It is a holiday in not so warm Southern Ontario (and the rest of Canada for that matter) today. After being blown out of cottage country by seriously-not-fun gales and gusts I present the fortnightly round up of micro-capsules. The complete list of these (since the inception of the feature in 2007) can be accessed by using the icon on the side-bar, and here is a sample of what we’ve been watching recently:
5×2 (2004) 4.5/5
5×2 is my favorite Francois Ozon movie, and I suspect one of his lesser known, at least beside Swimming Pool and 8 Women. Here we watch a marriage dissolve in reverse, the title referring to a couple at five key points in their relationship, starting with the Divorce and ending with their first encounter. More than a clever conceit, Ozon builds upon each event to reveal the underlying fissures to their relationship. A very deliberate take on Bergman’s Scenes From A Marriage (down to even the casting), the film is unflinching in its portrayal of married life in raw glimpses. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (a french Gillian Anderson) somehow transforms from aged divorcee to young beauty and is stunning to watch. Also a killer soundtrack. -MIKE
“Weeds” [season 2] 4.5/5
I think season 2 defeats season one in terms of quality, issues, storyline, character arcs and hilarity. And it ends on one hell of a cliff hanger. Kevin Nealon continues to be spontaneously funny, Elizabeth Perkins continues to surprise me and Justin Kirk… oh Justin. Where has this guy been all my life? But the showcase remains to be Mary Louise Parker who plays the stressed out character to the nines with charm, delight, quirk, fear and sexy. Quickly climbing the ranks as one of my favorite shows of all time. As of now, probably just squeaking into the top ten. Oh and Zooey Deschenel shows up in this season; playing a character fairly atypical of her “nice girl” persona. -ANDREW
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) 3/5
Hugo Weaving has never been more terrifying… yet amusing at the same time. The story and situations this trio of transexuals encounters on their trip across the Australian desert isn’t all that interesting, memorable or funny. But the gaudy make-up, flamboyant singing and the fabulous costumes amidst the atypical backdrop is too absurd not to fall in love with. But what really works are the performances. Not as much from Weaving who is fairly restrained here (considering the role) and a little bit too much from Pearce. But Terrence Stamp is nothing short of amazing and was really the only thing that kept me from being bored to tears. His performance is not ridiculous (again, considering) and it’s understated just enough yet still manages to bring out a lot of inner struggles from within the character. So the amusing and light hearted nature of the film is fun with a few messages to think about tacked on here and there and the performance of Stamp is terrific (particularly with the absurdity of the entire situation) but the story as a whole is fairly lack luster and not even particularly biting or funny. -ANDREW
Mononoke Hime (1997) 5/5
Princess Mononoke, with no hyperbole, is quite possibly the best animated movie ever made. It is a fantasy film, and action film, an environmentalist cautionary tale and a character drama. A boy-prince from a remote village of tribes people gets attacked by some sort of demon leaving his arm scarred and diseased. The village elders tell him to head west in search of a cure for the disease. When the prince leaves he encounters a complex world outside his village with a group of people trying to eke out a living by mining, but at war with the forest creatures for destroying their old-forest. The emperor has designs on the iron works as well. The animals of the old forest are bigger and smarter than ordinary animals, able to converse with the humans. Also, the wolves have adopted an orphan girl who fights on the side of the old-forest. She and the boy-prince become mediators in the war of progress vs. tradition. Sumptuously animated almost completely by hand, it is gorgeous to look at, and epic in scale. And a very nice voice-dub – possibly the best one ever done for a Japanese animated film – features Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Keith David, Minnie Driver, Gillian Anderson and Billy Bob Thorton and was made from a English-translated screenplay give a intent polish by Neil Gaiman. -KURT
Swiss Family Robinson (1960) 4.5/5
So I missed the first ten minutes, but the rest of this is just pure imaginative, adventurous joy for the remainder of its running time. Every kid’s dream right? Forget school and spend you childhood exploring jungles and frolicking in a natural, extreme water park. The action starts from the get-go. Let me explain the pacing of this film. Ready? First the family fights of sharks (with muskets and axes) that are attacking their raft. Then the ten year old boy (with balls of steel) catches an elephant with a rope while simultaneously fighting off a ferocious tiger from eating his mom by throwing sticks until the two hounds show off and have a rumble in the bushes with the tiger. Then they build an awesome tree house before spending the day swinging from vines with monkeys and water sliding before catching a giant Ostrich, taming it for a transportation device. Then they fight off a shitload of badass pirates with coconut bombs and Ewok-like traps. And NONE of this crap was CGI. The guys actually are being dragged around and attempting to tame a wild, 8 foot tall ostrich in the name of telling a captivating story. It was totally rad. -ANDREW
Ghostbusters (1984) 5/5
Let us take a trip back to the mid 1980′s. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had just re-cast American cinema into a big-budget-popcorn-munching mentality. It was really a short step from Jaws to Starwars and Indiana Jones, all three adventure stories taking place in the realms traditional pulp heroes: Battling nature on the high seas, princess rescuing space-cowboys, and battling baddies in jungle caves and ancient temples. Ghostbusters came at the special effects blockbuster using a completely new angle: a prankster-styled comedy tested out in Animal House, sculpted in Stripes and somehow perfected as a New Yorker ‘scientist vs ghost’ story played for broad laughs. Many of those who doom the simplicity of ’80s summer blockbuster mentality and pine for the gritty, cruel and nihilistic films of the 1970s (Scorcese, Coppola, Friedkin) fail to grasp the sugary taste of the peculiar cocktail of SCTV and SNL alumni doing science-fiction-comedy. Ostensibly an ensemble film featuring a slew of sketch-comedy talent (Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Rick Moranis) and featuring the odd-ball choice of Alien action-queen Sigourney Weaver, but Ghostbusters is pretty much the Bill Murray show. Featured is the classic Murray character: a cynical, slacker with an endless supply of dead-pan wise-cracks who manages to show some leadership quality when push comes to shove while still retaining his detached irony. Ghostbusters is the perfect vehicle for Murray because he’s never taking anything very seriously and always winking at the audience as if to say…It’s ok, this isn’t The Godfather or The Color Purple, relax, enjoy the pyrotechnics, I won’t tell if you don’t. Is this deep and meaningful cinema? Nope. But nearly every gag and joke works (and they fly at you pretty fast) and the characters are realized quite well insofar as the movies internal logic goes. And damn it, it has a 100 foot tall marshmallow man. I for one am not willing to throw Ghostbusters on the blockbuster scrap-heap. -KURT
Andrew’s review of Swiss Family Robinson rocks *chuckle* Quoted on tumblr: http://joffi.tumblr.com/post/155297248/swiss-family-robinson-1960-4-5-5-so-i-missed
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – My friends and I watched this back when we were doing weekly movie night, and I think it ended up being like the fourth movie in a row that had something to do with cross-dressing. Not intentionally. It just worked out that way. But it was so much fun, especially as we had an Australian in our group at the time.
Princess Mononoke – I should rewatch this. I enjoyed it, but it was one of the first Japanese animated films I ever saw, and I spent too much time getting used to the style. And I couldn’t stand the dubbed version – watched about ten minutes of it and switched back to the Japanese track. I’ve hardly tried any dubs since.
Swiss Family Robinson – Haha. It’s been forever since I’ve seen it – your review, though, made me realize how much last year’s short-lived TV show Crusoe was actually SFR in disguise.
I find Priscilla to be very funny, in fact quite touching.
I too love Priscilla, it was the film where we discovered the talent of Guy Pearce (Weaving and Stamp were known at the time, but Pearce has the showiest role in the film), and I remember recommending it to my in-laws (to the horror of my wife), and they got a kick out of it too.
The Miyazaki dubs are usually very, very good. I think Ghibli actually has ‘final cut’ on its English Dubs as part of their contract with Disney.
The Nausicaa, Porco Rosso and Howl’s Moving Castle dubs are top notch. (I usually watch My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and Kiki’s Delivery Service in Japanese with subs though).
speaking of terrible dub jobs, the dub on Machine Girl – which i watched this week (it was just okay) – was amazingly bad.
(not that i watched the dub version, just had a taste)
I think for me the difference in pitch/timbre of Japanese vs. American voices, and the difference in the perceived speed of speech (Japanese sounds much faster to me) is enough to throw me off. Even in animation when the voices don’t really match mouth movements or anything – it just doesn’t feel RIGHT to me. Though I know a lot of people who generally dislike dubs on foreign films do like them on anime. It’s just a hang-up I have, I guess.
Wanted to comment on Princess Mononoke. I’m a huge Miyazaki fan, but this is not my favorite of his films. I appreciate how ambitious in scope, theme, and animation it is, but it gets a little too convoluted in the last 1/3 of the movie and, frankly, a little boring. It’s been years since I last seen it, but I just remember it hard keeping my eyes open at the dragging, super-heavy, eco/imperialistic/philosophical dialogue of the wolves, boars, and zombie-looking apes (if i remember). Too many parties with their respective interests and Ashataki in the middle. And while this is what makes the movie epic, the side effects are making it pretty boring and oddly not that compelling, in my opinion. I much prefer the smaller-scale, more intimate stories of My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service which I found more affecting and emotionally compelling.
However, the animation is stunning in Mononoke, and a great English dub, which I prefer over the Japanese track. I’ve tried re-watching it a couple times over the years, but always fell asleep.
Hey dan, thanks for stopping by again.
I actually can’t stand this type of animation. Don’t know why exactly, I just frakking hate it to no end. But I have to say when I was forced to watch Mononoke, I did prefer the English version. Which would normally be something I can’t stand, but for Mononoke it seemed to work out well. Partly because th animation style caters to pretty much anything. The mouths in these anmated film just open and close – there’s no articulation – so you could have a monkey saying “eek eek oo oo ah ah” and it would fit. Hence, I preferred listening to Billy Bob Thornton or whoever rather than having to read subs.
As for Swiss Family Robinson, thanks for the re-post Michael. Ha! My friends and I were actually in a bar watching this and we absolutely got hooked. We kept remarking how amazing everything looked and if it were done today it would be a bunch of horse shit CGI and look completely fake. No. Disney said to it’s actors, hop on top of this Ostrich and ride it until it succumbs. Awesome.
“Hey dan, thanks for stopping by again.”
Thanks for the thanks, Andrew. Love the site and podcasts; been listening since movie patron days.
As for your aversion to japanese animation, as Kurt told you in an old cinecast, “you’re just gonna have to get over that, man” (see, I’ve been listening for a while). I find Studio Ghibli’s stuff the most accessible of this type of animation. But if it doesn’t work for you, whatever. It’s understandable, but you may be missing out (not on Princess Mononoke, necessarily). What I don’t understand is why you like Cars.
I’m confused, there is a Swiss Family Robinson movie? My memories are of the tv show, and one episode in particular where inexplicably some kind of locust or ants or something started eating up the island and inched closer to their home. It freaked me out as a kid, one of those seared in images, the jungle being eaten by this sea of bugs. I don’t even remember how it ended, or how there was suddenly a jungle again to have the next episode.
Rot, that sounds like The Naked Jungle! (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047264/) Based on a short story, Leiningen vs. the Ants. Wonder if the Swiss Family Robinson TV show gypped the story.
Oh they weren’t the only one doing it, there was some kind of 80′s trend, it was on other shows as well. Like the 90′s disaster movie trend, in the 80′s there was a lot of shows about massive amounts of bugs messing with people… I remember one of bees, another of spiders, and ants. I also think Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness depicted an infestation at some point.
needless to say I was scared shitless of insects growing up.