Bambi

Bambi is another one of those Disney movies that I can't accurately remember if I've ever seen all the way through or not. We had Bambi on VHS when I was a kid, but as hard as I tried, I just couldn't recall any scenes that weren't about Bambi as a fawn. I had the vague memory that he grew up at some point, and of course, I know what happened to his mother. I think a lot of kids might only remember the first portion of the movie, and like I did as a child, lose interest once the young animals grow up.

Bambi is Disney's ode to the circle of life (before The Lion King, I suppose). At the opening of the movie, all the woodland critters are abuzz with the news that the new Prince has been born. They gather around the mother deer and we meet Bambi. We then follow Bambi and his best friend and guide, the rabbit Thumper, as he learns to walk and talk, experiences his first rainstorm, learns the boundaries between nature and Man's World, struggles with mortality, falls in love, and ultimately, has a family of his own.

As a child, I didn't really appreciate Bambi on the level it deserved. It's not really anything like any other Disney film. The closest comparison would probably be Fantasia, Disney's other symphonic ode to nature. I am continually in awe of the way Disney's animators brought life to animals, humanizing them while keeping their behavior recognizable as their species. There are multiple different animation styles utilized throughout Bambi, ranging from the cute, big eyed designs we all know and recognize, to the amazing impressionistic style employed later, during the forest fire. The backgrounds are ridiculously lush. One of the best sequences in the movie is a musical diversion from the main story, the ridiculously earwormy April Showers song, a vignette showing all the wildlife reacting to a rainstorm.

I can see why kids latch onto the early part of the film, and not so much onto the later. It's beautifully done, and I appreciate it now, but there's little to no dialogue at the end, and the characters are no longer relatable to a child. Still, the level of quality maintained by these early Disney features is pretty unbelievable.

For my other reviews of classic Disney movies, follow these links:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Pinocchio
Fantasia
Sleeping Beauty

Flash Gordon

Ahh, the space opera. This is a genre I have a deep love for, even the kinda shitty entries. A good space opera takes us to all sorts of weird and wondrous places, pits the best of the good versus the worst of the evil. They have larger than life characters (and actors), and little to no attention is paid to the laws of physics.

I don't know how I'd never seen Flash Gordon before. Based on the classic comic strip and serial shorts, Mike Hodges' Flash Gordon movie was one of many similar (but inferior) space operas made in the wake of Star Wars. The title character, played by Sam J. Jones, is a football star, who along with a plucky journalist and a mad scientist, are transported to the world of the malicious space dictator, Ming the Merciless, and must lead a rebellion and save the earth from his tyranny. It's campy and silly from the very premise, but entirely watchable, made so by some pretty decent filmmaking, and a cast of actors playing their characters with earnest conviction.

I especially liked Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin, a rival who Flash must form an unsteady alliance with to defeat Ming, who is played by Max von Sydow. You've also got the boistrous Brian Blessed, as Prince Vultan, a Hawk Man who has never heard of the concept of indoor voices.

Sam J. Jones doesn't speak very much in the lead role, but he looks the part. I assume they casted him for his looks and not his ability to get inside a character. Or perhaps there's not a good deal of character to get inside. It's ok, though, because the rest of the cast elevates him. There's a ridiculous but enjoyable sequence early on where he takes down a bunch of Ming's evil guards by using his football skills.

The most famous and enduring part of the Flash Gordon movie is, of course, the score, composed by the legendary rock band, Queen. In fact, I owned the soundtrack long before I ever saw the movie. The theme song is a Queen classic (FLASH! AHHHAHH...SAVIOR OF THE UNIVERSE!). I wish there were actually more pop songs mixed in with the synthesized score, they would have fit into the movie just fine, and nobody wrote pop songs like Queen.

Flash Gordon is a pretty fun movie, if you don't mind the goofiness. Which I don't. I liked the universe it was set in, which was imaginative and rich, and weird. The cheese just adds to the overall craziness of the thing. It's kind of like male Barbarella with significantly less sex stuff. On a Space Opera scale with Star Wars Prequels as the low and the original Star Wars flicks as the high, Flash Gordon would be nestled comfortably somewhere in the middle.

Wanderlust

MTV's The State was a sketch comedy show in the early 1990's that connected with an entire generation of comedy nerds, myself included. Though the show came and went, what is really amazing is the fact that the group has never stopped working together in various combinations ever since. Several members have made names for themselves behind the scenes, writing and directing various TV shows and popular movies, while others have become successful in front of the camera, often as character actors and scene stealers. All of us who watched and loved The State on MTV have claimed these comedians as our own and followed their careers ever since.

Of all of these cast members, my personal favorite has been David Wain, who has built a career co-writing, directing, and producing some of the weirdest, most surreal, and culty comedies to have come out in the last decade or so. From his semi-autobiographical webseries, Wainy Days, to his true cult classic feature debut, Wet Hot American Summer, Wain always stamps his own distinctive sensibilities into everything he works on. His newest movie, Wanderlust, is no different.

Co-written by Wain and former The State member Ken Marino, Wanderlust follows Role Models as their second foray into more mainstream filmmaking. It's the story of George and Linda (Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston), a New York couple, who after several major financial setbacks, decide they can't take it in the city anymore. George's brother Rick offers him a job in Georgia, so they pack their car and head south. On the way down, they have an enchanting night at Elysium, a bed and breakfast that is actually a hippie commune. After George's brother's offered life proves itself to be a nightmare, George and Linda decide to drop out and move back to Elysium. Complications ensue when George realizes that the hippie lifestyle is not as magical as the first night made it seem, while Linda begins to embrace it wholeheartedly.

The movie reminded me very much of the classic Albert Brooks comedy Lost in America (one of my favorites), but with David Wain's sensibilities. He loves to drag jokes out well past the point of being funny and back into being funny again (such as George's hilariously crass, loooong attempt at hyping himself up in front of a mirror for an upcoming extramarital sexual encounter). Wain also plays fast and loose with his script, and many of the best gags feel very in the moment. There's a great, long run with Alan Alda, repeatedly insisting that "Money buys nothing. LITERALLY." Some of his usual trademarks are sacrificed by the mainstream nature of the movie, like the way he messes with things like continuity, or will leave in an actor obviously blowing a take just because it's funny, or including jokes that are intentionally and knowingly terrible, and trusting the audience to understand that. Despite those sacrifices, the tone remains light and silly.

The cast of Wanderlust is pretty amazing, largely filled with David Wain regulars. Paul Rudd has long been a veteran of Wain's films, from way back, even before he was Judd Apatow's go-to guy. The two of them share an understanding of each other. They find the same things funny. Jennifer Aniston is a good sport and throws herself into it, managing to fit in decently well. Six former The State cast members turn up in various roles, but the real scene stealer is Joe Lo Truglio as Wayne, the loveable nudist winemaker/novelist, who doesn't wear a stitch of clothing through the entire film.

Wanderlust is a pretty good entry into the post-Apatow comedy category, and it's more mature and focused than Wain has previously been, but I can't help but miss the utterly bizarre, silly, and non-sequitur qualities of his first two independent films, Wet Hot American Summer and The Ten. This feels like those two movies in some respects, and certainly more so than his previous film, Role Models. Still, I'm such a fan of David Wain, his unique voice, and all these great people he regularly teams up with. I know it didn't open too strongly, but I think Wanderlust will find an audience in the future. It's a really funny movie.

Blood and Roses

Roger Vadim's Barbarella has been one of my favorite films ever since I first saw it a decade or so ago. Even though it's campy and ridiculous, it holds up as an entertaining film, with great visuals, and set in an imaginative, fully realized universe. I don't know why it took me so long to think, "Hey, I wonder if Roger Vadim made any other movies?"

Well, I finally did think that, and after some rudimentary research on Wikipedia, I learned that the answer is, yes. He made a lot of other movies, some to much acclaim. After a little bit more looking, I learned that one of those other movies can be found on Netflix Instant Watch, and it is, of all things, a vampire movie. Awesome!

Blood and Roses (1960, French title: Et Mourir de Plaisir) is based on the classic Gothic story Carmilla, which itself was a predecessor to and influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula. A group of friends are staying at an ancestral home in Italy, celebrating Leopoldo and Georgia's engagement. Carmilla (Annette Vadim, the director's second of MANY wives), in love with Leopoldo, is jealous and depressed, unwilling to go outside for the costume party at the family graveyard.

Drawn hypnotically to an old wedding dress, Carmilla dons it and trance-walks into the crypt of its owner, Mircalla, a vampire who takes over her mind. Her friends don't pay much attention the changes in Carmilla at first, animals are afraid of her, her skin is cold. Every day, she must secret herself off to the place of her burial, in order to survive. At night, she hunts and feeds on innocent girls.

Blood and Roses is one of the coolest vampire movies out there. It has a great story, told with atmospheric and surreal cinematography by Claude Renoir (who also shot Barbarella). And as a bonus, the girls are totally 60's French sexy.

The only problem is that the version on Netflix is dubbed, and I don't know for sure, but it looked to me like the sides of the frames were cropped. I've heard the film was edited for release in America, and this may have been that cut. I would love to see the full French language version of the film.

Carmilla has been adapted more than once before. I read that Dreyer's silent film, Vampyr is somehow based on it, but it bears little similarity to Blood and Roses. There's another one from 1970 produced by Hammer, that I'm probably going to check out in the future. I assume it's going to be more of an exploitation film than Blood and Roses (which also has its share).

I'm going to have to watch more of Roger Vadim's films now, too. I'm happy to see that Barbarella wasn't a fluke, and that he totally had directing chops.

Sonatine

Sonatine is a 1993 Japanese crime thriller written and directed by and starring Takeshi Kitano. I believe it's the first movie that garnered him international attention as a director.

Kitano stars as Murakawa, a Yakuza guy who has kind of had it with being a Yakuza, and is looking for a way out. When he and his men are sent to Okinawa for what is essentially some busywork, Murakawa smells a rat and suspects that his bosses are planning to get rid of him. When it turns out he was right, Murakawa and some of his men go into hiding at a beach house in the hopes that this will all blow over.

This second act of Sonatine is what really sets the movie apart from other crime films. While at the beach house, the characters essentially goof off Yakuza style for a good long while. They play games and tease each other, Murakawa plays pranks such as digging sand traps for them to fall into. But it isn't all about laughs. There's a melancholy feel to all the scenes, and the fun and games have a violent underpinning to them, as this is the only life these Yakuza guys really know. There's a scene where Murakawa spies two of his underlings shooting a can off of each others' heads. He approaches them and it quickly becomes a tense game of Russian Roulette. It plays as a reminder of just what these guys are capable of, and also gives us a glimpse of the inner turmoil Murakawa is experiencing.

The strange turbulent peace of act two eventual comes to an abrupt end, and the third act features Murakawa turning the tables on the people who are out to get him, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you things get pretty bloody.

Sonatine is a very well made movie, and pretty enjoyable, although it can be kind of depressing at times too. Don't hold out for a happy ending, folks. You pretty much know from the get go that there's no way that's going to happen. The whole middle section is where Sonatine shined for me, and I believe it is what ultimately makes the movie richer and more thoughtful than other crime movies of this type.

Revenge (Adauchi)

Here's the thing: this is the last samurai movie that I can find on Netflix Instant that I haven't already seen. I don't know what I'm going to do. I need samurai movies to survive!

Tadashi Imai's Adauchi (Revenge, in English) is an effective movie that covers ground well traveled in the samurai genre: You guessed it. Revenge. You know, how revenge only leads to madness and destruction, and the undoing of not only you, but your loved ones, etc. To seek revenge is a hollow endeavor.

Revenge is the story of Shinpachi Ezaki, a young samurai at the very bottom of the military ranks of his clan. When approached and dressed down by a man from another family, higher in the social strata, he stands up for himself, and is challenged to an illegal duel to the death. His brother tries to stop it from going down, but arrives too late. Shinpachi has won the duel.

Shinpachi's family, fearing the consequences his victory will bring, argue with the clan leader that both men broke into a temporary fit of insanity when the duel broke out, and rather than have him executed, Shinpachi is exiled to a monastery.

At the monastery, Shinpachi grows paranoid and unstable, without purpose or direction. His situation only worsens when the younger brother of the man he killed seeks him out for his own revenge, and he kills him too. The only way to peacefully solve this whole ordeal and maintain his own honor and that of both families is for Shinpachi to face the third brother of his rival in a duel and allow him to win.

Wow, hey, revenge is exhausting.

Revenge is a really well done samurai movie, made in a period where, as far as I can tell, every samurai movie was really well done. I have not been let down by a samurai movie from the 50's or 60's yet. I always kind of wondered what the other studios besides Toho were up to at this time. I don't think I've seen many. Most samurai movies that get released in America begin with that Toho Studios logo. I know there were other studios in Japan, and it was nice to see that they were making quality films too during Japan's most creatively fertile cinematic period.

My review probably didn't do it much justice, but the characters in Revenge had a lot of depth and subtlety, and the story was filled with tension. I really liked the lead guy's performance and also the old man who played the monk he befriends. I don't think I ruined too much of the story, even though I went kind of deep into it. I promise you I didn't spoil the ending. Check it out.

I hope Netflix Instant puts out some more samurai stuff before I go into withdrawal and start watching Yojimbo on a permanent loop.

The Lady Eve

Preston Sturges was one of the great comedy directors of the 1940's. 1941's Sullivan's Travels is one of the funniest and most touching films ever made. It's amazing to me that he made that and The Lady Eve, one after the other, in the same year.

The Lady Eve is a screwball romantic comedy starring Barbara Stanwyck as Jean, part of a father-daughter con team that sets her sights on Charles "Hopsy" Pike (Henry Fonda), the heir to a huge Ale company. She arranges a chance meeting with him on a ship on his way home from a year studying snakes in the Amazon. He falls right into Jean's hands, and falls head over heels for her, as she starts planting the seeds for the big swindle.

Things are complicated, however, when Jean starts to fall for Pike as well. When Pike's bodyguard, Muggsy, smells a rat, calls in some favors, and reveals her true identity to him, a heartbroken Pike dumps Jean. Jean, furious at being spurned, then decides to get her revenge by reentering his life as a different woman, The Lady Eve, and bleeding him dry.

The two leads are perfect in their roles. Stanwyck is excellent as the manipulative and hard-hearted Jean/Eve, who keeps her vulnerability always under the surface, and Fonda is the perfect mark as Pike, filled with a nearly endless supply of naivete and trust. When Jean reappears in his life as Eve, Pike rationalizes that Jean would never come into his home without a disguise, so the resemblance must be a coincidence.

The Lady Eve is one of the great comedies. It's smart, silly, and romantic, all at once. The dialogue is endlessly clever, and loaded with the kind of snappy one-liners that the best movies of the time (many of them Preston Sturges movies) were known for. I do like Sullivan's Travels more than this, but you really can't go wrong with either.