Movie Reviews
Visions of Light
The person most responsible for what you see up on the silver screen in a darkened theater is not the writer, nor the director, nor the set designer, nor the producer. That person is the cinematographer. Film is a visual medium first, a story-telling medium second. Plot is not strictly necessary, but light is, and the structuring and shaping of that light is the most important job in ... Read more »
Virginia City
… is the birthplace of “Mark Twain,” as this was the first place Sam Clemens used his famous pseudonym in 1863. He would have been resident there during the time this film portrays, which is 1864. It’s a real swashbuckler cowboys and Indians action picture, but without the Indians. Standing in for them, even to the point of enacting the famous cliché scene of the savages a-whoopin’ and ... Read more »
The Village of the Damned
In the ‘50s and ‘60s John Wyndham made a living writing books that were usually apocalyptic, but apocalyptic in surprising ways. No nuclear war for him. He wrote things like The Day of the Triffids, a very unusual alien invasion. I read all his books, and loved them. Triffids was made into a decent movie, but this one, based on his book The ... Read more »
Catwoman
I am not recommending it, precisely. The plot is pretty ridiculous (but hey, Spiderman’s plot isn’t?), and there is zero chemistry between Benjamin Bratt and Halle Berry. Yet it’s a pretty good drive-in movie. Halle Berry’s moves are incredibly catlike; she is sexy as hell. There are some laughs, like her chowing down on canned tuna or peeling the raw fish from ... Read more »
The Village
M. Night Shabadabadoo (or whatever) has had an interesting career. He made two small films no one has ever heard of, then the monster smash hit The Sixth Sense, with Bruce Willis in his best role in some time. I loved it. I was totally taken in, like just about everybody else. Then he made Unbreakable, again with Bruce. I remember it as ... Read more »
Cinderella
This was the first single-story feature made by the Disney studios after the long hiatus caused by the war and financial straits from the failure of some big films Walt was counting on to keep him in business. If this one had flopped, Disneyland probably would never have happened, as the studio would have gone belly-up. But it was a big success, and Walt started ... Read more »
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
And so we come to the last of the six package films. Next up: Cinderella!
I like all these films, and this is no exception. It begins with Mr. Toad, taken from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. It is narrated by Basil Rathbone. It was the second movie Disney made from one of Grahame’s books, the first being Read more »
So Dear to My Heart
I watched this one when I first got the tape, and probably would have skipped it now except that I wanted to view all the Disney animated features in order. (I put this and other partially animated films on my list; some don’t.) It’s not really worth a second look … in fact, it’s probably not even worth a first look for most people, except the very young. I read somewhere it was one of Mr. ... Read more »
Melody Time
The penultimate of Disney’s package films, with only The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad to go. Where Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros are travelogues, I’ve found it useful to think of this one and Make Mine Music as short story collections which, I hope, gives them a ... Read more »
Fun And Fancy Free
Two movies for the price of one! Of course, added together they’re only 73 minutes long, but that’s long enough for kids. (It’s a little sobering to realize that I’m not quite two months older than this film.) Both the stories here were in development as early as 1939 to 1941, but you know what happened then. After Tojo’s little surprise party in Hawaii the Disney studios were kept busy ... Read more »