Adventure Archives - Page 27 of 40

Riddick Trilogy: The Franchise Collection – DVD

June 7, 20062000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Short Films, Thriller

PITCH BLACK – UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT (2000)
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, Keith David
screenplay by Jim & Ken Wheat and David Twohy
directed by David Twohy

DARK FURY (2004)
The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury
*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D+
screenplay by Brett Matthews
directed by Peter Chung

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK – UNRATED DIRECTOR'S CUT (2004)
***½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras C
starring Vin Diesel, Thandie Newton, Karl Urban, Judi Dench
written and directed by David Twohy

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover At the dawn of the century came a little movie called Pitch Black that didn't seem like an opportunity for blockbuster inflation. Produced for a mere $20 million, it turned out to be only moderately successful yet built up a cult following on video and cable. In the interim, its star Vin Diesel did smash business in The Fast and the Furious and xXx, positioning him as the next bankable action hero and generating a hunt for properties with which to exploit his appeal. Thus did the chamber piece Pitch Black beget the big-budget extravaganza The Chronicles of Riddick, a sequel nobody was particularly salivating for but which showed up anyway to widespread confusion and audience indifference. The two films couldn't be more disparate: where the former is a guilt-ridden ensemble piece in which the ensemble rapidly dwindles, the latter is an over-designed star spectacular with a glut of supporting supplicants and plenty of action set-pieces.

Poseidon (2006)

May 11, 20062000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Jacinda Barrett, Richard Dreyfuss
screenplay by Mark Protosevich, based on the novel The Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico
directed by Wolfgang Petersen

by Walter Chaw Sort of like Ghost Ship without the gore (and it promptly loses the points it earns for being sans Julianna Marguiles by featuring Kevin Dillon), Wolfgang Petersen's soggy underwater soaper Poseidon starts with a theoretically exciting (but just unintentionally hilarious) set-piece and limps the rest of the way on the standard old slogging-through-wet-hallways bullroar that may be the very definition of "un-exciting." Kurt Russell is Robert, an ex-fireman/ex-New York mayor who appears to have a gambling problem and a contentious relationship with his daughter Jennifer (Emmy Rossum), which will of course be resolved, Mark Twain-style, by a late-in-the-show heroic action. Josh Lucas is Dylan, the rogue ex-Navy man with a plan; Jimmy Bennett is the buck-toothed little idiot who wanders off a lot (and Jacinda Barrett is his long-suffering mom, Maggie); Richard Dreyfuss plays Richard, a suicidal queen planning on leaving his pals with a hefty bill by leaping from the mighty Poseidon luxury liner's galleria after dinner; and all people of colour are meatbags to be fed to the mill whenever someone needs an example of what could happen to the rich whiteys not unfortunate enough to be in steerage.

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

May 5, 20062000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, Espionage, Germany, Italy, Theatrical, Thriller, Tom Cruise

*/****
starring Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup
screenplay by Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci & J.J. Abrams
directed by J.J. Abrams

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. That classic combination of a film that doesn't make any sense with one that doesn't inspire anyone to invest an iota of emotion in giving a crap, J.J. Abrams's Mission: Impossible III (hereafter M:i:III) isn't convoluted like the first two instalments so much as it's just incoherent and loud. It's the camera-in-a blender-school of action filmmaking: There's so little understanding of spatial relationships that the whole thing plays like that Naked Gun gag where the gunfight is taking place between two people within arm's reach of one another. An extended heist sequence set in Vatican City, for instance, features the four members of IMF ("Impossible Mission Force") hotshot Ethan Hunt's (Tom Cruise) team (Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and the requisite hot Asian chick (Maggie Q)) running around in completely anonymous locations, sticking doodads to walls, and confirming to one another that they're "ready" and "in place." But without knowledge of their plan, their location (respective to one another and their goal, whatever that might be), their peril, or the stakes, you're left with four people doing something for some reason, necessitating our willingness to play along with the charade that we know who these people are, what their goal is, and why we should care. Consider a helicopter chase through a wind farm, too, and the many lovely visuals that such an enticing premise suggests–then look to the end-product, which is a lot of tight shots of helicopters in the middle of the night, parts of giant windmills, a bad soundtrack, and multiple decibel screaming about "incoming" and "they've got a lock on us." Who does? And where are they going on that wind farm? And why does the promise of an instrument-factory explosion induce yawns?

RV (2006)

April 28, 20062000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Germany, Theatrical, UK

½*/****
starring Robin Williams, Jeff Daniels, Cheryl Hines, Kristin Chenowith
screenplay by Geoff Rodkey
directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

by Walter Chaw Shit, feral raccoons, hillbillies, tits, white-boy Ebonics, more shit, and oodles of forced sentimentality to propel the septic stew down our collective throat as we strain towards it, baby bird-like. Or so the theory goes. In the interest of complete disclosure, the reason Barry Sonnenfeld's excrescent RV dodged a zero-star rating from me is that I actually laughed at a perversely perfect sewage geyser. It's one thing when you're all about the slapstick gross-out gag; another when, National Lampoon's Vacation-style (the film that, structurally, RV, Johnson Family Vacation, Are We There Yet?, and so on most resemble), your trip across the middle of the United States yields insights into the caste and racial strata of our expansive country. Then you have a feckless relic like this that pulls its punches even in regards to the bigotry it directs at rednecks. There's nothing to hold onto in RV, and it tries so hard to please that there's not much joy in taking it down. It's like kicking a puppy, with the puppy trying to lick your boot as you do it.

Howl’s Moving Castle (2005) – DVD

April 25, 20062000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Japan

*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B
screenplay by Hayao Miyazaki (American adaptation by Cindy Davis Hewitt & Donald H. Hewitt), based on the novel by Diana Wynne Jones
directed by Hayao Miyazaki

by Walter Chaw I've never liked it much when the Japanese are drawn to Victoriana, finding parallels as they sometimes seem to between that reserved, sexually-repressive culture and their own, because it most often results in garbage like Katsuhiro Ôtomo's exhausting Steamboy and now master Hayao Miyazaki's disappointing Howl's Moving Castle. Slow, not terribly interested in lore or internal logic, and fatally hamstrung by the choice of actors like Billy Crystal and a zombified Emily Mortimer to voice its American dub, it's a regression for Miyazaki from his last two films (Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away) in almost every sense, starting with his decision to have a lonely young woman as the central character in place of the prepubescent little girls front and centre in most of his masterpieces (the last two films, Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and My Neighbor Totoro) and ending with a gross simplification of his usually complex themes of confidence and actualization into a colourless, flavourless drone about the hard-to-dispute badness of war.

Chicken Little (2005) – DVD

March 27, 20062000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi

*/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras C
screenplay by Ron Anderson, Steve Bencich and Ron J.Friedman
directed by Mark Dindal

by Walter Chaw Frantic, frenetic, anxious, obnoxious: the ideal audience for Chicken Little should be in bed by seven, and Disney's umpteenth cry of "sure-fire comeback project" looks, appropriately, like another convulsive episode of corporate crying-wolf. Chicken Little, for instance, makes pop culture references that don't mean anything in the context of a film whose sole purpose appears to be instructing your children to be fearful and hyper. They're just there to give parents, alternately stunned and bored, a little rootless pleasure in the middle of epileptic flash; what's left isn't clever (or kinetic) enough for us to ignore its essential emptiness. What Chicken Little is more than anything else is exhausting. You could by rights hope that it's is a send-up of the Fifties cycle of Martian invasion pictures (it name-checks War of the Worlds for no good reason) as The Incredibles was a send-up of Golden Age superhero comics, but even a cursory comparison between the two films shows that Disney's desperation to make Pixar's looming secession a non-issue is as limp and impotent as the Nevada State Boxing Commission.

King Kong (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

March 20, 2006****/****, 2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Germany, New Zealand, Romance

****/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis
screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson, based on the screenplay by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace
directed by Peter Jackson

by Walter Chaw Naomi Watts is absolutely adorable in King Kong. Good thing, too, because she has to convince that with a few vaudeville pratfalls and a strategically-wielded switch she can win the heart of one of the most venerated monsters in movie history. The way Peter Jackson films her suggests that he’s found his own muse: she’s always set against impossible backlot sunsets, asked to feign love for a fake film before transforming herself–in the same, wonderful shot–into feigning real love for a man in this film when she spots her suitor, playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), author of a play (“Isolation”) for which she sees herself as perfect for the melancholy lead. (“You must be the saddest girl in New York.” She is.) In a lot of ways, Watts’s Ann Darrow is the logical extension of her Betty from Mulholland Drive: both are actresses with hidden elements to their personalities, both are asked to audition for us on an imaginary stage, and both, in the end, find themselves embroiled in a dark romance that ends in show-business betrayal. During the final third of King Kong, once the beast famously has Ann in his clutches while scaling the side of a mighty edifice in the Big Apple, it’s fair to be distracted by the rapture on her face–and to wonder if she knows that there’s only one eventuality possible to her quiescence.

Ryan’s Daughter (1970) [Two-Disc Special Edition] + Dune (1984) [Extended Edition] – DVDs

February 23, 20061970s, 1980s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: David Lynch, Disability, Drama, DVD, Mexico, Romance, Sci-Fi, UK

RYAN’S DAUGHTER
***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Robert Mitchum, Trevor Howard, Christopher Jones, Sarah Miles
screenplay by Robert Bolt
directed by David Lean

DUNE
***½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Francesca Annis, Leonardo Cimino, Brad Dourif, José Ferrer
screenplay by David Lynch, based on the novel by Frank Herbert
directed by David Lynch

DUNE (Extended Edition)
*½/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Francesca Annis, Leonardo Cimino, Brad Dourif, José Ferrer
screenplay by Judas Booth, based on the novel by Frank Herbert
directed by Alan Smithee

by Bill Chambers The common charge levelled at Ryan’s Daughter when it was released in 1970 was that it seemed anachronistic within contemporary film culture. Indeed, what so infuriated the New York critics, in particular, was not just that Lean had strayed from his roots (thematically, Ryan’s Daughter in fact represents a throwback for the Brief Encounter director), but that he had lost all trace of humility in the bargain. One might say the English were finally getting a taste of their own medicine, as Lean had essentially become a Hollywood imperialist, intruding on cinema’s evolution towards minimalism by treating a rather insular love triangle–catnip to the infidelity-obsessed British realists–like a theme-park attraction, subjecting it to both hyperbole and an incongruous perfectionism.¹ (“In general the only way for artists to work in the medium is frugality,” wrote Pauline Kael, thereby consigning Lean to the realm of not-artists.) This violation of an unspoken Prime Directive resonates in the current trend of giving A-list makeovers to grindhouse fare.

Bambi II (2006) – DVD

February 20, 20062000s, Adventure, Animation, Australia, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Romance

Bambi 2: The Great Prince of the Forest
**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C-
screenplay by Alicia Kirk
directed by Brian Pimental

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover It would be faintly disingenuous to cry bloody murder over a straight-to-video Bambi sequel: given Uncle Walt's own propensity for denaturing children's classics (and milking the new "classics" for cash), it's only fitting that the cream of his own canon would be whored out for what the market will bear. Still, Bambi is no ordinary Disney movie, but one whose awesome craft is matched only by its singular horror of the adult world. It's ludicrous, then, to pick up the story after the deer-kid has learned to talk and show him that being a grown-up isn't so bad. Not only does it generally contradict the original, but it also blows off the primal fear and sadness that make Bambi as potent as it is.

Eight Below (2006)

February 17, 20062000s, Adventure, Antarctica, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Disney, Drama, Family, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Paul Walker, Bruce Greenwood, Moon Bloodgood, Jason Biggs
screenplay by David DeGilio
directed by Frank Marshall

by Walter Chaw There are situations and statements, questions and propositions, that are so stupid by their nature that they actually approach Zen. And then there’s Frank Marshall’s arctic dogs-and-dude melodrama Eight Below, which plays for all the world like not only the world’s most unwelcome sequel (to Snow Dogs), but also a companion piece to March of the Penguins. It is, in simplest terms, a pandering blight–a straight line (nay, flatline) from unsurprising set-up to unsurprising resolution, every bit the equivalent of a line of footprints in the snow between two known points. Opening with one of film history’s most wooden leading men, Paul Walker, and “nice Jewish boy” comic relief Jason Biggs sitting in a hundred-degree steam room before running out into a 30-below autumn day in Antarctica, Eight Below immediately teaches us that human beings heated to a toasty 110 degrees do not steam when exposed to sub-zero temperatures and, more, that if you should ever visit the South Pole, your breath will never, ever show. It’s full of fun facts like that, but it saves its most fascinating revelations for the intricacies of canine interactions, including their complex gift-giving behaviours, advanced speech, abstract philosophical concepts, and eerie ability to go for at least fifteen days at a time without food or water. It even wrests an explanation from the universal loam as to what Walker was put on this earth for: to be upstaged by eight dogs, someone named Moon Bloodgood, Jason Biggs, and miles of white. It goes without saying that those scenes Walker plays against Bruce Greenwood have the queasy, guilty fascination of a baby seal getting mauled by a polar bear.

Thunder and Lightning (1977) – DVD

February 3, 20061970s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Crime, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring David Carradine, Kate Jackson, Eddie Barth, Roger C. Carmel
screenplay by William Hjortsberg
directed by Corey Allen

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A long time ago…I saw Thunder and Lightning with my family on a drive-in double-bill with Star Wars. I remember the experience of the former being not only uncomfortable for my 6-year-old self, but in fact the polar opposite of the elaborate fantasy I was there to see (again). Yet aside from a couple of scenes that stuck, I later drew a complete blank on what it was all about. In one of those grail quests exclusive to sedentary movie nerds, the idea that I had to find out never stopped bothering me, though I now know there was a reason for my initial discomfort: it turns out that Thunder and Lightning takes entirely serviceable moonshine B-movie tropes and does as little as possible with them.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)

January 25, 20062000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, France, Mexico, Mystery, Theatrical, Western

*½/****
starring Tommy Lee Jones, Barry Pepper, Julio Cesar Cedillo, Dwight Yoakam
screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga
directed by Tommy Lee Jones

by Walter Chaw Crash by way of Cormac McCarthy, Tommy Lee Jones's "fuck you" of a mouthful The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is another fairytale salvo from the race divide, fired from that good place that results in cultural artifacts so unbearably cheesy and proselytizing that any potential heat is lost long before the second reel has finished unspooling. It's about serendipity, this elegy for the American West, hence no transgression is left unredeemed in its long, rambling, "it's good for you, so swallow it" narrative, with blame going in equal portion to Jones–whose smug, smarter-than-you are attitude has shoehorned him into prestigious position as the resident asshole of Man of the House, Men in Black II, and The Missing–and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams, Amores Perros), who paints every Mexican in the film in the same shade of saintly. (All the gringos, on the other hand, have a lot to learn about the grand mystery of being human.) It's tedious, unsurprising stuff, this picture–the kind of thing that gets the Right in a bunch about how Hollywood is a tool of the subversive Lefties while making smart folks on both sides of the Culture War cringe before its condescension.

Transamerica (2005) + Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005)

January 18, 20062000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Music, Road Movie, Theatrical, UK, War

TRANSAMERICA
**/****
starring Felicity Huffman, Kevin Zegers, Fionnula Flanagan, Graham Greene
written and directed by Duncan Tucker

MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS
*½/****
starring Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins, Will Young, Christopher Guest
screenplay by Martin Sherman
directed by Stephen Frears

by Walter Chaw Duncan Tucker makes his hyphenate debut with Transamerica, one of the first pictures distributed by the Weinsteins under their new aegis. Predictably, all the earmarks of the earnest indie genre Miramax blazed are cemented into place: it's over-written when it's not overreliant on a soundtrack of ethnically-cued melodies (the wood flute marks the appearance of an Indian, for instance) and folksy ballads (I challenge you not to 'pit up when a tune about a rose blooming accompanies our hero swapping his "outie" for an "innie"); narratively creaky; and hangs its hopes on its star, Felicity Huffman, to impose nuance where there is none. Huffman's performance being the sort of stunt in a minor independent film that plays fast and loose with smug liberal paternalism should guarantee her an Oscar nomination–and it can't hurt that another Leonardo DiCaprio doppelgänger arrives post-Michael Pitt in the form of Kevin Zegers, trailing a little pathos and a little inappropriate titillation on his thin shoulders.

Kronk’s New Groove (2005) – DVD

January 9, 20062000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical, Philippines, Romance

*½/**** Image A+ Sound B+ (DD)/A- (DTS) Extras C
screenplay by Tom Rogers
directed by Saul Andrew Blinkoff & Elliot M. Bour

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover You know you're watching a family film when: a) father issues dominate the plot; b) it talks down to the parents in the guise of speaking on their level; and c) the whole thing is larded with pseudo-in-jokes intended to make everybody feel smart. So it is with Kronk's New Groove, a straight-to-disc sequel (to an original unseen by yours truly) that posits the Emperor Kuzco's one-time adversary Kronk (voice of Patrick Warburton) in a race against time to impress his "Papi" with the classic wife/kids/house-on-hill bellwethers of success. Alas, it's an indifferently-concocted affair, with the minor character pushing more charismatic presences to the side and leaving nothing to distract from some feeble jokes, obvious plotting, and a total refusal to bring something new to the table.

Broken Lizard’s Puddle Cruiser (1996) + The Dukes of Hazzard (2005) [Unrated – Widescreen] – DVDs

January 9, 20062000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

Puddle Cruiser
½*/**** Image C- Sound C- Extras C
starring Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Stephen Lemme, Paul Soter
screenplay by Broken Lizard
directed by Jay Chandrasekhar

THE DUKES OF HAZZARD
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C
starring Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, Jessica Simpson, Burt Reynolds
screenplay by John O'Brien
directed by Jay Chandrasekhar

by Walter Chaw The first film from what would become the comedy troupe Broken Lizard, Puddle Cruiser was completed and released in 1996 on a budget of a quarter of a million dollars and enjoys the dubious distinction of being irrefutable evidence that Jay Chandrasekhar and company are as funny now as they always were. Something about Chandrasekhar's Adam Corolla-on-quaaludes persona rubs me exactly the wrong way: it isn't the delivery, really, so much as the pervasive sense of smug superiority, not to mention the hostility and, while we're at it, the fact that he's just not funny. With Puddle Cruiser, he's created a film best described as a carbon copy of Noah Baumbach's debut pic Kicking and Screaming–the key difference between them that Chandrasekhar and co-writers Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske are woefully out of their element as scenarists, gag writers, actors, you name it. That Broken Lizard has attained a level of popularity now with garbage like Super Troopers, Club Dread, and The Dukes of Hazzard is astonishing, if not as astonishing as Chandrasekhar having helmed a handful of episodes from the brilliant "Arrested Development"'s first season. Goes to show that even a glib asshole can't ruin a gifted cast, pitch-perfect script, or ironclad premise.

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005)

December 21, 20052000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Family, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Piper Perabo, Tom Welling
screenplay by Sam Harper
directed by Adam Shankman

by Walter Chaw I spent altogether too much time during Cheaper by the Dozen 2 anticipating the moment when Hilary Duff would snuffle some sugar cubes out of a little girl’s hand–but in my defense, what else was there to do? I feel strange saying that this film is unwatchable because, hey, I’m proof that, technically, it is watchable; I guess I should say that it’s highly inadvisable to watch this film. I want to be clever, to turn a phrase that better illustrates the point, but in cases like these it’s probably better to be straightforward. If you find yourself in a theatre with this film, leave. It’s awful. Director Adam Shankman is the Uwe Boll of family movies: he doesn’t know how to pace a picture, he has no idea what to do with a camera (check out an outdoor banquet sequence that looks like it was shot under muddy water), and his use of John Debney’s atrocious, hate-crime of a score should set off Amnesty International’s radar. This is film as punishment, I’m serious. It’s never funny, never insightful, never valuable in any way. Kids might like it in the way that kids like anything that’s short and kinetic, yet the film preys upon a consistent mass hunger for “family” entertainment, and children and idiots deserve better supervision. Family films in the United States seem defined only as having no “objectionable” content, such as non-cartoon violence, a whiff of poetry, or any hint of sexuality. At the risk of being a rebel, let me offer the heretical view that the only content that’s truly objectionable is witless sludge like Cheaper by the Dozen 2.

Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) – DVD

December 20, 20052000s, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, China, DVD, Japan, Sci-Fi, Thriller

ゴジラ FINAL WARS
**½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B+
starring Masahiro Matsuoka, Rei Kikukawa, Don Frye, Akira Takarada
screenplay by Wataru Mimura and Isao Kiriyama
directed by Ryuhei Kitamura

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Applying critical standards to Godzilla is a useless endeavour. You don’t have to be schooled in Kracauer and Mulvey to know there’s something cinematically delicious about grown men in rubber monster suits having at each other, nor do you have to have a seat at the Tisch School to figure out that everything surrounding that is gravy. So the most and least a critic can do is to note that the latest (and perhaps last) entry in the series is: a) a big dogpile on the Green One by most of his old adversaries; b) nearly upstaged by some hilariously derivative human/alien backstory; and c) that you probably know before renting or buying whether you’ll come away thinking Godzilla: Final Wars is the greatest movie ever. You could quibble that nobody bothered to shoot Godzilla with the iconic artistry he deserved, but the monster has never been merely represented by cinema. Like John Wayne or Marlene Dietrich, he’s cinema all on his own.

Valiant (2005) – DVD

December 13, 20052000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, War

½*/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras D
screenplay by Jordan Katz, George Webster, George Melrod
directed by Gary Chapman

by Walter Chaw The animation is flat, the screenplay is insipid, the pacing is mortally off, and the voice acting is the mixed bag you generally get when you hire movie stars instead of professional voice talent (this is already the second animated film Ewan McGregor's tackled this year–third if you count Lucas's folly) to breathe life into your pixellated creations. But other than that, Valiant's fantastic. Its setting (WWII, circa D-Day) isn't as imaginative as that of Robots (this year's other glaring animated failure), and its CGI housefly sidekicks don't talk, as they did in Racing Stripes (this year's other glaring made-for-kids animal-related failure), but if you can overlook its obvious and subtle and inescapable deficiencies, well, what you have here is a blockbuster simply waiting to have its destiny fulfilled by the same group that flocked to the inexplicably popular Shrek films. Valiant's central marketing point is that it's from the same producer, John H. Williams, as the Shrek franchise, which, while technically true, ignores the movie's ten other producers.

Serenity (2005) [Widescreen] – DVD

December 12, 20052000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Summer Glau
written and directed by Joss Whedon

by Walter Chaw A key speech arrives towards the end of Joss Whedon's freewheeling space opera Serenity. The captain of an incongruous hunk of interplanetary junk–dubbed "Serenity" for said captain's transformative moment during a civil war in a valley of the same, ironic name–stands in a shaft of light and asks his disciples if, in essence, they're willing to follow him into Hell for a belief that their martyrdom will be in the cause of a greater glory. He's asking his crew, but he's also asking a slavering fanboy audience that has followed the good ship Serenity here to the big screen after the braintrust at Fox ("We'd rather focus on 'Stacked'–I'm sure you understand") cancelled Whedon's "Firefly" just eleven episodes into its run. The show found new life as a bestseller on DVD, of course, and this feature-length treatment acts as both the series finale it never got and a hopeful audition for a movie franchise. If it's still laden with such Whedonisms as thick, sometimes-inscrutable (certainly unspeakable) dialogue and a political cant worn, bleeding, on its sleeve, Serenity is also home to the kind of passion and belief in a cause worth fighting for with which the good ship's crew is infused at the bitter end.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

December 9, 20052000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, Family, Fantasy, Theatrical, UK

**½/****
starring Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell
screenplay by Ann Peacock and Andrew Adamson and Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
directed by Andrew Adamson

by Walter Chaw I'm offended by the marketing for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (hereafter Narnia 1)–not the trailers (which are pedestrian) or the print ads, per se, but the campaign to pre-screen reels to churches and church groups, including Colorado's wildly divisive rightwing activist organization Focus on the Family. It's not something I'm terribly surprised to see from Walden Media–but it's something that strikes me as peculiar coming from the gay-friendly Walt Disney Pictures, a studio currently "suffering" a boycott from Focus on the Family that aims, in part, to force Disney to explain their "Jekyll and Hyde" products and policies. Of the two hypocrisies, fiduciary vs. ideological, I guess I'd favour one over the other, not being in the business of weighing sins, as it were.