Way Too Late at the Movies: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Now Wes Anderson's 2009 "Fantastic Mr. Fox" is . . . a movie I have seen.

If I'm honest, the book it's based on isn't the best of Roald Dahl's work. And though it bragged a quirky director who brought in his corral of quirky big names to voice the critters in this tale, this is a movie that at beginning, middle, and end, was a disappointment.

The story, well, it suffered from Hobbititis before The Hobbit was stretched into three movies. Not too much story to tell, so a lot of embellishment. Weird middle-aged angst. "Family troubles." And so. Many. Speeches. Interrupting the flow of the story. It's like at times they forgot they were making a movie and just wanted to hear George Clooney speak.

And the animation. Stop motion is either excellent or mediocre. This fell into the mediocre camp. The movement seemed stiff and robotic, and the characters' eyes were so dead. The plasticine eyes of Wallace and Gromit have more warmth in them.

Anderson's linear storytelling methods don't lend to this kind of art, I think. Moving left to right, right to left, up or down, that may be Andersen's schtick, but it made the film feel really one-dimensional. With mouth and body movement subpar to even the likes of Rankin/Bass.

Still, it was a movie I'd long been curious to see. And thanks to YouTube Free Movies, I've seen it. It was worth the price.

Way Too Late At the Movies: The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!

 

"The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" has been on my to-watch movie list since I learned many moons ago that it stars Jonathan Winters, shown here in all his glory giving a briefing to his family, baby included, before he runs off to confront the Red Menace.

While Winters was quite subdued in this film (his role wasn't as big as I imagined) it was worth watching, if only for an exploration of the character actors therein. That and the story is pretty darn funny, what with the mob mentality that easily translates into the new century. And the Russians as bad guys vibe, that still fits, no matter what Barack Obama might have thought.

It was fun seeing Tessie O'Shea in a non-Disney role, but it was this guy who presented the most challenge:

He appeared far earlier in the movie than this (it's a slow burn, I gotta warn ya). But it wasn't until this scene I got to hear him say more than "Muriel?"

But that voice. He's in a scene for a scant ten or fifteen seconds, but that voice. Had to Google. He plays Titus Moody, a stereotypical crusty Yankee, in Fred Allen's old radio show.

Not that I'm old enough to remember the show. But I've heard a few episodes, and the voice I heard in the film reached out through time to grab me.

Obscure character actor of the day: Parker Fennelly. Best known, I suppose, as Pa Kettle from the Ma and Pa Kettle films, but I haven't seen any of those.

Overall, I enjoyed it, though the finale seemed a bit, eh. Maybe beyond belief. Part of me would like to see a modern remake of this one, but I shudder to think of who Hollywood would pick to fill out the ensemble cast.

YouTube Free Movies: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

 

I posted this as I started watching 2005's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

And while the panto silliness I feared didn't surface, what did surface was a series of set and character pieces, not a movie. I feel bad for folks unfamilir with the book who came into this film hoping to finally see what the fuss is about. Because they likely left saying "Huh. Still don't get it."

All the while the more rabid fans of the film are screaming WAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T GET IT IT'S ALL THERE!

No, it's not. It's a series of set and character pieces, not a coherent story. And, I've got to admit, not all that funny.

Casting, well, they did a great job. I can't see anyone other than Sam Rockwell doing Zaphod Beeblebrox. Martin Freeman was excellent as the fuddled Arthur Dent. But as for the rest, well, could have put anyone in those roles and gotten the same thing out of the film.

It was the one thing a film based on these books should not have been: Boring.

What isn't helping is our crap home internet, which only let me watch in three-minute spurts before pausing to buffer. Until the ultimate pause, shows here, which is where I gave up on the film for good:

I know Adams' schtick is that every time he approached the story it changed. And it's been a long time since I read the books. But they seemed a lot more coherent than this mess of a film.

And the narration. Anytime you have to stick narration into a film, beware. That contributed to the set piece feel, totally messing up the story. They needed to take a long, hard look at their choices before setting anything to celluloid, but they didn't take the time to do it.

YouTube Free Movies: Godzilla vs. Gigan

I’ll be honest – I had to look at Wikipedia’s long, long list of Godzilla movies before I could remember the title of the one I watched a week or so ago: Godzilla vs. Gigan. I found it, of course, on YouTube, and thought, “You know, I’ve never watched an entire Godzilla movie; this is probably as good a place to start as any.”

So, tell me this is a movie made in the 1970s without telling me this is a movie made in the 1970s:

Apparently, it was called Godzilla on Monster Island in the United States. Not that it matters. All I know is the version I watched was in Japanese with subtitles, not dubbed over in English.

And it was . . . a Godzilla movie. I went into it not really knowing what to expect, and came out feeling about the same way.

It had some interesting moments. Some confusing moments. And some interestingly confusing moments as well.

First of all, this being in Japanese, the character names eluded me. I’m told the main turtleneck sweater-wearing protagonist is a magna artist named Gengo, who is either hanging out with his girlfriend or his mother – I never really figured out which; I have to assume since they appeared to be close to the same age they were boyfriend/girlfriend, though at one time he draws a monster bearing her resemblance and calls it a “momma monster,” adding to the confusion. Despite this, it was fun to watch the mom/girlfriend unleash her martial arts skills on the baddies; I almost wished it was mom at the time, as this would have added to the film’s humor.

There’s also a hippie, an odd theme park called World Children’s Land, and two maniacal people who are either handing out cigarettes or trying to destroy the world. Amid lots of talk of peace – the peace that comes only after destroying everything that’s not peaceful, So yanno, many layers in this film on the “what’s the moral to the story” level.

If you’re not getting the drift already, the movie was silly. A few months ago I watched a preview for the latest King Kong iteration and was kind of bothered by the “human” way the monsters were depicted fighting (lots of punch-throwing and such). Not that I’m an expert on animal fighting, but I get the feeling they should fight differently than humans. Watching this movie I kinda got that feeling as well, though it helped that all the monsters had some kind of weapon they could blast at their enemies by just having the actors stand there with their costume mouths open.

As with many movies of the era, there was an underlying “we’re destroying the ecology, so whatever happens to us we deserve unless we recognize our error and start fixing things” vibe. The bad guys are revealed (spoilers) to be interstellar cockroaches planning on colonizing Earth because their home planet has become too polluted to live on. Not that they did the pollution, rather another species polluted and then died out from said pollution.

I gather from the film that every planet has its own native monsters and that in some way, they’re either there to keep more dominant species in check or to be used as intergalactic weapons if things are going awry elsewhere.

Still better than any Avengers movie out there, so there’s that.

It also contained a scene where everyone was eating a banana:

And they gave the monsters cartoon talk balloons, which were a nice touch I wish we'd see more of in such movies today. But they're not done for children or comedy today, but for Serious Film People who want to see different monsters do the same iteration of destruction and defeat that just kinda leave me cold.

YouTube Free Movies: Planes, Trains & Automobiles

 An immediate clue you're watching a John Hughes film:

A very familiar home, to be sure.

This features -- briefly -- in Hughes' 1987 film Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

I've seen the highlights to this film a thousand times. But never seen the full movie.

And after the Edie McClurg exchange and the ensuing discussion of Larry Bird ball handling, i'll remain unwatched.

I have a moderate tolerance for foul language, but this one crossed the bar.

It was fun to see the typical John Hughes Midwest place-setting, but I'm not putting up with the cussing to watch any more of this.

It's easy enough to show a character is fed up and angry without dropping into one of the longest streaks of using the F-word I have ever heard in a film. That's a cheap way to show anger; and only Edie McClurg's use of the word was comical. I'm not sure what Hughes was going for with having Steve Martin deliver that tirade, but it was lazy.

I get he might have been trying to get away from his reputation as a teen movie writer and director, but if your idea of an adult movie is adult language, I'll pass, thankyouverymuch.

Yet I'm still watching . . . update to come.

Well, this is subtle. Were Neal and his wife having struggles outside of his delayed arrival this Thanksgiving? That's the unanswered question. That Del had nowhere to go was less subtle.

Guess the point is we don't know what other peoples' struggles are unless we walk in their moccasins. Or travel with them cross-country.

Still one I don't think I need to see again.

YouTube Free Movies: WarGames

Really, I should turn in my Gen X Card for this: I have never seen WarGames.

Oh, I've seen bits and pieces of it, to be sure. But never all the way through. Until today.

And really, I missed out.

This is a terrific film. A tight tale with just enough character development, perfectly cast with every player you'd expect from a military-centric early 1980s film, with enough character actor surprises tossed in to make each new character an adventure in "Where Have I Seen Him or Her Before?"

It might have been advantageous to wait until 2022 to see this 1983 film, because I get to play the Place the Character Actor game. But it still feels weird to hit this Cold War '80s milestone so late. Almost 40 years late.

The story, in my mind, holds up. The tech is, clearly, a bit old, but the film itself could take place at any time and still be a pertinent tale of the nihlism of "acceptable losses" contrasted with the callowness of putting off learning how to swim because the world wasn't going to end before you got around to it.

This, of course, translates easily to today:

And the Now Generations talking to those who have passed, or are passing on, or who are already dead at age 41.

This is one I'd definitely watch again.

And the film itself led our nation into some interesting directions. Thank heaven we had a president at the time who had his finger on the pulse of Hollywood more than others might have.

YouTube Free Movies: Dimension 5

Today's offering:

Dimension 5

A rather bland, confusing tale of espionage and time travel from 1966. But is the time travel device a ring? A watch? A multidimensional utility belt that really clashes with the hero's checked sports coat?

Yes. Maybe. And indeed. Behold:

Starring Jeffrey Hunter, of Star Trek Capt. Christopher Pike fame. Who also brought over some of the door whooshes and computer noises from Star Trek for this film. May have been trying to borrow some goodwill from the show to help the movie. Certainly borrowed Oddjob from the Bond films for some good karma as well, as the baddie in the wheelchair.

If you want babes, this is a good film, as far as '60s babes go. But if you want explanations of the technology, or of the motivations of some of the characters, well, this probably isn't your kind of film because that kind of stuff they just don't bother with. Or at least they didn't bother with it as I was watching; I was kind of distracted.

Here's the Facebook live summary:

To summarize: A kinda cool sleep-fest. Elements of it were rather snappy, but they don't make up for the undeveloped parts that left me confused.

YouTube Free Movies: Capricorn One

Capricorn One. One of those movies you hear a lot about, but never get around to watching until you see it on YouTube Free Movies and say, "What the heck?"

This film -- either from 1977 or 1978, depending on the source you go to, is borne of the distrust in government that the Watergate scandal brought on. Peter Hyams, who would later bring us less paranoid space fare in "2010," pitches this one sentence to ITV, and had a deal and $4.8 million to make the movie after only five minutes:

"There was one event of really enormous importance that had almost no witnesses. And the only verification we have ... came from a TV camera."

That one event, of course, is the Apollo moon landing. So in a very big way, this film helped fuel the "we didn't land on the moon" conspiracy theories that dog us even to this day. Of course, the only good thing that came out of that theory is this video, of conspiracist Bart Sibrel getting punched in the face repeatedly by Buzz Aldrin.

The film I found to be two things:

1. Rather entertaining

2. A good education on how a conspiracy to fake such an event would fall apart rather rapidly.

The film basically has three storylines, interwoven. There are the NASA conspiracists, shattered enough in finding out that the life support systems meant to keep the astronauts alive to, on, and from Mars won't cut it who then are under agency and political pressure to have a success, so much pressure that they decide to fake it all. There are the astronauts, brought into the conspiracy at the last minute -- rookie mistake to be sure -- and are forced to fly right or have their families threatened. There is the noob investigative reporter -- for a newspaper or television network, it's not clear -- who finds out and does invesgitatory work in rather stupid and straightforward ways.

I live-thought the movie today on my Facebook feed. Behold:

(We'll see if that Facebook embed works.)

Conclusion: I rather liked it. The story is shaky in spots, but it does go to show that to fake a story of this magnitude, either a lot of people have to be in on it and all keep their fat yaps shut, or you have to have a system of government so terrible and frightening that the populace is kept in line out of real fear. We didn't have either of those conditions in the post-Watergate years, and even now we don't have them, though you have to wonder why conspiracy theories still get bandied about.

So definitely one I would watch again.

YouTube Free Movies: Rockets Galore!

Rockets Galore!

Since I watched "Inn for Trouble" earlier this week YouTube has helpfully tossed a number of contemporary British films my way. For once, an algorithm is doing something right.

Today's is Rockets Galore from 1958. It's done in the style of "The Mouse that Roared" in that it's based on a comic novel about a small place, in this case the Scottish island of Todday, outsmarting the big guns (literally the British government, which wants to use Todday as a missile base). It's got the cast of eccentrics including a few who prattle on in idecipherable Gaelic.

It's a bit light on the comedy, I have to admit. Though it was fun to see as they panned through the island's inhabitants for reactions to a missile circling loudly over the island, the cutaways included a sheep dog, a sheep, and an incredibly wooly horse.

There is something fundamentally funny about watching a collection of rustic bumpkins pulling the wool over the bluebloods' eyes, however. Though making the crashed missile part of a bonfire seems ill advised.

I also love that it's filmed on location -- in this case on the island of Barra. These days, it would all be CGI. And I'm weary of that. Done right, CGI is wonderful. But in many, many cases it's done lazily because it's easier than doing the real thing.

Now they're dropping paratroopers on the clam-diggers.

There's some good anti-war conversation in the movie, coming from a nation only a decade removed from World War II and probably anxious to see the demilitarization, not re-militarization. Maybe that's where the humor -- and the hope -- comes through. And it's all resolved in a way that was probably clever back then, but old hat now: Conservation. I won't spoil the ending. Just go watch the movie.

There's that Cold War weariness, poked in the eyeballs.

But oops: I just spoiled the ending. Sorry.

YouTube Free Movies: "Inn for Trouble" and "Furry Vengeance"

Inn for Trouble

The one review I read on this film at IMDB decried it as a tired vessel for worn-out stars from The Larkins, a British situation comedy of the same 1960 vintage. Or something.

It could be since I'd never seen the show, I wasn't tainted by its worn-out premise, but I thought the film was a hoot.

I mean, it is pretty typical -- A man-boy married to a straightforward, harradin-ish wife, with other man-children in the family getting up to hijinx while the wife tries to keep everything together.

What I enjoyed the most was from the youngest man-child, Eddie Larkin, still living out his Boy-Scout days. He's forced to leave his post as Assistant Scoutmaster as his family runs off from London to run a pub as a reward for a long career in a brewery.

He camps, gets run over by a group fox-hunting, fails to start a fire by using a fire drill and recruits a local youth of indeterminate age as the nucleus of a new troop. They end up water-dowsing and, well, I won't spoil the film. But it was a fun look at Scouting in 1960s Britain, if even then at least the leaders were played as sissies.

I wish I knew more British character actors, because I'm sure this film is packed with them.

I cannot find a trailer for the film, so the YouTube link I used to watch it is here instead.

And technically I didn't find it on the "YouTube Free Movies" thread, but nevertheless, it caught my attention.

Furry Vengeance

This is a 2010 Brendan Frasier vehicle, which should have been a warning.

I'm not sure what this film was, or what its intended audience is. Is it a kids' film? A preaching on the continued human invasion of the natural world? Or a gigantic mistake that I would regret for the rest of the day?

It was sort of all three.

There were enough smashes and crotch shots to entertain the boy kiddies, and maybe enough cute animals to entertain the girls. And there was a rather weak love sub-plot involving two teenagers where the eco-conscious message could be brought in.

But the film, at the end, is utterly forgettable.

Except for Brendan Frasier. I'm pretty sure he had fun making it. Maybe he ought to go Full Rambo more often. So if you want to watch someone having fun while making a really stupid movie, this one's for you.

Also, it should be noted that while the film did not use animals in sunglasses in their promotional material, this did show up in the movie:

The environmentalist message is a bit wearisome at points, particularly at the beginning when the clearly conservative and smarmy land developer representative is driven off the road by an animal-produced Rube Goldberg machine, which sends him and his Porche off a cliff but not before a raccoon is able to hand him back the cigar butt he flicked out the window.

There's also a poorly-built plot point where they try to show the land being developed has long been cursed by animals willing to go to extreme means to shove humanity out, including cavemen, a Puritain, and a hippie, all played by Frasier.

Here's the trailer, so you know what you're in for:

YouTube Free Movies: "The Italian Job," and "Jingle All the Way"

The Italian Job

On the heels of watching The Muppet Christmas Carol with the family last night, I decided I was still in a Michael Caine mood, so I chose 1969's The Italian Job from the list today.

It is, shall we say, a muddle.

For me, what makes heist movies work are the characters. Introduce the characters to me well, and then do an incredible heist, and you've got me hooked.

The heist in this film is pretty good, with a lot of action, some fun cinematography, and what you'd expect from a car chase.

The characterizations, not so much. We get to see Michael Caine's character developed a bit. And you get a little bit of Benny Hill's character -- enough to know he likes the ladies chubby. But that's about it. All the rest of the characters, you could swap them in and out of roles and the movie would be about the same. There's quite a bit going on in the first half of the film, but little of it has to do with establishing characters.

Also, the editing is really choppy. In once scene, they're all shown leaving their mansion hideout. Then one's at the airport, getting his moll out of the action. Another's getting arrested -- Benny Hill, for feeling up a lady. Then they're back at the mansion hideout leaving again, or so I assume. Maybe I don't really know who's coming and going. But the film does a pretty poor job of maintaining continuity.

One of the plot points has to do with changing a reel-t-reel tape at a power plant, or something, as part of the heist. They show the exchange. Then the keep cutting to some kind of control center to show monitors going off or something, but all of the dialogue -- except for one scene -- is done in Italian. It's hard to know what's going on.

Apparently, there's a Mark Wahlberg remake, which might be worth looking at, but based on the trailer, I'm a bit dubious.

I wanted to like this film. But at the end, it was just too muddled to like.

It also has what might be the most annoying rallying movie theme song I've ever heard. And, given it's the '60s, some really questionable hair:

Jingle All the Way

This is a throwback to 1996, and it shows. There were THREE phone calls placed from public payphones in this film. THREE. And as a Christmas movie, it does hit all the Hollywood holiday buttons:

1. No mention of Jesus or Christianity; it's secular all the way ho ho ho.

2. Dad, played by Ahnold Schwarzenneger, is an incompetent workaholic.

3. The town -- which at one point feels smallish, then has a small downtown skyline, then a HUGE downtown skyline -- drips with holiday trimmings with EVERY house decorated to the hilt and lots of piles of snow but nobody has frosty breath and there's a threatened ice storm and it's night and then it's day and there are people caroling in FULL DICKENSIAN REGALIA.

Oh, folks, it was bad. They were going through the motions of making a Christmas movie and they really wanted it to have a heart, but the heart was that the kid gave away the toy he wanted because Dad became a full-fledge copy of the toy, and will probably go back to his incompetence after the New Year.

Do not watch.

NEW FEATURE: YouTube Free Movies. "Shattered Glass" and "Kangaroo Jack"

Starting a new and exciting feature here at Mister Fweem's blog. Or retreading something I've done here before and just not branded all that well. Or something.

Here's the premise: YouTube is offering free movies with ads. Probably trying to compete with Netflix and other streaming services for eyeballs, particularly as they're offering questionable movies in their free category to bait you into renting more quality content from their paid service.

Because I'm cheap, I go for the free. But, you know, I pay for it in other ways.

So this installment features two films:

Shattered Glass

This 2003 film tells the story of Stephen Glass, a writer for The New Republic who fabricated the majority of the stories he wrote for the magazine. It stars Hayden Christensen, who apparently is making a career of playing whiny, unlikable characters. (Seriously, if I had a co-worker who said "Are you mad at me" as often and as pathetically as Christensen plays Glass, I'd want to die.)

I'll admit to watching YouTube highlights of the film many times. When I watched the full film, I realized I hadn't missed much by watching just the highlight reels.

The film tries to tell a story or something about honesty and integrity, but as the flashback moments come almost exclusively through the eyes of Glass, it's more a tale of hubris and regret. And maybe that's the real message of the film.

So, my recommendation: Skip the film, watch the highlights. Unless you don't know the story, then watch the film.

Kangaroo Jack

This film, also from 2003, carries a warning in the trailer: The kangaroo wears sunglasses.

I have long had a rule that says if an animal is featured in a film's promotional material and at any time that animal is shown wearing sunglasses, it's best to avoid that movie as they are universally bad. I remember seeing previews for the film and thinking, "Yeah, this might work. But SUNGLASSES ON THE KANGAROO."

Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try.

And stinkerino.

First of all, the premise that these two mooks have valid passports enabling them to travel to Australia at a moment's notice is laughable.

And then there's the traveling to Australia montage: Koalas, check. Kangaroos, check. Ayers Rock, check, Men at Work (and you know what song I'm taking about because in Americans' view, they only ever wrote one song), check. Drinking game at an Outback bar, check. Trouble with Aussie slang, check. Finding an American who can help them bridge the two worlds, check. This move hit all the pre-packaged Australian cultural hot buttons, right down to worrying if the dingoes they see ate someone's baby.

I couldn't finish, once the juvenile humor in a PG-rated film got too crass. I mean, I didn't have high expectations to begin with, and I was not wrong. And Christopher Walken was in this. Did he owe somebody a favor? I mean, there might have been other big-name actors in the film, but as an officially out-of-it Gen X fud, I didn't recognize any of them.

And I didn't care. Because what I saw was bad.

Also, I don't recall watching a single ad in this film, even though it was on YouTube's free with ads channel. Apparently, no brand wanted to besmirch itself with an animal-in-sunglasses movie either.

So, my recommendation: Stick with the sunglasses rule; it will never steer you wrong.

Addendum: Just discovered this film won the "Favorite Fart in A Movie" category in the 2004 Kids' Choice Awards. Just to let you know what caliber of film you'd be watching if you choose to break the Sunglasses Rule.