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As I set this up to watch it, I realised that I can't remember why I bought this film. There must have been something about it when I saw it for the first time that prompted me to buy it.
I watched this one on my own on a rainy Saturday afternoon, which felt appropriate. And I'm left thinking that my main reasoning for buying it was my love of stop motion animation. The story doesn't hold my attention the entire way through.
There's many people in this world who love Neil Gaiman's writing. I want to love it, and I've read a few of his books, but there seems to be something about it that I don't quite connect to. I'm yet to pinpoint what it is I'm missing. And I think that carries through to this film for me. Much like with his novels, there are moments that grab me and there are moments that I just drift through.
Final Thought: This is one of the few films that I watch and think "That moment would have been pretty cool in 3D..."
Up Next: Cradle 2 The Grave (2003)
The characters are what make these films work for me. They appeal to my sense of humour. They really do strike the perfect balance between emotion and the ludicrous in a way that works for me. That said, I only went to see this film thanks to the good feelings engendered by its predecessor, and I wouldn't say that it was in the same league. It was great at the time, because it had been a while since I'd seen the one before it. But re-watching the original film confirmed to me my preference for it over this sequel.
Mainly, I think I find the villain in Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 a bit of a... hassle. I think that's the best word for it. Rather than providing impetus for the plot, I feel like he gets in the way of it. And that goes twofold for his orangutan sidekick. The first film only needed the villain to be a vague idea in the background; the entertainment came from watching the characters reacting and dealing with consequences. The villain in this film tried to steal the show from the main characters too much for my liking, making this film the lesser film. But what do I know? The Bassist says he prefers this one to the original (though he did see this one first).
Final Thought: "There's a leek in the boat" makes me laugh every. single. time.
Up Next: Clueless (1995)
This film was a real surprise to me in how good it was. From the title, it seemed like such a stupid film. And it is, but in a wonderful way.
I love animation, so there's a lot of animated films that I'll watch as a gamble, and this was one of them. I fell in love from it right from the start, at the moment they introduced of spray on shoes. And I kept loving it, because there's so many delightful little side moments in this film. You have to keep watching so you don't miss something. Not to mention the fact that Steve is one of the greatest sidekicks ever.
Even though this film is a ludicrous idea, it's tempered by Flint's dad, who they've made such a touching character - hairy and gruff but well meaning. And they deftly set the poignancy of this relationship early in the film and thereby give some sort of vague purpose to why Flint behaves as he does.
I think this film works for me because it embraces what it is and then takes it just a little bit further. It leaves me teary (because I'm a sap, apparently) and jubilant (because Yay Animation!), which is just great.
Final Thought: What's distressing is that Baby Brent reminds me of someone I know, and I can't figure out who...
Up Next: Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 (2013)
I bought this film without having seen it, purely because it was Studio Ghibli. It was at a time when I was buying a Ghibli film a week, and my decisions were based entirely on the DVD cover. I didn't realise at the time that The Cat Returns wasn't made by Hayao Miyazaki himself, so sadly it isn't quite of the same calibre of the Miyazaki's films. That said, it's still a lovely, peaceful little film.
It beats you about the head with the moral a bit, but I can forgive that in a Ghibli film for some reason. The thing with these films is that I feel like I can't look away. Not because the plot is complicated and I might miss something, but because they're just so visually stunning that I'd hate to miss anything.
Final Thought: The soundtrack is oddly jovial in moments of upset.
Up Next: Centre Stage (2000)
Computer animation evolved very quickly, and aged very quickly as a result. This is forgivable though, when presented with an enchanting story. And A Bug's Life uses the classic mistaken identity plot to tell a charming tale.
The writers are clever in the grand problems they create for such small creatures. The shift in scale is part of what's so interesting about the movie. The world in which it occurs is very contained, but you don't even notice until the very end.
Something in particular that I noticed - too often, applause is used as a cheap payoff gimmick in films. Not here. The ovation by the characters at the end is powerful in a way that I don't recall ever seeing in a live action movie.
Final Thought: I do insist that, before watching any Pixar film in my collection, one must first watch the short that accompanies it in order to make the viewing experience complete.
Up Next: The Cabin In The Woods (2012)
This is easily one of my top three childhood films. It is as comforting and familiar to me as the smell of my father's cooking. Angela Lansbury is just wonderful, and I was always amazed by films that combined animation with live action. I was amazed by how they managed to put real people together with something that I knew was created on paper. It seemed extremely clever to me and I was fascinated by any film where it occurred (which led me to watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as a kid; a decision I regretted. That steamroller scene was upsetting).
I regularly hired the video from my local store and knew it back to front, but upon purchasing the 25th anniversary DVD, it turns out that there was a lot more to the story than was shown in the initial version that I saw. There are quite a few songs that weren't in the video I saw as a kid, and the extended Portobello Rd dance sequence is lovely. I mentioned previously that I resented the addition of a song to my DVD copy of Beauty and the Beast ("Human Again" wasn't in the original version, and I don't feel that the film flows smoothly in to it, so it jars my viewing experience), but I must say that the additional scenes in Bedknobs and Broomsticks work for me. They give the characters more depth. As a kid, I particularly never understood why Emelius suddenly shacked up with Miss Price at the end, but with the extended version their quiet affection for each other is shown and so it all makes sense.
Final Thought: It often happens that, as an adult, you'll go back and watch a film or TV show you loved as a kid and realise that it was actually a bit messed up. It somehow didn't seem that way to you when you were young. Yet with Bedknobs and Broomsticks, I always thought the deflation of the suits of armour most creepy, even as a child.
Up Next: Being John Malkovich (1999)
I remember there being a fuss about this movie when it was released. The fact that computers were used to partly animate the ballroom scene was a big deal. It seemed so strange to me at the time that a person would use a computer for animation. I knew that making a cartoon involved several pieces of paper that you drew on and then flicked between a lot. The idea of using a computer for that was just weird.
I went to see this film at the cinema and just loved Belle. She was bookish, brunette and inquisitive, which I found appealing. I also loved the music theatre nature of the soundtrack. The opening theme is gorgeous and the songs have such entertaining lyrics ("I use antlers in all of my decorating...").
I do wonder though, how much of the furniture in the castle was just furniture? If it was entirely furnished with the staff in their transformed state, what did they do once everyone was human again?
Final Thought: Thinking back, "inventor" was a common profession according to 90s films...
Up Next: Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)
When I was a kid discovering music, I would pinch my father's CDs that I liked the most. My father listened to a lot of jazz and classical music, so that was where I started. Henry Mancini made an impression on me. I loved "Baby Elephant Walk" and "Pink Panther". There was another song on the same album called "Main Title from The Great Mouse Detective".
Being a child, and therefore prone to come up with my own definitions for things, I thought it cool that a composer my father liked had written a piece of music about an imaginary mouse detective. I thought it was just an idea that had occurred to Mancini one day; "Suppose there was this detective, but he was a mouse... I think his life would sound like this..." After all, he'd written music about baby elephants and pink panthers, so for me it wasn't much of a stretch. I loved the piece of music and was satisfied with my explanation for it.
Years later, I discovered the film Basil, The Great Mouse Detective at the video store. It had animals in it, so of course I hired it. When the opening credits started and the theme played, I froze. I knew that music! I scrabbled through my CDs to confirm that I was right, and sure enough, there it was on the track listing. I'd been listening to it for years and never learned that it was the theme music for a Disney film before that day that I'd hired it on a whim.
After I'd watched the film, I pulled out my CD and listened carefully to the title music several times. I heard it so differently having seen the film. I could picture the characters and their world. The piece seemed more emotive to me, knowing what it was created for. This was a piece that was part of my discovery of music. It wasn't something that I was told was good, it was a piece that I decided myself that I liked. I had made that choice independent of outside influence. I had listened to that album so many times growing up, I knew every little nuance of every track. And then, out of the blue, completely unwittingly, I'd discovered a whole new meaning to a piece that I thought I knew so well. It was an amazing experience to listen to a piece of music that I knew intimately, and hear it as though I was listening to it for the first time. Because it gave me that feeling, this film will always be special to me.
Final Thought: Hooray for mice with Scottish accents.
Up Next: Batman Begins (2005)
Within in the first five minutes of this film, I was struck by how gentle it is. I can't think of a better word for it. This film is gentle. This feeling stays throughout, even in the dramatic moments, because the protagonist is a shy creature and it wouldn't suit his story to present it in another way.
This was yet another Disney movie that I didn't see while young. So many people say that they were shocked and devastated when Bambi's mother meets her fate, but I already knew of her demise before I saw the film for the first time. As a result, I almost feel like I'm missing an essential part of what it is to watch Bambi, because her death wasn't a shock to me. For such a thing to happen in what is mostly such a peaceful film was quite traumatic for many viewers, I believe.
Although I didn't watch the film as a child, I once again must have somehow got my hands on it's related picture book, because I sure did know that I liked Thumper. I was actually thrilled on watching the movie for the first time to discover that Thumper's character is even more charming than I'd imagined.
The presence of man as an ever present but never seen threat is disturbing, and apparently didn't sit well with audiences in the original theatrical release. We're shown the idyll of Bambi's world, and then pretty bluntly told that humans constantly threaten to destroy it. In the current age this is more acceptable, with more people environmentally aware, but back then it would have been pretty confronting. In fact it's now common for hunters to be portrayed as villains, whereas back then it was quite a commercial risk to make such a connection.
Final Thought: I really love when animators take care to accurately portray the movement of animals.
Up Next: The Bandwagon (1953)
