UP – Don’t Miss This!

John, Spanky and Desmond (The Hollywood Version)

UP, Pete Docter, Director, 2009 

HOOK: Can movies re-invent themselves? 

LINE:  “You know, Mr. Fredrickson, the wilderness isn’t what I expected.”

SINKER: Who would ever think we’d be cheering on an hrumphing Ed Asner as a serious hero. 

JOHN: This is one of the great movies. There, I’ve said it. It’s easy to list past animated-film faults: too precious, too (wink, wink) clever, too technically show-offy. Up doesn’t sidestep such pitfalls, it makes them irrelevant. Here are plot development, multi-layered characters and genuine surprises that match the best animated and non-animated movies ever made. Sure the dogs talk (with the help of a special translator collar) but what they say has genuine dog perspective, right Spanky? For example they call the boy, “young mailman.” And just when we think an old man can be cool we meet one who’s cruel. The ending—with the boy’s missing father—could have been sappy, but it isn’t—and the old geezer (who we’ve come to feel for) becomes the young wilderness scout’s real award. Don’t miss this or wait to see it at home. It is a movie to laugh at and cheer for with an audience. Remember when we use to do that? 

GO GO GO GO (4 big GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: The 3-D technology is magic. And this film begins with a black and white, two dimensional, newsreel out of Citizen Kane that expands to a world of color, dimension and surround sound much like that first roller coaster ride in This is Cinerama. You’re right about the dogs, John, but the same applies to the humans. They’re not stereotyped cartoon characters but real people we come to care about (even the wonderfully twisted Christopher Plummer). The opening montage about the old man’s relationship with his deceased wife is spectacular. Whatever prior expectations we may have had melt and the audience of dogs (once menacing) cheering the boy on at the award ceremony show that even a small thing that might have proven mildly disturbing is not forgotten, but rectified. So many times Disney films have used our emotions. This Disney/Pixar prize heightens them in a real and meaningful way. Good movies get us talking about director, actors, plot mechanisms and settings. The great movies (and this is one) get us thinking about our lives and who we are. John described taking his four-year old grandson to this as the kid’s first movie. Desmond wasn’t sure why they needed to buy special glasses for this movie when outside the theater 3-D is free. But, in any case, even if you don’t have a child or grandchild, go to see Up…when you leave you’ll feel you do. 

“TWO PAWS UP” (4 BARKs out of four)

CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON

Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1955

 

Jack Arnold, director

 

HOOK: Why don’t people on scientific expeditions drink coffee and smoke cigarettes like the used to?

 

STORY: The Big One that got away.

 

GOSSIP: William Alland (the producer) played the faceless reporter in Citizen Kane. He first heard about the man-creature at a dinner party Orson Welles threw years later. After the Warner Brother’s hit, It Came from Outer Space, (also directed by Arnold) he decided to develop this script which shares several plot ideas and actors from that other sci-fi film.

 

The New York Times original review complained: “It is a fishing expedition that is unnecessary unless the viewer has lost all his comic books. The proceedings above and below the surface are filmed in 3-D to provide depth when viewed with polarized glasses, but this adventure has no depth.”

 

SPANKY: I like a monster movie where the female lead appears in brief, white shorts and a breast poking black sweater (just the thing for The Amazon). Despite echoes of a sound studio and the rainforest being rear-projected on a screen behind the actors, this black and white classic goes back to the days when fish seen by an underwater camera were considered ominous.

 

In the first third of the movie we experience only the prehistoric reptile’s webbed hand and multiple screams by Julie Adams, but what we really want is for the Richard Denning character (the unscientific, financier backing the expedition) to get eaten by the big lobster-man.

 

“TWO PAWs UP” (3 BARKs out of four)

 

JOHN: Spanky, you just want to see any creature get the best of man. Well, aliens and monsters may have become symbolic of cold-war paranoia, but when the creature from the Black Lagoon swims on its back beneath an unaware pinup, Julie Adams, swimming on the surface, this is the embodiment of every adolescent male’s burgeoning libido. The excellent audio commentary is all King Kong “Beauty and the Beast.” It’s Beauty all right but we all know who the horny monster is, it’s us, Pogo. And the monster is not alone. Wherever he goes a full orchestra follows. Note: the creature lacks genitalia, so even though there were sequels, subsequent generations have had little to fear.

 

GO GO GO (3 GOs out of four)

 

KEEPER: “What do you suppose is taking them so long?”

PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM

Five to Watch Once More

This week Spanky and John take a break from their usual format to salivate over five classics well worth getting on DVD and viewing one more time. Send your own favorite with a sentence or two why. (In a few months watch for Spanky and John’s list of five cotemporary masterworks.)

The Godfather Part II, 1974

John: Not only better than Part I but surpassing almost all films ever. America through a glass darkly. Remember the execution of Michael’s pathetic brother as he fishes on the lake? This is when Pacino, DeNiro, Robert Duvall and Francis Ford Coppola were great.

Casablanca, 1942

Spanky: “As Time Goes By,” Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, the closing line from Bogie to Claude Rains. Everybody comes to Rick’s. Some of us have never left.

Citizen Kane, 1941

John: Orson Welles pulled this rabbit out of a hat at 25 and managed to stop Ted Turner form colorizing it 40 years later. Like some literary masterpiece we discover something new each time we see it.

Psycho, 1960

Spanky: Hitch stunned audiences then and this film is still unsettling today. Not only did it type-cast Anthony Perkins for life in movies, but no one would ever sit beside him in an airplane.

To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962

John: Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch in the film adaptation of Harper Lee’s only book. Now watch Robert Duvall making his debut in a brief but unforgettable role of Boo. When is the last time you saw a heartfelt, genuine movie like this?