Storm Boy (2019)

☆ ☆ ☆

Storm Boy (2019) – S. Seet

The local council organised this film for a summer movie night in the park right next to our house (including a mobile petting zoo, popcorn and snags, free face-painting and various games).  So, Amon and I strolled over (it was a cold evening, so later I ran back to the house, in about a minute, and got blankets and pillows for us).  The film is an adaptation of Colin Thiele’s 1963 book, which Aito’s teacher read to him in third grade (it was also filmed earlier in 1976).  The basic story is about a boy who raises three pelicans whose mother has been killed by a hunter and forms a special bond with them.  Like the best children’s fiction, there are important adult elements here – the boy (Finn Little) has lost his mother and sister in a car accident and his father has sought to isolate himself in a rural part of South Australia (90 Mile Beach).  So, how best to cope with grief is part of the story here (esp. because, well, you know, pelicans don’t live forever).  Fit for 2019, a framing device shows businessman Geoffrey Rush (the boy all grown up to be a grandfather) having a change of heart about his company’s destructive environmental policies after being encouraged by his granddaughter (and reminiscing about the past – the actual story).  Although the framing device was a bit confusing for Amon (as were the scenes that showed both Rush and Little in the same shot), he was totally absorbed by the pelican actors (mostly not CGI) and their adventures – and he cried at the end.  Yes, it’s a tearjerker.  I suspect that films like this, when seen at a certain age, remain in one’s heart for a long time – and perhaps children’s films need to be judged by an entirely different rating scale based on the impact they unquestionably have, despite any technical flaws.  I’m sure you have your own list of influential and memorable kids films – mine are all from the 1970s – but I’m not sure they bear rewatching.

After Dark, My Sweet (1990)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

After Dark, My Sweet (1990) – J. Foley

How many of my reviews begin with “I haven’t read the source novel…”?  Well, here is another one, although I probably should give Jim Thompson a look since I do enjoy noir (and pulp fiction – at least Hammett, Chandler, et al.).  Here, his novel has been updated to 1990 and since its set in the desert, the shadows are all in one’s head rather than physical (given the hot sun everywhere).  “Kid” Collins (Jason Patric) is an ex-boxer who may have killed someone in the ring and then spent time in mental institutions – he’s out, possibly on the run. He gets mixed up with Fay (Rachel Ward) and Uncle Bud (Bruce Dern) who have cooked up a scheme to kidnap a rich kid and ask for a big ransom.  They convince Collins to do the heavy lifting but he begins to suspect that they are going to play him for a sucker.  So, it’s a standard noir set-up and Patric sinks himself into the role of the loser, complete with broken-down shuffle and hapless voiceover.  We never quite know whether Fay is bad or good, probably because we are seeing things through Collins’ point of view – he can’t decide because he desires her but senses a trap.  Uncle Bud is much easier to read – he’s obviously deceptive.  Dern shows again how much he can make of a good part – even if he had few of them during this point in his career.  Overall, it’s a slow burn that never quite bursts into fire.  You are there for the characters and the tension and not for any significant plot twists or action.  But director James Foley and the cast do capture that particular mood…

Clash of the Titans (1981)

☆ ☆ ☆

Clash of the Titans (1981) – D. Davis

The final Ray Harryhausen film returns to ancient Greece (the milieu of Jason and the Argonauts, 1963) to tell the story of Perseus (Harry Hamlin).  As before, the Gods squabble and intervene in human affairs – both Zeus (Laurence Olivier) and Thetis (Maggie Smith) have produced human offspring, Perseus and Calibos, respectively.  Calibos (a Harryhausen creation) has been punished by Zeus for killing all of the winged horses (except Pegasus) and turned into a deformed satyr.  Perseus and Calibos clash over their love of Andromeda (Judi Bowker), who is subsequently cursed by Thetis to be eaten by the Kraken (a seamonster titan).  The only way the Kraken can be stopped is with the head of Medusa, which Perseus attempts to secure.  As before, the stop-motion animation is really the reason to watch these films, as the plot itself, despite the presence of name-brand actors (including Burgess Meredith), is rather soapy.  Surprisingly, there is some occasional nudity here!  Nevertheless, Amon found this an enjoyable adventure, although I felt it showed a decline after the wonders we had seen earlier in the Harryhausen canon (I’m not a fan of the mechanical owl). 

  

Everybody Knows (2018)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Everybody Knows (2018) – A. Farhadi

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (best known for A Separation, 2011) is a master of ambiguity – we are never quite sure where his characters stand in relation to each other and whether or not they are withholding information from each other (and from viewers).  In his second film outside of Iran, this time working in Spain, Farhadi employs superstar actors Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Argentinian Ricardo Darín to good effect in a mystery drama that has less interest in whodunnit and much more interest in the relationship dynamics that result.  Cruz and Bardem play ex-lovers who are now married to others but who are brought together again when Cruz returns to Spain from Argentina with her two children for her younger sister’s wedding.  After a slow build where we get to know the characters, a crime occurs and suspicion falls on everyone – Farhadi does a nice job of slowly revealing secrets that implicate each of the principals in turn (including Darín when he too travels to Spain).  Perhaps there are a few too many secondary characters (to increase the number of red herrings?) and perhaps the retired policeman is too overt a plot device directing the characters to provide information to advance the story.  Finding out who the culprits are is rather unsatisfying, suggesting again that this is not Farhadi’s main focus, and the open-ended finale (again with the ambiguity) probably lets everyone off the hook.  Nevertheless, I was gripped by the possibilities, the tension, and the emotions for most of the film. 

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

☆ ☆ ☆

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) – S. Wanamaker

Surprisingly, I found this penultimate Ray Harryhausen production a good watch – but perhaps I have simply adjusted my expectations after watching three of his earlier films first or perhaps it is because I am watching them with my 7-year-old son and seeing them through his eyes.  In this one, Sinbad (a different actor each time; this time Patrick Wayne) needs to help a prince who has been turned into a (dynamation) baboon by travelling with a Greek philosopher and his daughter to the arctic where a mysterious pyramid will help to transform the prince back to human form.  Sinbad’s love interest is the prince’s sister (Jane Seymour) and the main foe is evil witch Zenobia (Margaret Whiting).  A lot of the special effects here are camera tricks (characters grow big or small and change into seagulls and such) but Harryhausen animates a (friendly) troglodyte (early human), a sabre-toothed tiger, some alien-looking monsters, a big bee, a bronze minotaur, and an awesome giant walrus.  That walrus was something else.  Again, the plot is rather beside the point here, come instead for the Harryhausen creations which are pretty well integrated into the live action.   

  

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) – G. Hessler

Amon continues to ask for more Ray Harryhausen films and he reckons that this is his favourite so far – mostly because of Kali swinging six swords at a time and fighting off Sinbad and his men (until finally pushed off a ledge and broken “by a kid”).  I’m not so sure this beats out either 7^th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) or Jason and the Argonauts (1963).  Probably the acting by John Philip Law (as Sinbad), Caroline Munro (of Hammer Horror fame as a “slave girl”), and Tom Baker (yes, that Tom Baker, as another evil magician, Koura) is on par with the acting from the previous pictures.  The plot is similarly convoluted. Sinbad needs to find three pieces of a broken golden tablet in order to stop the evil magician from securing some more powers and instead give these to a good king whose face has been horribly burned.  The magician does everything he can to stop Sinbad and there are some fearsome (dynamation) creatures to behold, for example, a griffin fights a one-eyed centaur (both gigantic, of course). Most of the stopmotion seems devoted to Koura’s little homunculus goblin though.  Slightly more “adult” content (some very tame off-colour jokes and Munro’s barely dressed outfit) place the film squarely in the Seventies.  Start with the earlier films, if you are interested (but we will likely move onward to Eye of the Tiger, 1977).

  

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) – N. Juran

I think it is a mark of this film’s success that Amon is still asking questions about it the next morning (New Year’s Day 2020).  Of course, it is the special effects (“dynamation”) by Ray Harryhausen that are the reason to watch this film, now as it was in 1958. We get cyclopses, a roc chick and mother, a dragon (that later fights with a cyclops), a swordfightin’ skeleton, and a snake woman.  However, the interpersonal dynamics that drive the plot were a little lost on him.  An evil magician tricks Sinbad into heading to his home island to kill the cyclops that has grabbed the magic lamp (with genie inside) by shrinking Sinbad’s princess fiancée and claiming to only be able to make a potion to change her back with an eggshell from the roc found only on his island.  Amon kept asking why they were helping the evil magician and vice versa.  But really that magician could not be trusted (although his acting was probably the best of the lot)!  Now Amon wants to watch the subsequent Sinbad films (1973 and 1977), which I fear will be a notch below.  We shall see. But for its mix of wonder and adventure, we give this one a thumbs up!