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One of Disney’s shortest animated features, featuring a lead character who doesn’t speak through the entire film, is still as appealing now as it was at the time of release, way back in 1941. This fact is a testament to the creative quality that makes Dumbo such a genuine family classic. It’s a simple tale, gorgeously animated and well performed, featuring some truly jaw-dropping ideas and imagery, which allows the audience to become drawn into the more “human” elements of the film. Considering the main cast are all animals, that’s no small feat.

Continue our exploration of Dumbo here…

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There are two moments in Apocalypse Now that have entered the pop-culture zeitgeist, moments that are spoofed, parodied and played upon whenever somebody wants a historical touchstone for war, or the madness of it. Robert Duvall’s oft-quoted line about loving the smell of napalm, and the epic helicopter attack utilising the score for Wagner’s Ride Of The Valkyries. However, ask anybody under the age of around 25 what films they come from, or indeed anything else about that film, and you’ll probably receive a blank look. Which is a shame, because Apocalypse Now is a film worthy of inclusion into whatever pantheon of Great War Films you seek to fill. Director Francis Ford Coppola suffered a nervous breakdown whilst filming this monster, star Martin Sheen had a heart attack, and Marlon Brando…. well, behaved exactly like Marlon Brando would; yet for all its famed production troubles (and I use the term “troubles” in the lightest sense, because this was an apocryphal film to make) Apocalypse Now remains an enduring icon in Hollywood’s history. Today, we take a look back at the film itself, look beyond the anecdotes and myths, to see if it really does hold up after all these years.

Delve deeper into the redux, here!!!

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This review is based on the extended Director’s Cut version of Aliens, long thought by fans to be the definitive version of the film. Key story elements removed for the theatrical version, such as setting up the LV426 colony at the opening of the film, additional character development for Ripley during the opening act and various other narrative enhancers throughout which add to the story.

If it was possible to exceed what Ridley Scott did with Alien, then James Cameron did so with Aliens. In what can only be described as a tour de force of science fiction, James Cameron cemented his place as a genuine A-list director, following his breakout mainstream debut with Terminator, with the follow-up to Alien. Set some time after the events in Alien, with Ellen Ripley being found drifting in the remains of the Nostromo’s escape pod, some 52 years after she blew the Alien Queen out the door, Aliens manages to return our heroine to the planet she never wanted to return to. Aliens is not your typical action-sci-fi fare, however, in that it takes its time setting up the scenario, the characters, and the plot. Avoiding Ridley Scott’s original noir-ish tone from film 1, Cameron eschews the more traditional scary movie feel for a gung-ho, testosterone injected thrill ride, balancing both character development and hard-core thrills in equal measure. To say Aliens is a masterpiece is an understatement of an order of magnitude. What Cameron achieved set the benchmark for science fiction (and the Alien franchise) film and, until he revised that benchmark again in Terminator 2, would never be bettered.

Flick it of safety and come for a ride with us! Click here to ready the rest of this article!!!

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If you were to count down the most influential science fictions films made over the last half century, somewhere towards the top of that list would be a couple of  Ridley Scott films, namely Blade Runner and Alien. Scott almost single-handedly revolutionised hard sci-fi during the period between 1979 and 85, kicking things off with the noirish, gritty space thriller, Alien. Little did he realise at the time just what he was unleashing upon cinema audiences, with the Alien saga ballooning into a major franchise for 20th Century Fox. The edgy, non-politically correct nature of Alien, with it’s realistic narrative and believable look into future tech, caused a minor sensation with audiences upon its release to audiences in 1979. Sparing use of the film’s main villain, coupled with a brooding, atmospheric tone, and believable characters, gave audiences a real jolt of adrenaline, effectively introducing one of cinema’s greatest screen villains. It also introduced one of cinema’s great female screen icons, Ellen Ripley; a character which would even have Sigourney Weaver nominated for an Oscar in the role in the mega-sequel, Aliens.

Scare yourself silly by reading the rest of this review!!! Click here to enter the Nostromo and be chased by an alien!!

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There are classic films. And then, there are classic films. The truly classic film defy both time and tide, surmount the detrimental jibes of critics, and remain an enduring legacy of a time when the world was innocent, and film-making accordingly thus. The Wizard of Oz, recently released on remastered BluRay disc, is one of those rare films that transcends both time and place, remaining in the firmament of genuinely classic films, and will remain so as long as humans stride the surface of this planet. The back-story of The Wizard of Oz is as enthralling a saga as the film itself, filled with the intrigue of actors ending up in hospital and receiving second degree burns. Troubles behind the scenes, however, hardly seem to touch this timeless classic, and it’s a testament to director Victor Fleming that the whole thing comes together as it does.

To follow the Yellow Brick Road and read more of our thoughts on the Wizards world, click here!!!

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Okay, so we’ve already reviewed perennial favourite The Neverending Story here at the site, and we felt it was about damn time we turned our attention to the other of the Holy Family Puppet Films, those films that twinkle in our childhood and make us sigh with remembrance at being such innocents. Like The Neverending Story and Labyrinth, which used both humans and puppets (courtesy of Jim Henson and others), The Dark Crystal also uses puppets to tell its story. But unlike that great film, it uses them exclusively. Jim Hensons dark fable is both desperately melancholy, and brilliantly stylish, for those able to overcome the somewhat clunky direction.

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Stunning, frightening, spectacular film success from legendary director Steven Spielberg, unleashing realistic digital dinosaurs upon the cinema-going public in Jurassic Park. Released in 1993, Spielberg effectively launched the field of digital animation in motion pictures with this single film, a film which still holds up under scrutiny today as a roller-coaster ride of thrills, spills, and amazing action as only Spielberg can provide. Today, we take a look back fondly at a time when digital animation was in it’s infancy, an expensive, prohibitive way to to bring fantastical elements of a story to life. Jurassic Park spawned two sequels, The Lost World, and Jurassic Park III, which all added to the franchise set in motion with this one, pivotal film. Jurassic Park also gave us our first theatrical taste of the new sound system known as dts, or Digital Theatre Systems, a competitor to Dolby’s own 5.1 discrete channel soundtrack format, which itself premiered theatrically a year earlier with Batman Returns. Yes, 1993 was a big year for Spielberg: that same year he also gave us Schindler’s List, the Oscar winning Holocaust film which finally gave the master director a golden statuette to take home.

Don’t get eaten by dinosaurs!! Click here to read on!!

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Walt Disney was an undisputed genius. That much is certain. His ability to take famous (and semi-famous) European fairy tales and morality stories and turn them into feature films of animation so beautiful is renowned, his early works considered to this date classic masterpieces of the artform. Rightfully so, too. Who am I to try and knock the great man (after all, he’s dead, and can’t respond!), so I can really only give you my thoughts on what is one of the studios most beautifully rendered films.

Peter Pan was conceived by Scottish-born playwright John M Barrie, and his first appearance was in a published version of The Little White Bird in 1902; his leading role status wouldn’t be seen until 1904, when Pan was written into a play featuring the now famous characters we all know and love, including Wendy, John and Michael Darling. Peter Pan appeared in numerous stories, in much the same way a serialised character like Sherlock Holmes would, in which the same character would get into various serialised adventures that ended up becoming the basis for the more modern take on the character. Part of the legend of the character was held that the part of Peter himself, when performed on stage, was played by a girl, rather than a boy, to try and keep the mischievous ambiguity of the character alive and well.

Pan creator, JM Barrie circa 1910

Peter Pan, along with the Lost Boys, Captain Hook, Smee, Tinkerbell and Tigerlilly, and finally the Darling children, became part of modern English folklore, a sort of mythology of childhood fantasy so eloquently expanded a few decades later by Tolkein and CS Lewis, among others. However, the underlying themes of Barrie’s stories were a little darker than the version we see today. More on this later.

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With the release of The Jungle Book in 1967, the end of an era was achieved. In a sad coda to the films production, Walt Disney, the man responsible for creating the Disney brand, died before the film was completed, from lung cancer. As the 19th official animated film in the Disney canon, The Jungle Book is a dramatic misfire of gargantuan proportions, lacking the subtlety and magic that had inhabited almost all of the previous Walt-produced features since Snow White. Lacking real narrative substance, substituting it for character instead, was a risk Walt wanted to take with this, his swansong as producer. It ultimately didn’t pay off, although only time has revealed this in the years between original release and today.

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Prison movies have a long and proud history in Hollywood. Films such as Cool Hand Luke and Stallones Lock-Up have all, at one point, kept us in rapt attention to the plight of the modern-day inmate. While Hollywoods idealised prisoner is traditionally the wrongly accused, or the murderer with a heart of gold, there are some films so perfectly realised by a filmmaker that they transcend the genre and become classics in their own right. The Shawshank Redemption, based on a Steven King short story (entitled Rita Hayworth & The Shawshank Redemption, published in Kings’ Different Seasons in 1982) appeared out of nowhere in 1994, and was given a generally lukewarm response by moviegoers around the world. Upon it’s release on home video and DVD, however, audiences warmed to the wonderful story of a man, accused of murdering his wife and her lover, who is thrown into prison, and the friendships he strikes up with fellow inmates. A few years later, the very same director gave another King work a shot at cinematic glory, with The Green Mile, a story set in a prison’s death row, and the men who guard those who have been sentenced to death. But the question remains, which of these two cinematic classics is the better prison film? Which would survive in solitary confinement? Which film deserves our critical version of a lethal injection? Strap on the handcuffs, jot down your last meal, and get set to find out!!

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God bless the ABC. For ages now they’ve been running classic movies on their second digital channel here in Australia, and it’s a great chance to be exposed to films that you might not ordinarily see. Recently they screened this pearler of a film from Paramount, starring a very young Fred Astaire and Burgess Meredith, entitled Second Chorus, a comedic musical co-starring Paulette Goddard and big-band superstar Artie Shaw. Filmed in 1940, Second Chorus tells of two misfit college band trumpeters, Danny O’Neill (Astaire) and Hank Taylor (Meredith), who try to win over the affections of Ellen Miller (Goddard) when they spot her at one of their performances. Ellen, who is employed by a debt collection agency, uses her feminine charms to serve a summons notice to Danny about some costs for an encyclopedia he once purchased and never paid for. Both Danny and Hank arrive at the collection agency and swindle Ellen out of her job and into their employ, as their band secretary, a job that sees Ellen soon become defacto band manager.

Goddard, Astaire & Meredith in Second Chorus.

Danny and Hank both try to further their employment with legendary band-leader Artie Shaw (who, funnily, plays himself throughout the film, a nice touch!), but end up themselves being swindled out of a secretary by the famed musician. With Ellen now effectively out of reach, both Danny and Hank come up with various plans to try and win her back, although throughout the film, it’s fairly obvious which of our leading men she’s going to end up with. Throw in the plot device of a Shaw-led concert, a doddery bottle-cap manufacturer (a wonderfully deadpan Charles Butterworth) bankrolling the show and a whole slew of wonderful cinematic treats for the interested viewer. The key musical motif, the song Love Of My life, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Song, and is a delightfully fitting (if somewhat belaboured) theme for the film’s sense of fun. Astaire gets to do his thing, dancing up a storm during a few genuinely entertaining musical numbers, especially the grand finale, where he tap-dance-conducts Artie Shaw’s orchestra, winning the heart of his girl. Did I give away the ending? Yep, but you all knew that anyway, didn’t you. After all, this is Hollywood.

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Ahh yes, the original. Caught a showing of this film a while back on local TV here in Australia, and thought it might be good to give you my opinion on it. For those unaware, Dirty Harry was the first in a series of five films depicting the escapades of Harry Callahan, a San Fransisco cop whose methods are unusually…. brutal. The Harry films embedded Clint Eastwood into the pop-culture conciousness, spawned a stream of now classic quotes, and gave us the anti-authority police officer archetype, the kind who “don’t take no crap from nobody” and who will bust your ass if you get in his way, in much the same way that he became the definitive cowboy figure from his pulp westerns under the guidance of Sergio Leoni.

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This film is a magnificent cinematic achievement. And that’s putting it lightly. Disney’s Pinocchio is a devastatingly lavish, luscious and delightful animated feast for the senses, both artistically and musically. Barely a frame of this film is anything less than perfection. It’s golden, a warm, frightening, often poetically made film filled with lovely characters and a sense of the sublime. This, quite simply, is Walt Disney at his absolute finest. As each of these classic films are released on DVD and BluRay as part of the Platinum Series, I keep being blown away with just how… well, awesome each of these early films actually are. A lot of people give the Disney Corporation a bit of grief these days about their overt commercialisation, and their somewhat cavalier attitude towards their inherited legacy of animation. And to some extent, perhaps that rightly so. After all, Disney have successfully whored their product out in a variety of ways that has effectively distilled their wares into nothing more than soft-core family-oriented slop: direct-to-video sequels of their most enduring and popular characters, for example, is only one instance that I can cite where they’ve tarnished their massive history.

Pinocchio dances for Figaro... Thanks to Geppetto.

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The title of this article is wrong. I got to thinking about the Titanics I had seen on film, and I realized there were at least four of them that have featured in semi- (or pseudo-) historical cinematic retellings of the tragic events of April 14-15, 1912. (This is not counting Titanic cameos: Time Bandits, Raise the Titanic!, and recent goings-on on Doctor Who.) So the awful pun that popped into my mind when said mind contained but two Titanics (James Cameron’s and the Titanic lionized in today’s rant, the Titanic of A Night to Remember: Hello, Bi-tanic!) morphed into Tri-tanic when I recalled Germany’s early Nazi-era go at the story (S.O.S. Titanic, essentially a diatribe against the shortcomings of capitalism: a very odd film, to say the least), and finally hit the shoals of nonsense and sank when I remembered the Titanic of 1953, starring Barbara Stanwyck, as a four-way Titanic pileup, or, of course Quar-tanic.

Boo! I found you!

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There’s a moment at the beginning of the second act of Key Largo (the film was adapted from a play by Maxwell Anderson, and certain theatrical conventions– the sense of an act-break, the semi-proscenium blocking of some of the scenes– remain) where young widow Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall), having fallen asleep during the film’s centerpiece hurricane near Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart), seated watchfully next to her on the floor of the lobby of the Largo Hotel, wakes, raises her head, and looks up into his eyes, and he looks back at her. That’s all. In a moment, the gangster dramatics of the film will resume, as Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) and his men plot how they will get themselves and their counterfeiting money to Cuba now that the hurricane has passed, but for now we can enjoy simply being privy to a key to Bogart’s success: the fact that Hollywood’s most legendary tough guy knew the absolute importance of tenderness.

Key Largo was Bogart and Bacall’s fourth, and final, film together. (A year earlier, in 1947, their third co-billing, Dark Passage, played to less-than-enthusiastic reviews: the film, about a wrongly accused, escaped con [Bogart] who has plastic surgery in order to elude recapture, is fascinating and nightmarish; we follow Bogart’s character up and down the impossible hills of San Francisco via first-person point-of-view until it’s revealed midway through the film that the surgery has “given” him Bogart’s face. Not having Bogart actually present on-screen for half the film’s running time, as well as the script’s weak ending [Bogart finds the real killer, but she commits suicide before he can bring her to the police], stifled Dark Passage at the box office.) In real life, despite a twenty-year age difference, they’d been happily married for several years, and to critics it showed: they were too comfortable with one another onscreen. The sexual spark they’d displayed in To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep was gone.

To which I respond: Stifle it, naysayers. Key Largo is an entirely different type of animal.

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