Family Archives - Page 18 of 19 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

The Films of John Sayles (1980-2002)

July 6, 2002****/****, 1980s, 1990s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Disability, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Ireland, Mexico, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Sports, Thriller, Western

Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980)
**/****
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John Sayles's directorial debut has taken on the aura of a folk tale, the details of its genesis are that well known: With a $40,000 budget raised largely from the quadruple-threat's (writer/editor/director/actor) work for the scripts for Roger Corman's Battle from Beyond the Stars, Piranha, and Alligator, Sayles shot a film at a rented lake house with friends possessed of neither experience nor know-how and redefined the American indie movie scene. Return of the Secaucus Seven had two separate New York runs, made appearances on several year-end lists, and became a cause célèbre for snobs "in the know" deriding Kasdan's The Big Chill as a Secaucus rip-off. Twenty-some years later and the bloom is off the rose, so to speak: Return of the Secaucus Seven reveals itself to be sloppily made, overwritten, and horrendously performed (with the exception of David Strathairn and Gordon Clapp). Still, there are moments of truth in the picture that are pure: an embarrassing interlude when two old friends pass on their way to an unfortunately placed bathroom, and another during a feverish pick-up basketball sequence that steadily develops a delicious subtext. Gathering for what might be an annual reunion, the titular seven reminisce about characters who never appear, discuss past indiscretions (legal and sexual), and locate themselves on the verge of their third decade unmoored from the virulent liberalism of their flower-powered youth. Stealing the show is nerdy "straight" man Chip (Clapp), demonstrating the kind of unaffected naturalism indicative of Sayles's later work but a naturalism buried for the most part here by oodles of hanging plots, mismanaged character moments, odd editing choices, and a peculiarly literate lack of focus indicative of a brilliant novelist moonlighting as a filmmaker. 104 minutes

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001) – DVD

July 3, 20022000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, Comedy, DVD, Family, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by John A. Davis and David N. Weiss & J. David Stem and Steve Oedekerk
directed by John A. Davis

by Jarrod Chambers There is a new innocence abroad. You can see it in movies such as Spider-Man and the Academy Award-nominated Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, which feel no need to undercut the goodness of their heroes or the morality of the story with black irony. They tell us, in effect, that it is okay to be a nice guy whose heart is in the right place, who uses his abilities in the service of good, who makes mistakes and pays for them without becoming bitter or psychotic. I, for one, think it’s a breath of fresh air after the dark, depressing visions of the Tim Burton Batman era.

The Powerpuff Girls Movie (2002)

July 2, 20022000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

The Powerpuff Girls
**/****
screenplay by Craig McCracken, Charlie Bean, Lauren Faust, Paul Rudish, Don Shank
directed by Craig McCracken

by Walter Chaw I remember this Nora Dunn skit on “Saturday Night Live” where she plays a French chanteuse draped over a piano singing “Send in the Clowns” translated into French and then back into English again. The result was incomprehensible and funny–for a while. Craig McCracken’s The Powerpuff Girls Movie (based on his Cartoon Network series “Powerpuff Girls”, natch) is American animation translated into Japanese animé back into American animation: similarly incomprehensible, not quite so funny, and it overstays its welcome, too. Because the humour of the piece is reliant on the slow burn and the extended take, when a joke doesn’t work there’s a lot of downtime (Men in Black II suffers a similar malady), and because most of the jokes don’t work, even for the bib-and-diaper set, at around seventy minutes The Powerpuff Girls Movie is powerfully boring stuff.

The Pagemaster (1994) – DVD

June 4, 20021990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance

*½/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras B-
starring Macaulay Culkin, Christopher Lloyd, Ed Begley, Jr., Mel Harris
screenplay by David Casci, David Kirschner, Ernie Contreras
live-action director Joe Johnston, animation director Maurice Hunt

by Walter Chaw Tailor-made as a public service announcement for going to the library and reading the classics, The Pagemaster makes up for what it lacks in grace with an admirable and perhaps misplaced faith in its audience. Clearly intended as an introduction to discussion rather than a particularly entertaining animated film, it becomes the role of the parents with The Pagemaster to point out the references it makes along the way: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Melville’s Moby Dick, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Verne’s 20,000 Leagues, Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. The extent to which a parent is able to fulfill this obligation is the extent to which The Pagemaster is worthwhile; using this film as an eighty-minute babysitter-cum-opiate negates any possible positive effect conferred by the picture–raising the question, clearly, of how best to approach criticism of the piece.

Dunston Checks In (1996) – DVD

May 27, 20021990s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family

*½/**** Image C Sound C
starring Jason Alexander, Faye Dunaway, Eric Lloyd, Rupert Everett
screenplay by John Hopkins and Bruce Graham
directed by Ken Kwapis

by Walter Chaw The old showbiz maxim of never working with children or animals is one violated with such regularity that I guess the otherwise sensible and talented Jason Alexander could be forgiven for Dunston Checks In. There is, in truth, very little else forgivable about the benighted exercise.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)

May 23, 20022000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Family, Theatrical, Western

**½/****
screenplay by John Fusco
directed by Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook

by Walter Chaw Earning major points for its revisionist understanding of the impact the rail had on the spoiling of the West (briefly positing its equine hero as one part Burt Lancaster from The Train and one part William Blake), DreamWorks’ return to cel (albeit computer-assisted) animation is the surprisingly dark and unintentionally twisted Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. The film is an endlessly disquieting Oedipal construct in which Spirit’s absent-from-pre-birth father is the former king of a herd of wild horses, the mantle of which the virile Spirit, with his mother doe-eyed at his side (!), assumes to the tune of a newly-penned anthem from dinosaur Canuck rocker Bryan Adams. I waited with baited breath to see how mama’s foal Spirit would break his new Oedipal split (hot filly Rain) to “Jocasta,” but the picture fumbles the potent moment with a coy mane flip and a sexy-quick gallop.

Bear in the Big Blue House: Tidy Time with Bear! + Bear in the Big Blue House: Everybody’s Special – DVDs

May 14, 20021990s, Authors: Jarrod Chambers, DVD, Family, Musical

Image A Sound A
Tidy Time With Bear!: “Working Like A Bear,” “Woodland House Wonderful,” “We Did It Our Way”
Everybody’s Special: “As Different As Day and Night,” “Bats Are People Too,” “The Yard Sale”

by Jarrod Chambers For those of you who have never seen it, “Bear in the Big Blue House” is a children’s show about a bunch of animals (two bears, two otters, a mouse, and a lemur) who live in a big blue house and get along famously, thanks to the gentle leadership of the bigger of the two bears, named simply Bear. They are produced by Jim Henson Television, who, with Columbia TriStar Home Video, have put together two fabulous DVD packages, “Tidy Time with Bear!” and “Everybody’s Special!”, each with three loosely related episodes of the show from 1997 on plus a few extras.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame II (2002) – DVD

March 25, 20022000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Jule Selbo and Flip Kobler & Cindy Marcus
directed by Bradley Raymond

by Walter Chaw Although the animation is sloppy and the music is, to say the least, uninspiring, Disney’s direct-to-video sequel to 1996’s underestimated and genuinely disturbing The Hunchback of Notre Dame is bolstered by an astonishing voice cast (excepting Jennifer Love Hewitt), an interesting racial tension, and a storyline I haven’t encountered since Pete’s Dragon. Taking place about six years after the events of the first film (judging by the age of Phoebus (Kevin Kline) and Esmeralda’s (Demi Moore) suspiciously Caucasian son, Zephyr (Haley Joel Osment)), The Hunchback of Notre Dame II details another seemingly-doomed love affair between the hideous Quasimodo (Tom Hulce) and a beautiful lady love, this one named Madellaine (Hewitt).

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: 20th Anniversary Edition (1982/2002)

March 22, 20021980s, 2000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Family, Sci-Fi, Spielberg, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton
screenplay by Melissa Mathison
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Walter Chaw Young Elliot (Henry Thomas) discovers an alien castaway in his garden shed and lures it into his closet with a trail of candy. He introduces it to his little sister, Gertie (Drew Barrymore), and his older brother, Michael (Robert MacNaughton), pledging them to the “most excellent” promise of secrecy to prevent his siblings from sharing the creature’s existence with their frazzled mother (Dee Wallace), recently divorced. Soon, government scientists, led by the starry-eyed Keys (Peter Coyote), catch the scent of Elliot’s discovery, necessitating a desperate race to return it to its kind.

Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (2002) – DVD

March 17, 20022000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Romance

Cinderella 2: Dreams Come True
*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
written by Jill E. Blotevogel, Tom Rogers, Jule Selbo
directed by John Kafka

by Walter Chaw Split into three parts, aptly like the anthology horror films The Monsters Club and Trilogy of Terror, Disney’s own direct-to-video horrorshow Cinderella II: Dreams Come True reeks of corners cut and the kind of flaccid inspiration fuelled by the urge towards filthy lucre. The animation is an embarrassment to the Disney imprint, a half-step above the cut-and-paste style of Cartoon Network’s “Space Ghost”, and the writing is so lifeless, so feckless, it does nothing to forgive the paucity of attractive, liquid images. The backgrounds are static at all times, the characters move in stiff fits and starts (jittering and freezing just prior to edits), and the colours are lustreless. I would forgive a ballroom dance sequence, recycled no fewer than ten times over the course of the film (and serving as the DVD release’s menu motif), not to mention the multiple rancid “remixes” of “Bibbidy, Bobbidy, Boo,” if there were one moment in the enterprise that didn’t make me want to lie down in a dark room with something cool to my brow.

Ice Age (2002)

March 15, 20022000s, Adventure, Animation, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Family, Theatrical, UK

*½/****
screenplay by Michael Berg and Peter Ackerman
directed by Chris Wedge

by Walter Chaw Borrowing heavily from Disney’s aimless and laggard Dinosaur, Fox and Blue Sky Animation’s Ice Age is burdened from the outset by the vaguely disturbing reality that the titular epoch spells doom for most of the heroes of this animated mistake. When our quartet of cuddly endangered animals saunters off into the sunset, it feels disturbingly melancholy–something director Chris Wedge tries to assuage with a tedious epilogue that beats a long-dead running gag into the loam of an increasingly belaboured film.

The Watcher in the Woods (1980) – DVD

March 10, 20021980s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, UK

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Bette Davis, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Kyle Richards, Carroll Baker
screenplay by Brian Clemens, Rosemary Anne Sisson, Harry Spalding, based on the novel by Florence Engel Randall
directed by John Hough

by Walter Chaw John Hough’s cult favourite The Watcher in the Woods is a movie about how a camera presents a point-of-view and how that point-of-view, if it’s not attached to a specific identity, can become menacingly voyeuristic; shame that The Watcher in the Woods isn’t also about a story with characters in whom you’re interested and performances that don’t set teeth on edge. One of the more unusual Disney productions of the late-Seventies, the film becomes yet another showcase for an aging Bette Davis’s hiccupping hag archetype and, sadly, an opportunity for figure-skater Lynn-Holly Johnson to demonstrate how good athletes seldom become good actors.

Thumbelina (1994) – DVD

March 10, 20021990s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

*/**** Image D Sound B
screenplay by Don Bluth
directed by Don Bluth, Gary Goldman

by Walter Chaw A predictably disturbing take on Hans Christian Andersen’s cautionary tale of the importance of conformity and the dangers of female sexual awakening, the diminutive heroine of Don Bluth and Gary Goldman’s Thumbelina arrives in the slow blossoming of a rose. After brief stops in which a hyper-sexualized, Charo-voiced frog teaches Thumbelina to shake her tiny money-maker, a sleazy moustachioed junebug (Gilbert Gottfried) abducts her to be its wife, and Bluth presents phallic stems and pregnant bulbs to the point of indecency, the message of “there’s someone for everyone” (or, closer to the mark, an “Eye of the Beholder”-like “stick with your kind, freak”) comes ham-fisting home.

A Troll in Central Park (1994) – DVD

March 10, 20021990s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical

½*/**** Image D+ Sound B
screenplay by Stu Krieger
directed by Don Bluth, Gary Goldman

by Walter Chaw So Gnorga (voiced by Cloris Leachman), the queen of the trolls, hates flowers, outlawing them in her forsaken trolldom. Kindhearted simple-troll Stanley (Dom DeLuise) finds himself and his green thumb in quite the pickle: What’s a horticulturally inclined troll to do when everything his olive digit touches turns to a badly-animated flower? Get banished to Central Park in New York, of course–the only place in the universe more unpleasant (according to Gnorga) than Trolldom. Not content to be a worm in the Big Apple, fish-out-of-water intrigue, Don Bluth’s excrescent A Troll in Central Park also manages to shoehorn in a Mary Poppins, “parents too busy to fly a kite” bit of nonsense. It seems too much to wrap up in just under seventy-six minutes, but not only does it manage to do just that in its trundling, underdeveloped way, A Troll in Central Park also wastes what feels like hours on aimless and appalling musical numbers.

Newsies (1992) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

March 4, 20021990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical

*½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B
starring Christian Bale, Bull Pullman, Ann-Margret, Robert Duvall
screenplay by Bob Tzudiker & Noni White
directed by Kenny Ortega

by Walter Chaw If the crick in my neck is any indication, I watched Kenny Ortega’s Newsies like a dog hears a new sound. Most probably, my eyebrow was also arched. I always marvel that a racist bit of juvenilia became The King and I, for instance, or when someone decides to turn a “Romeo and Juliet” into a West Side Story. So when I say that I am clueless as to how the newspaper-hawker strike of 1899 could make for a good musical, I might not be the best person to ask.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) [2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD

February 6, 20022000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
screenplay by Tab Murphy
directed by Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise

by Walter Chaw Clearly trying to gain some anime credibility by aping the mystical mumbo jumbo of Akira in an unfathomable third act, jettisoning the musical romantic comedy format, and inserting a few subtitles, Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire (henceforth Atlantis) has moments of true grandeur, though it has a good many more of pure Disney. It gets hip genre credibility from the story contributions of “Hellboy” creator Mike Mignola and “Buffy” scribe Joss Whedon, but the best of intentions often lead to the worst of eventualities, and Atlantis is ultimately less “wow” than “oh, boy” and, eventually, “huh?”

The Testimony of Taliesin Jones (2002)

February 1, 20022000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Family, Theatrical, UK

Small Miracles
Taliesin Jones
*½/****
starring Jonathan Pryce, Ian Bannen, Griff Rhys Jones, Geraldine James
screenplay by Maureen Tilyou, based on the book The Testimony of Taliesin Jones by Rhidian Brook
directed by Martin Duffy

“Excessive sorrow gains nothing,
Nor will doubting God‘s miracles.
Although I am small, I am skilful”
—6^th century, Taliesin

by Walter Chaw Chief Bard of Britain and a Celtic shaman, the historical Taliesin lived in Wales in the sixth century, his poems the direct precursor to the Arthur legend as well as his own as a druidic shape-shifter and spiritual healer. (He’s thought to be the inspiration for the Merlin character.) Rhidian Brook’s well-regarded children’s tome The Testimony of Taliesin Jones concerns a quiet child who, stricken by the divorce of his parents, turns to faith-healing to deal with the arbitrary turmoil of his life. With its heart so clearly in the right place, it’s hard to come down too hard on Martin Duffy’s same-named cinematic adaptation of Brook’s text, but the film is so intent on capturing the spiritual aspects of its title character and its namesake that it gives short shrift to the tragedy of its familial disintegration, discarding subtlety, too, in its proselytizing wake.

My Bodyguard (1980) – DVD

January 30, 20021980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Family, Teen

**½/**** Image B Sound B
starring Chris Makepeace, Matt Dillon, John Houseman, Adam Baldwin
screenplay by Alan Ormsby
directed by Tony Bill

by Bill Chambers My Bodyguard, not to be confused with the sudsy Costner-Huston thriller The Bodyguard, has been described to me as “the ultimate bully movie.” I won’t even toy with the idea that this feature-length Afterschool Special is the best at anything, but the film does have some merit as a teen revenge fantasy. Making his low-key directorial debut, Academy Award-winning producer Tony Bill brings visual grace sans style to this tale of the new kid in school and how he masterminds one bully’s downfall through another’s redemption.

Snow Dogs (2002)

January 18, 20022000s, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Disney, Family, Sports, Theatrical

½*/****
starring Cuba Gooding Jr., James Coburn, Randy Birch, Joanna Bacalso
screenplay by Jim Kouf and Tommy Swerdlow & Michael Goldberg and Mark Gibson & Philip Halprin, based on the book Winterdance: the Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen
directed by Brian Levant

by Walter Chaw Brian Levant’s Snow Dogs counts on adult audiences rationalizing that although it was terrible, at least their kids liked it. Why is it that the standards we hold for our children are substantially lower when it comes to the movies? (And if kids will probably like anything, why not expose them to something a little less offensive than Snow Dogs?) It isn’t so much that Snow Dogs finds its humour in a black man getting humiliated by a pack of dogs who are smarter than him, nor that it also mines for yuks by placing a black man in mortal peril because of his suicidal stupidity. No, the moment that Snow Dogs crossed a line for me was when Cuba Gooding Jr., an Oscar-winning African-American actor (one of, what, six?), gets comically treed by a ferocious dog.

Osmosis Jones (2001) – DVD

December 13, 20012000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Family

**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Bill Murray, Molly Shannon, Elena Franklin, Chris Elliott
screenplay by Marc Hyman
directed by Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, Piet Kroon and Tom Sito

by Walter Chaw If the devil is in the details, so, in Osmosis Jones, is most of the humour. It is one part Farrelly Brothers biological comedy and one part Piet Kroon and Tom Sito (late of The Iron Giant) animated genius; that the balance of the film is heavily in favour of the latter speaks to rare good thinkin’ from the Hollywood brain trust. The live-action part stars Bill Murray as the slovenly Frank–Murray out-repulses co-star Chris Elliot, which means that he is very possibly the most disgusting human ever captured on film. The animation side features the voice of Chris Rock as the titular Osmosis Jones, a white blood cell cop who, after a controversial stomach evacuation, is busted down to mouth duty. If you’re not sure what “mouth duty” entails–it’s bad. When Frank is invaded by an evil virus named Thrax (Laurence Fishburne), Osmosis gets one last chance to make good, paired with a blustering blunderbuss of a timed flu capsule named Drix (David Hyde Pierce).