Movie Reviews
The Three Caballeros
Number three of the “package” films the Disney studio made during WWII, to keep their hand in while they made masterpieces like “Four Methods of Flush Riveting” for Uncle Sam. This is the follow-up to Saludos Amigos, both inspired by a Latin American trip Walt and his animators made for the State Department, intending to foster good relations with our Spanish- ... Read more »
Victory Through Air Power
I waited for this film for a long time. I’d begun to accept that I’d never see it. I started collecting Walt Disney animated features pretty much as soon as they started issuing them on VHS tape. Over the years the Disney folks brought out all their feature-length movies, a few at a time, except for Song of the South. I doubted they would ever release this one, ... Read more »
Saludos Amigos
If there is bargain basement Disney, this is certainly it. (I speak of early Disney; in recent decades the studio has produced about as much trash animation as Hanna-Barbera or the makers of Speed Racer.) It had an odd genesis. In the early forties the Disney Studio was in trouble, since after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, only Read more »
Bambi
This movie contains some of the best animation Disney ever produced; hell, some of the best anyone has ever produced. Current CGI technology can make photo-real images of incredible complexity, but it takes an artistic hand, not a computer, to come up with the images, and no computer can by itself decide to use less detail, and few humans today would think of it. ... Read more »
Dumbo
In 1941 the Disney Studios were in trouble from two financial failures in a row, Pinocchio and Fantasia, films that would go on to be regarded as classics but that didn’t bring in that much at the box office. They needed some hits, and they needed them now, and they needed them cheap. The first attempt was another failure: Read more »
The Reluctant Dragon
Except for Victory Through Air Power, this is the least known of the Disney animated features. (I am using the broader definition, to include the films which were only partly animated, such as Mary Poppins.) Only the last part of the film, the “Reluctant Dragon” short itself, is widely available, paired with “Morris, the Midget Moose” ... Read more »
Fantasia
This has to be one of the most amazing films ever made. Almost 70 years later, in this age of CGI, it still has the capacity to astonish. It is even more mind-boggling when you consider the intensive labor and sheer innovation needed to bring some of the effects seen here to the screen. And it was a case of Walt Disney being far ahead of his time, because it was not a financial success ... Read more »
Pinocchio
Of all the early Disney animated features, I think this is the best. (I put Fantasia in a class by itself.) Oddly, at least from today’s perspective, it wasn’t a big success at the time. Some of that had to do with the War, which prevented an overseas release. But the reviews were mostly mixed. It took a while for Walt to recoup his $2,289,000 investment. With ... Read more »
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Walt’s wife, Lillian, said: “No one’s ever gonna pay a dime to see a dwarf picture.” His brother, Roy, was against it. And like every other time I’m aware of that people told Walt he was crazy, they were wrong. He thought he could make it for a quarter of a million, and it ended up costing six times that. He mortgaged his own house. But it made more money than any picture until Read more »
Ushpizin
Every once in a while a movie comes along that I am entirely incapable of evaluating, simply because I can’t set aside my prejudice. I try my best, but I just can’t. In this case it is not anti-Semitism, it is my revulsion for religious fanaticism in any form, practiced by any people. In this case, it’s Jews. And my feeling is that these people—ultra-orthodox Hasidics in Jerusalem—are ... Read more »