Review: THE INTERVIEW (2014)

THE INTERVIEW  (ACTION-COMEDY)
3 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen
Starring: Seth Rogen, James Franco, Lizzy Caplan, Randall Park, Diana Bang, Timothy Simons, Reese Alexander, James Yi, Paul Bae
Rated R for pervasive language, crude and sexual humor, nudity, some drug use and bloody violence.
112 minutes
Verdict: It's a bit slow at the start and will certainly disappoint those looking for a satire on the level of DR. STRANGELOVE, but once the action gets to North Korea, it's a furiously funny and juvenile farce that's a lot of fun.
YOU MAY ENJOY THE INTERVIEW IF YOU LIKED:
THIS IS THE END  (2013)
TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE  (2004)
SUPERBAD  (2007)
PINEAPPLE EXPRESS  (2008)
NEIGHBORS  (2014)

Against the odds, a goofy, scatological comedy aimed at college-age males became one of, if not the, most important films of the year.  Not necessarily the best, mind you, but the most important; a legitimate historical landmark, and there are running jokes about buttholes.  Why can't history-making always be this fun?
THE INTERVIEW is the second film directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the writing team behind the legitimately great 2007 comedy SUPERBAD, as well as PINEAPPLE EXPRESS and their own gut-busting directorial debut, THIS IS THE END.  Written with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart's co-executive producer, Dan Sterling, Rogen's and Goldberg's latest, strictly speaking as a movie, is an imperfect but wildly funny and fun action-comedy.
In addition to writing, directing and producing, Rogen stars as Aaron Rapaport, producer of a celebrity news and gossip show called Skylark Tonight, hosted by his flamboyant and dimwitted longtime friend, Dave Skylark (frequent Rogen collaborator, James Franco).  After 1,000 episodes, Aaron feels unfulfilled with the vapid direction in which his journalism career has taken him, so when it's discovered that the show has a big fan in the North Korean communist dictator Kim Jong-un (Randall Park), Aaron arranges an exclusive interview.  Soon after, Aaron and Dave are contacted by Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan) on behalf of the CIA, who wants to enlist them in assassinating Kim as part of a coup d'état, to which they reluctantly agree.  Once they get to North Korea though, the task proves far more difficult than initially planned, as Dave is drawn in by Kim's charms and Aaron falls for Kim's top aide, Sook (Diana Bang).
THE INTERVIEW doesn't have the rapid-fire laugh-out-loud moments of THIS IS THE END, or the heart of SUPERBAD, and it starts fairly slow, although there are some good laughs from Skylark Tonight in interviews with celebrities playing fictionalized versions of themselves.  Franco hams it up really big, and a lot of it falls flat, while Rogen plays the straight man, but once they get to North Korea, the movie really hits its stride.  Randall Park plays the real-life dictator as sheepish and insecure, on the surface a kindred spirit to the typical man-children of Rogen/Goldberg comedies, but also believably menacing.  He's the whole package, at once likable and loathsome.
THE INTERVIEW is more a political farce than a satire, because even while it doesn't beat around he bush about things like propaganda, U.S. foreign relations and celebrity journalism, it's not particularly sharp or interested in insight.  It's a movie content with aggressively lampooning a real-life dirt-bag, and using blunt instruments like scatological humor and knowingly overwrought execution to do it, while making the basics known to a demographic that might not be so well-informed about the subject.  As far as low-brow humor goes though, there are many good laughs to be had, many of the juvenile gross-out variety, just the way I like them.
Those drawn in by the controversy will likely be unimpressed by sophomoric comedy and wonder what all the fuss was about, but it's fun, dumb and even though it doesn't pack much of a political bite, it has admirable nerve as a comedy.

Review: BIG EYES

BIG EYES  (BIOPIC/COMEDY-DRAMA)

3 out of 4 stars
Directed by Tim Burton
Starring: Amy Adams, Christoph Waltz, Danny Huston, Krysten Ritter, Jason Schwartzman, Terence Stamp, Jon Polito, Madeleine Arthur, Delaney Raye
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and brief strong language.
105 minutes
Verdict: Played safe, but ultimately a refreshing turn for director Tim Burton, BIG EYES is an interesting commentary on marriage, gender politics and art with a fun cast, and best of all, it proves that Burton can still make a good movie.
YOU MAY ENJOY BIG EYES IF YOU LIKED:
ED WOOD  (1994) 
BIG FISH  (2003)
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN  (2002)
FINDING NEVERLAND  (2004)
MAN ON THE MOON  (1999)
Behind every great man is a great woman, or so the saying says.  The stranger-than-fiction story of American artist Margaret Keane and her husband, Walter Keane, takes place in the so-called 'good old days", of the 1950s.  As put by a character in Tim Burton's new film recounting the Keanes' story, "The 1950s were a great time...if you were a man."  If you were a white man, more specifically.  It was a time when men were men, and women were domestics who cooked and cleaned in service the husband's household.  Women were expected to provide for their husbands, but only husbands got the credit of "provider"; marriage made two people into one and the same, but the identity belonged to the man.  Divorce was truly an anomaly, and while it's easy to look back at those times in contrast to our modern rate of 53% of marriages ending in divorce, that mindset overlooks how many people suffered in broken, sometime abusive marriages because of the social pressure to fit the mold.  It's tragic that two people who once professed their undying love to one another have reached with a failed marriage past repair, but it's less tragic than the victim of an abusive marriage who suffers in silence.
BIG EYES is the story of a peculiar case of marital abuse in a patriarchal society, opening just as Margaret Ulbrich (Amy Adams) has left her first husband, with only her daughter and her paintings, and arrived in California at the behest of her longtime friend DeeAnn (Breaking Bad's Krysten Ritter).  Struggling to make a living off of her unique painting of sad waifs with disproportionately large eyes, Margaret soon meets a charming, charismatic artist with a big, big personality- Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz).  It doesn't take long before they're married, and one night while trying to sell their paintings, Margaret's "big eyes" and his own Paris scenes, Walter claims Margaret's work as his own.  Although disappointed by this, Margaret is persuaded by Walter that his personality is the best way to sell the paintings, and in time, to the chagrin of art critics like John Canaday (Terence Stamp) and fine art dealers (one played by Jason Schwartzman), who bemoan Margaret's paintings as "kitsch", her big eyes paintings become a full-blown artistic phenomenon.  Through cheap, mass-produced reproductions on posters and postcards sold across the United States, "Keane" becomes the bestselling artist in the country, but Walter appears to have more sides to him than he initially let on, hogging the spotlight and demanding more and more paintings from Margaret, who is forced to repress herself.

 It's no secret that Burton has been on the low end of his career in recent years, artistically anyway, with hollow, special effects and visuals-driven fantasies like ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010) and the dreadful DARK SHADOWS (2012).  On the other hand, he hasn't been has much on the outs as he's been cut out to be; for instance, one of his very best films, SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET was released in 2007, and while imperfect, CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005) is much better than its reputation suggests.  His only truly terrible films are DARK SHADOWS and his 2001 remake of PLANET OF THE APES, but he does have an awful lot of mediocre movies in between his genuinely great ones.  That said, in the past seven years, his only decent film has been the 2012 stop-motion-animated remake FRANKENWEENIE, and BIG EYES is a real breath of fresh air.  With a cast of actors that includes none of Burton's regular collaborators, BIG EYES nonetheless reunites the director with the writing team of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who wrote another biopic Burton directed, and arguably his best film, ED WOOD.  Burton's distinctive style is not entirely absent throughout BIG EYES, but it's more restrained.  The biggest factor separating it from his early work is that it isn't a story about misfits or eccentrics so much, a consistent interest of his; although the story itself is weird, the characters aren't as much.  In fact, the main character is a subdued personality, and what makes her an outsider at all is her art and her marital history.
Burton also has a strong appreciation for kitsch, which usually plays into his movies as either a benefit or a detriment, and curiously, in a movie all about artistic kitsch, his own is heavily toned down.  Unfortunately, it gives it a sense of "playing safe", which plays through Burton's artistic voice, ironically, as nearly experimental.
The heart of the movie is Amy Adams' performance, a tremulous personality with an underlying strength that she's reluctant to use, exuding it through her art.  Christoph Waltz is over-the-top, but the supporting cast is great all around, including Terence Stamp, who never really acts and instead recites lines in an affecting but wooden tone, but is ideally cast as an antagonistic art critic.
It would be nice if BIG EYES marked a new turning point for Burton's career toward interesting, character-driven films for adults, but for now, it's nice to know that he still has something like this in him.

Review: INTO THE WOODS

INTO THE WOODS  (FANTASY/MUSICAL)

3 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Rob Marshall
Starring: Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Daniel Huttlestone, Lilla Crawford, Tracey Ullman, Christine Baranski, Billy Magnussen, Mackenzie Mauzy, Simon Russell Beale
Rated PG for thematic elements, fantasy action and peril, and some suggestive material.
124 minutes
Verdict: Entertaining and thoughtful, but far from perfect, INTO THE WOODS is probably not the fairy tale you're looking for, and perhaps more rewarding for that.
YOU MAY ENJOY INTO THE WOODS IF YOU LIKED:
ENCHANTED  (2007)
CHICAGO  (2002)
SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET  (2007)
THE PRINCESS BRIDE  (1987)
ELLA ENCHANTED  (2004)

Walt Disney Pictures is probably more responsible than any other entity for the modern popular perception of fairy tales in the western world.  The European folklore that was first widely popularized in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's folk tale collection, Children and Household Tales, stories like "Cinderella", "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Rapunzel", were dark and occasionally quite violent morality tales with sometimes questionable morals.  When the Disney studios took to adapting such fairy tales into feature animated films like SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937), CINDERELLA (1950) and SLEEPING BEAUTY (1959), practically each adapted story, and the idea of fairy tales themselves became defined by the Disney version.  Fairy tales are supposed to be kid-friendly, maybe just a little bit scary, but neatly resolved with a "happily ever after", or what we sometimes call a "fairy tale ending."  So Disney fans who turn out for the studio's latest offering, INTO THE WOODS, expecting a Disney fairy tale will probably be disappointed, because it's not Disney's fairy tale.  Adapted from the Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical of the same name, this is more a Sondheim fairy tale than anything else, while also re-injecting a lot of Grimm.
The story is comprised of characters and events from multiple well-known fairy tales, intermingling with one another as they each pursue fulfillment of their own individual wishes with single-mindedness.  The Baker (James Corden) and the Baker's Wife (Emily Blunt) are a couple who wish for nothing more than to have a child of their own, but are barren thanks to a Witch's (Meryl Streep) curse, which the Witch has given them three midnights to undo by collecting a list of particular items for her.  Venturing into the woods to find the Witch's requests, the Baker and his Wife encounter an assortment of other wishers and dreamers who have entered into the woods for some purpose or other.  Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) is a poor boy forced to sell his best friend, a cow; Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) is a gluttonous girl on her way to visit her sick grandmother, but crosses paths with a genteel but lascivious Big Bad Wolf (Johnny Depp) along the way; Cinderella is a scullery maid who lives with her cruel Stepmother (Christine Baranski) but sneak away to dance with the Prince (Chris Pine) at the royal ball, despite remaining indecisive about what it is she really wants; and finally, there's Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy), the adopted (or, shall we say, kidnapped?) daughter the Witch keeps locked away in a tower with her ridiculously long golden hair, but who has recently met a different Prince (Billy Magnussen) and is planning to leave with him.

The fairy tales all generally play out the way you may already know them, but that's not the end, a twist at the heart of the movie, that also has the unfortunate side effect of make the movie feel overlong.  If you saw the play on the stage, there would be an intermission at that particular point, but as a movie, the two distinct halves are tied together at the center, so it feels like two movies.  It's jarring and less than ideal, but it helps that the second half brings about much of the most interesting stuff in the story.  The split between the darkly quirky but fun first half and the almost comically apocalyptic/pessimistic second half is what it is, but the use of the narrator is a particularly blatant misfire.  While a narrator isn't entirely uncalled for, the execution is very poor, narrating many things that don't require it and feeling very out of step with the rest of the movie.
Director Rob Marshall is best known for his first theatrically-released film, CHICAGO (2002), and PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES (2011), and even if it isn't saying much, INTO THE WOODS is his best film in a good while.  There are the occasional bold choices, but on the whole, it shows a great deal of directorial restraint, while the performances and songs take nearly all the heavy lifting.  With the exception of Lilla Crawford (in her screen debut, but previously known for playing the eponymous character in the 2012 Broadway revival of Annie) as Little Red Riding Hood, who constantly struggles to find a balance between an annoying character and an annoying performance, the cast is first rate.  Streep is obviously marvelous as the nasty but highly sympathetic crone, and while most of her inevitable awards nominations will be more because she's Meryl Streep than for this particular performance, that doesn't mean the recognition isn't deserved.  Blunt as the Baker's Wife is also a ton of fun; funny, sad, sweet and ruthless in her pursuit of motherhood, but then left with the questions that come with it afterward.  Depp has been in a real rut lately, playing dress-up without anyone to offer a helpful 'no' every once in a while on his past several movies, but in the flashy but brief role of the Big Bad Wolf, he's delightful- as far as thinly-veiled sexual predators who ooze charm go.  The real surprise is Chris Pine as Cinderella's Prince, who we already know can be the charming, charismatic bad boy, but he can also belt a show tune with the best of them, which he does in the film's best musical number, "Agony", in which the two princes lament competitively over their heartaches.  Sondheim's tunes are mostly unmemorable, but his lyrics are amusingly witty and thoughtful, and the songs lend themselves to the performances, rather than overshadowing them.  It's never amazing in a mind-blowing way, but the pieces come together and support each other in a solid movie that's rewarding and thought-provoking.  The film, PG-rated with a Disney logo, is clearly directed at families though, and those with young children or who are otherwise expecting a fairy tale ending ought to give it some thought ahead of time.

Done as a Doornail: The Christmas Carols

At the young age of 31, having already solidified his place in literary history with the serialized novels The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, the great novelist Charles John Huffam Dickens was in the midst of a career slump, and needed a new published work, something with popular appeal to make a profit.  The resulting novella, published in December 1843, was Dickens' most famous work: A Christmas Carol.  Drawing on medieval traditions of ghost stories told at Christmas, many of which told of spirits from beyond the grave appearing to the living to remind them of their Christian duties, and injecting his own usual liberal social commentary on the pious hypocrisies of Victorian culture, A Christmas Carol was a plea for Christian charity, especially in the wake of an Industrial Revolution which worsened the conditions for the poor while the rich got richer, and social welfare programs had been overhauled to lower the tax burden on the upper class while resulting in the inhumane treatment of those who the laws were meant to protect.
Dickens' story tells of Ebenezer Scrooge, a shrewd and miserly businessman who is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his seven-years-dead business partner, Jacob Marley, who warns him of the purgatory that awaits him if he does not change his greedy, apathetic ways.  Scrooge is then visited by the Spirit of Christmas Past, who reminds him of how he got to where he is, the Ghost of Christmas Present, who shows him what he is missing by denying the milk of human kindness, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a silent wraith who warns him of the path his life is set in.  The experience brings Scrooge to his redemption, and he emerges Christmas morning a changed man, full of charity and benevolence toward his fellow men.
Only a few months after its publication, A Christmas Carol was adapted to the stage multiple times, and in 1901, the first film adaptation of it was made- titled SCROOGE, OR MARLEY'S GHOST, and running only 6 minutes and 20 seconds (only 4 minutes and 55 seconds of which still survives today).  It's one of the most frequently adapted books for film and television, and usually quite faithfully adapted, even in versions that star Jim Henson's irreverent Muppets, and yet, funnily enough, they all have widely varied takes on the Ghost of Christmas Past, thanks to a detailed and yet strangely ambiguous description in the book.


SCROOGE aka A CHRISTMAS CAROL  (DRAMA/FANTASY, 1951) 
Directed by Brian Desmond-Hurst
Starring: Alastair Sim, Mervyn Johns, Hermione Baddeley, Michael Hordern, Glyn Dearman, George Cole, Rona Anderson, Michael Dolan, John Charlesworth, Francis de Wolff, Carol Marsh, Brian Worth
Not Rated (PG-level; some mild thematic elements and scary moments).
86 minutes
There are literally dozens of adaptations of A Christmas Carol to the screen, but by a modest margin, the 1951 British version, SCROOGE, released here in the States as A CHRISTMAS CAROL, is the critical darling out of the assortment.  It is not an undeserved position though; I would at least consider it within close proximity to the best, if it isn't the best itself.  Like some of the other holiday movie stalwarts that receive perennial viewing year after year, it really solidified its footing thanks to repeat airings on TV for a number of years.  What makes it stand out so prominently in the crowded field however, is the rare script that dares to deviate from the same rote checklist of adapting Dickens' novella, giving it a sense of freshness even decades since it was made.  There are so many Christmas Carol movies, and nearly all of them use the same familiar pieces of dialogue taken verbatim from the page, the same plot points, and any deviation taken from that formula is usually quirky or a stylistic flourish.  The screenplay by Noel Langley, who was also one of the main writers on the iconic 1939 classic, THE WIZARD OF OZ, expands heavily upon the Ghost of Christmas Past segment, taking the opportunity to really dig into the meat of the Scrooge character (played by Alastair Sim, by far his most famous role), showing his seduction by greed and apathy alongside his business partner and sole friend, Jacob Marley (Michael Hordern), the hardening of his heart as those close to him leave or die.  I'm always iffy about the Christmas Past part of the story, because it mostly feels like exposition to me, spoon-feeding of the character background on Scrooge with little or no consequence to the story at large, but this adaptation makes it more relevant, more interesting and more impacting.  Where other adaptations have turned the characters of this story into stock characters, the sort that can easily enough be swapped out for a well-known brand-name character like Mr. Magoo or Scrooge McDuck, this 1951 film fleshes them out into engaging characters with nuance and humor.  Sim does not display a great deal of range as Scrooge, but he is fitting in the role, and his delivery is often tinged with humor and the unexpected- it is the role he was meant for.  Tiny Tim, as played by Glyn Dearman, is not quite so tiny, standing not much shorter than his mother (Hermione Baddely, who you might remember as the maid from MARY POPPINS), but he's fine, no more sentimental or cheesy than other Tiny Tims, and not too prominent in this version.  The black-and-white production (don't you dare watch the "colorized" version) is glorious and richly atmospheric, and the ghostly special effects, while some of them are dated (thinking of the "air filled with phantoms" when Scrooge looks out his window), are perfectly serviceable, and the limitations of 1951 effects often work to their benefit, keeping it simple.
It's a beautiful film that runs at a brisk pace, and it's the Christmas Carol that other productions since have aspired to be, but with perhaps one exception, remains unequaled.
And the Ghost of Christmas Past Appears as: 67 year old actor Michael Dolan, wearing a white gown with a holly garland, and long white hair.


SCROOGE  (FAMILY-MUSICAL/FANTASY, 1970) 
Directed by Ronald Neame
Starring: Albert Finney, Edith Evans, Kenneth More, David Collings, Michael Medwin, Richard Beaumont, Francis Cuka, Suzanne Neve
Rated G (PG-level; some mild language and scary moments).
113 minutes
This was a weird one, with a lot of hit-and-miss going on.  Albert Finney stars as Ebenezer Scrooge, although he was only 34 at the time, and thus plays Scrooge as an old man and in his youth (it's a lot easier to make a young person look old than to make an old person look young).  1970s SCROOGE is unique as it's an old school Hollywood-style musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and it brings a bit of that inherent corniness with it.  The songs themselves are unimpressive overall, and often goofy, although possibly the best of the soundtrack (such as it is) is "Christmas Children", which you've probably heard a cover of on the radio around the holidays (you know, the one with the "But 'til Christmas morning no one knows/ Won't it be exciting if it snows?" and "I believe that story we've been told/ Christmas is for children young and old").  There's also an amusing musical moment where, Scrooge, in the Christmas Yet to Come segment, sees the people of London singing his praises for something he has done for them (you know, dying), and he jumps in front of the crowd singing "Thank You Very Much", oblivious to the coffin being carried out his front door just behind him.
1970's SCROOGE isn't terrible, but most of it is too goofy and too frothy to really satisfy.  Much as I like Finney, I have mixed feelings about him in this role, because he's too cartoony to be believable.  He scowls beneath bushy eyebrows and acts impudently and gets drunk on the "milk of human kindness" (okay, well, that bit was a little funny).  Alec Guinness is in the role of Jacob Marley, a prospect that had me excited, but much like the rest of the film, he just plays it silly, which was disappointing.  I like my Marleys with pathos.  The movie doesn't hit the crazy with full throttle until Scrooge get to Hell though.  Yes, you read that right; in this movie, Scrooge actually visits Hell.  The scene, which acts as the film's climax immediately following Scrooge's encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, is a tiny bit controversial for being "too frightening," which just seems ridiculous, because the scene is so silly and over-the-top, with Marley escorting Scrooge to his new chambers in Hell as Lucifer's personal clerk, but it is sometimes edited from TV versions.
What I do really love about this version, however, is the set design, especially earlier in the film, like the "Christmas Children" sequence, with frosted windows glowing with candlelight and sprigs of holly and such, all the sort of things that I associate with the idea of a Dickensian Christmas.
And the Ghost of Christmas Past Appears as: 82 year old actress Edith Evans in the fashion of a prim and proper Victorian duchess.


A CHRISTMAS CAROL  (DRAMA/FANTASY, 1984) 
Directed by Clive Donner
Starring: George C. Scott, David Warner, Frank Finlay, Angela Pleasence, Edward Woodward, Susannah York, Anthony Walters, Roger Rees, Lucy Gutteridge, Mark Strickson
Rated PG for unspecified reasons (some mild language, scary moments and thematic elements).
100 minutes
This TV movie adaptation of Charles Dickens' book, originally aired on CBS on December 17, 1984, is my other favorite film version of the tale.  I don't typically care for TV movies, but this one has an added oomph that many others lack, thanks to an incredible cast and surprisingly strong production values, shot on location in the historic medieval market town of Shrewsbury, England.  It is shot like a TV production however, with tighter angles and closer shots than would be in a theatrical production, so I imagine it would look strange on the big screen (think last February's SON OF GOD), even though it was release theatrically in the UK.  The incomparable George C. Scott stars as Ebenezer Scrooge (a rare American in the role), the prosperous but ruthless and apathetic businessman, and David Warner co-stars as his benevolent clerk, Bob Cratchit.  Warner is atypically warm as Cratchit, but Scott, as usually, is firing on all cylinders as Scrooge, with his growling vocals, sharp wit and subtlety.  Edward Woodward is one of the best incarnations of the Ghost of Christmas Present, boisterously jovial but with a layer of menace just beneath the surface, ripping Scrooge a new one regularly.  Frank Finlay, known for playing the buffoonish Porthos in Richard Lester's under-appreciated THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1973), is the absolute definitive Jacob Marley, performed with intense pathos, sadness that occasionally intensifies into outburst of frustrated rage.  In his only scene, Finlay knocks it way out of the park.  What I really love about this version though is that, unlike so many other adaptations in which Scrooge is threatened with damnation for not liking Christmas and or cutting people a break on the contracts they signed, which hardly sounds damnation-worthy, Scrooge is guilty of more than hating Christmas or practicing tough business ethics.  Scrooge is not malicious, but his great crime, one of inaction which people are too often too wiling to excuse, is apathy, a crime we ignore because we don't know that effect.  The Ghost of Christmas Present, near the end of his time, brings Scrooge to a starving family by the river, struggling to survive and stay together as a family.  "Why do you show me this?  What has it to do with me?"
Outraged at Scrooge's unfeeling nature, the Ghost shouts, "Are they not of the human race?"  Are they not?
And the Ghost of Christmas Past Appears as: 43 year old actress Angela Pleasence, wearing a white gown and holding an olive branch in one hand and a large snuffer cap in the other, while emanating a bright light from her head.


THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL  (FAMILY/MUSICAL-COMEDY, 1992) 
Directed by Brian Henson
Starring: Michael Caine, Dave Goelz (puppeteer/voice), Steve Whitmire (puppeteer/voice), Jerry Nelson (puppeteer/voice), Frank Oz (puppeteer/voice), David Rudman (puppeteer/voice), Jessica Fox (voice), Steven Mackintosh, Robin Weaver, Meredith Braun
Rated G
85 minutes
THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL was the first movie starring the Muppets since the death of Muppet creator Jim Henson in 1990, with Jim's son Brian Henson taking the reins as director and producer.  Although the idea had been suggested by Jim Henson prior to his death, the film was a noted departure from previous Muppet movies, in which the Muppet characters themselves were the characters in the stories.  Here, the Muppets portray the literary characters of  A Christmas Carol, a not at all an unheard of treatment of the classic novella, as it had probably been done first in the animated television special Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962), starring the UPA cartoon character, and again in Bugs Bunny's A Christmas Carol (1979), starring the Looney Tunes stable of characters, and Mickey's A Christmas Carol (1983), starring Walt Disney's stable of cartoon characters.  Of such adaptations of the book however, the Muppets are the only collection of popular characters to adapt it to feature length, and it's also the best of the bunch.  It's a decent introduction to the material for kids and entertaining for adults as well, even if it's knowingly not the most sophisticated film version of A Christmas Carol, or even the best.  It is more faithful than one might expect, which makes it a little weird as a starring vehicle for the Muppets, because it includes Muppets talking about God, faith and death, and of course, Muppets die in this movie.  You get that?  Muppets can die, and then they have funerals, decay in graves, and in some cases, come back as spirits who've been damned for all eternity.  Muppets.
The story is basically the same as you've seen it a dozen times before, with Michael Caine starring as Ebeneezer Scrooge, the miserly but talented capitalist who hates the celebration of Christmas, but takes sadistic delight in the opportunity to foreclose on debtors who have made exception on their frugality for the seasonal frivolities.  Kermit the Frog (performed by Steve Whitmire, taking over from Jim Henson) is Bob Cratchit, Scrooge's humble bookkeeper, who works for little pay to support his family, including his feisty wife Emily (Miss Piggy, as performed by Frank Oz) and crippled son Tiny Tim (Robin, as performed by Jerry Nelson).  As the story is narrated by Charles Dickens (Gonzo the Great, as performed by Dave Goelz), with his pal Rizzo the Rat (also performed by Whitmire), Scrooge is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghosts of his long-deceased business partners, Jacob and Robert Marley (Statler & Waldorf, performed by Nelson and Goelz, respectively) now damned to an eternity of torment for their lives of avarice, who announce to him the appearance of three more spirits during the course of the night, as an attempt to offer Scrooge a chance of redemption.And the Ghost of Christmas Past Appears as: An elaborate special effect; a physical puppet operated in side a water tank then superimposed onto the film, brightly glowing and doll-like in appearance in white robes, voiced by Jessica Fox.


DISNEY'S A CHRISTMAS CAROL  (FANTASY/ANIMATION, 2009) 
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright Penn, Cary Elwes, Daryl Sabara, Lesley Manville
Rated PG for scary sequences and images.
96 minutes
You've got to feel a little bit bad for Robert Zemeckis.  The Academy Award-winning filmmaker best known for making certified classics BACK TO THE FUTURE and WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT spent most of the 2000s pioneering and championing motion capture (also referred to as "mo-cap" or performance capture) technology and digital 3D, only to see them finally break out in a big way with James Cameron's AVATAR, released less than two months after Zemeckis' own 3D motion capture animated film, A CHRISTMAS CAROL (or DISNEY'S A CHRISTMAS CAROL, for marketing and differentiating purposes) was a box office disappointment.  In filming mo-cap, which can be done to create a digital character in a live action film (i.e., Gollum in THE LORD OF THE RINGS) or a fully-animated film, actors perform scenes in spandex leotards covered in sensors which the camera picks up, and in a computer, the performances can be rendered into the computer-generated digital character's movements.  A major dilemma for mo-cap, ever since the first fully mo-cap animated film, Zemeckis' THE POLAR EXPRESS, is the so-called "uncanny valley."  The uncanny valley refers to a phenomenon in which a depiction of human likeness looks so human, without being quite "human," and results in a feeling of revulsion.  On the one end, are stylized human likenesses that range from something as exaggerated as Mickey Mouse to C-3PO, the "cute" end of the spectrum; one the other end are photographic depictions of actual humans.  Somewhere in between that is the uncanny valley, which, to put it in a fashion as disturbing as the appearance of THE POLAR EXPRESS characters, looks like a dead human body being operated like a puppet on strings.  To date, Zemeckis's last motion capture animated venture was MARS NEEDS MOMS, which he produced through his company ImageMovers Digital, and was one of the biggest box-office bombs of all time (grossing $39 million worldwide off a $150 million; reportedly the second-biggest studio film write-off ever behind last year's 47 RONIN). 
A CHRISTMAS CAROL is easily Zemeckis' most visually ambitious mo-cap film, made on a massive $200 million estimated budget (that's in the same arena as top-tier summer blockbusters), and the money is on the screen.  Comedian Jim Carrey stars as Scrooge, as well as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come, and as Scrooge, he's just fine, although as the Ghosts (obviously not the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who appears mainly in shadow and simply gestures), he's doesn't quite have the range to differentiate all four characters.  To the movie's credit however, their is some acknowledgement to the implicit connection between Scrooge and the spirits.  Gary Oldman co-stars as Bob Cratchit (probably the movie's creepiest-looking major character), as well as Tiny Tim (just the physical performance, with the voice provided by Ryan Ochoa) and Jacob Marley.  As great an actor as Oldman is, his Marley is too vacuous and creepy to really be really appealing, which is lot like the movie at large at times.  Zemeckis' interests in A CHRISTMAS CAROL appear to be mainly in rendering the old Dickensian London in lush and extravagant detail then flying his camera through it with in all kinds of swinging and swooping "fly-throughs" that openly defy the laws of physics, and secondly, in emphasizing the grisly horrors of Dickens' famous ghost story.  It may be Disney, but to say this is a 'family film' is a borderline dubious claim.  In the novella, Marley is described as "taking off the bandage round its [Marley's] head, as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast."  Rather than being satisfied with his mouth falling open, this Marley's cheeks rip (yes, rip) apart with his full lower jaw disconnecting and dangling by flesh, then Marley uses his hands to manually move his jaw up and down to continue talking.  These moments are occasionally "lightened" by inappropriately broad, goofy humor, such as Scrooge tying his jaw back up to high, over his nose, or an extended scene in which Scrooge flees from the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and inexplicably shrinks to the size of a bug, accompanied by a high-pitched voice.  But outside of that latter sequence, and only occasional flourishes, the script is enormously faithful to a fault.
The animation is very richly detailed, and definitely the most refined of Zemeckis' mo-cap films, in particular with Scrooge, a character that benefits from a stylized design, hunched and twisted with a crone's nose.  Many of the supporting characters though, in particular the women characters such as Scrooge's sister Fan and Belle (both played Robin Wright), still exhibit the dreaded dead-eye syndrome.  It's the most lavishly-produced film adaptation of A Christmas Carol around, but it's simply missing a heart.
And the Ghost of Christmas Past Appears as: A literal candle, speaking in an Irish brogue, a face inside the candle flame and holding a snuffer cap.

Review: ANNIE (2014)

ANNIE  (FAMILY-COMEDY/MUSICAL)
1 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Will Gluck
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Quvenzhane Wallis, Rose Byrne, Bobby Cavanale, Cameron Diaz, David Zayas, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Dorian Missick, Tracie Thoms
Rated PG for some mild language and rude humor.
118 minutes
Verdict: What promised to be a modern re-envisioning of the old musical fails miserably as it too often aims to be modern in all the worst ways, with soulless, over-mixed musical numbers, brain-dead attempts at comedy and shoddy storytelling, in spite of some good casting.
YOU MAY ENJOY ANNIE (2014) IF YOU LIKED:
HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR  (2008)
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD  (2012)
EASY A  (2010)
HAIRSPRAY  (2007)
ENCHANTED  (2007)

At least on the surface, all the major ingredients to make a 2014 update of Annie, the 1977 stage musical based on the classic 1920 comic strip, Little Orphan Annie, seem to be in place.  They have a likable lead in Academy Award-nominated child actress Quvenzhane Wallis (who had a very brief role in last year's 12 YEARS A SLAVE, but is best known as "Hushpuppy" from BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD), and two talented, not to mention comedically-gifted, co-stars Jamie Foxx and Rose Byrne.  Director, co-producer and co-writer Will Gluck's last two theatrically-released films, EASY A and FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, were both surprisingly funny, and it's clear that he has good intentions with his re-envisioning of the familiar story.  Regardless, ANNIE is an utter failure.  Partly beat-driven, pop-styled musical aimed at the High School Musical crowd (assuming there still is one), and partly a confused mishmash of watery social commentary for politically-conscious parents, the movie is unfocused, cutesy and dull.
Reset in a contemporary New York City, Annie Bennett (Wallis) is a streetwise kid who was abandoned by her parents at an Italian restaurant six years ago and now lives in a foster home run by bitter alcoholic Colleen Hannigan (Cameron Diaz).  One day she has a run-in with Will Stacks (Foxx), a billionaire cell phone tycoon running for New York City mayor, but trailing in the polls for appearing out-of-touch.  When his encounter with Annie is caught on camera and goes viral, it humanizes him in the public eye and creates a boost in the polls, so Stacks' crafty campaign adviser, Guy (Bobby Cavanale), arranges to have Annie stay in Stacks' penthouse for a while as part of a thinly-veiled P.R. move.
Wallis is as pleasant as can be and has good chemistry with Foxx, who is to thank for most of the movie's few good laughs, while Rose Byrne, who plays Foxx's personal assistant and possible romantic interest, Grace, is as good as ever, even if the script doesn't serve anyone well.  Diaz and Cavanale are both flops, overplaying their already hammy characters, coming off embarrassing instead of funny.
As a musical, ANNIE is weirdly self-aware, where the characters burst into song like any other musical, but everyone around acknowledges it as singing.  It's an interesting idea, but not carried very far, and the new arrangements of the familiar songs (with some new ones as well) feel soulless.  Not that there's anything wrong with the modified lyrics, but for those familiar with the old ones, some of the changes may elicit giggles.
On the whole, it feels cheap and shoddy, with over-mixed musical numbers, a fast and loose narrative that relies too heavily on montages to string together the occasional contrived plot point, and a sickly assortment of lame jokes referencing social networking and internet culture.  It's a real shame too, because early on, there's potential for an interesting and witty satire of the musical's "insufferably happy-go-lucky orphan girl wins the lottery" story, but it quickly goes off the rails into brain-dead family fare with slightly hazy morals.

Review: THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES  (FANTASY/ACTION-ADVENTURE)
3 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Peter Jackson
Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Evangeline Lilly, Lee Pace, Luke Evans, Ken Stott, Aidan Turner, Cate Blanchett, Ryan Gage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Manu Bennett, John Bell, Graham McTavish, Dean O'Gorman
Rated PG-13 for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images.
Verdict: Peter Jackson's finale to The Hobbit trilogy is good enough, but not nearly as good as it could be.
YOU MAY ENJOY THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES IF YOU LIKED:
THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG  (2013)
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY  (2012)
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING  (2001)
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN  (2008)
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE  (2005)
The thing about Peter Jackson's trilogy adaptation of The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien, is that is was always going to be the little, underachieving brother of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) film trilogy.  Looking back as THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY neared release in 2012, we may have hoped it would be at least nearly as good as Jackson's earlier Academy Award-winning masterpiece, but it didn't make a lot of sense.  The books themselves are very notably disparate in tone; where The Lord of the Rings, as published in three parts, was a dark, weighty epic myth, The Hobbit was a much shorter, and much simpler, adventure story in the vein of Joseph Campbell's notion of the "monomyth," or "the hero's journey."  After the LOTR films set the standard, The Hobbit films would be forced to walk a line between their own source material and satisfying the movie fans.  It definitely did not help when the originally two-part adaptation was further split into three, and more inexplicably, all three were still pretty lengthy films (AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY being the longest at 169 min.).  The Hobbit trilogy cannot quite be what it should be, and cannot be The Lord of the Rings, so it stands somewhere in between in this weird halfway point.
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES (originally titled THERE AND BACK AGAIN) opens just immediately after the credits started rolling in the previous film, THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG.  The dwarf company of Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), of which the titular hobbit, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), is a member, has invaded the fallen dwarf mountain kingdom of Erebor, long claimed by the vicious dragon Smaug (performance capture and voice provided by Benedict Cumberbatch), who has now flown down to the nearby village of Laketown to cause devastation.  Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) is made the leader of the town when he successfully saves them from the dragon, but the survivors of Laketown are now homeless refugees and turn to help from Thorin and the dwarves, who now claim Erebor and its infinite treasures.  A curse lies over the treasure now though, and Thorin, possessed by its spell, reneges on his promise to help the people of Laketown, and moreover, the ancient dwarf stronghold/treasure trove has recently become the most valued piece of real estate in all of Middle-earth, both for its endless riches and strategic positioning.  This draws in the nearby kingdoms, all who want a piece of the bounty defended by a mere thirteen dwarves and a hobbit, and Thorin, willing to go to war over a cursed treasure, with orcs, elves, men, dwarves and more gathering their armies for the massive imminent conflict.

The Hobbit films, and certainly this one, suffer from an overuse of digital effects, such as frustratingly prominent light manipulation, and in one of this productions most disappointing moves, the decision to make the orcs with motion capture animation as opposed to physical makeup effects and costuming in the way LOTR used them.  A computer-rendered dwarf character feels like 'jumping the shark' though.  The character, Dáin, is a dwarf king who leads an army into battle atop a boar mount, and while voiced enthusiastically by Bill Connolly (who may have also provided the performance capture, but that information is not readily available), inexplicably appears onscreen as a CGI character, while any other notable dwarf character is an actor in costume and makeup.  Perhaps wisely, they never linger very long on the character's face, lest the pixels really sink in, but there's no hiding it.  There seems to be an utter lack of logic as to what characters or effects should be digital and not, and in the end digital always gets the upper hand, as opposed to LOTR's grounded, natural aesthetic that utilized digital effects to their best potential when necessary (apologies for all the Hobbit-LOTR comparisons, but frankly, that's what the film has been sold as anyway).
The action is copious and often prolonged, although we only see occasional moments of the actual titular battle, which mostly takes the background to lengthy showdowns between major characters of to the sides.  Some of it's pretty exciting, sometimes surprisingly grim, and so digital that it lacks any strong sense of consequence.  None of these things are bad necessarily, but feel like they could have been done better.  On the other, the would-be comic relief character Alfrid (Ryan Gage), the sleazy number-two to the old master of Laketown, who more-or-less throws his miserable lot in with Bard, is a dreadful misfire.  While in DESOLATION OF SMAUG, he was small and lightly amusing throwback to low-level bureaucratic slime-balls of Victorian-era fiction, here he takes a slightly more prominent role, cartoonishly bemoaning his situation and berating others regularly in a manner that clumsily flies in the face of everything else going on.
The humor that does work is primarily from Martin Freeman as Bilbo, the best part of the movie, and there's not nearly enough of him.  He's the heart and humor of the movie, a movie that too rarely proves itself beyond being a watchable curiosity.  One major credit to it, within the history of Tolkein onscreen, THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES finally provides some justification for one of Tolkien's most glaring (and repeated) cop-outs, if only for itself.  The most welcome addition to the material is the character Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), and her romance with one of Thorin's company, Kili (Aidan Turner); a welcome, if somewhat corny, vein of emotion to the story.  It's far better than the thuddingly dull first film in the trilogy, and while it's less bloated than second part, it's also less flavorful.  It's an obligatory ending, and ultimately a refreshing one; very large in scale, but not particularly memorable.
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES is good enough, but not nearly as good as it could be.

A Christmas Tale of Total Terror: THE SANTA CLAUSE

Imagine if you accidentally startled a home invader and the man fell to his death and vaporized.  Your emotionally-manipulative son begs you to try on the dead man's clothes, and because it's late and your kid is annoying, you decide to humor him.  But it turns out that this dead man's suit has a magic spell upon them, and by putting it on just once, your entire previous life and identity is forfeit.  You are now damned to eternal servitude (or at least until a violent death) to Christmas spirit and the children of the world.  This is the terrifying tale of how one man became... Santa Claus.

THE SANTA CLAUSE  (FAMILY-COMEDY/FANTASY, 1994) 

Directed by John Pasquin
Starring: Tim Allen, Judge Reinhold, Wendy Crewson, Eric Lloyd, David Krumholtz, Larry Brandenburg, Mary Gross, Paige Tamada, Peter Boyle, Judith Scott, Jayne Eastwood
Rated PG for a few crude moments.
97 minutes
Disney's 1994 fantasy-family-comedy THE SANTA CLAUSE is a horror movie that thinks it's a comedy.  Think David Cronenberg's THE FLY with a super sappy Christmas twist, then given a TV comedy-style treatment.
Comedian Tim Allen, who was at the height of his fame in 1994 with his highly-popular sitcom Home Improvement in its fourth season on ABC, stars as Scott Calvin, a successful toy advertising executive spending Christmas Eve with his insatiable son Charlie (Eric Lloyd), who can do nothing but complain and talk about how great his new stepfather Neal (Judge Reinhold) is.  That night, upon hearing clattering sounds up on the roof, Scott runs outside to see what's going on and startles Santa Claus, who then falls off the roof and possibly dies.  We don't know, because once Scott isn't looking, the body disappears and leaves the suit, along with a card advising: "If something should happen to me, put on my suit; the reindeer will know what to do."  Scott wants to do the sensible thing and not jump into a sleigh hauled by eight strange reindeer, but try explaining that to the emotionally-manipulative Charlie.  ["How come everything I want to do is stupid," Charlie asks, pouting.  I don't know about "everything" Charlie, but what you want to do right now is really stupid, and I hate you and don't want you to be happy.]  Skeptically and reluctantly, Scott plays along, going down the chimneys of the world and depositing presents beneath Christmas trees, and once all the presents are delivered, Scott and Charlie are taken to the North Pole.  The head elf, Bernard (David Krumholtz), informs Scott that by putting on the suit, he has forfeited his previous identity and become Santa Claus (how's that for some fine print?).  That is why you have to be so, so careful what you let your kids manipulate you into doing, because you could be pressed into indentured servitude to the Christmas spirit.
Scott continues to think that last Christmas Eve was a dream, or at least he hopes it was, while Charlie, in utter disregard for his dad's reputation, goes around telling everybody about it.  As if it isn't bad enough that Charlie's big mouth is getting him in trouble with his ex-wife Laura (Wendy Crewson) and Neal (who also happens to be a psychiatrist, and the frequently ridiculed voice of reason and rational thinking in the movie), Scott is being subjected to some real body horror.  He's getting fatter, like, way fatter.  You know, forty-five pounds per week.  Despite being a healthy middle-aged man, his hair has turned to a shock of white, and his facial hair is growing at an increasingly fast rate.  Even after shaving his face clean and dying his hair, his efforts are entirely reversed in a matter of seconds.  By cruel fate, one act of appeasement to his bratty son has completely robbed Scott of his identity and sense of self, and it's only so long before the holidays start again and the elves come to collect him.

This would have made far more sense approached as a horror film, but while Tim Allen has shown he's fine with "horrible," he doesn't really do "horror".  What a shame.  In fact, in true horror fashion, the film ends on the disconcerting note of Charlie smiling creepily as his dad flies the sleigh off into the night sky and says he plans to go into the "family business."  Did they think we forgot how Scott got the Santa gig?  Charlie's a sick bastard.

You better watch out...

Although there are a few inspired moments, THE SANTA CLAUSE isn't especially funny, and yet, none of the humor is nearly as dated as the special effects.  This came out a year after JURASSIC PARK, but the CGI warping and morphing effects in it wouldn't be out of place in late-1980s fantasy film.  Even while it's barely middle-of-the-road family fare up until then, it isn't until a little ways into the second half that THE SANTA CLAUSE just falls apart like a bunch of broccoli.  It's like anyone making a family film starring Santa Claus is obligated to show St. Nick apprehended by law enforcement and thrown in the slammer, ever since A MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET.  Granted, it's probably what we'd do in real life; we don't like to talk about it, but Santa is a little problematic, what with the watching everyone's children while they're sleeping and coaxing them to sit on his lap.  It's just the world we made for ourselves, I guess.  I'm fine with the trope of booking Santa, but what is with all the revamped Santa tech?  So many Christmas movies and TV specials turn Santa into a James Bond-style covert operation with elaborate gadgets (that rarely glitch, mind you), because Christmas magic will only get you so far, and then you have to bring in a fat elf with a British accent to play Q.  Gross.
The excellent NBC sitcom 30 Rock lampooned this kind of movie (and other formulaic holiday-themed movies) perfectly in the episode "Leap Day", with scenes from a movie within the show called "Leap Dave Williams", in which Jim Carrey plays Dave Williams, an uptight lawyer who starts transforming into the Leap Day mascot "Leap Day Williams" (he lives in the Mariana Trench and trades candy for children's tears) after a fishing trip incident.

If you are going to watch THE SANTA CLAUSE, the television airings and all format releases after the 1995 VHS and Laserdisc editions are a tad edited.  With the exception of a few off-color lines of dialogue and one mild swear word, it's pretty squeaky clean; one of those off-color lines cost some parents big phone bills though.  When his ex-wife gives Scott the phone number to her new husband's mother's house where she and Neal will be staying, Scott quips, "1-800-SPANK-ME?  I know that number!"  Sometimes little kids call the phone numbers that they hear in movies, and sometimes those phone numbers turn out to be real and cost money.  Sometimes kids rack up phone sex bills as high as $400.  Then Disney decides to play it safe from now on and take out phone sex numbers from DVD, Blu-ray and TV versions, so I just watch the VHS and feel edgy.

THE BEST PARTS:
Santa is a dick: On his first night as Santa, Scott Calvin accidentally wakes up a little girl-
Little Girl: "Santa?"
Scott: "Scott Calvin."
Little Girl: "How come your clothes are so baggy?
Scott: "Because Santa is watching his saturated fats."
Little Girl: "How come you don't have a beard?"
Scott: [exasperated] "Because I shaved!  You want this doll?  Go back to sleep."

On his way out, Scott grabs the cookies on the plate left out.
Little Girl: "You're supposed to drink the milk."
Scott: "Look, I'm lactose intolerant!  [getting right up in her face] And I am about this close to taking all of those presents back up the chimney!"
On his way back to the chimney, Scott whispers mockingly, "You're supposed to drink the milk."

Punch & Judy see Santa's underwear: Changing into pajamas at the North Pole, Scott starts taking off the Santa pants, and the Punch and Judy puppets nearby having a nonsensical conversation suddenly turn and scream, "AAAAH!" prompting Scott to immediately pull his pants back up and the puppets return to their conversation.  No word on how those puppets felt in the sequel when Santa brought back a Mrs. Claus.  I bet those perverts liked it.

Neil's sweaters: Following an argument in which Scott ridicules Neil, saying "The only thing you've got to worry about is where you're going to buy your sweaters when the circus pulls out of town," Neil breaks the awkward silence turning to his wife, telling her,
"You were right about the sweater thing."  Heaven knows what that's supposed to mean, and I have no justification for why I find it so funny.

THE WORST PARTS:
"Elves with attitude": "We're your worst nigthmare: elves with attitude," the snot-nosed little team leader of the E.L.F.S. (no justification for that acronym, but it's probably something like "Extremely Lame Fart Sniffers") tells to a police officer just before terrorizing him and breaking Santa out of hoosegow.  You can just tell by the way he delivers each of his lines that this kid was just the sh**iest kind of kid, and when his parents tried to ground him, he'd shout back, "You can't do this to me!  Do realize who I am?  I'm "E.L.F.S. Leader" from the holiday family favorite, THE SANTA CLAUSE!  You can't do this to me!"


Charlie:  Charlie just sucks.  Screw you, Charlie.

Fat British 'Q' Elf: Santa is supposed to be about Christmas magic, not Christmas gadgets.  It made

Gah, he's the worst.

a lot more sense in Rene Cardona's 1959 bad movie classic SANTA CLAUS (the one where he outwits Satan's demons to bring Christmas to the children of the world) when Santa's sidekick was Merlin (that Merlin), but here we're assaulted with the Christmas version of 007's tech guy.  He's the only elf in the entire North Pole with a British accent (or a non-American accent for that matter), and he's so self satisfied and probably sneaks cookies from Mrs. Claus' oven, because he's fat and stupid.

Review: EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS  (DRAMA/ACTION-ADVENTURE) 
2 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Ridley Scott
Starring: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, John Turturro, Aaron Paul, Isaac Andrews, Ben Mendelsohn, Maria Valverde, Golshifteh Farahani, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Andrew Tarbet
Rated PG-13 for violence including battle sequences and intense images.
150 minutes
Verdict: Despite some magnificent and exciting action set-pieces and a few intriguing ideas, Ridley Scott's rendering of the Old Testament's most epic tale is an epic without a heart, not to mention the problematic casting.
YOU MAY ENJOY EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS IF YOU LIKED:
NOAH  (2014)
GLADIATOR  (2000)
ROBIN HOOD (2010)
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS  (1956)
BEN-HUR  (1959)

The story of Moses as told in the Book of Exodus, from his rearing as an Egyptian prince, discovery of his heritage, fall from glory and return to the land of Egypt to lead his people, the Hebrews, out of slavery is one of the Bible's great stand-out narratives, let alone in all religious texts.  It's a classic and fantastic example of the "Hero's Journey," the man cast out from his home into the world, where he is called upon and reborn as something more than a man.  The story of Moses is one that's been told time and again, even if you don't realize it (THE LION KING and BATMAN BEGINS come to mind).  Of the major mainstream films to adapt the story in actuality, I believe EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS is only the fourth.  Two were done by Cecil B. DeMille, both titled THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, the first released in 1923, and the considerably better-known remake in 1959.  The last was DreamWorks Pictures' intended flagship animated feature film, THE PRINCE OF EGYPT (ANTZ was released little more than two months previously due to a feud with Disney and to give PRINCE OF EGYPT a stronger market standing), released in 1998.  I've never seen DeMille's 1923 film, but I don't think there's any question which, out of DeMille or DreamWorks, is the superior film.  It's THE PRINCE OF EGYPT by far.  I'm not kidding, but perhaps that's best saved for another day.
In the United States, we like to think of Moses as one of the great representatives of our values, even go to great lengths and indulgence of outrage to display the Ten Commandments on government property, when frankly, it would make a lot more sense to have those monuments on church properties, whether or not it's "Constitutional" to display on public property (I go to churches for those sorts of things anyway).  On the other hand, one of our beloved "Founding Fathers," Thomas Paine, best known for his 48-page pamphlet Common Sense, which is widely attributed with bearing strong responsibility to swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence, also wrote that Moses was a "detestable villain" and guilty of "unexampled atrocities."  It's fair to say that even Moses is a figure widely open to interpretation.
And so we get to Sir Ridley Scott's take.  Scott is a very high-profile director with an eclectic filmography from bona fide classics like ALIEN, BLADE RUNNER and THELMA & LOUISE, to memorable but imperfect action-adventures like GLADIATOR, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN and PROMETHEUS, and to intermittently interesting but ultimately disappointing failures such as 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE and ROBIN HOOD (2010).  Very unfortunately, EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS belongs to that latter group.
The film opens in Ancient Egypt, 1300 B.C., when the nearly 400,000 Hebrew people are enslaved by the Egyptians, forced under the taskmaster's whip to build their massive cities and monuments.  Moses (Christian Bale) is a general in the Egyptian army, and an adopted son of the royal family, who leads the army alongside his brother and heir to Pharaoh's crown, Ramesses (Joel Edgerton).  When visiting the city of the slaves to assess their conditions, Moses the Hebrew elder Nun (Ben Kingsley), who informs him of his true lineage as a Hebrew; a revelation that Moses is neither happy to hear or believe.  Someone else overhears the conversation though, and informs Ramesses, who has Moses exiled to the desert.  Moses survives and comes through to the other side, starting a new life as a shepherd and married to a Midianite named Zipporah (Maria Valverde), with whom he has a son.  God has greater plans for Moses however, calling upon him to return to Egypt, and acting through him, in a war of attrition, win freedom for the Hebrews.

The casting of this film has been a point of controversy, and I'm inclined to agree with those disappointed that the major roles of these Middle Eastern characters were cast with white actors.  It's not that it's an all-white cast, because it absolutely isn't; Golshifteh Farahani, who plays Ramesses' wife, is Iranian, Kevork Malikyan, as Jethro, is Armenian, and Kingsley, born British, is from a mixed heritage of Indian and Middle Eastern regions; to name a few.  But the big roles to seem to be dominated by vanilla.  Scott's excuse is that in order to make a film of this size (size $140 million) in Hollywood, the studios demand crowd-drawing names.  Bale, yeah, I can see that.  Aaron Paul (who plays Moses' protege Joshua), umm...maybe?  Edgerton?  Edgerton, while a fine actor, is hardly a household name.  They aren't bad in their roles, but it's definitely a stumbling block (Yul Brynner was less white than Joel Edgerton) when settling into what's supposed to be Ancient Egypt.  Bale's performance doesn't disappoint though, with a "touched" aspect following his encounter with God.  Racially appropriate or not, the really big miscasting in the movie is Scottish actor Ewen Bremner as a scholar in Pharoah's court, who has the unfortunate responsibility of delivering clumsy exposition to explain the natural causes of the plagues (calm down fundamentalists, does a miracle really not count if God creates it using natural causes?).  It's not just that his character's purpose is lousy, but Bremner works great when you want him to make things funny and/or quirky, and in most other things, as in this, he feels wildly out of place, even for his minor role.
Unfortunately, Scott's execution of the story, while not as shallow as the cheesy, bloated whale that is THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, lacks a strong sense of pathos or any heart beating at the center of it.  It hits the goal posts of the story, and what Scott seems most interested in is seeing Ancient Egypt and the plagues visually realized with creative explanations.  At the very least, he's good at that, and the movie has some spectacular action and stunning visuals.  The story of Moses is not merely spectacle, and certainly not intellectual though, so it ultimately feels for naught without an emotional core.

Monthly Movie Preview: December 2014

December continues the second busiest time of the year for movies, the holiday season.  A counterpart to the summer season, the holiday season is similarly filled with high-profile tentpole films, although they tend to have a more focused aim at the family demographic, such as this month's NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: SECRET OF THE TOMB, ANNIE and INTO THE WOODS, or awards season potential, such as EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS or UNBROKEN.  The crown jewel of this month's box office prospects is undoubtedly the climactic chapter of The Hobbit Trilogy, THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES, but those looking for comedy are sure to find it in the already controversial but hugely promising THE INTERVIEW.  Happy holidays!

December 12th
EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS  (DRAMA/ACTION)

Directed by Ridley Scott; Starring: Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Aaron Paul, John Turturro, Ben Kingsley, Sigourney Weaver, Maria Valverde, Indira Varma, Hiam Abbass, Kevork Malikyan
Rated PG-13 for violence including battle sequences and intense images.
The second biblical epic of 2014 (I'm sorry, but SON OF GOD just does not count) comes from a filmmaker with experience in swords-and-sandals epics, Sir Ridley Scott, the director of GLADIATOR.  He's kind of hit-and-miss, with some big hits and big misses (he's also responsible for 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE), so this is a wild card.  Based on the Book of Exodus from the Bible, it's based on the story of Moses (played by Christian Bale), a Hebrew raised as a prince in Ancient Egypt during a time of enslavement for Hebrews, who came to liberate his people as a prophet from the Pharaoh.  Although the specific Pharaoh is not named in scripture, this interpretation goes with the most popular choice, Ramesses II, aka Ramesses the Great (believed to have ruled from 1279 BCE to 1213 BCE), played by Joel Edgerton, and like previous adaptations, appears to emphasize the brotherly relationship between Moses and Ramesses, and how that factors into them as enemies.  Originally beginning production under the simpler, and frankly better, title EXODUS, the title absorbed the cooler title GODS AND KINGS as a subtitle after Steven Spielberg abandoned his long-gestating Moses project by that title, creating the combination EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS, which makes it sound like a would-be franchise, which is stupid.  As far as I know, there are no EXODUS franchise plans, because that would be stupid.  Scott's interpretation appears to be war/action-oriented, perhaps borrowing from some historians' theories of Moses as a militaristic prophet, plus action opens its appeal wider to mass audiences.  Nonetheless, expect complaints about "the Hollywood version".  Scott also appears to be doing double duty by making both a Bible movie and a Holocaust movie, as the advertising reveals unmistakable visual references to the Holocaust, such as piles of bodies and hangings.  I really, really hope Scott delivers on this film, because I love Bible movies when they're good, and the Moses story in particular is a favorite of mine.  The only serious concern is the casting- the cast is a great line-up, but why did they cast so many roles, especially Pharaoh, with white actors?  Sigourney Weaver does not look right in an Ancient Egyptian getup.  She looks like she should be at a really expensive costume party.

December 17th
THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES  (FANTASY/ACTION-ADVENTURE)

Directed by Peter Jackson; Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Luke Evans, Orlando Bloom, Evangeline Lily, Lee Pace, Aidan Turner, Benedict Cumberbatch
Not Yet Rated
Peter Jackson's trilogy adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkein's The Hobbit has been interesting at the very least, and this final chapter feels like obligatory viewing if you already care in the slightest, but these movies have been incredibly imperfect.  The bright side is that they seem to be improving with each installment, with the first being arduous and tonally out of sorts, the second being darker and more flavorful, if no less bloated, and this climactic chapter now having the advantage of a shorter running time and a lot more action (you know, being a battle between five armies and all).  Our expectations have been tempered, and at the very least, it's practically guaranteed to be exciting fare.

December 19th
ANNIE  (MUSICAL/FAMILY)

Directed by Will Gluck; Starring: Jamie Foxx, Quvenzhane Wallis, Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale, Cameron Diaz, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Tracy Thoms, Dorian Missick, David Zayas
Rated PG for some mild language and rude humor.
I'm actually very surprised that this remake of the musical Annie, based on the classic Little Orphan Annie comic strip, doesn't look terrible.  In fact, it looks alright.  It began life as a starring vehicle for Will Smith's daughter Willow Smith, which sounds bad, but eventually she dropped out and was replaced by Quvenzhane Wallis, who was delightful in BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, plus added director Will Gluck, director two previous pleasant surprises, EASY A and FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS.  I'm not saying that this contemporary reiteration of Annie will be anything particularly special, but it looks kind of good.

December 19th
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: SECRET OF THE TOMB  (FAMILY/FANTASY)
Directed by Shawn Levy; Starring: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Dan Stevens, Ben Kingsley, Skyler Gisondo, Steve Coogan, Rebel Wilson, Ricky Gervais
Rated PG for mild action, some rude humor and brief language.
Five years since NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN, Ben Stiller returns as museum night guard Larry Daley, who traverses the globe to find what makes the magical Tablet of Ahkmenrah tick, when its power to bring the museum exhibits to life each night begins to wane.  It's the last major film for both the late Robin Williams and the late Mickey Rooney, stuffed into a packed all-star lineup that also includes Owen Wilson, Ben Kingsley, Rebel Wilson, Ricky Gervais, Dick Van Dyke and CGI dinosaur skeletons, and I guess your entertainment from it will depend on your appreciation for the work of director Shawn Levy, who is usually adequate at best (the first NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM, CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, REAL STEEL) and unbearable at worst (THE INTERNSHIP, CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN 2).  BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN was a typical case of Levy proving utterly incapable of reigning in the chaos, and as a result, it was very dull, in spite of a bright Amy Adams performance, and while Adams is not returning for this round, the advertising proudly shows that the chaos is still plentiful, and with plenty of monkey pee.  Frankly, it looks embarrassing.

December 25th
THE INTERVIEW  (ACTION-COMEDY)

Directed by Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen; Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Lizzy Caplan, Randall Park, Timothy Simons, Charles Rahi Chun, Rob Lowe
Rated R for pervasive language, crude and sexual humor, nudity, some drug use and bloody violence.
From Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, the writing-directing team behind one of the funniest comedies in recent years, THIS IS THE END, this movie has already gotten a good bit of free publicity thanks to North Korea's threat of a "decisive and merciless countermeasure" upon the film's release.  On the one hand, a movie isn't the best excuse for a war, but on the other hand, it's not the first time that North Korea has made a stink about a movie lampooning their dictators (in 2004, North Korea made similar threats over TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE), and at least the movie looks amazing.  Rogen stars alongside his THIS IS THE END co-star James Franco as celebrity journalists who get the interview of a lifetime with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un (played by Randall Park), and the CIA recruits them to assassinate their subject.  There'll be celebrity cameos, abundant crudity and over-the-top violence for sure, and I can hardly wait.

December 25th
INTO THE WOODS  (MUSICAL/FANTASY)

Directed by Rob Marshall; Starring: Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, Johnny Depp, Lilla Crawford, Daniel Huttlestone, Tracey Ullman, Christine Baranski
Rated PG for thematic elements, fantasy action and peril, and some suggestive material.
Adapted from Stephen Sondheim's Tony-winning Broadway musical, INTO THE WOODS is a fairy tale mash-up featuring famous characters like Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), Prince Charming (Chris Pine), Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy) and the Big Bad Wolf (Johnny Depp).  At the center of it all are a poor Baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt), cursed childless by a witch (Meryl Streep), who embark on a quest to rid themselves of their curse.  Other than it being a popular stage musical and a fairy tale mash-up, I know little about the source material (that's how I like it going into a movie), but it could be really good.  My one big apprehension, and it is substantial, is director Rob Marshall, whose only really good film to date was his theatrical feature debut CHICAGO in 2002, and has since had a career comprised of misfires, his last being PIRATES OF CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES, the only truly bad film of that series (yes).  I'm watching for the early responses, because this could all too easily go far to one way or another.

December 25th
UNBROKEN  (WAR DRAMA)

Directed by Angelina Jolie; Starring: Jack O'Connell, Miyavi, Garrett Hedlund, Jai Courtney, Domhnall Gleeson, Finn Wittrock, Alex Russell, Luke Treadaway
Rated PG-13 for war violence including intense sequences of brutality, and for brief language.
Yet another biopic in an awards season dominated by them, Angelina Jolie's second narrative feature film as director tells the true story of Olympic track star Louis "Louie" Zamperini (played by Jack O'Connell) who joined the U.S. Air Force in World War II and survived for weeks adrift at sea after crashing down in the Pacific, before enduring two-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war to the Japanese.  The script is written by the Coen brothers, although a script alone does not promise too much in the Coens' careers; on the other hand, it's prestigious material, with cinematography by the highly-acclaimed Roger Deakins, musical score by Alexandre Desplat, and a cast of promising up-and-comers.  Even if you don't love it, I'm sure your parents will.