Celluloid Heroes

I know that tone. I’m just not used to hearing it from someone with . . . hair.

It’s been a good couple of years for restarting movie franchises. 2005 gave us Batman Begins and 2006 begat Casino Royale. It also gave us Superman Returns, so no trend is bulletproof. However, it did continue in 2007 with a fourth installment in the Die Hard series, which was easily the most consistently entertaining of the sequels. The original is, of course, still miles ahead, even from this one, but that’s to be expected.

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You mean to tell me that I’m caught up in all this shit because some white cop threw some white asshole’s brother off a roof?

It’s almost axiomatic that the third iteration of a movie franchise is when the sucking starts to begin, assuming that the first sequel didn’t already bring the suck to the table. The good news is that the third Die Hard movie, with John McTiernan back at the helm, manages to avoid this “curse of the third movie.” The bad news is that it doesn’t miss the mark by all that much. This is a Die Hard movie done mostly by the numbers and it’s only because of the sheer professionalism of the enterprise that they bring it off at all.

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Just once, I’d like a regular, normal Christmas.

This follow-up to the 1988 genre-buster is one of those movies that does just about as much wrong as it can without completely sucking. It’s also not bad for a Renny Harlin movie, but if all you can claim is you’re better than Cutthroat Island, that’s not much to hang your hat on. The best you can say about it is that it keeps your eyes and ears sufficiently entertained that you don’t notice that your brain hasn’t joined in the reindeer games.

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Man, if this is their idea of Christmas, I gotta be here for New Year’s.

When 1988 began, this guy Bruce Willis was a popular enough TV star, known for his years on Moonlighting, but his two ventures into film were a pair of alleged comedies that had a negligible impact at the box office. At the same time, action movies had been in a creative black hole, full of invulnerable superman battling hordes of commies and terrorists. So, when Die Hard appeared with an unproven star, there weren’t a lot of expectations for its success. It certainly wasn’t expected to reinvent the entire genre. Well, Merry Christmas in freakin’ July, Hollywood.

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You won’t make much money, but you’ll get more pussy than Frank Sinatra.

On Thanksgiving Night in 1976, the legendary rock group known simply as The Band said farewell to touring with a party at San Francisco’s legendary Winterland Ballroom. 5,000 turkey dinners were served. There was ballroom dancing and a poetry reading. Oh, yes, there was also a concert featuring The Band, joined by such obscure musical nobodies as Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Bob Dylan, just to name a few. To top it off, Martin Scorcese was on hand to film the whole thing. The end result has been called the greatest concert film of all time. I’m not sure that it quite rates that title but it is very good and a priceless snapshot of rock music at that point in time.

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Judges, lawyers, cops, politicians. They stop bringing dope into this country, about a hundred thousand people are gonna be out of a job.

With the creative pedigree behind this film, if it had merely been good, that would have been a tremendous disappointment. The writer, director and two stars have no fewer than five Academy Awards between them and none of them earned cheaply. It should come as either no surprise or a great relief that American Gangster more than delivers on every promise made by the names in the credits.

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They can fly rings around the moon, but we’re years ahead of ’em on the highway.

What was it in the water in 1977 that directors of classic sci-fi movies couldn’t leave well enough alone? Long before George Lucas had turned the words “Han Shot First” into a fanboy battle cry, Steven Spielberg had already done a major facelift on his landmark UFO film. When Close Encounters was in production, Spielberg was aiming for a summer, 1978, release. Columbia Pictures, on the verge of bankruptcy, forced him to finish the movie for the fall of 1977, leaving unfilmed several of what he thought were key scenes.

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This is cool news for film fans. The Criterion Collection has announced the upcoming release of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1985 Best Picture winner, The Last Emperor for next February. This epic film has been missing-in-action on DVD for quite some time, so this good news.

They’ll ruin him. They’ll make a man out of him.

The Jungle Book was the last Disney animated film in which Walt Disney had any direct involvement. It’s probably not a coincidence that it also marked the end of the first real “Golden Age” of classical animated features from the House of the Mouse. While the studio would continue to produce other cell-animated movies over the next twenty years, no one was ever going to confuse The Aristocats and The Rescuers for Pinocchio. It wouldn’t be until The Little Mermaid in 1989 that Disney would really reclaim its animated mojo.

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I’m just not sure how well this plan was thought through.

There is a clear pecking order when it comes to computer-animated features from Disney. On the top tier are the Pixar films like The Incredibles and Ratatouille, which push the envelope technologically and are usually have a deeper, more sophisticated story than your typical animated film. On the next rung down is, frankly, everything else.

Meet the Robinsons clearly falls into this second tier, lacking the lushness and complexity of its Pixar brethren. That doesn’t make a bad movie, just simpler and less challenging. While even films like Finding Nemo have the ability to keep the adults entertained while still engaging the kiddies. This bright and cheerful sci-fi tale, however, is one you let your eight-to-ten-year-old throw in the DVD player while you pour yourself a Pinot and curl up with a book.

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I am not terrorized. You can’t be terrorized.

Despite its Hallmark Hall of Fame title, A Mighty Heart is a spare, unblinking look at the last days of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl through eyes of his wife, Mariane, and those who desperately tried to find him after he was kidnapped in Karachi, Pakistan. With a subject just asking to be sensationalized, director Michael Winterbottom’s matter-of-fact documentary-style approach is not only much more effective, it’s downright commendable.

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Where do these guys come from?

While I would never knowingly recommend either of the two Joel Schumacher Batman movies to you, gentle readers, I think either of these two brain-dead cinematic exercises would be instructive to those responsible for Spider-Man 3. It could have helped them avoid that dread affliction known as elephantiasis of your villain roster. It’s what happens when you have three (or more) antagonists for your comic book hero to fight, fatally diluting the threat that any one of them poses. A quick review of Superman Returns might have also warned them of the dangers of dwelling too much on your hero’s girl troubles. Yes, Peter Parker’s relationship with Mary Jane is major part of the Spider-Man mythos, but there is such a thing as balance and this movie does not achieve it.

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