Back to School: written by Rodney Dangerfield, Rich Eustis, Harold Ramis, PJ Torokvei, William Porter, Steven Kampmann, Dennis Snee, and Greg Fields; directed by Alan Metter; starring Rodney Dangerfield (Thornton Melon), Sally Kellerman (Dr. Turner), Burt Young (Lou), Keith Gordon (Jason Melon), Robert Downey Jr. (Derek Lutz), and Ned Beatty (Dean Martin) (1986): Rodney Dangerfield's star turn here made this a box-office success. It's a surprisingly sweet-hearted comedy, utterly improbable and probably somewhat perplexing from a woman's standpoint (why is Dangerfield's character so attractive to women?).
Ignore the boilerplate Hollywood sexism, though, and one can derive a lot of enjoyment out of the one-liners, the improbable situations, the physical comedy, the bizarre comic stylings of supporting actors such as Robert Downey Jr. and Sam Kinison, Dangerfield's pop-eyed charm, and Dangerfield's surprisingly moving reading of Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." As Dangerfield's son, Keith Gordon does a nicer version of his damned nerd in Christine; a very young Terry Farrell, 8 years away from Star Trek: Deep Space 9, plays his love interest. Recommended.
Galaxy Quest (1999): written by David Howard and Robert Gordon; directed by Dean Parisot; starring Tim Allen (Jason Nesmith), Sigourney Weaver (Gwen DeMarco), Alan Rickman (Alexander Dane), Tony Shaloub (Fred Kwan), Sam Rockwell (Guy Fleegman), Daryl Mitchell (Tommy Webber), and Enrico Colantoni (Mathesar): The best Star Trek movie that isn't a Star Trek movie ever made. Galaxy Quest runs with an idea that's actually been a staple of fan fiction since fan fiction came into existence in the 1970's because of Star Trek's devoted fans. What if the Star Trek actors found themselves on the real Enterprise on a real mission?
In this case, the show is Galaxy Quest, an early 1980's sf show that riffs on both the original Trek and the Next Generation. The plot's enough of a romp that I won't spoil any of it. The actors are all terrific. Tim Allen is great as the self-absorbed but ultimately good-hearted William Shatner stand-in, Alan Rickman kills as a classically trained British actor forever typecast as Allen's logical second-in-command, and Sigourney Weaver gets a lot of laughs out of a character whose sole job on the original show was to repeat what the computer said (shades of 'Hailing frequencies open, Captain'). The marvelous Enrico Colantoni (Person of Interest, Flashpoint) appears here in a rare comic role as the leader of the aliens who seek the help of the Galaxy Quest crew.
The visual effects are both superb and often hilarious, and the movie itself has a genuine affection for all things nerdy and geeky and science fictiony. Sam Rockwell supplies a sort of semi-hysterical running commentary on the action throughout as a former Redshirt who gets pulled into the action, while Tony Shaloub plays this show's version of Scotty as a blissed-out pothead. Highly recommended.
Childhood's End (2015): adapted by Matthew Graham from the 1951 novel by Arthur C. Clarke; directed by Nick Hurran; starring Mike Vogel (Ricky Stormgren), Osy Ikhile (Milo), Daisy Betts (Ellie Stormgren), and Charles Dance (Karellen): This SyFy Network miniseries does a far better job than most theatrical releases at adapting a classic science-fiction novel. Its problems, though, are all self-inflicted.
Changes made to the original add melodrama and angst at the cost of the intellectual aspects of the production. Indeed, at no point does the miniseries explicitly state several things that are crucial to understanding Arthur C. Clarke's unblinking look at one of the possible paths human evolution might take. If you've seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, then be aware you're in the same territory of thought as that work from Clarke and Stanley Kubrick.
Mike Vogel does his best as a central character who has been Americanized, ruralized, and inserted into all three parts of the miniseries: the novel, also divided into three parts, takes place over several hundred years while the main action of the miniseries occupies about 20 years, with one 85-year time jump near the end that is also in the novel. Only one individual character, the alien Karellen from the race humanity knows as the Overlords, appears in all three of the parts of the novel.
For the most part, this is better science fiction than, say, The Martian (which I really liked). Childhood's End deals with gigantic concepts and Sublime abysses of time and space, and it doesn't change the novel's stunner of an ending. The melodrama, though, doesn't add anything to the narrative. More importantly, having several characters other than the alien Overlord Karellen (beautifully voiced by Charles Dance) appear throughout the narrative cuts against the novel's emphasis on humanity as a collective protagonist over the course of the novel's events, and not a collection of individuals. Recommended.
Last Action Hero: written by Shane Black, David Arnott, Zak Penn, and Adam Leff; directed by John McTiernan; starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (Jack Slater/ Arnold Schwarzenegger), Austin O'Brien (Danny Madigan), F. Murray Abraham (John Practice), Art Carney (Favourite Second Cousin Frank), Charles Dance (Benedict), Tom Noonan (Ripper/ Tom Noonan), Robert Prosky (Nick the Projectionist), Anthony Quinn (Tony Vivaldi), Mercedes Ruehl (Irene Madigan), Ian McKellan (Death), and Bridgette Wilson (Whitney Slater/Meredith Caprice) (1993):
Much-maligned action-satire when it came out, hilarious Hollywood satire now (and then). Last Action Hero's main problem was that it bit the hand that fed it. If nothing else, it seems to show that action-movie fans are too sensitive to fully support a movie that savages action movies and their fans, albeit with a certain amount of affection.
Last Action Hero may be uneven and even ragged at times (some of that seems to come from rewrites and reshoots ordered by a nervous studio), but it's really funny when it's on. And its Mad-magazine approach to crowded humour in foreground and background rewards careful viewing and careful listening. Some of the physical gags are great slapstick or maybe techno-slapstick, as so many of them involve the destruction of cars in hilarious ways, sometimes as throwaway background gags.
The cast is thick with cameos, but much of the heavy lifting is done by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Dance as the villain, and Austin O'Brien as the kid who loves action movies. They're all great, though O'Brien takes awhile to grow on one. That some of the movie's more developed gags involve Hamlet (a parody that seems to be poking Mel Gibson's 'action-Hamlet' of a couple years earlier) and Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal may be one indicator of why it bombed. The world inside the movie universe ends up being as complicated and metafictional as Toontown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and almost as fun at times. Whiskers, where the Hell were you? Recommended.
A Most Wanted Man: adapted from the John LeCarre novel by Andrew Bovell and Stephen Cornwell; directed by Anton Corbijn; starring Grigoriy Dobrygin (Issa Karpov), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Gunther Bachmann), Rachel McAdams (Annabel Richter), Willem Dafoe (Tommy Brue), and Robin Wright (Martha Sullivan) (2014): Mournful spy procedural follows a covert German anti-terrorist agency led by Philip Seymour Hoffman in his second-last screen role.
Hoffman's small group is after a seemingly charitable Muslim leader in present-day Hamburg, Germany who may have as-yet-unproved ties to Al Qaeda. The movie looks great -- worn and lived in -- and the acting is all high-end, though Rachel McAdams struggles a bit with her on-again, off-again German accent. As this is based on a John LeCarre novel, you can expect betrayal and ruthless competition among the various intelligence organizations involved. Hoffman is superb as a man who's seen too much but nonetheless goes on because he genuinely wants to protect people. But whether or not they need to be protected from terrorists or from the anti-terrorist governmental agencies or from both -- well, there's the problem. Recommended.
The Man Who Could Work Miracles: written by H.G. Wells and Lajos Biro; directed by Lothar Mendes and Alexander Korda; starring Roland Young (Fotheringay), Ralph Richardson (Colonel Winstanley), Ernest Thesiger (Maydig), Joan Gardner (Ada), Sophie Stewart (Maggie), and George Zucco (The Butler) (1937): Whimsical, comedic fantasy turns into a socialist polemic at the end. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
An argument about humanity's potential among three gods (or perhaps angels) leads one of them (The Giver of Power, who likes humanity) to give an English store clerk the power to do pretty much anything except control human minds. What follows is a deceptively light-hearted story of escalating stakes, as the clerk initially uses his powers for minor tricks before seeking out others for advice on what do -- and then finally deciding to make his own decisions. I suppose it's the thinking person's Bruce Almighty.
H.G. Wells adapts his own short story. The performances are all fine, especially those of Roland Young as newly super-powered Fotheringay and Ralph Richardson in heavy make-up as a blustery, upper-class twit of a Colonel. Fotheringay's epiphanic speech toward the end anticipates the concluding speech of Chaplin in The Great Dictator, among others. The visual effects are extremely well done for the time, especially a great bit involving the miraculous destruction of a mansion and subsequent erection of a much larger palace. Recommended.
