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.
The Trip to Italy: written by Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, and Michael Winterbottom; directed by Michael Winterbottom; starring Steve Coogan (Steve Coogan), Rob Brydon (Rob Brydon), Rosie Fellner (Lucy), Claire Keelan (Emma), and Timothy Leach (Joe Coogan) (2014): Sequel to 2011's The Trip sends British comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, playing 'themselves,' on another restaurant-visiting road trip, this time in Italy. Highlights include more dueling Michael Caine impersonations, a hilarious take on the vocal problems of Tom Hardy and Christian Bale in The Dark Knight Rises, and some ventriloquism in Pompeii. All that and a colourful travelogue of food and scenery. Highly recommended.
The Best of Times: written by Ron Shelton; directed by Roger Spottiswoode; starring Robin Williams (Jack Dundee), Kurt Russell (Reno Hightower), Pamela Reed (Gigi Hightower), Holly Palance (Elly Dundee), Donald Moffit (The Colonel), M. Emmet Walsh (Charlie) (1986): American sports-movie maestro Ron Shelton (Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump) gets his big-screen debut here as a screenwriter. It's a sharp, gently satiric look at small-town life and the American obsession with high school football, with winning performances from all the major players. Recommended.
Europa Report: written by Philip Gelatt; directed by Sebastian Cordero; starring Daniel Wu (William Xu), Sharlto Copley (Jame Corrigan), Christian Camargo (Daniel Luxembourg), Karolina Wydra (Katya Petrovna), Michael Nyqvist (Andrei Blok), Anamaria Marinca (Rosa Dasque), and Embeth Davidtz (Dr. Unger) (2013): Found-footage horror movie, or at least marketed as such. It's really a found-footage science-fiction movie about a privately financed mission to Europa, that moon of Jupiter that may have an ocean of water (and thus perhaps life) hidden under an icy crust. Despite its low budget, there are some nice visuals and tense moments. Horrible things happen to people, but they're mainly a product of bad luck. Though how anything is getting through several miles of ice to the surface of Europa is a question best left unasked. Lightly recommended.
Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story: directed by Jeffrey Schwarz; featuring comments by Terry Castle, Donald F. Glut, John Landis, John Waters, Stuart Gordon, Joe Dante, Leonard Maltin, Marcel Marceau, and others (2007): As someone who hasn't watched a lot of William Castle's gimmicky horror movies, I still found this genial documentary to be enjoyable. It's an interesting look at the sort of showman who simply can't exist in today's movie landscape, about how and why he came up with gimmicks, and how those gimmicks made his low-budget thrillers wildly popular. Also, the clips of Vincent Price from The Tingler are priceless. So, too, Castle's late-career attempt at a serious art-house film, Shanks, which starred mime Marcel Marceau. Stories of Joan Crawford's behaviour on the set of Strait-jacket also fascinate. Recommended.
National Lampoon's Vacation: written by John Hughes; directed by Harold Ramis; starring Chevy Chase (Clark Griswold), Beverly D'Angelo (Ellen Griswold), Randy Quaid (Cousin Eddie), Anthony Michael Hall (Rusty Griswold), Dana Barron (Audrey Griswold), John Candy (Walleyworld Guard) and Christie Brinkley (Girl in Car) (1983): The first and best of the Vacation movies holds up remarkably well. There may be some culture shock at some of the jokes and set-pieces (dangerous black people in East St. Louis! incest among your country cousins! dead dog!) and at Beverly D'Angelo's casual nudity in two scenes. Casual nudity isn't something one sees a lot in non-R-rated comedies these days, and even there it tends to be pretty rare because of the need to placate the international market. How times have changed. Followed by four increasingly dire sequels, with another one on the way this summer! Recommended.
Last Vegas: written by Dan Fogelman; directed by Jon Turteltaub; starring Michael Douglas (Billy), Robert De Niro (Paddy), Morgan Freeman (Archie), Kevin Kline (Sam), and Mary Steenburgen (Diana) (2013): Relatively enjoyable, fairly tame senior-citizens' version of The Hangover gets aided by its top-notch cast. A number of scenes play like ads for Las Vegas, LMFAO, and Red Bull (to name three of the most blatant). Coming off cancer surgery, Michael Douglas looks haggard and about a decade older than everyone else in the cast. Lightly recommended.
Stardust: adapted by Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman from the novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess; directed by Matthew Vaughn; starring Charlie Cox (Tristan), Claire Danes (Yvaine), Mark Strong (Septimus), Michelle Pfeiffer (Lamia), Robert De Niro (Captain Shakespeare), and Kate Magowan (Una) (2007): Somewhat loose adaptation of the Neil Gaiman novel originally and heavily illustrated by the great Charles Vess is a real charmer for those people looking for something to watch after watching The Princess Bride for the fiftieth time.
The cast is strong, and given enough decent lines and character bits to keep everything percolating in what may be a slightly too-long film. Michelle Pfeiffer is terrific as the arch-witch Lamia. Several transition scenes involving walking and riding are photographed pretty much exactly as these things are done in Peter Jackson's Tolkien movies, possibly in the hopes of tricking some people into thinking they're at a Lord of the Rings movie. The score also comes pretty close to Horner's LOTR score at points. I do wonder whether these things were done at studio insistence -- certainly the majority of the movie is lighter and cleverer than Jackson's Middle Earth. Recommended.
The Fisher King: written by Richard LaGravenese; directed by Terry Gilliam; starring Jeff Bridges (Jack), Mercedes Ruehl (Anne), Robin Williams (Parry), Amanda Plummer (Lydia), Michael Jeter (Unnamed), Tom Waits (Uncredited) (1991): Gilliam and LaGravenese's urban fantasy offers a sometimes sarcastic love letter to New York. Bridges, Ruehl, Williams, and Plummer all do terrific work, though only Ruehl (deservedly) won an Oscar.
Seen now, The Fisher King is a document of a much dirtier New York, one that hadn't yet had Times Square turned into a food court at Disneyland. Williams manages to modulate manic and melancholy as he did in few other movies, and Bridges is his usual Jeff Bridges self, making the acting appear too effortless and invisible for him to be recognized for how good it always is. He's probably the perfect fit for the role of a vain, self-centred, but potentially decent talk-radio shock-jock: he may be handsome, but he's not afraid to look awful in a variety of ways.
This is probably Gilliam's biggest commercial success (along with 12 Monkeys). He tones down his weirdness without ever losing it -- his vision of New York suggests the medieval at the right points, and not the shiny medieval, but the crap-covered ground-level world we laughed at in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It isn't Gilliam's best film, but it's certainly his sunniest. Highly recommended.
