1999 - FANTASIA 2000 - sort of a follow up to FANTASIA

Fantasia 2000 was made due to the involvement of Roy Disney, the nephew of Walt and a major shareholder in the company.  To say that the other Disney executives were not enthused about this project would apparently be an understatement.  Still Roy Disney was a big deal at the Disney company so this film which was basically an update of Fantasia went forward.

Once again the Disney company marshaled their creative and technical staff.  The format was to be the same, musical segments were based on compositions from classical composers such as Beethoven, Respighi, Gershwin, Shostakovich, Saint-Saëns, Dukas, Elgar and Stravinsky.

 

The plan this time was to hire a series of performers to introduce each segment to make the film seem more "hip."  Steve Martin opens the film with a rather tiresome comic bit.  Quincy Jones shows up in his introduction for Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  Magicians Penn & Tellar do an already dated magic trick.  "Darth Vader" himself James Earl Jones gets a bit and finally Bette Midler introduces some segment which I can't recall.  Sticking all these actors into this film smacked a little like desperation.

The animation was at a very high standard.  When the Disney Corporation put their minds to it, nobody could produce more stunning traditional animation and in his case aided by computer enhancement, than this talented group.

 

This film like the previous Fantasia also did not do especially well with the general public.  The film lost money.  The critical reviews were all over the place and it was clear this wasn't going to be the animation masterpiece Roy Disney had hoped for.  The problem with Fantasia 2000 was that it was for the most part a very boring film.   No amount of elaborate and stunning animation was going to help this film.  Nice try but no cigar as they say.

The film's running time is 76 minutes.

1940 - FANTASIA, Disney's classic animated concert film.

Fantasia was two years in the making. Walt Disney along with conductor Leopold Stokowski decided to aim very high with an animated film that consisted of musical segments created by the Disney organization's talented artists and craftsmen.  The musical segments were to be drawn from  a selection of classical music composers.  At this point the Disney company was at the peak of it's creative powers.  Fantasia was an expensive production with perfection set as the goal.  It was a big ambitious risk for Walt Disney.  

Besides pushing animation to a high level of artistic creativity, Walt Disney also developed an early stereophonic sound system to go with the film which further drove costs  up.  A lot of money was spent on a sound system that had to be installed inside theaters showing this film.  Again, Disney wanted nothing less than perfection for the finished soundtrack in the animated segments.  The excellent live action color photography of Fantasia was photographed by one of Hollywood's top cameramen, James Wong Howe who is surprisingly not credited for his contribution to the film.

The end result was a unique film which featured visual interpretations from composers, Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Dukas, Stravinsky, Ponchielli, Mussorgsky and Schubert.  If not all of the musical segments come off (the Beethoven Mount Olympus segment is kind of silly), they are all  spectacular with the animation and special visual effects perfectly blended together.  

 

The plan for the release of the film was to add and replace musical segments every few years which would keep the film in circulation.  Unfortunately the film was so expensive that the initial run didn't really bring in the box office results Disney was looking for.  World War 2 didn't help things as it closed off a lot of foreign markets that would have generated revenue.

Still even with CGI and all the latest technological mumbo jumbo junk that the entertainment industry can muster today.  This film is an amazing achievement when you compare it to the current cookie cutter animated films that are released.

The story credit is given to Joe Grant and Dick Huemer although you can be sure this film is also the result of input from the creative artists and the producer Walt Disney as well.  The running time is  126 minutes.

2011 - SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN, entertaining romantic comedy

This is a very likable romantic comedy with two very attractive leads. The story is really featherweight. An Arab sheikh who happens to be a devotee of fly fishing decides he wants to populate a river in his country with salmon. To accomplish this he hires a fishery specialist who is assisted in this mission by a financial planner.  Because if you are going to raise fish who is better qualified than a financial planner.

The fishery specialist and the financial planner are played by Ian McGregor and Emily Blunt and you can’t get much more charming and charismatic than these two.  However this is a rom-com and there are few obstacles that stand in the way of true love before the end of the film.  One of the most entertaining characters in this film is Kristen Scott Thomas.  She plays the very tough Press Secretary to the British Prime Minister who is looking to exploit the fishing project for political purposes.  Thomas's character gets all the good dialog and she has razor sharp scene stealing comic timing.   

This type of well made romantic comedy really doesn't show up in movie theaters these days.  This genre has been taken over by streaming services that can pump out modestly budgeted love stories with no expensive A list actors.  They usually run about 90 minutes and are so poorly made and insubstantial that when one of them ends up being halfway decent film critics jump all over themselves blathering on about how good they sort of are when generally they’re not.

Getting back to the film.  It's well paced by the director Lasse Hallström it has some nice visual touches and good dialog.  What more can you ask for?  Yes this is the kind of film where you can say "I've seen it all before."  but usually it's not this well made.

The film was written by  Simon Beaufoy, the running time is 107 minutes.

1992 - MALCOLM X, way too long biography

I had to sit through a lot of Malcolm X's childhood and formative years before I finally got to the meat of the drama, Malcolm X's conversion to the Muslim religion. This early stuff unfortunately takes up half the length of the film,  Terrorized by racists as a child who also killed his father, Malcolm X ends up in prison where he begins to focus on the racial injustice propagated  against African Americans.

I'm not saying this isn't interesting or important information but the writer/director Spike Lee should have worked a little harder to telescope the events of Malcolm's early life.  A film that is pushing close to four hours is a lot for a viewer to sit through.  Probably the two dance numbers Lee staged could have been cut to start with since they add nothing to the narrative.

 

Denzel Washington is excellent as Malcolm X (you only have to watch some video clips of the real Malcolm X to see how good he is) especially when he begins preaching the teachings of The Nation of Islam. The film follows his pilgrimage to Mecca, his struggles with the leadership of the Nation of Islam, the perceived threat that white people have of him and his controversial comments about the JFK assassination this film finally become interesting. 

 

You can't fault the cinematography by Ernest Dickerson or the physical production of the film which really captures the look of the 1950's and 1960's.  Spike Lee had to deal with a really tight budget during the production of this film but he did give the film an epic quality.

The film was written by Spike Lee and Arnold Perl, the running time is 202 minutes.

1985 - COMMANDO, a comedy pretending to be an Arnold Schwarzenegger action

A film patronized by about every film critic that saw it upon it's initial release.  The critics failed to realized that this was a very funny movie that was also a spoof of action films.  This was Arnold's third film as the lead and it certainly set the tone for every action film going forward.  Arnold was in incredible shape and his dead pan delivery of a bunch of classic comedy one liners in his dialog made this a very fun film.

Arnold is a widower living in a mountain retreat with his daughter played by a very young Alyssa Milano.  He's a former special ops Colonel who becomes a one man killing machine after his daughter is kidnapped by "The Wez" himself Vernon Welles.  It's just one over the top moment after another as Arnold rushes to save her.

 

This film has a decent supporting cast but the standout is Rae Dawn Chong as a flight attendant who gets involved in Arnold's quest.  The diminutive Chong, especially when she stands next to Arnold, more than holds her own in the comedy quips department playing off Arnold's violent shenanigans.

It all ends in a major shoot out as Arnold takes on an army of Vernon Welles's bad guys while basically blowing up the Harold Lloyd estate where this film was photographed.   

This is the film that really cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger's Hollywood leading man career and started his twelve year run in the action genre.  Commando still holds up as a very entertaining film.

The film was written by Steven E. de Souza, the running time is 90 minutes.

1960 - THE WITCH'S MIRROR, aka EL ESPEJO DE LA BRUJA

Mexican horror at the beginning of the 1960's,  Mexican horror is almost a genre on it's own going from interesting films to completely ridiculous films.  The Witch's Mirror sort of straddles this range of frequently interesting to at times ridiculous plot turns.  The English dubbing on this DVD definitely doesn't help contribute to the serious aspects but it's what it is.

Our story, it seems a plastic surgeon has decided he no longer loves his wife and plans to kill her off and marry someone else.  This turns out to be a very big mistake as the wife's stepmother happens to be a witch who is out for revenge by evoking the powers of Satan.  The film mixes tradition horror scenes with an odd borrowing from the plot of the french film Eyes Without A Face.

 

The Witch's Mirror is filmed in black and white and apparently entirely on studio sets.  It's got nice photography and great gothic atmosphere with the cast prowling around creepy castle sets.  Time has kind of chipped away at the plot of this film and obviously horror has gotten a whole lot more graphic.  Still for a early 1960's film the film has some interestingly disgusting scenes.  The film is short and doesn't drag out the plot.  It's worth a look.

 

The film was written by Alfredo Ruanova and Carlos Enrique Taboada, the running time is 75 minutes.

1966 - TARZAN AND THE VALLEY OF GOLD, another entertaining Tarzan film.

Probably time to take a break from the ape man after this Tarzan film.  Once again the producer Sy Weintraub shoots a film on location, in this case Mexico.  Weintraub made some major tweeks to the Tarzan character this time.  It's been pointed out that Tarzan is now acting more like James Bond then the jungle ape man created by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  There is also a really annoying 1960's jazz score to have to put up with.

 

Weintraub also had a new actor playing Tarzan, former NFL football player Mike Henry who is needless to say is in very good shape and in these Tarzan movies these actors don't wear a whole lot of clothes.  With the exception of character actor David Opatoshu playing the chief bad guy like he was Auric Goldfinger and model/actress Nancy Kovack, the rest of the cast and the film crew were Mexicans.

The film is an entertaining action adventure. Tarzan travels to Mexico to save a young Mexican boy from an evil bad guy. The bad guy wants the boy to lead him to his jungle city which is loaded with gold.  Fortunately Tarzan is on the case and the film has lots of action.  The final part of the film was photographed at the magnificent Teotihuacan pyramids, nothing beats on location filming.

Mike Henry as Tarzan isn't much of an actor but then again he doesn't have to be.  Viewers watching this film and especially adolescent boys are here for the action highlights not Shakespearean soliloquies.  This Tarzan movie has Tarzan with his animal friends, a chimp named Dinky and a lion named Major helping out.  Apparently Mike Henry and Dinky didn't get along to well, Dinky ended up biting Henry which resulted in him getting stitches.  Henry ended up suing the producers for creating an unsafe work environment.

The film was written by Clair Huffaker who was frequently associated with John Wayne movies and other western films.  The running time is 90 entertaining minutes.

1995 - A MONTH BY THE LAKE, entertaining romantic comedy

At 58 years old when this film was released Vanessa Redgrave is the whole show in this romantic comedy.  Set in 1937 at Lake Como in northern Italy. It’s now a place that only the very rich can afford to vacation at.  Redgrave plays a single woman who would probably be called a "free spirit."  She meets an Englishman played by "The Jackal"  himself, Edward Fox and finds herself attracted to him.  Unfortunately he is being led on by a younger woman played by Uma Thurman.  Will Vanessa win the heart of this stuffy British guy?

The film was shot on location and the production design does a good job capturing the mood of pre-World War II Italy.  John Irvin was the director.  Irvin worked in a lot of different genres whether it was the war film, the thriller or the drama he was for the most part an excellent craftsman.  The cinematography was by Pasqualino de Santis who had been associated with Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Robert Bresson and Ettore Scola.  De Santis was a real heavy hitter in the Italian film industry.

 

If there is one objection that I have to this film, it's that the very magnificent Vanessa Redgrave would never fall for Edward Fox's English twit character.   The guy just acts like a complete jackass most of the time. Still this is an entertaining romantic comedy. Vanessa Redgrave even late in her career is a pleasure to watch and this film shows again what a unique talent she always is.

 

This film was written by Trevor Bentham, the running time is 92 minutes.

1963 -TARZAN'S THREE CHALLENGES, entertaining adventure film

 The producer Sy Weintraub obtained the film rights to the Tarzan character from the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate and had a radical idea he would actually make Tarzan films in the jungle instead of some film studio back lot.  Working on a tight budget Weintraub hired talented film crews and shot quickly on location.  Tarzan's Three Challenges was filmed in Thailand and is a nonstop action adventure story.

After saving a herd of elephants in Tarzan Goes To India, the ape man is pressed into service helping the new ruler of an Asian kingdom travel to his coronation while fighting off a local strongman trying to stop the rightful ruler of the kingdom.  Jock Mahoney is back as Tarzan and his opponent was Woody Strode a former NFL football player and member of the John Ford stock company.  Strode is to put it mildly in very good shape in this film and was an excellent opponent for Mahoney.

 

The film is called Tarzan's Three Challenges but it should have probably been called Tarzan's many challenges as it's just one damn thing after another for Tarzan.  An attempted assassination, a forest fire, a test of strength as two water buffalos try to pull him apart and finally a sword fight with Strode on an elevated net which has big jars of boiling oil ready to deep fry the fighter unable to stay balanced on the net.

 

It's well known that Jock Mahoney got dysentery while filming in Thailand and lost 40 pounds which gave him a very lean look during the big sword fight scene.  However the show must go on so they apparently loaded him full of drugs stuck him in front of the camera and kept on shooting.  The result of all of this is an entertaining action film with some amazing stunts and stunning scenery.

The film was written by Robert Day and Bernie Giler, the running time is a lean 92 minutes. 

1972 - LADY WHIRLWIND, Angela Mao kicks butt

There is really not a lot you can say about Lady Whirlwind.  It's kind of a standard marital arts film for the most part.  What this film does have going for it is Angela Mao who besides being an actor was also an excellent martial artist.  Mao had been a Chinese opera performer and when from what I've read about the Chinese opera it was no place for wimps. 

In this film Mao is out to avenge her sister who committed suicide after being left at the altar so to speak There is lots of marital arts action which includes the usual scene where one of the protagonists has to learn a new technique to toughen him up after getting beat up by the chief bad guy etc.  

 

Naturally it all comes together at the end for a big fight scene with everybody hitting everybody else. However it's always fun to see a female martial artist kicking butt in what was essentially a male dominated genre.

 

An interesting fact about Angela Mao, she ended up relocating to New York City where her family has opened up several restaurants.

The film was written by Huang Feng, the running time is 88 minutes. 

2016 - THE ACCOUNTANT, kind of absurd action thriller

With the internet suddenly full of movie trailer ads for The Accountant 2, it's probably time to take a look at the first film in what is apparently an attempt to turn future Accountant movies into an action series with Ben Affleck playing sort of an autistic James Bond.

Ben Affleck an autistic savant, is a wiz with numbers (he's an accountant).  He's also, a martial arts expert and an expert with firearms.  At times he works for the mob doing their books but at other times he's a secret high level informant for a member of the Treasury Department.  Affleck gets hired to check the books at a start up robotics company where he discovers embezzlement is going on.  This in turn leads to a group of hit men attempting to kill him and his female accountant helper in order to silence them of course. The female accountant is played by Anna Kendrick who looks like a midget standing next to accountant Affleck.   Little do these hit men know they are about to run into a real autistic killing machine.

The story is rather ludicrous, the action scenes are the usually shaky hand held camera mess and with the exception of Ben Affleck the characters are for the most part not really well defined.  The back story on how Affleck became a number crunching killing machine is essentially unbelievable.  Still when you take all of these things into consideration this is an entertaining action film even with all of this plot nonsense. 

 

The Accountant is blessed with a good cast even if a lot of their roles are small.  JK Simmons is Affleck's Treasury Department contact.  John Lithgow is the head of the robotics company, Jean Smart is his sister.  Jon Bernthal is a mysterious hit man and Jeffrey Tambor is a mob bookkeeper who teaches Affleck everything there is to know about sneaky accounting.  The Accountant is yet another example of a good cast really holding a movie together when the screenplay is not so hot.  Good actors have saved many a questionable movie.

The film was written by Bill Dubuque, the running time is 128 minutes.

1972 - THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, corny but entertaining Irwin Allen foolishness

Another film in our Gene Hackman memorial film festival.  The Poseidon Adventure is an Irwin Allen production with all of the good and bad stuff that Allen was noted for.  The Poseidon Adventure marks the beginning of the 1970's disaster cycle.  Take an improbable situation, in this case a luxury liner tipping upside down after a tidal wave knocks it over and focus on a group of survivors trying to escape before it sinks.

Producer Irwin Allen assembled what would back then be called an all star cast.  Gene Hackman is a defrocked minister who leads a motley bunch of has been movie and TV actors out of the Poseidon.  Ernest Borgnine is an LA cop on vacation with his former hooker wife played by Stella Stevens.  Red Buttons is a Haberdasher who is a lonely single guy.  Shelly Winters and Jack Albertson are a Jewish couple on their way to Israel to see their grandson and because this is a 1970's film there is an annoying little kid played by Eric Shea who you wish somebody would drown.  Naturally since this is the 1970's we get a couple of women stuck running around in hot pants in lots of gratuitous derriere shots. 

 

The director Ronald Neame who in a past life had been associated with David Lean and had filmed a lot of quality English dramas and comedies signed on for this nonsense and was probably responsible for keeping the focus on the story.  Apparently true to form Gene Hackman was not a happy camper on this production but who can blame him as he had to get doused with water and avoid explosions and fires throughout the production.  Still he turns in an excellent performance.

 

This is an enjoyable film, it keeps you watching but it's pretty dumb when you stop to think about it.  The characters are basically a bunch of stereotypes but as the film goes on you do get kind of get a vested interest in what will happen to them.  The producer Irwin Allen was really hot after this film and reached his professional peak with The Towering Inferno but it was all downhill from there.  His brand of entertaining schlock had finally worn out it's welcome.

The Poseidon Adventures has two excellent screenwriters, Wendell Mayes and Stirling Silliphant but you would never know it watching the collection of cliches they put together.  Still the  film is fun to watch.

The running time is 117 minutes, it made a lot of money.

1986 - HOOSIERS, very entertaining sports film

 Let the Gene Hackman memorial film tribute begin.  After watching The French Connection and Get Shorty we moved on to Hoosiers, a very good sports drama.  Gene Hackman is the coach of a small town basketball team.  He has to put up with the know it all townspeople and pull together a very small team of high school players.  Even with all of this going on he makes time to have a romance with school principal Barbra Hershey and rehabilitate Dennis Hooper the alcoholic father of one or his best players.

This is probably one of Hackman's most likable films and it's definitely one of those Frank Capra triumph of the little guy feel good films.  The film was shot in Indiana and is based on an actual championship game although in this case it's an all white team of high school kids in real life their were black basketball players in Indiana basketball although you would hardly know it.

Hoosiers may be a feel good film but apparently it wasn't a real feel good film for first time director David Anspaugh to shoot.  Anspaugh had to deal with a very ornery Gene Hackman who felt this film would be a career killer for him.  His romantic lead Barbara Hershey was also unhappy as she saw her part reduced during the making of the film.  Anspaugh and his production team were also working on a very tight budget.  Composer Jerry Goldsmith put together what you would call a rousing score and careful attention was paid to 1950's period detail in spite of all the challenges.

 

Hoosiers succeeds thanks to Gene Hackman's excellent performance. He may have been a grumpy guy on set but he was a complete professional when it came to performing.  The director and the writer Angelo Pizzo were also smart enough to focus on the characters in the film.  There are plenty of basketball game scenes to watch but they never lost track of the story or the people.

The film runs 115 minutes.

1994 - TIMECOP, a pretty good science fiction film

A fairly decent film for a Jean Claude Van Damme movie.  The time travel plot is well thought through and Van Damme at times actually allows himself to get beaten up by the bad guys.  The plot has Van Damme as guess what, a cop traveling through time attempting to keep a corrupt politician from becoming President of the United States.  The challenge for time cop Van Damme is to keep from changing the future.  This is all fairly cleverly worked out in the screenplay.

The most tiresome aspect of this film is the gratuitous love scene between Van Damme and the actor Mia Sara who gets to roll around naked with Van Damme, lucky her.  You can be sure that someone insisted on inserting this sex tease stuff to satisfy the drooling teenage nerds watching the film.  Later there is a virtual reality nude scene the viewer has to sit through as well that adds nothing to the story.  These scenes actually hurt the film and drag the film into the "B" status category. 

Jean Claude Van Damme was always the poor man's Bruce Lee or Arnold Schwarzenegger (take your pick).  His specialty was kicking people.  In TimeCop he kicks lots of people.  Bruce McGill who played "D-Day" in National Lampoon's Animal House a long time ago, is Van Damme's boss.  Ron Silver is the hiss able evil Senator villain and it's a cliched character to be sure but he puts it over.

 

The action is decent, the story is interesting. Peter Hyams the director keeps things moving along.  The film is entertaining even with it's tiresome sex scenes and for the most part doesn't outstay it's welcome.

The film was written by Mark Verheiden, the running time is 98 minutes.