Movie Review: Real Genius

Real Genius (1985/Tri Star Pictures/Dir. Martha Coolidge)

What can be said about Real Genius that hasn’t been said before? Well, quite a lot really. I almost never hear anyone talk about this movie, or hold it up as a favorite, or anything really. It’s strange because considering how favorable the depiction of geeks is in this movie, and how archetypal the characters are, it should be a cornerstone of Geek Culture. It’s not a perfect movie, but there is a lot to love here.

Movie Review: The Tale of Despereaux

The Tale of Despereaux (2008/ Universal/ Rob Stevenhagen & Sam Fell)

Let’s get the first things out of the way first. I cannot recommend this movie, because it’s not a good movie. That’s just for starters, but we can get that out of the way right now. The reason we’re talking about it though, and the reason I’m reviewing it, is that it could have been a good movie. There is a good movie hiding in this film, however the movie keeps getting in its own way and prevents it from being good. The book it’s based on was a Newberry Award winner (which should make you worry right there) and the movie wants to be worthy of that to the extent that it keeps trying way too hard to be worthy and can’t manage to be good. It’s a shame because on the technical side, the movie is very good in many places. The style and visual flair of the movie is wonderful, but the movie itself is so pretentious and overly serious that you can’t really enjoy watching it. Instead of a point by point review, let’s talk about a few of the problems…

Movie Review: Incident at Blood Pass

Incident at Blood Pass (1970/Toho/Dir. Hiroshi Inagaki)

Hey look, another Sanjuro movie that doesn’t actually have Sanjuro in it. Okay, I’ll make the history lesson quick to explain that statement. First things first though, this movie is actually titled “Ambush” and was changed to “Incident at Blood Pass” somewhere along the line. Now back to the history lesson that you don’t really care about. After Yojimbo, Toshirō Mifune spent more than a few years playing more or less that character in several movies. It wasn’t so much that he was being Sanjuro, as much as he had made that a stock style of character. A stock style that still exists to this day, and is portrayed by many an actor. This would basically be like Sean Connery playing a well dressed, suave spy after he ended his run on James Bond. So yeah, it’s a samurai movie where Mifune plays a strong, mysterious tough guy type.

Movie Review: Dumbo

Dumbo (1941/RKO Pictures/Dir. Ben Sharpsteen)

In 1941, Walt Disney was in South America, doing a good will tour and collecting materials for the movie Saludos Amigos, which would come out the next year. While he was away, he left the studio to make a small quick-buck movie, that would hopefully help restore the studio’s fortunes after the finacial disappointments of Pinocchio and Fantasia. The result was the fairly short and sweet movie about an elephant with big ears. Dumbo is the sort of story anybody who wasn’t part of the popular kid’s crowd can enjoy. In fact, instead of looking at Dumbo in the traditional manner, I’m going to examine it as a metaphor for a person’s freshman year in college.

Year in Review

Well, year end is here and I… don’t have a final review ready. Huh, it just sort of happened. I’d meant to write one, but then I didn’t. I blame the whole ninja/pirate thing… and hipsters. Because hipsters ruin everything, don’t they?

So instead I’m closing the year out with a retrospective list of the reviews I liked the best. Not the best movies, oh sweet waffles, no. Just the reviews that I personally found amusing or that I’m particularly fond of. Yes, I know it’s useless, but it’s been an interesting year and truth be told I’m a little exhausted. So, let’s knock this one out quick and then go for drinks, what’d ya say?

Here are my 10 Favorite Reviews of 2010…

Cartoon Review: Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales

Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales (1979 Warner Bros. / DePatie-Freleng Enterprises Dir. Friz Freleng & Chuck Jones)

Ah sweet, sweet freedom. I don’t have to do anymore commercials if I don’t want to! Shall we talk about harmless but enjoyable cartoon entertainment for a moment? Let’s talk about what is really the last gasps of the Looney Tunes, the time of the mid-80s when all the guys who had worked on cartoons their whole lives were dying off and studios were shutting down animated production left and right. During those days, just before the nostalgia wave that hit in the 90s, it was hard to produce new Looney Tunes. This was one of the compromises. Partially made by Friz Freleng’s company and partly made by the powerhouse that was Chuck Jones, this holiday special is one of the last times that the old team would produce and entirely new show instead of just making bumpers for compilation movies. Even if it were bad, which it isn’t, it would still have Chuck and Friz and Mel working on it. Actually though, I find it sort of charming, if not anyone’s best work.

TV Review: Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Hercule Poirot's Christmas

Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1 January, 1995 Carnival Films Dir. Edward Bennett)

David Suchet has been playing the Belgium Detective Hercule Poirot for about a million years on England’s ITV, which is different from the BBC in several ways that are important to them, but not to us. Mostly, they have commercials. In the 1995-96 series of episodes, they stopped doing hour-long episodes and just stuck to feature length (for TV) movies. This is the first of those movies and hey, it’s a Christmas episode! That’s so convenient, you’d think I grabbed this episode out of a stack just to review it! This is based on the 1938 novel of the same name and as far as I remember the book, it follows pretty faithfully. I haven’t read it in years and years, so I could be mistaken. I’ve looked it up and some sources claim a few characters are deleted from the book, but that tends to happen when one must condense a book for the screen anyway. I’ll mention glaring issues as I notice them.