First of all, I'd like to "thank" Matt Conroy for being the first to vote on my new feature where readers can pick which movie I view and write about. His selection was the 1997 animated family film "The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island"
The movie opens with a shot of the solar system for some reason, with planets that would be put to shame by a pre-school art class. We then hear a voice-over describing the story of a band of dinosaurs who live in "The Great Valley," where they co-exist in peace. There is a group of young dinosaurs who are led by Little Foot, a child brontosaurus (apparently baby dinosaurs were the size of small cats according to the animators - but no matter).
The Great Valley is decimated by a swarm of locusts that reign down and feast on all the edible plant life. It took them an awfully long time to get to The Great Valley, but they did, and now Littlefoot and the gang (including several older dinosaurs that behave like your standard movie parents) must venture out in search of new land with fresh vegetation. Apparently the locusts either got lazy or ate too much to follow them.
Littlefoot and the other Triassic tikes decide to strike out on their own without their parent's permission in order to find a suitable living place. They conveniently end up finding a paved land path that takes them to an island, that lo and behold has all the leaves they can eat! But their joy is short lived when the path is flooded and they cannot return. There is a young pterodactyl with them (that George Lucas must have used as an influence for the awful Jar-Jar Binks) that could easily fly back and get help, but he is afraid to fly over the "Big Water." In any decently run dinosaur society he would have either been forced to go or eaten for being a complete pansy-ass.
They run into an old friend on the island - a baby T-Rex named Chomper or something, and his family (island not as mysterious as advertised). I assume he was in the preceding 4 movies, but alas, have not seen them. There is a battle with a great white shark, who must have traveled back millions of years of evolution just to feast on poor little dinosaurs. They obviously make it out alive, amidst a series of 4 horrendous songs (3 of which I fast forwarded through) and are eventually saved totally at random by a giant finned dinosaur - that has a British accent for some reason. End of Movie.
Well played Matt Conroy, well played
1 out of 4 stars
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Favorite Movie Series - "The Sweet Hereafter"
“The Sweet Hereafter” – 1997
Directed by Atom Egoyan
Starring: Sarah Polley, Ian Holm, Bruce Greenwood
The best films are ones that tell a simple story in an elegant and complex way. Atom Egoyan’s “The Sweet Hereafter” is about a tragic accident and its effect on a small Alaskan town. A school bus crash leaves many of the town children dead, and a struggling lawyer flies into town hoping to exploit the families’ grief by suing the school bus company. The lawyer, played by Ian Holm, has his own tragic background – his daughter is a runaway and drug addict who calls him infrequently only to ask for more money to buy drugs. She never tells her father this, but it is obvious to him.
I have never experienced the loss of a child, but I have heard comments and read quotes from people who have. The way it is best understood, if it can ever be, is a loss so deep and so out of the natural order of things that recovery is impossible. The cycle of life is disrupted when a parent outlives a child, and the parent carries this loss with them until they die. It is important to consider this when watching the film. The town is in a perpetual numbness. The volume of young, innocent lives lost has left a surreal and emotionally vacant shell.
A young teen, played by Sarah Polley, who was a leader to the young children, survives the crash. She is paralyzed from the waist down. There is a subtext to the film that draws parallels to the children’s story “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” She reads the story while babysitting early in the film. In it, the Pied Piper leads the town children into a cave and away forever by playing music to get them to follow him. One lame child is left behind because he could not keep up. He laments that the town is lonely since his friends have gone. The children and the heart and future of the community have been snuffed out, just as in her town after her friends are killed.
The lawyer, late in the film, tells a story to an acquaintance about a time when his daughter was very young and his wife was still alive. They lay in bed together as a family, and his daughter suffers a medical emergency. The doctor he calls instructs him on how to perform an emergency tracheotomy if they cannot get his little girl to the hospital in time. He reflects that he was fully prepared to do this as he stared at his daughter’s young face. He would do anything for her. This is a beautiful memory for him. It was a time when he had the power to save the person he loved most in the world, a power he no longer has.
This is a film about the loss of innocence and the bleakness of life without it. The small town goes on, but only through the motions. The vibrancy and life died with those children on the school bus. The lawyer continues on in a similar way. All he has left are memories of the simple and pure moments in his life that the reality of the world has now destroyed.
Directed by Atom Egoyan
Starring: Sarah Polley, Ian Holm, Bruce Greenwood
The best films are ones that tell a simple story in an elegant and complex way. Atom Egoyan’s “The Sweet Hereafter” is about a tragic accident and its effect on a small Alaskan town. A school bus crash leaves many of the town children dead, and a struggling lawyer flies into town hoping to exploit the families’ grief by suing the school bus company. The lawyer, played by Ian Holm, has his own tragic background – his daughter is a runaway and drug addict who calls him infrequently only to ask for more money to buy drugs. She never tells her father this, but it is obvious to him.
I have never experienced the loss of a child, but I have heard comments and read quotes from people who have. The way it is best understood, if it can ever be, is a loss so deep and so out of the natural order of things that recovery is impossible. The cycle of life is disrupted when a parent outlives a child, and the parent carries this loss with them until they die. It is important to consider this when watching the film. The town is in a perpetual numbness. The volume of young, innocent lives lost has left a surreal and emotionally vacant shell.
A young teen, played by Sarah Polley, who was a leader to the young children, survives the crash. She is paralyzed from the waist down. There is a subtext to the film that draws parallels to the children’s story “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” She reads the story while babysitting early in the film. In it, the Pied Piper leads the town children into a cave and away forever by playing music to get them to follow him. One lame child is left behind because he could not keep up. He laments that the town is lonely since his friends have gone. The children and the heart and future of the community have been snuffed out, just as in her town after her friends are killed.
The lawyer, late in the film, tells a story to an acquaintance about a time when his daughter was very young and his wife was still alive. They lay in bed together as a family, and his daughter suffers a medical emergency. The doctor he calls instructs him on how to perform an emergency tracheotomy if they cannot get his little girl to the hospital in time. He reflects that he was fully prepared to do this as he stared at his daughter’s young face. He would do anything for her. This is a beautiful memory for him. It was a time when he had the power to save the person he loved most in the world, a power he no longer has.
This is a film about the loss of innocence and the bleakness of life without it. The small town goes on, but only through the motions. The vibrancy and life died with those children on the school bus. The lawyer continues on in a similar way. All he has left are memories of the simple and pure moments in his life that the reality of the world has now destroyed.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Favorite Movie Series - "Fail Safe"
"Fail-Safe"
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Starring: Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau and Larry Hagman
Fail-Safe was directed by the great Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon) in 1964. Here Lumet expands on the technique he himself perfected in 12 Angry Men. He uses facial close-ups as the climax of the film approaches to build tension and emotion. Lumet was famous for his focus on the face, and here he uses that to perfection.
The film has a straightforward plot: The military is running drills for hypothetical nuclear escalation with The Soviet Union. The fighter planes, armed with nuclear warheads, will fly to "Fail-Safe" points around the globe. They are to remain there until they receive the instruction that it is only a drill and fly back to their respective bases. If they hear nothing they are to assume the United States has been attacked, open sealed instructions, and bomb whatever Soviet location listed. The message to return to base is received by all but one fighter squadron due to a technical error. The remainder of the film consists of U.S. officials frantically trying to reach the squadron and prevent nuclear holocaust. This will not be easy - The fighters are trained very specifically to ignore any communication beyond the Fail-Safe point as it could be Soviet manipulation.
The way Lumet constructs the events that have to take place for this to occur is disturbing in its deliberate march toward its conclusion. So many things happen that bring us to the climax and aftermath, and each is entirely plausible within the realm of the militarized and paranoid world that existed in 1964.
At the heart of the film is man's reliance on technology and the pitfalls and disasters that can result when the human element is removed from the equation. The communication to the fighter planes fails, and the fighters themselves have been so de-humanized and programmed through their training that reason will not affect them. The march toward their mission is on auto-pilot - both in the cockpit and in the minds of the men operating it.
This film came out the same year as another Cold War classic: Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. When you put the two films side by side, it is stunning how similar yet different they are. The plot and even many of the characters are eerily the same. The only difference is the treatment of the material. Strangelove is pure satire, Fail-Safe is deadly serious. Both work exquisitely.
Lumet was a master film maker, and this is equal to the best work he has ever done. It is tortuously suspenseful, reflective, and sobering. The conclusion is stark and almost unbelievable. The fact that it is not fully incomprehensible is terrifying.
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Starring: Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau and Larry Hagman
Fail-Safe was directed by the great Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon) in 1964. Here Lumet expands on the technique he himself perfected in 12 Angry Men. He uses facial close-ups as the climax of the film approaches to build tension and emotion. Lumet was famous for his focus on the face, and here he uses that to perfection.
The film has a straightforward plot: The military is running drills for hypothetical nuclear escalation with The Soviet Union. The fighter planes, armed with nuclear warheads, will fly to "Fail-Safe" points around the globe. They are to remain there until they receive the instruction that it is only a drill and fly back to their respective bases. If they hear nothing they are to assume the United States has been attacked, open sealed instructions, and bomb whatever Soviet location listed. The message to return to base is received by all but one fighter squadron due to a technical error. The remainder of the film consists of U.S. officials frantically trying to reach the squadron and prevent nuclear holocaust. This will not be easy - The fighters are trained very specifically to ignore any communication beyond the Fail-Safe point as it could be Soviet manipulation.
The way Lumet constructs the events that have to take place for this to occur is disturbing in its deliberate march toward its conclusion. So many things happen that bring us to the climax and aftermath, and each is entirely plausible within the realm of the militarized and paranoid world that existed in 1964.
At the heart of the film is man's reliance on technology and the pitfalls and disasters that can result when the human element is removed from the equation. The communication to the fighter planes fails, and the fighters themselves have been so de-humanized and programmed through their training that reason will not affect them. The march toward their mission is on auto-pilot - both in the cockpit and in the minds of the men operating it.
This film came out the same year as another Cold War classic: Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. When you put the two films side by side, it is stunning how similar yet different they are. The plot and even many of the characters are eerily the same. The only difference is the treatment of the material. Strangelove is pure satire, Fail-Safe is deadly serious. Both work exquisitely.
Lumet was a master film maker, and this is equal to the best work he has ever done. It is tortuously suspenseful, reflective, and sobering. The conclusion is stark and almost unbelievable. The fact that it is not fully incomprehensible is terrifying.
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