Super 8 (2011): written and directed by J.J. Abrams; starring Jeff Courtney (Joe Lamb), Ryan Lee (Cary), Zach Mills (Preston), Riley Griffiths (Charlie), Kyle Chandler (Deputy Lamb), Ron Eldard (Louis Dainard), and Elle Fanning (Alice Dainard): Lightweight Spielberg homage from J.J. Abrams comes with the approval and cooperation of Spielberg himself. It's a lot like ET gene-spliced with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goonies, and the South Park 'dream' episode in which the kids are trapped on a bus by a monster. Elle Fanning is distractingly wan and emaciated throughout. The kids are underwritten and overdetermined and not all that appealing. Not a terrible film, but so much of a pastiche it hardly seems to exist. Lightly recommended.
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017): written and directed by Martin McDonagh; starring Frances McDormand (Mildred), Sam Rockwell (Dixon), and Woody Harrelson (Willoughby): Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell get lots of pithy dialogue and violent moments to earn their Best Acting Oscars (Lead Female and Supporting Actor, respectively) in this pungent NuTarantino offering from writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, 7 Psychopaths). It's not as good as you might expect from the awards, but it's certainly an actor's showcase of a certain sort. Recommended.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947): adapted by Philip Rapp, Everett Freeman, and Ken Englund from the story by James Thurber; directed by Norman Z. McLeod; starring Danny Kaye (Walter Mitty), Virginia Mayo (Osalind van Hoorn), Boris Karloff (Dr. Hugo Hollingshead), Fay Bainter (Walter's Mother), Ann Rutherford (Walter's Fiancee), and Thurston Hall (Bruce Pierce): A special edition that removes Danny Kaye's bafflingly popular patter songs from this movie would be super. James Thurber's short-short story gets pulled and twisted like taffy to accommodate a romantic plot involving Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo. The movie's a lot of fun except for those patter songs. Boris Karloff is a delight as a menacing 'doctor.' Recommended.
Living in Oblivion (1995): written and directed by Tom DiCillo; starring Steve Buscemi (Nick Reve), Catherine Keener (Nicole Springer), Dermot Mulroney (Wolf), Danielle von Zerneck (Wanda), James Le Gros (Chad Palomino), Rica Martens (Cora), Peter Dinklage (Tito), and Kevin Corrigan (Assistant Camera): Witty look at Indy film-making remains fresh and exciting more than 20 years after its release. Everyone is good. The character of 'Chad Palamino' is not based on Brad Pitt, apparently, despite decades of rumors, but another young actor of 1995 whom writer-director Tom DiCillo refuses to name. Johnny Depp, maybe? A young Peter Dinklage has a show-stopper of a rant about the preponderance of dwarves in movie dream sequences. Highly recommended.
Emma (1996): adapted from the Jane Austen novel and directed by Douglas McGrath; starring Gwyneth Paltrow (Emma), Greta Scacchi (Mrs. Weston), Alan Cumming (Mr. Elton), Sophie Thompson (Miss Bates), Phyllida Law (Mrs. Bates), Jeremy Northam (Mr. Knightley), Toni Collette (Harriet Smith), and Ewan McGregor (Frank Churchill): In and around the fictional English village of Highbury and the surrounding estates, romance is blooming in the second decade of the 19th century. Or at least it's brewing inside 21-year-old busybody matchmaker Emma's head. Gwyneth Paltrow is very sparkly and glowy as Emma, while the supporting cast is solid and witty throughout. Well, maybe except for Ewan McGregor, hot off Trainspotting. McGregor admitted later that the part was outside his range and not helped by a terrible wig. Oh, well. Recommended.
Caddyshack: written by Brian Doyle-Murray, Harold Ramis, and Douglas Kenney; directed by Harold Ramis; starring Chevy Chase (Ty Webb), Bill Murray (Carl Spackler), Rodney Dangerfield (Al Czervik), Ted Knight (Judge Smalls), Michael O'Keefe (Danny Noonan), and Cindy Morgan (Lacey Underall) (1980): A classic comedy of improvisation built over a stereotypical teen coming-of-age comedy. Harold Ramis and company quickly realized that the adults were far more interesting than the teens, and that the improvisation of Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, and Rodney Dangerfield was the real star of the movie. Well, that and the special-effects gopher. Recommended.
Sense and Sensibility: adapted by Emma Thompson from the novel by Jane Austen; directed by Ang Lee; starring Emma Thompson (Elinor Dashwood), Kate Winslet (Marianne Dashwood), Hugh Grant (Edward Ferrars), Alan Rickman (Colonel Brandon), Gemma Jones (Mrs. Dashwood), Harriet Walter (Fanny Dashwood), Imelda Staunton (Charlotte Palmer), Hugh Laurie (Mr. Palmer), Imogen Stubbs (Lucy Steele), Greg Wise (John Willoughby), Robert Hardy (Sir John Middleton), and Elizabeth Spriggs (Mrs. Jennings) (1995): Ang Lee and Emma Thompson's visually lush adaptation of Jane Austen is a winning combination of romance and pointed social observation. The adaptation won Thompson a well-deserved screenplay Oscar. The performances are uniformly strong. Lee's direction is painterly in composition without becoming too static in the manner of some period productions. Highly recommended.
Requiem for a Heavyweight: written by Rod Serling; directed by Ralph Nelson; starring Anthony Quinn (Louis 'Mountain' Rivera); Jackie Gleason (Maish Rennick), Mickey Rooney (Army), Julie Harris (Grace Miller), and Cassius Clay as Himself (1962): Adapted by Rod Serling from his own 1956 Playhouse 90 TV movie, the first original 90-minute drama ever shown live on American TV. Serling may have a didactic point to make about the boxing business, but he also gives his actors line after line of terrific dialogue.
As aging tomato-can boxer 'Mountain' Rivera, veteran character actor Anthony Quinn embodies wounded, almost inarticulate pride along with a sense of honour that may yet get him killed. Jackie Gleason is also terrific in his best dramatic role, as Quinn's beloved, treacherous manager. Mickey Rooney also surprises as Quinn's corner-man, and Julie Harris does delicate work as an employment agency worker trying to find Quinn a job after boxing. At less than 90 minutes, this is a terse and sorrowful work. Highly recommended.
Into the Woods: adapted by James Lapine from the musical by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim; directed by Rob Marshall; starring Anna Kendrick (Cinderella), Daniel Huttlestone (Jack), James Corden (Baker), Emily Blunt (Baker's Wife), Tracey Ullman (Jack's Mother), Meryl Streep (Witch), Johnny Depp (Wolf), Billy Magnussen (Rapunzel's Prince), Mackenzie Mauzy (Rapunzel), and Chris Pine (Cinderella's Prince) (2014): Enjoyable screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 1987 meta-musical gives us a movie-star cast that can, mostly, sing. OK, Meryl Streep occasionally moves into under-enunciated mumblemouthedness at times, especially in her climactic song.
The cast and the songs are witty and involving, and the musical's exploration of fairy-tale logic hits the light and dark notes of real fairytales while also commenting on Disneyfied bowdlerizations of those fairy tales (weirdly, this is a Disney movie, with the opening logo itself commenting on the difference between Into the Woods and more normally sunny Disney fare. So much meta!). For some reason, the scenes with the vengeful giant are murky and difficult to follow, which is not necessarily a good thing when this is your climax. A couple of gruesome deaths have been either eliminated or toned down from the stage version, and the original Narrator is nowhere to be heard, so be forewarned if you're a theatrical purist. Recommended.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (2004): One of the staples of historical fantasy and science fiction is the "changed premise" alternate history, in which one difference gives us a new Earth to ponder. Clarke's award-winning first novel gives us that changed premise in an England where magic works, fairies are real, and Northern England was ruled for hundreds of years by John Uskglass, the Raven King.
But as we advance through the years covered by the novel -- 1806-1817 -- we discover a curious thing. History has pretty much progressed, and continues to progress, exactly as it did in our world. To note the biggest example of this, the Napoleonic Wars play out exactly as they did in our world, despite Great Britain and its allies having the services of two powerful magicians. Is this an imaginative failing on the part of the novel? Well, yes. It's hard to believe in magic when it seems to be zero-sum.
I can see why a lot of people -- and perhaps more non-fantasy readers than fantasy readers -- praised the novel. It's a triumph of pastiche and multiple stylistic homages to writers that include Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. But it's also thin as spring ice. After a 1000 pages, most characters still possess only a few defining characteristics. The two main characters -- Strange and Norrell, England's first two practicing magicians in a couple of centuries -- are defined by arrogance and fear, respectively, and little else.
Many of the supporting characters fall into one of two camps: the thinly drawn sympathetic and the pseudo-Dickensian grotesque. But our sympathies for the most ill-served-by-events character in the novel must develop entirely from the situation she's placed in: she has no actual personality traits that aren't reactions to her situation. Another character is pretty much entirely defined by being nice and slightly worried. With 1000 pages to work with, Clarke perhaps could have given us more, though the book did need room for all the pseudo-scholarly footnotes on the history of English magic. Actually, many of the footnotes are more magical and interesting than the primary text.
And oh, that mannered style. Arch and distancing, it renders much of the text droll and occasionally cutting, but it also makes sympathy for the characters difficult. The archness of style and the thinness of the characters don't mix well with the epic scope of the novel. And for the main plot to proceed, several supposedly smart characters have to be unsatisfyingly stupid and dense for a very, very, very long time (ten years and several hundred pages).
But anyway, there's magic. It comes back from somewhere. Two Englishmen, the exceedingly bookish Mr. Norrell and the more public Mr. Strange, learn how to use it. Strange helps with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe; Norrell helps with the defense of England. The true plot grows from Norrell's second work of public magic, the one that established him as a magician to be reckoned with in polite society in London. The lesson to be learned: Don't trust fairies.
I'm glad I read the novel, though I can't say I ever want to read another one by Clarke. The racial and gender critiques in the novel are about as thuddingly obvious as they come. The fantastic universe itself makes very little sense: how did magic change absolutely nothing about the history of England? Because the novel needs everything to be the same for its pastiche elements to work properly, I suppose is the only answer. And a real 'What if?' novel might scare away a lot of the paying customers, the ones who like Jane Austen but can't tell a hobbit from a hat-pin.
There are weird historical miscues (Clarke seems to be unaware that a height of 5'9" wouldn't make a man seem tiny in 1816, given that it would actually be above average height). And there really isn't an ending so much as a stoppage in play. The pay-offs to two of the main plot-threads are so muted as to almost be non-existent, while a third becomes a culmination of a deus ex machina that removes much of the agency from Strange and Norrell themselves. There's certainly room for a sequel. I'm sure it will be long. Lightly recommended.
