Celluloid Heroes

As if that has anything to do with marriage. Do you suppose your father and I like each other?

The visual imagination of Tim Burton is probably unequalled among today’s filmmakers and when he brings it to bear on a project suited to his particular talents, the results are almost always unique and special. Corpse Bride, like Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas, is an example of Burton playing on his home turf and swinging for the fences.

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Magnificent. The boy is gone. In the last 30 seconds… you became a grown-up.

Now that he’s making sequels to Pirates of the Carribean, Johnny Depp can hopefully steer clear of films that put people uncomfortably in mind, if just for a moment, of the recent Michael Jackson business. After this and Charlie and the Chocalate Factory, we’re ready to move on, Johnny.

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A long time ago, my ancestor Paikea came to this place on the back of a whale. Since then, in every generation of my family, the first born son has carried his name and become the leader of our tribe… until now.

Whale Rider takes a premise that could have been a politically correct exercise in female empowerment and instead crafts something truly magical out of a myth-like tale of a culture in transition and a clash between two strong-willed individuals, both of whom love their people’s traditions in very different ways.

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Well then I guess the big mystery is, who gathered all those remarkably different cultures together and taught them all how to park their cars on their lawns?

The team behind Paul Haggis‘ Crash said they were out to polarize people and, well, mission accomplished. This film made its share of both “ten best” and “ten worst” list for last year. You don’t divide critical opinion to that degree without swinging for the fences and, if Crash is not quite a home run, it definitely has warning track power.

Crash takes an Altman-esque look at the often bumpy interrelations between persons of different ethic backgrounds living in Los Angeles. Using a large, diverse cast, the film examines how they are all, in turn, victims of other people’s preconceived notions about their particular ethnicity and then turn around and, without thinking, inflict the same treatment on others.

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The Russians put our camera made by our German scientists and your film made by your German scientists into their satellite made by their German scientists.

On paper, Ice Station Zebra must have looked like a slam-dunk. The director of The Great Escape helming a film based on the work of the author of The Guns of Navarone. Unforunately, Ice Station Zebra doesn’t possess the sense of adventure found in either of its ancestors.   

That doesn’t mean that this film isn’t enjoyable. When I remember seeing the film in my youth, my primary recollection is of the fairly rigorous authenticity of the submarine sequences. Sub buffs can certainly enjoy the film on that level. There is also some dazzling widescreen photography in some of the at-sea scenes as well, at least until the sub reaches the North Pole and they discover that it’s a soundstage.

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We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them — this morning, as they prepared for their journey, and waved good-bye, and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

On January 28, 1986, I was a college junior in the middle of winter break, working in the campus bookstore. As I was pushing a cart load of used books from the warehouse someone came out and said, “The Space Shuttle exploded!” I dashed over to the student union and learned that person was terribly correct.

Before I was a movie geek, I was a space geek. I still am but, sadly, there’s a lot less space travel these days to be geeky about. On that horrible Tuesday, 20 years ago today, watching those two lonely exhaust trails spiral away from a cloud of smoke and debris was a like a kick to the gut.

Anyway, I just had to pay tribute to seven individuals who gave their lives for the belief that discovery is the greatest adventure.

They think you’re moody, make ‘em think you’re crazy. Make ‘em think you might snap. They say you got attitude, you show ‘em some real attitude.

Oh, 1990, what a quaint and backwards time you were. It’s fun to realize that, less than five or six years after Pump Up The Volume came out, technology and culture had passed it by like it was a golf cart on a drag strip. Kid misses his friends back east? Obviously never heard of e-mail, let alone instant messaging. Of course, this was during the dark ages when AOL still charged by the minute, so maybe they just can’t afford it on his dad’s school administrator’s salary. On the other hand, you could say this film was slightly ahead of its time. The protagonist’s pirate radio station is not much different in concept from the podcasters that appeared on the scene in late 2004 and early 2005. Writer/director Allan Moyle got one thing right: the liberating feeling of speaking your mind into a microphone and knowing that somebody, anybody is listening.

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I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark
When he made Pearl Harbor.

If subtlety were a sin, this movie would be an immaculate conception. Team America is the cinematic equivilent of a fraternity hazing, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I got the feeling that writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone were on a beer bender when they wrote it and then got the studio execs drunk before they pitched the idea. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, either.

This is one of those films where summarizing the plot is pointless because, outside the context of the movie, the plot is beyond stupid. That’s not a criticism, just an observation. Parker and Stone would probably not only agree, but would laugh and call me names if I said otherwise.

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There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That’s one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other eleven?

Lord of War is a black comedy that labors so hard to be ironic it forgets to be funny. It’s better than the misfired Deal of the Century, but it still fails to engage your outrage because it views its subject through the amoral eyes of Yuri Orlov (Nicholas Cage). Whatever the aims of the filmmakers, the audience ultimately empathizes with the hero, undercutting the film’s condemnation of gunrunning.

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I always ask myself, ‘Is the movie that I am watching as interesting as a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?’”

This would have been Gene’s 60th Birthday. Even those he’s been gone almost seven years, I still find myself asking, “What did Siskel & Eb–, um, Ebert and Roeper think of this movie?”

Nothing against Richard Roeper, but film criticism was rarely better than when Gene and Roger were together. He will always be missed.