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Reviews
Pi (1998)
Pretentious Twaddle Imagines Itself Interesting
It's shot in high-contrast grainy black and white, so you just KNOW it's got to be serious.
I saw the "shocking" ending coming from the time he disassembled the computer mainframe in the first couple of minutes. This film is drivel, but imagines that it isn't. The entire move strikes me as being a lot like its Lenny Meyer character: annoyingly obsessed with something not especially interesting.
I get that the repeated scenes (Cohn taking pills, Cohen at the bathroom mirror, the pointless story about looking at the sun, that dreadful screeching sound during Cohen's attacks) are supposed reflect the "patterns" that Cohen believes are in all things, but the rest of the film falls short on so many levels.
It is ably acted: that gets it a ★. I like the break-beat theme, so there's another ★. And as another reviewer points out, the math problem presented by Jenna at the end resolves to 22/7, a famous approximation of pi, so that's a third ★.
Peter & the Wolf (2006)
Beautifully realized, masterfully matched to the music
In interviews on the DVD, Templeton says that hers is a darker Peter & The Wolf than others. Compared to Templeton's other work (the brilliantly crafted, deeply moving, but thoroughly distressing "Dog" and the creepy "Stanley", for instance), and considering the way she ends her "Peter", I'm not sure it's as dark as she thinks it is.
This Peter and the Wolf is clearly not for little kids (when the wolf eats Duck, Peter's best friend, there's no hint that she — swallowed whole in a single gulp in Prokofiev's tale, but taken in several gore-free bites here — is alive and quacking in the end), but for anyone old enough to appreciate the scope of this mini masterpiece, a rewarding discovery awaits.
The sense of connection between Peter and the Wolf is palpable. Two starving beasts get a taste of what they crave: The Wolf, a scrawny duck, and Peter, escape from his grandfather's stern, austere care. If you crave stop-animation with depth, substance, and beauty, you will find this brief film a 30-minute treat, too.
Plane Dumb (1932)
Dumb racist tripe
My God, the things that passed for entertainment in this country...
This is *not* the "Tom and Jerry" you may have enjoyed on Saturday Mornings, featuring a hapless cat and a clever mouse. This is a much earlier animation series, featuring a pair of Mutt-and-Jeff clones who get themselves into various scrapes that result in any of the then-typical dancing-skeleton-type gags that made up so much of early animation.
This particularly vile outing, apparently originally intended as a vehicle for a pair of actual black stage comedians of the time, has the pair crashing in the ocean while flying to Africa, necessitating black-face make-up, exaggerated "negro" dialect and "Feets, don't fail me now" situations.
It only shows that in the 70 years between emancipation and this film, the American view of Africans hadn't progressed much. Then again, at least one of them apparently had a pilot's license.
I'll Fly Away (1991)
Patterned after "Mockingbird", but not a clone
There are differences between "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "I'll Fly Away", but I find that the similarities make them very much "birds of a feather." They are set 26 about years apart. TKAM famously begins, "Macomb was a tired old town, even in 1932, when I first knew it." It's harder to pin down the time of IFA, but several sources place it in 1958. I thought that we saw John F. Kennedy assassinated in an episode, but I don't rightly recall. Forrest Bedford would have been about ten years older than Scout, Jem and Dill were in 1932 -- right between the ages of the kids and "Boo" Radley.
Beyond the differences, it's the setup and the subject that are paired: a single lawyer father (virtually single, in the case of IFA, until they killed off Gwen in order to clear the way for a guilt-free romance with Miss LeKatzis) in a Southern town with a black housekeeper, a couple of kids, and the ever-present tensions between black and white.
Then there is the matter of the housekeeper's name: Harper Lee. Lilly Harper. Coincidence? I rather doubt it.
I also think it is not coincidental that both works were set about exactly 30 years in the past, about the distance in time between their settings.
As PBS always says when they air it, it was "too good for television." I agree, and cherish my aging VHS copies and hope they'll eventually be available on DVD.
The Polar Express (2004)
A Hit and Some Misses
My 7-year-old son and I were excited to see this film, having read and enjoyed the book many times.
While we were both moved by the parts that were supposed to be moving, thrilled by the parts that were supposed to be thrilling, and awed by the parts that were supposed to be awesome, in the end, it missed the mark for me.
I had a hard time getting past how strange and un-real the kids looked and moved. Their eyes were too big, which wasn't cute, it was just ... disturbing. And please, that whiny kid with the glasses... Maybe the director needs to LEARN that flat-out annoying characters are, well, flat-out annoying.
On the other hand, the best bit in the film is the lost-ticket sequence, which brings to life my favorite illustration in the book, the two-page spread of the wolves watching the train pass in the distance. What a great choice to take one of the quietest moments in the book and use it to kick off some of the biggest thrills of the film.
I'm sure it'll be a huge hit, but I doubt that I'll want to buy the DVD...
Maybe we'll just read the book again.
Hot Wheels Highway 35 World Race (2003)
Just about right for a six-year-old
I was pleasantly surprised at the evident effort that went into the design of this film: although it is pretty obviously computer generated, it has something of a hand-drawn look. The action is pretty much constant, and there is just enough story to hold it together. My six-year-old "Hot Wheels" fan, (recently graduated from Thomas the Tank Engine), ate it up.
Plot summary: a sort-of-mad scientist opens a portal to "Highway 35," a futuristic orange-paved race track built ages ago by the "Accelerons." The scientist picks a handful of racing pros and at least one 16-year-old skater dude. The racers travel through volcanoes, ice-caves, deserts, and other assorted dangers in search of the "Wheel of Power."