Monthly Archives: August 2007

The Simpsons Movie

Posted on August 1, 2007

What a great coincidence that my 500th post to this blog is the long-awaited big screen bow of those five funny members of the four fingered family and their pals in Springfield. Matt Groening, James Brooks, Al Jean and their massive creative crew took 18 years to get this flick done and the result is really good though falling just short of greatness from, strangely, focusing too closely on the family but not using the great supporting cast.

In The Simpsons Movie Homer’s appetite is the cause of calamity. Too impatient to wait in line to drop off some toxic waste when free donuts are available across town, he dumps the load in Lake Springfield and its the tipping point to disaster. Lisa, meanwhile, has met the perfect boy, a new character called Colin, and Bart is realizing that uber-wuss Flanders is a better dad than his can ever be.

EPA director/greedy corporate tycoon Russ Cargill (Albert Brooks) gets the okay from President Arnold Schwarzenegger to enclose the town in a huge glass dome to punish their unrepentant polluting ways. Barely escaping the nooses put up by torch and pitchfork branding townsfolk through a sinkhole, Homer takes Marge and the kids to start over in Alaska. When Marge sees on TV that Springfield’s about to be replaced by a brand new Grand Canyon and insists on returning to prevent it, despite Homer’s refusal she packs up and leaves with Bart, Lisa and Maggie.

There are a ton of funny bits, which any longtime viewer of the TV series will expect, but overall the main creative team appeared to decide that at least for the first movie nearly everything needs to be about the Simpsons and so the supporting characters, other than Flanders, are mainly involved for small gags. Colin, Russ Cargill and an Inuit woman who helps Homer find his epiphany after Marge leaves have the biggest secondary parts but one has to wonder if any of the three will turn up on new TV episodes.

Bottom line for me: plenty of laughs, a good single plot throughout (rather than, say, three or four episodes loosely tied together as has been the case with other 30 minutes series gone to the movies) and movie-sized hijinks, 3.5 out of 5 stars, but not the awesome film this might have been.

recommended

Posted in animation, comedy, family, Recommended, Reviews, summer2007 | Comments Off

Assassins

Posted on August 1, 2007

This 1995 movie was not very well regarded when it came out, nor afterwards, but interesting for several reasons and worth catching on cable or on demand:

  • A young Antonio Banderas as the cruel, nasty, ambitious contract killer
  • An unusually subdued, thoughtful Sly Stallone as the older hitman realizing his arsenal’s near empty
  • Julianne Moore is first the two assassins’s target and then the final straw in Sly’s self-realization.
  • The script is the first produced feature written by Andy and Larry Wachowski, who of course went on to make the Matrix trilogy.
  • Richard Donner directed, making this in the middle of a string of four Mel Gibson flicks (Lethal Weapon 3, Maverick, Conspiracy Theory and Lethal Weapon 4). Donner also directed the first two Christopher Reeve Supermans, The Goonies, The Omen and the first two Lethal Weapons.

recommended

Posted in adventure, drama, Recommended, Reviews, thriller | Comments Off

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Posted on August 1, 2007

This fifth movie in the Boy Wizard series is enjoyable but suffers from a lack of a clear objective, most likely because this is actually the first of a three part finale while each previous story had a well-defined milestone. JK Rowling’s novel handled this by dropping hints and bits about the prophecy regarding Harry and his dark counterpart but the script by Michael Goldenberg made no mention of it until just before the Ministry of Magic confrontation that climaxes this movie.

No knocks against Goldenberg (the 2003 Peter Pan and Jodie Foster’s Contact) but Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is also the first script not written by Steve Kloves and I’m happy to see that Kloves is doing the script for Half-Blood Prince, due to arrive on your local cinema screen in 16 months. David Yates took over the director’s chair and will also return for HBP.

Harry, Hermione and (less so, but that’s his part) Ron have learned from the harsh lessons of their previous four terms at Hogwarts but, as we see right from go, Voldemort is only getting started: two dementors attack Harry and his muggle cousin Dudley in the first scene, with Harry barely able to drive them off with his Patronus and his use of magic leads straight to a trumped up trial in front of the entire Wizangamot.

Not everyone, you see, believes our boy that Voldemort has returned and that he killed Cedric Diggory at the end of the Tri-Wizards Cup in the previous book. The Death Eaters do as do Harry’s friends in the Order of the Phoenix but, denial not being just a river in Egypt, key members of the magical community like Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge and his top staff refuse to admit it. So Potter’s use of magic in front of Dudley can’t be justified and therefore deserves expulsion but Dumbledore arrives in time to convince the Wizangamot to acquit.

Most of the movie, unfortunately, focuses on the antics of Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), Fudge’s assistant who comes to Hogwarts to restore order and stamp out absurd notions of appropriate student behavior. These bits are good for quite a few laughs and getting Harry to step up as a leader among his peers but were, correctly in the novel just a sideline. This volume wasn’t titled Harry Potter and the Annoyingly Nasty Woman, after all.

recommended, just

Posted in action, fantasy, Recommended, Reviews, summer2007 | Comments Off