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Thursday, March 28, 2024

HEIDI (2015) -- DVD Review by Porfle



 

Originally posted on 3/25/17

 

Before, whenever I heard the name "Heidi", I thought of Shirley Temple being cute, or a children's book that I never read, or, most infamously, an American Football League game between the Oakland Raiders and the New York Jets on November 17, 1968 which, during an intensely suspenseful fourth quarter, was suddenly interrupted by NBC for the premiere of a brand new "Heidi" TV-movie, causing frenzied football fans all along the East Coast to tear their hair out in utter, gibbering consternation.

But that was before.  Now, having just seen the latest Swedish film adaptation of Johanna Spyri's 1881 children's book HEIDI (2015), not only has my perception of the story gone up considerably, but you might even call me a fan.  At least, a fan of this wonderfully rendered and exquisitely produced version.

Anuk Steffen is disarmingly endearing in the title role as a young orphan girl pawned off on her gruff grandfather by an uncaring aunt. Grandfather is played by Bruno Ganz, known mainly these days as Adolf Hitler in DOWNFALL (2004) thanks to all those "Hitler Reacts" video memes on the internet.


Here, he convincingly plays an old hermit living on a mountaintop in the Swiss Alps who rejects the child at first but eventually warms up to and then learns to love her.

The mountain sequences are dazzling with their beautiful locations and photography, whether during the lush green spring and summer or the frosty snow of winter.  Heidi frolics almost as a feral child, accompanying her young friend Peter during his daily goatherding duties or just hanging out with and gradually humanizing the once misanthropic old man. 

Her happiness is short-lived, however, when mercenary Aunt Dete (Anna Schinz) returns and takes her away to the city to live with a wealthy widower--and mostly absentee father--as a companion to his wheelchair-bound daughter, Klara (Isabelle Ottmann), an arrangment from which the unscrupulous aunt makes a tidy profit.


Although Heidi and Klara become fast friends, Heidi's life is made miserable by the stiflingly formal regimen of upper-class life (where she is addressed by her real name, Adelheid) personified by stiff, sadistic governess Miss Rottenmeier (Katharina Schüttler), who more than lives up to her name.

Thus, Heidi's dilemma is that she yearns to escape back to Grandfather and her beautiful mountaintop home but also dreads leaving poor Klara alone in her dreary, joyless existence. 

Director Alain Gsponer (LIFE ACTUALLY) has a very nimble and imaginative style that adapts well to the various settings.  The cinematography is consistently fine, as is the film's musical score. 

While the Swiss Alps provide some incredible eye-candy, even the believably gritty city and village settings are impeccably rendered and totally convincing.  The mansion scenes are suitably oppressive, sort of like a children's story as written by one of the Brontë sisters. I also sense something of a GREYSTOKE vibe at times, so jarring is Heidi's forced transition into so-called civilized life, with a bit of A LITTLE PRINCESS thrown in as well.



The cast are so good at their roles and the script so well-written that Heidi's story is effortlessly engaging from beginning to end.  Her eventual reunion with Grandfather and her precious mountains delivers a well-earned emotional catharsis. 

One of the film's main strengths is that it takes its story seriously--the drama and pathos are realistically handled, and lighthearted moments spring naturally from the situations without seeming forced or artificially cute.

The DVD from Omnibus Entertainment and Film Movement is in 2.40:1 widescreen with 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby surround sound.  Dubbed English or original German with English subtitles are available.  No extras.

I feel now as though I've been missing out on this story all these years, although I can't imagine it being presented in such a realistic and satisfying fashion as it is here.  There's so much more to this version of HEIDI than its innocuous-sounding title might suggest, and it should please both children and the adults who watch it with them to an equal degree. 




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Wednesday, March 27, 2024

HOODWINKED TOO! HOOD VS. EVIL -- DVD Review by Porfle


Originally posted on 8/10/11

 

I was pretty numb during the first twenty minutes or so of HOODWINKED TOO! HOOD VS. EVIL (2011) with its hyperactive sugar-high action, "girl power" antics, self-consciously hip and overly adult humor, and the kind of rubbery-looking CGI cartoon characters that I'm sorta getting tired of looking at. 

But at a certain point in the story we find out who the real bad guys are, and it's such a neat surprise that I thought, "Okay, I get it now" and started to enjoy this tacky little bag of eye candy.  I still didn't love it, but I didn't hate it anymore, either. 

From that magical children's wonderland known as The Weinstein Company, this relatively low-budget concoction opens with Granny (Glenn Close) and her fellow HEA (Happily Ever After) agents attempting to rescue Hansel and Gretel from the evil witch's gingerbread house before she cooks and eats them.  But without the help of agent Red Riding Hood (Hayden Panettiere), who's off training with the Sisters of the Hood at their mountaintop temple, the mission fails and the witch makes off with the both the children and Granny.



Holding them captive in the Dark Castle Towers hotel, the witch tries to make Granny divulge the secret recipe for the Norwegian Black Forest Feather Cake Truffle Divine, which can make those who eat it super-powerful and invincible.  Meanwhile, Red and Big Bad Wolf (Patrick Warburton) are on the trail along with their caffeine-crazed squirrel sidekick Twitchy, until their endless bickering causes them to split up.  Naturally, they eventually learn to work together and, with the help of numerous friends, save the day.

There's action aplenty as the spunky Red and her friends fight a variety of giant monsters (including an enormous spider), underworld baddies (the scene in the beanstalk giant's glitzy nightclub is fun), murderous hit-pigs with bazookas, and other dark denizens of their skewed fairytale world.  There's so much going on, in fact, that you might get a headache trying to take it all in--even the background extras swarm with extraneous activity.  Much of it, needless to say, is designed to hypnotically dazzle young eyeballs and keep them glued to the screen. 

The oddest thing about HOODWINKED TOO! for me is that it seems like a cross between a kids' film and an underground comic from the 60s that satirizes kids' films.  At the risk of sounding prudish, I remember when movies aimed at ten-year-olds didn't have bathroom humor, drug references ("The 60s were kind of a blur," Granny reveals), and funny-animal characters getting kicked in the nuts.  When the Wolf gets crotch-crunched after being splayed over an iron bar, he groans, "I can taste my own butt." 

A jab at Disney features the words "disgustingly cute" (how dare Uncle Walt make innocuous, non-hip kid flicks that were rated G?)  "Da fan is about to be hit by da doody!" is exclaimed at one point, and when the beanstalk giant (Brad Garrett) lands on a folk-singing goat, the little guy's voice--coming out of the giant's ass, of course--faintly remarks, "I'm in a dark tunnel...and I can smell burritos."  It's funny how the "adult" humor that permeates the script is also the most puerile. 



The film is also loaded with pop culture references that only adults will get, most of whom will have to be over thirty.  Among the TV shows that are spoofed verbally or visually are "Happy Days", "Star Trek", and "Starsky and Hutch."  SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is strongly recalled when Red and Wolf visit the previous film's villain, Boingo Bunny (Andy Dick), in his Lecter-like dungeon cell, while Granny sports the same yellow and black outfit worn by Uma Thurman in KILL BILL VOL. 1.  The idea that the writers expect young viewers of HOODWINKED TOO! to have seen those two films is somewhat distressing. 

Nevertheless, there are so many gags flying around all over the place that some of them are pretty amusing, especially anything involving those strange little German tykes Hansel (Bill Hader) and Gretel (Amy Poehler).  In the meantime, older viewers may enjoy playing "spot the celebrity voice."  Panettiere and Close are okay as Red and Granny, and Warburton gives The Wolf his usual laconic quality.  Joan Cusack instills the witch with the same manic kookiness she brought to ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES. 

The Three Little Henchman Pigs are voiced by Cheech & Chong and Phil Lamarr with predictable results.  Martin Short and Heidi Klum are among the corpulent squad of yodeling mercenaries who aid in Granny's rescue.  David Ogden Stiers plays Nicky Flippers, the frog leader of the HEA, and the beanstalk giant's singing harp, Jimmy 10-Strings, is voiced by Vegas mainstay Wayne Newton (who's starting to look a little like a CGI cartoon character himself).

The two-disc Blu-Ray/DVD combo from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 widescreen and Dolby English 5.1 sound.  Subtitles are in English and Spanish.  Extras include "The Voices of Hoodwinked Too!", storyboard comparisons, production artwork, three music videos, and brief videogame teasers.   

I don't watch a lot of these computer-animated cartoons myself--I prefer either cel animation or WALLACE AND GROMIT-style stop-motion--so I can't really compare the effects of HOODWINKED TOO! HOOD VS. EVIL to the recent high-profile examples of the genre churned out by the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks.  What I can say is that although I found it too frenetic and lowbrow at times, I still managed to enjoy it to a certain extent.  But it's not exactly what I'd call a basket of goodies.



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Tuesday, March 26, 2024

SPY KIDS 4: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD -- DVD Review by Porfle


Originally posted on 11/15/11

 

Am I not supposed to love this movie?  Not according to IMDb's user vote, which currently gives it about a 3 out of 10.  Fortunately, my inner ADD child doesn't read IMDb, and he thinks SPY KIDS 4: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD (2011) is like a giant gumball machine of fun which rates way more than that.

Writer-director Robert Rodriguez gives his own inner child free rein here and the result is a consistently inventive and lightning-paced romp packed with just about everything a kid might want to see in a movie.  Not the least of which being the chance to vicariously get swept up in a series of wild spy adventures with a couple of kids--make that Spy Kids--who suddenly find themselves having to save the world.

Rebecca Wilson (Rowan Blanchard), who loves to pull practical jokes, and her twin brother Cecil (Mason Cook), a brainy bookworm, are the typical bickering, competitive siblings.  Their dad Wilbur (Joel McHale) stars in a TV series called "Wilbur Wilson: Spy Hunter" but is unaware that his own wife Marissa (Jessica Alba) is herself a former OSS superspy now retired to take care of their new baby. 



In addition to struggling to connect with her dubious stepkids, Marissa is suddenly called back into action when a supervillain known as the Time Keeper threatens to end the world as we know it by accelerating time.  Needless to say, Rebecca and Cecil eventually end up as OSS agents themselves when the discontinued "Spy Kids" program is reactivated, with Rebecca's prankish ingenuity and Cecil's superior intellect saving the day.

The film opens with a very pregnant Marissa in hot pursuit of the Time Keeper's impish second banana Tick Tock even as her contractions begin, which gives us a good idea of the story's lighthearted and fantastical nature right off the bat.  It also gives us a taste of the endless barrage of cartoony CGI sight gags that will increase exponentially for the rest of the film, climaxing in the Time Keeper's vast clockwork lair with its huge rotating gears and deadly spinning second hand.

Once it gets going, the action never stops.  A surprise attack on the Wilson home by the Timekeeper's henchmen sends Rebecca and Cecil--via prerecorded holographic messages from Marissa--into an elaborate panic room where they hop into rocket-propelled jet luges that whisk them on a screaming aerial joyride to OSS headquarters with the bad guys hot on their tails. This is fun stuff, kids, replete with barf bag bombs (Cecil gets airsick), multiple sight gags, and thrilling special effects, during which their tiny robot dog Argonaut keeps up a steady stream of lowbrow one-liners (Ricky Gervais does a great job voicing the mutt who thinks he's a canine James Bond).

The OSS headquarters turns out to be like a theme park filled with awesome gadgets which the kids avail themselves of before striking out on their own after the Time Keeper.  Eventually the entire Wilson family, including Spy Baby of course, is united in the fight, only to be thwarted by "time bombs", freeze rays, and other unforeseen dangers.  Fans of the first three films will no doubt be pleased to find the original Spy Kids, Carmen (Alexa Vega, looking sharp these days) and Juni (Daryl Sabara), now grown up, joining in the action themselves. 



Rowan Blanchard and Mason Cook are perfect as Rebecca and Cecil and perform like pros while still coming across as real kids.  Not only are they good, natural comic actors but clearly are very directable as well.  McHale and Alba make an appealing couple, with Jessica looking especially fit in a series of skintight spy outfits.  Jeremy Piven, appearing in multiple roles including OSS leader Danger D'Amo, does an outstanding job and is key to making some of the film's more heartfelt moments work.  Speaking of which, the subplot with Marissa trying to fit in as the kids' stepmom is nicely handled, as is the message (non-too-subtle, but this is a kids' movie) about not taking time or family for granted.

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and subtitles in English and Spanish.  Extras include a Robert Rodriguez kid interview, "Spy Kids Passing the Torch" with Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara, deleted scenes (with Danny Trejo as "Uncle Machete"), "Rowan and Mason's Video Diary", "How to Make a Robotic Dog", "Ricky Gervais as Argonaut", and "Spy Gadgets."  The film is available both as a single DVD and a 4-disc combo pack with Blu-Ray+bonus, DVD+bonus, Blu-Ray 3D, and Digital Copy.

As colorful, fast-moving, and frenetic as any anime or CGI cartoon, SPY KIDS 4: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD is the kind of giddy-fun thrill ride of a movie that I wish I'd been able to see as a kid.  Apparently there are some pretty convincing reasons not to like it, judging from its low IMDb rating, but darn if I could find any of them.  I even enjoyed the fart jokes.


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Monday, March 25, 2024

BEYOND SHERWOOD FOREST -- DVD Review by Porfle

 
 
Originally posted on 2/13/10
 
 
After having recently watched the third season of the British TV series "Robin Hood", I found SyFy Channel's BEYOND SHERWOOD FOREST to be woefully bland and uninspired by comparison. Even the fact that it has a big, dumb bad-CGI dragon flying around doesn't help.

In a flashback, young Robin Hood watches as the dragon kills the Sheriff of Nottingham and is felled by arrows from his father and the Sheriff's successor, Malcolm (Julian Sands). Wounded, the creature reverts to its true form, that of a naked woman named Alina (Katharine Isabelle, GINGER SNAPS, FREDDY VS. JASON, CARRIE remake) with hyper regenerative powers. Malcolm wants to capture her in hopes that he can use her blood to give himself immortality, and when Robin's dad objects, Malcolm kills him.

Jump forward a couple of decades, and it's the old story of Robin stealing from the rich and giving to the poor while Malcolm, now the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, struggles endlessly to capture him and gain the favor of the equally-evil Prince John. He orders Alina, whose still-beating heart he holds hostage in a jar, to find Robin and his merry men and kill them. Robin, meanwhile, sets off on a quest to enter the mystical Dark Woods (from which Alina was banished as a child) and find the Keepers of the Trees, who possess a plant which can neutralize her dragon powers and make her mortal.



You're probably well aware that "Robin Hood" stories don't usually feature stuff like sorcerers and flying dragons, but this is SyFy and they have to squeeze some wince-inducing CGI in there somewhere. The idea that somewhere in Sherwood Forest there's this big floating doorway into the Dark Woods which has somehow escaped the notice of the general public for several years is equally farfetched, and the thought of Robin Hood and his small and lackluster band of Merry Men wandering around in there trying to locate the "Keepers of the Trees" struck me as a pretty non-thrilling quest.

Besides Little John and Will Scarlett running into some typically bad-CGI wolves along the way, their lengthy encounter with these robed bores is about as enchanting as a Rotary Club meeting. ("It is the law of the woods," their leader informs Robin at one point, to which he responds, "Where I come from, it is the men who make the laws...not the trees.") Later, they get captured by the Sheriff's men and, after the usual clever escape from jail, have it out with the bad guys as Robin and Malcolm go at it sword-to-sword in desultory fashion. To make things worse, our hero performs rather unheroically during this battle and comes off as a decidedly smaller-than-life character.


With his fussily-trimmed beard, costume-like clothing, and less than rugged demeanor, Robin Dunne makes one of the least impressive Robin Hoods ever. Mark Gibbon is a passable Little John (although both he and Katharine Isabelle currently fail to list this film on their IMDb pages), while Richard de Klerk's Will Scarlett reminds me of a belligerent Gilligan. Erica Durance makes a nice-looking Maid Marian, but since this is a "modern" retelling she is given the fighting skills of a warrior woman and further diminishes our hero by besting him with a staff.

As Prince John, David Richmond-Peck does a fairly good job although he resembles a grown-up version of Butch from "Our Gang" and falls far short of Toby Stephens' delightful interpretation of the character in the recent TV series. Julian Sands, of course, does his best as the Sheriff but can't manage to rise above the dull script (which boasts such anachronistic lines as "I've taken out an insurance policy") and murky, unappealing production values.

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and Dolby Surround 5.1, with English subtitles. A "making-of" featurette and a trailer are the extras.

Okay if there's nothing else to watch but hardly worth going out of your way to see, BEYOND SHERWOOD FOREST is a lackluster effort that may leave you pining for Errol Flynn, or even Kevin Costner.



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Sunday, March 24, 2024

DINOSHARK -- DVD Review by Porfle



Originally posted on 4/3/11

 

Compared to its follow-up, SHARKTOPUS, I found the highly-rated SyFy Channel fishfest DINOSHARK (2010) to be superior in just about every way.  Of course, that's like saying falling out of a two-storey window is superior to getting run over by a bus, but at least the first one is sort of exciting on the way down.

Eric Balfour, an actor I like for some reason after seeing him in Larry Bishop's bonehead biker flick HELL RIDE and the TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE remake, plays "Trace McGraw", who has returned to Puerto Vallarta to resume running a charter boat for tourists.  He meets a gorgeous blonde teacher named Carol Brubaker (Iva Hasperger), who joins him in the search when their mutual friend Rita goes missing.  Rita, of course, has been eaten by a dinoshark, and Trace and Carol end up going after the prehistoric beast themselves as it makes a beeline for its next beachfront buffet.

Lacking a big star like SHARKTOPUS' Eric Roberts, DINOSHARK benefits from the fact that some of the leads are actually pretty good actors (although Roger Corman is fortunate he didn't have to audition for his brief role as a fish expert).  And lucky for them, the script isn't nearly as dumb.  It does have its moments, though, as when Trace discusses his next course of action against the monster with friend Luis:

Trace: "So, what...we'll need explosives, right?"
Luis: "Yeah.  I'll try to get some from my friends at the army base."



Talk about convenient!  Nothing like having some pals at a nearby army base who don't mind lending you a few grenades and rocket launchers.  And then there's the helicopter scene, which is just plain goofy (but in a good way) and allows Balfour to intone a wry reference to JAWS.  Other echoes of the Spielberg classic abound, including a direct quote of its famous "DUN-dun DUN-dun" theme music as a hapless couple in a canoe try to outrun the toothy terror. 

The film is really pretty similar to a regular shark movie anyway--the Dinoshark isn't all that much bigger than Bruce, and it does pretty much the same things in the same way, aside from being able to leap out of the water to snag surfers and para-sailors in mid-air.  As co-producer (with his wife Julie) Roger Corman has said, you don't tease the viewer in a TV-movie the way you would for a theatrical film--you show the monster right away.  And sure enough, DINOSHARK isn't five minutes old before we get a gander at the head, the tail--the whole damn thing.  It isn't a bad-looking critter, really, resembling a cross between a shark and a big horned toad.

By being way less outlandish than its follow-up, this film's SPFX manage to be a bit more convincing even though they're still on the chintzy side.  The CGI guys aren't asked to overextend themselves as much, and manage to turn in some passable effects along with the more wince-inducing ones.  A big mock-up of the monster's head is used in several closeups of swimmers being chomped, but most of the attacks take place underwater and are digitally rendered.  The gore level is somewhat higher than in SHARKTOPUS, especially when Rita's leftovers are washed ashore.



Kevin O'Neill, whose only other director credit is this film's 2004 predecessor DINOCROC, is a visual effects veteran of films such as the FEAST and PULSE series and TV's "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys."  So in addition to being able to stage action scenes pretty well, he also knows where the SPFX are going to go later on.  The lush, scenic Puerto Vallarta locations are milked for all the added production values they can yield as the film breaks out into a festive travelogue montage at the drop of a hat.  The roving camera also manages to zero in on an abundance of frolicking bikini babes throughout the film. 

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.  Subtitles are in English and Spanish.  Besides a trailer, there's a commentary track featuring Roger and Julie Corman and director O'Neill.

The finale is pretty lively as the finny fiend makes its way to a heavily-populated resort beach where a sailboat regatta and a women's water polo match are being held, complete with a wide array of human appetizers bobbing around.  Balfour gets a cool final confrontation with Kid Din-o-Shark (I keep imagining J.J. from "Good Times" doing the play-by-play) and Iva Hasperger delivers one of those badass action-movie one-liners to top things off.  All in all, DINOSHARK is a pretty fun movie to watch, and not just in a derisive-laughter kind of way. 



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