This fantasy/family film crams a five-volume series of novels into an hour and a half movie that’s coherent and satisfying. Twin nine-year-old brothers and their teen sister have moved into a remote family estate with their mother (Mary-Louise Parker). English Freddie Highmore, employing two perfect American accents, plays both the mischievous Jared, who first discovers the hidden creatures in and around the house, and the placid, brainy Simon.
The story concerns these creatures, who range from tiny fairies to a giant griffin, but most concerns the efforts of the evil ogre and his assisting goblins to acquire a book that is in the house. Woven through this is Jared’s resentment at his mother for moving away from his old home and his father. There isn’t time for these themes to be explored in depth, or even to learn much about all of the different creatures that are introduced. It’s too small of a film to seem like a classic of the chidren’s fantasy. I didn’t feel pulled into another world, as with Wizard of Oz, or Chronicles of Narnia. But I did stay interested despite some familiar elements, and the movie will likely please kids old enough not to be scared of the gruesome, shape-shifting villain.
IMDB link
viewed and reviewed 2/16/08
Showing posts with label monster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monster. Show all posts
Friday, February 15, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
Cloverfield (***1/4)
This is a monster movie, but not an old-fashioned one. The gimmick is that the whole movie is actually camcorder footage, filmed in and around the area “formerly known as Central Park” in New York City. Yep, this means 80 minutes of shaky images. It’s especially annoying in the exposition, which takes place at a surprise party full of twenty-somethings in a Manhattan high-rise. After 15 minutes of that, I was earnestly hoping that the beast would knock the whole building down and the camcorder would be found by a tripod-wielding Martin Scorsese.
But then, oddly, the gimmick started to work for me. At any rate, I did jump back in my seat more than once, and the technique provides a kind of intimacy that your average Godzilla movie lacks, though the story is no more sophisticated. Still, it succeeds precisely by not trying to do too much. Omitted are elaborately corny back-stories about estranged fathers, unimaginably daring rescues by unaccountably fearless hunks, and buildings that predictably collapse precisely half a second after said rescues. The basic story, credited to Drew Goddard, a writer on TV’s Lost, does rest on the male lead’s (Michael Stahl-David) willingness to aid his imperiled girlfriend, but doesn’t turn him into an action hero. Everyone seems appropriately scared when the beast is around, and tense the rest of the time, and so was I.
The monster looks like a big dinosaur and was fairly fearsome, though it’s only around for ten or fifteen minutes. There are a couple of other scary things, but revealing what they are would spoil the fun. Meanwhile, director Matt Reeves makes the camcorder idea work. In reality, the machine’s battery would have failed, or the tape would have run out, in the time taken by the events in the film, and maybe the friend holding the camera wouldn’t have been quite so conscientious about keeping it rolling during certain events, but the scenario still seemed more plausible than I’d have thought. You never really do learn how it is that a 50-story creature came suddenly to be terrorizing Manhattan, but that’s to the good. Trying to explain the preposterous only ruins the fun.
But then, oddly, the gimmick started to work for me. At any rate, I did jump back in my seat more than once, and the technique provides a kind of intimacy that your average Godzilla movie lacks, though the story is no more sophisticated. Still, it succeeds precisely by not trying to do too much. Omitted are elaborately corny back-stories about estranged fathers, unimaginably daring rescues by unaccountably fearless hunks, and buildings that predictably collapse precisely half a second after said rescues. The basic story, credited to Drew Goddard, a writer on TV’s Lost, does rest on the male lead’s (Michael Stahl-David) willingness to aid his imperiled girlfriend, but doesn’t turn him into an action hero. Everyone seems appropriately scared when the beast is around, and tense the rest of the time, and so was I.
The monster looks like a big dinosaur and was fairly fearsome, though it’s only around for ten or fifteen minutes. There are a couple of other scary things, but revealing what they are would spoil the fun. Meanwhile, director Matt Reeves makes the camcorder idea work. In reality, the machine’s battery would have failed, or the tape would have run out, in the time taken by the events in the film, and maybe the friend holding the camera wouldn’t have been quite so conscientious about keeping it rolling during certain events, but the scenario still seemed more plausible than I’d have thought. You never really do learn how it is that a 50-story creature came suddenly to be terrorizing Manhattan, but that’s to the good. Trying to explain the preposterous only ruins the fun.
viewed and reviewed 1/14/08
Friday, November 16, 2007
Beowulf (**3/4)
Ah, how well I remember not reading this back in high school when it, the earliest classic of English literature, was assigned. If only there’d been a movie version. Now there is this, one of a few adaptations in the last decade, but let us not speak of the gloomy, dreadful 13th Warrior (1999), the only other one I’ve seen. Here we have director Robert Zemeckis (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) working from a script by fantasy polymath Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary.
This quasi-animated version (enhanced live action) preserves the shell of the ancient story, set in sixth-century Scandinavia, while filling the center with something new. There is the monster Grendel, all right, the one thing I vaguely recalled from class, and his reign of terror upon a king and his people is what sets the story in motion. Beowulf (Ray Winstone) is the warrior who answers King Hrothgar’s (Anthony Hopkins) call for a hero. In this telling he is met not only with the beast, who comes looking like a giant man whose skin has been flayed, but by beauty, which looks a lot like what today we might call Angelina Jolie. The tale, then, is of bravery mixed with temptation, which is the new part.
The frame is sturdy, the look shiny and sharp, especially if you get to see the 3-D version, as I did not, and the climax, a one-on-one war of man and beast, rousing. There is one larger-scale battle sequence, but it’s short, and overall the movie’s only mildly action-oriented. What prevents it from being more memorable is that the temptation theme is not well-developed. A tragedy of weakness and redemption seems intended, but as the years skip by we really don’t see its full weight. Epic grandeur is needed, and lacking. Whereas perhaps we are to see Beowulf as a Samson figure succumbing to the charms of Delilah, I saw him more as Bill Clinton succumbing to the charms of Monica Lewinsky.
By no means is the film a failure, or dull. But it lacks the mythic power of 300, a rough analog of heroism and self-sacrifice set in a semi-mythic past.
This quasi-animated version (enhanced live action) preserves the shell of the ancient story, set in sixth-century Scandinavia, while filling the center with something new. There is the monster Grendel, all right, the one thing I vaguely recalled from class, and his reign of terror upon a king and his people is what sets the story in motion. Beowulf (Ray Winstone) is the warrior who answers King Hrothgar’s (Anthony Hopkins) call for a hero. In this telling he is met not only with the beast, who comes looking like a giant man whose skin has been flayed, but by beauty, which looks a lot like what today we might call Angelina Jolie. The tale, then, is of bravery mixed with temptation, which is the new part.
The frame is sturdy, the look shiny and sharp, especially if you get to see the 3-D version, as I did not, and the climax, a one-on-one war of man and beast, rousing. There is one larger-scale battle sequence, but it’s short, and overall the movie’s only mildly action-oriented. What prevents it from being more memorable is that the temptation theme is not well-developed. A tragedy of weakness and redemption seems intended, but as the years skip by we really don’t see its full weight. Epic grandeur is needed, and lacking. Whereas perhaps we are to see Beowulf as a Samson figure succumbing to the charms of Delilah, I saw him more as Bill Clinton succumbing to the charms of Monica Lewinsky.
By no means is the film a failure, or dull. But it lacks the mythic power of 300, a rough analog of heroism and self-sacrifice set in a semi-mythic past.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Dragon Wars (*1/2)
A Korean import whose sole appeal comes from the half-decent effects, and not at all from the characters, story, dialogue, or direction, which are entirely cheesy. Aside from US box-office considerations, the Los Angeles setting makes even less sense than the supposed Korean legend that provides the plot, such as it is. Apparently, star-crossed lovers from 1507 have been randomly reincarnated across the globe. As foretold in prophecy, a giant snake has followed. The latter-day hero, now a reporter, must settle a score with the snake and its human and reptilian legions before he can score with the girl he loves. Robert Forster, in a supporting role, seems to be phoning in his disembodied performance, but it could just be he was directed that way, as no one else is much better.
IMDB link
reviewed
IMDB link
reviewed
Friday, May 18, 2007
Shrek the Third (**3/4)
Saw this on opening weekend. The short version: it’s nothing special, certainly not enough to spawn such hysteria had it been the first in the series rather than the a follow-up to a classic original and a 2004 sequel that felt like a really long epilogue.
It starts off fresh and fun, with the plot hinging on the death of the king of Far Far Away, which looks like Hollywood with medieval trappings. The classic storybook animation is so fine you can see the characters’ dermatological flaws. Do we really need that level of realism? Anyway, the ogre Shrek (voice of Mike Myers) is the heir apparent to the late ruler, even though it’s Princess Fiona’s (Cameron Diaz) dad who’s kicked off. This plotline may be symptomatic of the series’ transformation from fresh and original to reactionary. It’s as if Prince Philip had inherited the throne over Elizabeth in Britain.
Yet Shrek doesn’t want power. Why, he doesn't even want to rule over the baby Fiona’s going to have, so he goes off to search for the other potential heir, a high school nerd (Justin Timberlake) who looks like another strike against a hereditary aristocracy. The American high school with drawbridges is fun here. Accompanying Shrek on his quest are the mildly tedious Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and the amusingly effete Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas). It’s something like The Wizard of Oz, with Shrek as Dorothy and Justin as the Cowardly Lion, and sure enough a wizard turns up.
Meanwhile, Fiona spends her pregnancy hanging with Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and someone who appears to be a transsexual (who’s funnier than the whiny heroines), while the villain—yes, there is one—Prince Charming schemes to usurp the throne. The Charming technique is to turn all of the classic storybook villains, Captain Hook and all, against Shrek. A bold move, using the same plot as the execrable Happily N’Ever After, which came and went in January.
Wow, that’s a lot of plot that comes to naught. Things start off well, with rapid-fire sight gags and humor that manages to be contemporary without straining to be hip (i.e., no Paris Hilton jokes). Soon enough, the humor flags. And there’s no payoff, plot wise, just some moralizing pap for the kids, the ultimate message being, boy, it’s sure easy to manipulate cartoon villains. Or, perhaps, frazzled parents with insistent children.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413267/
It starts off fresh and fun, with the plot hinging on the death of the king of Far Far Away, which looks like Hollywood with medieval trappings. The classic storybook animation is so fine you can see the characters’ dermatological flaws. Do we really need that level of realism? Anyway, the ogre Shrek (voice of Mike Myers) is the heir apparent to the late ruler, even though it’s Princess Fiona’s (Cameron Diaz) dad who’s kicked off. This plotline may be symptomatic of the series’ transformation from fresh and original to reactionary. It’s as if Prince Philip had inherited the throne over Elizabeth in Britain.
Yet Shrek doesn’t want power. Why, he doesn't even want to rule over the baby Fiona’s going to have, so he goes off to search for the other potential heir, a high school nerd (Justin Timberlake) who looks like another strike against a hereditary aristocracy. The American high school with drawbridges is fun here. Accompanying Shrek on his quest are the mildly tedious Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and the amusingly effete Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas). It’s something like The Wizard of Oz, with Shrek as Dorothy and Justin as the Cowardly Lion, and sure enough a wizard turns up.
Meanwhile, Fiona spends her pregnancy hanging with Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and someone who appears to be a transsexual (who’s funnier than the whiny heroines), while the villain—yes, there is one—Prince Charming schemes to usurp the throne. The Charming technique is to turn all of the classic storybook villains, Captain Hook and all, against Shrek. A bold move, using the same plot as the execrable Happily N’Ever After, which came and went in January.
Wow, that’s a lot of plot that comes to naught. Things start off well, with rapid-fire sight gags and humor that manages to be contemporary without straining to be hip (i.e., no Paris Hilton jokes). Soon enough, the humor flags. And there’s no payoff, plot wise, just some moralizing pap for the kids, the ultimate message being, boy, it’s sure easy to manipulate cartoon villains. Or, perhaps, frazzled parents with insistent children.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413267/
Friday, March 9, 2007
The Host (***)
? South Korea’s all-time box-office champion is a monster movie that, like the original Godzilla, has pretensions of social commentary. Extrapolated from an actual incident in 2000 when an American military employee poured a large quantity of formaldehyde down the drain, the story here is that chemicals released into the Han River cause a mutation that unleashes a truck-size amphibious creature thought to carry a deadly virus on the local populace.
+ The computer-rendered beast, looking like a reasonably realistic version of a fish with legs, is pretty good, and its initial rampage when it terrorizes the populace is mostly terrific, but the best thing about the movie overall is the characters. If you go by movies like Anaconda or Primeval, you’d expect that there’ll be, say, a brainy female journalist, a cocky male adventurer, a tourist or three, and assorted sidekicks who will get offed, one-by-one, until the two most attractive characters are left to kill the beast and probably hook up. But nope, here we get an ordinary family of five. The father’s narcoleptic and not too bright, the grandfather’s old, the brother’s a drunk, and even the sister, a competitive archer, compromises her superior skills by being seemingly afraid to pull the trigger. It’s this goofy lot that has to outwit the government trying to quarantine them and locate the youngest one, the daughter who’s been carried off by the beast. Just as writer-director Bong Joon-ho subverted the conventions of the serial-killer mystery (a little like Zodiac did) with his last movie, Memories of Murder, he injects a similar note of melancholia into this most unlikely vehicle for a family drama.
- After the beast’s opening rampage, things get a little too calm as the plot plays out. Also, some of the attempts at humor are on the hokey side. As for the plot, it didn’t bother me that the American government and military are villains (the Korean authorities fare no better, in any case), but if Bong had come up with a mad scientist instead it would have seemed only slightly more cartoonish and one-dimensional.
= *** Most of the action occurs at the beginning and end. So people looking for another King Kong, or even another Godzilla, might be disappointed if they start hoping the beast will start tearing up downtown Seoul. I expect the planned American remake will be more to their liking. I was on the fence about this one, but I’m giving it an upgraded rating for having a surprisingly poignant conclusion that, though containing familiar elements, has one really big surprise.
IMDB link
reviewed 3/16/07
+ The computer-rendered beast, looking like a reasonably realistic version of a fish with legs, is pretty good, and its initial rampage when it terrorizes the populace is mostly terrific, but the best thing about the movie overall is the characters. If you go by movies like Anaconda or Primeval, you’d expect that there’ll be, say, a brainy female journalist, a cocky male adventurer, a tourist or three, and assorted sidekicks who will get offed, one-by-one, until the two most attractive characters are left to kill the beast and probably hook up. But nope, here we get an ordinary family of five. The father’s narcoleptic and not too bright, the grandfather’s old, the brother’s a drunk, and even the sister, a competitive archer, compromises her superior skills by being seemingly afraid to pull the trigger. It’s this goofy lot that has to outwit the government trying to quarantine them and locate the youngest one, the daughter who’s been carried off by the beast. Just as writer-director Bong Joon-ho subverted the conventions of the serial-killer mystery (a little like Zodiac did) with his last movie, Memories of Murder, he injects a similar note of melancholia into this most unlikely vehicle for a family drama.
- After the beast’s opening rampage, things get a little too calm as the plot plays out. Also, some of the attempts at humor are on the hokey side. As for the plot, it didn’t bother me that the American government and military are villains (the Korean authorities fare no better, in any case), but if Bong had come up with a mad scientist instead it would have seemed only slightly more cartoonish and one-dimensional.
= *** Most of the action occurs at the beginning and end. So people looking for another King Kong, or even another Godzilla, might be disappointed if they start hoping the beast will start tearing up downtown Seoul. I expect the planned American remake will be more to their liking. I was on the fence about this one, but I’m giving it an upgraded rating for having a surprisingly poignant conclusion that, though containing familiar elements, has one really big surprise.
IMDB link
reviewed 3/16/07
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