That being said, however, all of these movies are fantastic.
I’m tired of explaining things, honestly. The process of doing the year in review this year was a lot longer than I intended. So, yeah. You know the drill. Read below! Read more…
REVIEW: A Goofy Movie
Directed by: Kevin Lima
Produced by: Dan Rounds
Written by: Jymn Magon, Brian Pimental, Chris Matheson (screenplay), Jymn Magon (story)
Edited by: Gregory Perler
Art Direction by: Larry Leker, Wendell Luebbe
Production Design by: Fred Warter
Music by: Carter Burwell, Don Davis
Starring: Bill Farmer, Jason Marsden, Rob Paulsen, Jim Cummings, Kellie Martin, Pauly Shore, Pat Buttram, Wallace Shawn, Ray Liotta, Jenna von Oÿ, Tevin Campbell, Jo Anne Worley, Joey Lawrence, Frank Welker
Based on the TV series Goof Troop
Year: 1995
Goofy was always one of the most enjoyable characters in Mickey’s group of friends. Anyone who’s seen pretty much any of the “How To” series shorts featuring the clumsy anthropomorphic dog-like creature knows that unquestionable fact. Arguably, he’s second only to Donald – who really stood more on the manic end of the comedy spectrum from Goofy. It’s only fitting that they each got their own domestic family sitcoms – Donald in Quack Pack and Goofy in the earlier Goof Troop, which introduced us to Goofy’s son, Max – while straightman and, honestly, comparatively bland Mickey was stuck playing emcee to all of his own shows. Quack Pack never seemed to resonate with kids from that era, and it didn’t seem to be half as fondly or frequently remembered compared to Goof Troop. (For me, personally, it came a little too late, as its entire one season came out when I lived overseas.) However, Disney seemed to recognize the fondness kids had for Goofy and Max’s domestic lives, so it was only logical that the corporation that would become well known for releasing unnecessary sequels to its classic films over the next decade would capitalize on its success with a theatrical film. Read more…
2011 in Review: My 10 Favorite Films, 10 – 8
It’s hard for me to pick a favorite film of all time, but with a year like 2011, it wasn’t that hard to narrow down my choices for favorite films over the past year.
After making my selections and arranging them, I’ve realized a lot of my choices for 2011 involved some combination of whimsy, science fiction, or fantasy elements. While I love a good realistic film — and indeed, had this blog existed at the beginning of 2011, I would have likely been talking about how much I loved True Grit and The King’s Speech — I always seem to go back to the more whimsical ones the most, and 2011, for all its faults, was full of some wonderful films of this ilk.
I swear, I’ll never write off another Western again, I promise!
I had originally intended to place all ten of my favorite films here in this one article, but around the time I had completed the tenth place film and began writing the entry for the ninth (the rankings of which continued to evolve themselves, so that was its own dilemma for me as I love them all, some more equally than others), I began to realize just how much I had to say about the films I loved this past year. If you read my past articles on the films I didn’t see in 2011, the ones I liked, and the ones I hated, you can see that there wasn’t a huge number of films that I especially wanted to see that was new, so perhaps that is why I ended up feeling so compelled to write so much about these films.
Ultimately, I am my own editor, and I know I can be quite wordy, but it is my hope that, in writing these analyses on my favorite films of 2011, I can impress upon you what it is about these films that I love so much and maybe compel you to love them similarly and, if not, defend your position, retort with your own, and perhaps feel compelled to introduce others, including me, to something they had never considered seeing before. That being said, this is a perfect jumping off point for the first entry on my list, so here they are, Entries 10 – 8 of My 10 Favorite Films of 2011: Read more…
2011 in Review: The Top 5 Worst Films I Saw
Some would say that 2011 as a very disappointing year for film. While there were definitely fewer films that I wanted to see this past year than in years past, or at least ones that I was totally looking forward to, there was hardly a shortage of films that I did see and love, all the same.
But before I get to those films, we do have some filth to get out of the way, first. Though I try to avoid them at all costs, sometimes a bad film is just too hard to avoid, whether it’s because I saw them out of obligation to someone else or, as is the case with many of the films I saw this past year, I developed a case of morbid curiosity. Sometimes it paid off. Sometimes it didn’t. And while there were some films I did see from the past year were truly very poor ones, there were some that were just downright disappointments, too.
I’ve already gone through and told you about the films that I liked, and I already have a list of my favorite films of 2011 coming to you, as well, but before we do that, let’s get this out of the way, first.
Here is a definitive list of the Top 5 Worst Films I saw from 2011 that I did see, in ascending order from bad to worse to just absolutely awful…
5. Gnomeo & Juliet (February 11)
As if this story weren’t retold enough, here comes Canadian animation studio Arc Productions’ gimmicky little collaboration with Disney, a comedic and decidedly un-tragic retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Honestly, it’s not a horrendous film and likely wouldn’t have made this list had I seen some of the more horrible-looking films this past year that I managed to avoid (which is why it’s at the bottom of this list); but Gnomeo & Juliet‘s biggest failing isn’t that it’s awful, but that it’s like that friend who cracks all those corny jokes all the time, who gets everyone laughing but only because, you know, they’re friendly enough and generally nice to have around, but you really can’t bear to hurt their feelings and tell them that they’re not as clever as they think. The title, though, should give you an idea of what kind of humor lies within the film — puns aplenty and a smearing of self-aware sensibility so heavy that you’d think the animators kind of knew they were making a rather bland film and decided to compensate for it. Read more…
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