Jumanji !!!

Jumanji (1995): adapted from the Chris Van Allsburg book by Chris Van Allsburg, Greg Taylor, Jim Strain, and Jonathan Hensleigh; directed by Joe Johnston; starring Robin Williams (Adult Alan Parrish), Jonathan Hyde (Van Pelt/ Alan's Dad), Kirsten Dunst (Judy Shepherd), Bradley Pierce (Peter Shepherd), Bonnie Hunt (Adult Sarah Whittle), Bebe Neuwirth Nora Shepherd), David Hyde Pierce (Carl), Adam Hann Byrd (Young Alan), and Laura Bell Bundy (Young Sarah):

Jumanji imagines its tale of a magical board game along the lines of any number of 'Forbidden Tome' horror stories over the decades. The movie may be seriocomic and star Robin Williams, but Jumanji the game is pretty horrifying for much of the movie's narrative. 

Jumanji's ground-breaking CGI looks terrible now, far worse than most stop-motion animation of decades past. The monkeys are especially terrible. But the movie, riffing on the Necronomicon and It's a Wonderful Life in equal measure, remains something of a curious hybrid of comedy and horror. Robin Williams is given almost nothing to work with comically; his desperate, traumatized character is one of his finest non-comic performances, delivered here in the midst of what should be comedy. 

Director Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, Captain America: The First Avenger, and a lot of work on Spielberg movies) works some shocks into the material, though it really feels like this should have been set in the 1930's to play to his (period) strengths. A young Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce are mostly non-annoying children; Bonnie Hunt doesn't have a lot to do. Recommended.

Jumanji: Welcome To the Jungle (2017): adapted from the Chris Van Allsburg book and the 1995 film by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Scott Rosenberg, and Jeff Pinkner; directed by Jake Kasdan; starring Dwayne Johnson/ Alex Wolff (Spencer), Kevin Hart/ Ser'Darius Blain (Fridge), Jack Black/ Madison Iseman (Bethany), Karen Gillan/ Morgan Turner (Martha), Bobby Cannavale (Van Pelt), Rhys Darby (Nigel), and Nick Jonas/ Colin Hanks (Alex):

Genial, light action-comedy sequel of sorts to the 1995 movie about a reality-altering board game. Now the board game is a retro videogame cassette that pulls players into the world of Jumanji rather than vomiting up portions of the game world into the real world depending on the result of a roll of a dice.

Four high-school kids get dumped into the world of Jumanji and transformed into avatars from the game. This allows Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, and Kevin Hart to play at teen-aged personalities in adult (and in Black's case, gender-swapped) bodies. 

The Rock seems like he's auditioning for that Doc Savage movie that will never come. Things stay light, occasionally clever, and very CGI-heavy throughout. Rhys Darby (Murray on The Flight of the Conchords) appears as an NPC guide; would that there were more of him. Recommended.

Black Mirror

Oculus: written by Mike Flanagan, Jeff Howard, and Jeff Seidman; directed by Mike Flanagan; starring Karen Gillan (Kaylie Russell), Brenton Thwaites (Tim Russell), Katee Sackhoff (Marie Russell) and Rory Cochrane (Alan Russell) (2014): Competent horror thriller that uses some fairly effective narrative tricks rather than 'found-footage' for its scares. It's not easy to make a seemingly haunted mirror into a worthy antagonist, but Oculus manages this feat.

The leads are all solid, the reality-bending games are sometimes startling, and the stupid decisions made by Karen Gillan's character are totally explicable within the cinematic universe. She has motivation for how she does what she does, and all motivation in the film is suspect: the mirror manipulates people subtly as well as through illusions. If only someone had brought a fire extinguisher. Recommended.


Land of the Dead: written and directed by George Romero; starring Simon Baker (Riley Denbo), John Leguizamo (Cholo DeMora), Dennis Hopper (Kaufman), Asia Argento (Slack), Robert Joy (Charlie), Eugene Clark (Big Daddy) and Joanne Boland (Pretty Boy) (2005): George Romero's fourth Dead movie gave him a mostly name cast and a decent budget; Romero's own quirky muse caused him to use these things on what wasn't a horror movie at all, or at least not the horror movie the studio thought it would be getting.

Instead, Land of the Dead is part-satire, part-social commentary. The zombies aren't really the villains any more: indeed, they don't seem to have any interest in hunting humans until the humans piss them off. And piss them off, they do. I don't know that the movie benefitted from having known actors in some of the roles, though I am sure that this was necessary to secure funding. Dennis Hopper just seems miscast as a scheming businessman, but Leguizamo, Baker, and Asia Argento are all fine. But the real hero is the massive zombie (former) gas-station owner dubbed Big Daddy. He's the Robinson Crusoe of zombies. Recommended.