A Giant Squid, Simon Pegg, A Dragon, And A Poltergeist Walk Into The Bar

20 000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954): adapted from the Jules Verne novel by Earl Felton; directed by Richard Fleischer; starring James Mason (Captain Nemo), Kirk Douglas (Ned Land), Paul Lukas (Professor Aronnax), and Peter Lorre (Conseil) : Jesus Christ but does Kirk Douglas ever get out-acted by a trained seal in this movie. Douglas is both terrible and miscast as harpooner Ned Land, a character one wishes would just die. He's the angry, stupid American. James Mason, Paul Lukas, and Peter Lorre seem to be acting in a different movie.

The biggest-budget, live-action Walt Disney film to hit the screen in the 1950's (and for at least a decade afterwards), 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea remains involving despite its occasionally torpid pace and that godawful performance by Kirk Douglas. The design of Nemo's Victorian-era super-submarine, the Nautilus, is superb and steampunky. James Mason as Nemo, Paul Lukas as Professor Aronax, and Peter Lorre as Conseil are all solid in their roles. And the squid fight still works, with the mechanical effects making the squid seem as unearthly as the tornado in The Wizard of Oz.

Made now, 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea would play Nemo as even more of a hero -- he's attacking the slave trade, after all, having been enslaved himself in some South Seas mining colony. Of course, Nemo was a native of India in the original novel. James Mason, not so much. The often languid pace can get a bit wearing at times, as does Kirk Douglas, but 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea still works for the most part. Recommended.

How To Train Your Dragon 2 (2014): based on the books by Cressida Cowell; written and directed by Dean DeBlois; starring the voices of Jay Baruchel (Hiccup), Cate Blanchett (Valka), Gerard Butler (Stoick), Craig Ferguson (Gobber), America Ferrara (Astrid), Jonah Hill (Notlout), and Djimon Honsou (Drago) : How To Train Your Dragon was a lot of fun. So too this sequel, though its frenetic pace and much longer action sequences make it a far less charming movie than the original. Still worth watching, though, for the animation, voice acting, and story. The designs of the seemingly endless number of different dragon species remain a highlight. Recommended.

Run Fatboy Run (2007): written by Michael Ian Black and Simon Pegg; directed by David Schwimmer; starring Simon Pegg (Dennis), Thandie Newton (Libby), Hank Azaria (Whit), Dylan Moran (Gordon), and Harish Patel (Mr. Goshdashtidar) : Fun, amiable comedy takes full advantage of the good will Simon Pegg generates when playing hapless heroes. Hank Azaria seems like an odd choice as the handsome boyfriend, but he does a good job. Thandie Newton is lovely but stuck with being a straight woman to pretty much everyone else in the movie. Recommended. 

Poltergeist (2015): adapted by David Lindsay-Apaire from the 1982 movie written by Steven Spielberg, Michael Grais, and Mark Victor; directed by Gil Kenan; starring Sam Rockwell (Eric Bowen), Rosemarie DeWitt (Amy Bowen), Saxon Sharbino (Kendra Bowen), Kyle Catlett (Griffin Bowen), Kennedi Clements (Madison Bowen), Jared Harris (Carrigan Burke), and Jane Adams (Dr. Brooke Powell): It's probably a much better-acted film than the original, this Poltergeist remake. Sam Rockwell certainly does everything he can with his role, which actually seems to be modeled on the father in The Amityville Horror rather than Poltergeist (1982): financial woes occupy him.

The kids are much more front and centre here. The scares are pretty light. Perhaps most notably, the Tree and Clown scenes have been completely bungled. It also doesn't help that the gateway to the Underworld looks and acts like a Stargate, or that occult investigator Jared Harris is dressed like a leprechaun. It's a diversion, but just barely. Lightly recommended. 

Tarantinovision

Seven Psychopaths: written and directed by Martin McDonagh; starring Sam Rockwell (Billy), Colin Farrell (Marty), Christopher Walken (Hans), Woody Harrelson (Charlie), Tom Waits (Zachariah), Olga Kurylenko (Angela) and Abbie Cornish (Kaya) (2012): Writer-director Martin McDonagh's In Bruges was an enjoyable film for those of us who miss the earlier, funnier, and most importantly shorter Quentin Tarantino, he of spicy gangster stories and not hyperviolent historical epics from Earth-Bizarro. And there are apparently a lot of people in Hollywood who miss that Tarantino, given In Bruges' Oscar nominations and what-have-you.

Here we've got another chatty, violent meta-drama with a twisty plot and extremely eccentric characters. This one's about a writer's-blocked, alcoholic screenwriter (Colin Farrell) whose buddy (Sam Rockwell) steals people's dogs with another man (Christopher Walken) so as to collect the reward from a grateful owner when they 'find' and return the dog. The screenplay Farrell's working on is entitled Seven Psychopaths. And there are.

Violent fun ensues, along with a certain amount of Bazooka-Joe-level philosophizing. Laughs come from some surprising places, including the revelation of the identity of the Zodiac Killer. Not great, but not boring. Recommended.

Bruce Willis vs. The Moon

Movies:


Moon, starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey, written by Duncan Jones and Nathan Parker, directed by Duncan Jones (2009): While it's no 2001, Moon is an intelligent and enjoyable science-fiction movie, an increasingly rare thing in these heady days of overwrought CGI and underwrought writing.

Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the only worker on a Lunar Industries moonbase on the far side of the moon tasked with mining Helium3 and shipping it back to Earth to power Earth's fusion reactors. Sam is only weeks away from the end of his three-year contract -- and a return to his wife and child on Earth -- when an accident leaves him wondering just what is really going on. The result is a tightly plotted science-fiction thriller with several surprises and a refreshing air of scientific verisimilitude.

Rockwell is fast becoming one of my favourite, slightly offbeat actors -- his Sam Bell is sympathetic and a bit wiggy, the latter perfectly understandable given his three-year isolation. Kevin Spacey lends his voice to GERTY, the base computer which knows...something. Spacey pitches his voice in HAL territory, leaving one wondering until the final scenes whether or not we have another homicidal computer on our hands. If you enjoyed the old Twilight Zone or the 1960's Outer Limits, you'll enjoy Moon's combination of existential dread, hope, and the joys of plot twists. David Bowie's son, Duncan Jones, does a nice job of directing. Here's hoping he continues to make movies as enjoyable as this, and doesn't get sucked up into the Hollywood crap-making machine. Highly recommended.



Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Ving Rhames and James Cromwell, written by Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato from the graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, directed by Jonathan Mostow (2009): I'm not sure I'd call this a good movie, but it is fun. In a future world, cybernetics has advanced to the point that a person never has to leave his or her home -- a robotic surrogate, usually better looking than the original person, can do everything for you while you lie in a control chair, directing the surrogate's movements and experiencing whatever it experiences safely away from any possible harm. But then someone manages to murder a person by destroying his surrogate, and FBI agents Bruce Willis and Radha Mitchell are called in to investigate. Ving Rhames shows up in a ridiculous dreadlock wig.

Bruce Willis's surrogate makes for some droll moments -- CGI de-ages Willis's face and gives him a full-head of somewhat ridiculous-looking blonde hair. The future society isn't drawn with enough care to be fully believeable (obviously, not everyone would be able to afford these things as they apparently do in the movie), but the metaphoric commentary on people and their avatars, whether those avatars are computerized or simply the fake faces we put on when we go out the door, is interesting and sometimes somewhat poignant. If you could live through a nigh-indestructible, better-looking version of yourself, would you? And would it be fair to criticize people who do so because of mental or physical problems? Recommended.