Though I know it will inspire some pushback, I’m prepared to dub the “How to Train Your Dragon” movies the GOAT animated franchise. (That’s Greatest OF All Time, in case you didn’t know.) And yes, I’m including the “Toy Story” flicks.
Especially when considered in companionship with its short films and television/streaming show, “Dragon” has been a decade-long experience that’s both exhilarating and emotionally sustaining. It’s wrapped around the friendship between a Viking boy and a dragon, both of them striving despite physical (and to a lesser extent, psychological) disabilities.
In this definitively final go-round, scrawny nerd Hiccup (voice by Jay Baruchel) has become the unquestioned chief of his village, comprised of hardy folk who used to be enemies of the dragons but became their friends and allies. As time has gone on, their little island has become a crowded refuge for the reptilian creatures.
This draws the attention of dragon hunters, chiefly Grimmel the Grisly (F. Murray Abraham), a sly fellow who uses chemistry and trickery to control and, eventually, exterminate the dragons. Hiccup and his people stumble across a plan to protect them -- but it involves permanently saying goodbye to them.
Familiar faces return, including Hiccup’s wingwoman/reluctant romantic interest, Astrid (America Ferrera); his mother, Valka (Cate Blanchett), herself a dragon master; Gobber (Craig Ferguson), the village blacksmith and wisest person; and Hiccup’s various sidekicks, ranging from obnoxious to nerdy.
In the most notable development, ebony night fury Toothless, though to be the last dragon of his kind, encounters a white female, setting up obvious parallels with his human counterpart.
Writer/director Dean Deblois, who’s helmed all three feature films, brings a comfortable mix of action and awe, building characters without sacrificing entertainment value. What a great ride it’s been.
Bonus features are excellent. They include a feature-length commentary track, an alternate opening, deleted scenes and a couple of animated shorts. There is also a full dozen documentary shorts, ranging on the animation process to looks at the mythology behind dragons.
I admit I'm not sure how to take "Wild Nights With Emily," a portrait of poet Emily Dickinson in the latter years of her life. Certainly it's comedic, and the spare settings and deliberately stilted dialogue delivery make it feel like a "Saturday Night Live" spoof of period costume dramas. It's easy to poke fun at that sort of thing, and I enjoyed many a snigger.
But there's an undercurrent of anger here, too. Writer/director Madeleine Olnek wants to reclaim Emily's image as a reclusive spinster who knew not love or fame during her lifetime.
Instead, she's portrayed -- by "SNL" alum Molly Shannon -- as a vibrant if awkward woman desperate to be published who carried on a lifelong love affair with her childhood friend, Susan (Susan Ziegler), who married her brother and lived in the house next door.
The romance between the two (which is hardly supported by a consensus of scholars) is my favorite part of the movie. The Susan of this portrait was not just Emily's sister-in-law and lover, but editor of her nearly 2,000 poems and a constant source of encouragement and support. Active in society, she urges publishers and other poets to take notice of the genius next door.
Dickinson's disjointed, non-rhyming, untitled poetry was well ahead of its time, and it's funny to see a parade of stolid, unimaginative men parade into her parlor and declare her work unworthy of print. Easily the most delicious is Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Brett Gelman), editor of the Atlantic, whose buffoonery and priggishness are available in ample measures.
(He was actually among the first major publishers of her work, though viciously edited to conform to the conventions of the time.)
The villain of the piece is Mabel Todd (Amy Seimetz), a younger social climber who played piano for Emily (from downstairs) and, after the poet's death, became her chronicler and champion -- but of a deliberately skewed picture. The film depicts her as literally erasing Susan's name from Emily's love letters, something later confirmed by spectrographic analysis.
Mabel also carried on a liaison with Emily's brother/Susan's husband, Austin (Kevin Seal), who's depicted as a blundering idiot completely unaware of the love affair passing literally in and out his doorstep.
There's much to admire about "Wild Nights with Emily" but no much to savor, unless you're a fan of Dickinson's poetry, which is often read underneath or as part of the scenes. Most people first encounter poems in a school setting, dooming them to dislike the experience when it's force-fed to them.
Some of that same sort of aftertaste lingers with this film, which often feels more like a thesis than a portrait.
"Five Came Back" is not to be confused with the 2017 Netflix documentary series about five noted Hollywood filmmakers who made propaganda movies for the U.S. government during World War II. It's a 1939 harrowing adventure story about a dozen people whose plane crashes in the Amazon and they have to struggle to survive while hashing out various interpersonal relationships and clashes.
The premise reminded me a lot of "Flight of the Phoenix," one of my dad's favorites, so I was eager to check it out.
It's a prototypical B-picture with some solid talent behind it. One of the screenwriters (along with Jerry Cady and Nathanael West) was legendary script man Dalton Trumbo. Director John Farrow helmed some notable pictures, including the film noir classic "The Big Clock," which was later remade into "No Way Out."
Farrow also won an Oscar for his screenplay of "Around the World in 80 Days" -- which is actually better than it's given credit for, though still a solid contender for the title of "Worst Best Picture."
The cast of "Five" included iconic "that guy" character actor John Carradine, with his signature scarecrow frame and scowl, who went on to sire an entire dynasty of thespians.
And it was one of the biggest early screen roles for Lucille Ball, before she switched to comedy and conquered television. She plays Peggy, a classic screen type: hard-bitten moll who's had all sorts of troubles with men, and finds herself judged by the high-class types.
Carradine is Crimp -- great name, that -- a "detective" who's really a glorified bounty hunter. He's got a $5,000 claim on Vasquez (Joseph Calleia), an anarchist who's being extradited back to Panama to be executed for his role in the assassination of a government official. That's about 90,000 smackers in today's dollars, so he's very keen on making the plane to Panama City.
Vasquez turns out to be very cagey, managing to swipe Crimp's gun away from him while being processed at the police station. In many ways he's the central character of the story, a man who's committed despicable acts yet winds up as the figure with the largest accrual of moral authority.
Chester Morris plays Bill, the thick-necked and, initially, thick-headed captain who continues to lead the party after the crash due to engine failure. Peggy takes a shine to him, though his hard heart takes some convincing. Rakish copilot Joe (Kent Brooks) has eyes for one of the passengers, Alice (Wendy Barrie), who's the secretary to wealthy heir Judson Ellis (Patric Knowles).
It's eventually revealed they're eloping together to escape the media glare and disapproval of their parents. Judson turns out to be, along with Crimp, the least adaptable of the survivors, quickly taking to drink -- he's got an entire suitcase packed with booze -- and despair.
Dick Hogan is Larry, the steward who's sucked out the door during the crash. (Blond guys always bite it early in adventure movies.) Casey Johnson plays Tommy, a little boy of about 3 who is the son of a mob leader on the run. Allen Jenkins plays Pete, the gun tough charged with protecting the tyke.
When the passengers (prior to the crash) hear a news account that Tommy's dad has been gunned down, the group takes on a sort of collective parenting of the boy. At first Pete won't let Peggy play mother to him, but eventually she proves her mettle.
The flight scenes are certainly a relic of their times, both for the crudity of the not-so-special effects -- their plane, The Silver Queen, looks like a child's model (and not an expensive one) -- and the depiction of air travel in the 1930s. People move about the cabin freely, the booze flows just the same, and there's no lock on the door to the cockpit, which is invaded several times by passengers.
The by-today's-standards huge chairs include a fold-down bed for each person. Joe has a pervy scene where he responds to Alice's buzzer about a stuck ventilator by flirting and invading her personal space.
The scenes on the ground are also a bit funny in their near-total avoidance of verisimilitude. Other than Bill's sleeves becoming ripped to reveal his thick arms, nobody's attire changes considerably despite weeks on the ground in stifling jungle heat. I lol'd several times at the women clip-clopping around the underbrush in their high heels. The men don't even take off their suit jackets the first few days.
Despite crash-landing in the trees (without the landing gear down), Bill and Joe commence with making repairs, this being the day when the sky jockeys who drove the planes apparently were all expert mechanics, too. They somehow manage to clear hundreds of yards of jungle for a runway with improvised tools.
But it all comes down to the proverbial "too much weight," so in the end they have to decide who goes and who stays -- after their numbers have been sufficiently thinned by the heard-but-never-seen cannibals, of course.
Some of the story plays out with predictable precision. Like the evolution by which Alice realizes Judson is no good and gloms onto the creepy-but-noble Joe. And the way Crimp and Judson both seem determined to have run-ins with the other men, so it's only a matter of time before they square off with each other.
In a hoot-worthy example of inept stunt choreography, during their fight Carradine actually starts falling backward before Knowles' mimed punch comes anywhere near him.
But I appreciated the unexpected cerebral and emotional portions of the story. The Spenglers find themselves coming to appreciate Vasquez, who points out that while the others are desperate to escape back to their lives, his destination lies with a hangman's noose. Without the headhunter subplot, my guess is he would have chosen to stay behind, assuming he escapes Crimp's greedy clutches.
In the end it's Vasquez who is allowed to decide which five people will get to ride away on the plane. Though his choices are pretty unoriginal -- two pairs of lovebirds and a kid -- the way he arrives at them hold genuine tension and intrigue.
"Five Came Back" is the sort of largely forgotten picture that strives beyond the shortcomings of its B-picture entertainment value and delivers a memorable experience.
Nicole Kidman has de-glammed for roles before, mostly notably putting on a prosthetic nose to play Virginia Woolf in “The Hours,” for which she won an Oscar. That’s a pretty standard M.O. in Hollywood: get grizzled, get Oscar gold.
The boys do it too: see Matthew McConaughey in “Dallas Buyers Club.”
But Kidman goes beyond unadorned to downright fugly in “Destroyer,” a hard-edged drama in which she plays a police detective who’s been spiraling toward the bottom for years. With her face mottled, eyes like two dim lamps peering out of dark holes, Erin Bell looks like she’s stared into the face of the devil and slowly gotten crispy.
She’s a boozer, a user, a cop who seems to spend very little time actually investigating crime. Seemingly sleeping out of her police car, she’s following up on an old case that involves an undercover operation she was in years ago.
It centers around Silas (Toby Kebbell), a drug dealer who inspires fear and loyalty in his crew. And there was Chris (Sebastian Stan), the fellow cop who posed as half of a couple with her and led to a real-life romance.
Other players include Erin’s estranged teen daughter, Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn), who’s about to make some bad choices with her scuzzy boyfriend, and Bradley Whitford as a wealthy lawyer involved with the drug trade.
Directed by Karyn Kasuma from a screenplay by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, “Destroyer” is a tough watch but a rewarding one. Kidman deserved the Oscar nomination she didn’t get, not for just taking off her makeup but for putting on the face of self-destructive character who worms her way under your skin.
Bonus features are sparse in quantity but long in quality.
There are two separate feature-length commentary tracks, one by Kasuma -- pity Kidman did not join her -- and another with the script men. Plus there’s a making-of documentary, “Breakdown of an “Anti-Hero: The Making of Destroyer.”
I was genuinely creeped out by “The Curse of La Llorona.” I’m an old-school horror fan from way back who has generally been unimpressed by modern scare flicks, which all seem to substitute jump-scares for tension and foreboding. “Llorona” employs a few of those, but judiciously and skillfully.
And PG-13 horror? Please.
While this isn’t by any means a “hard R” gross-out gorefest, it’s got enough of the ol’ ultra-violence to whet the appetite for those who have one.
The story is based on a famous Mexican folktale about a mother who drowned her own children as retribution for her husband cheating on her. There have supposedly been man sightings of the “weeping woman,” who now wanders the land as a ghost bringing misfortune to those who encounter her.
For the movie version, this mythology gets woven into the existing world of “The Conjuring” movies, a vastly-expanding horror franchise with multiple sequels and spinoffs. Set in 1973 Los Angeles, it does not feature the Warren couple of occult investigators played by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, although a secondary character, a priest named Father Perez (Tony Amendola), makes an appearance.
“You don’t have to be religious to have faith,” he says. Thanks Father! Now go find something good for stabbing with.
Linda Cardellini plays Anna, a social worker who was widowed about a year ago, leaving her to toil with two kids, Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen) and Chris (Roman Christou), who are around 10. Early on she catches a bad case involving a mother, Patricia Alvarez (Patricia Velasquez) who has been keeping her sons locked in a closet.
Anna gets the boys put into protective custody, but they wind up drowned and Patricia curses her to have La Llorona haunt her family next.
Marisol Ramirez plays the creature, and it’s a pretty gnarly get-up: white (wedding?) dress and veil, chalky skin with pitch-black tears eternally streaming down her face, the mouth splitting into a yawning chasm and the hands blackened as if by charring. When she grabs one of her victims, it leaves burn marks.
Apparently there’s a bureaucracy involved in getting the Warrens’ help, so Father Perez hooks Anna up with Rafael Olvera (Raymond Cruz), a former priest turned ghost-hunting shaman. He’s got a dour attitude and a closet full of holy artifacts and potions to fight La Llorona. Wait till you see what he can do with eggs.
I like that the screenplay by Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis has little to no fat. There are only really three or four setups before we get to the scaring inside the family’s house. Director Michael Chaves keeps things moving nicely, with a minimum of existential pondering and a maximum of eerie weeping lady frights.
Is “The Curse of La Llorona” an especially groundbreaking or original bit of horror? It is not. It relies a little too much on familiar tricks, like the wind that is constantly blowing open doors, windows, etc. and heralding the ghost’s arrival. Somebody needs to keep an eye on the barometric pressure.
But it’s an enjoyable scary flickershow with lots of inky shadows and tense moments. I don’t know why female horror villains are scarier, but they just are.
“Glass” was made for $20 million, which must be some sort of low-end record for a modern superhero flick. Heck, I think even Roger Corman’s 1994 version of “Fantastic Four” must’ve cost more.
(Note to editor: this is what’s known as “artistic hyperbole.” Corman never spent more than a quarter-mil on anything. – CL)
To be true, nobody flies through the air or emits energy beams from their eyes or turns into an orange pile of rocks. But that’s really the point of the movie from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan, who with this films wraps up an ad-hoc trilogy that began with 2000’s “Unbreakable.”
“Glass” is less of a straight-up action flick than an exploration of the superhero myth. It posits three men who believe they have extraordinary abilities against a disbelieving world where skepticism and gaslighting reign.
(Another note to editor: “gaslighting” means using trickery to convince someone their beliefs or mindset are unreliable.)
David Dunn (Bruce Willis) is nearly impervious to physical harm, using his day job running a small security company to hunt criminals. Lately he’s chasing Kevin (James McAvoy), an unstable man with split personalities, dominated by one who calls himself the Beast, and exhibits extraordinary strength and sadism.
The third wheel – quite literally for the first half of the movie – is Elijah Price (Samuel Jackson), an evil genius who goes by the moniker “Mr. Glass” because of his extraordinarily fragile bones. He’s been incarcerated for the past two decades, sitting in a wheelchair in a seemingly catatonic state.
For a while all three men are jailed and treated by a psychiatrist (Sarah Paulson) who specializes in addressing superhero delusions. Using evidence and therapeutic techniques, she works to convince the trio that they are actually normal humans – because there’s no such thing as superheroes.
We’ll see how that turns out.
“Glass” is a much more cerebral superhero movie than we’re used to, but I think a satisfying one. It takes a few liberties with things that happened in the prior movies, not to mention basic logic. But maybe rearranging reality is Shyamalan’s super-power.
Bonus features are quite extravagant. There are a dozen deleted scenes and an alternate opening. I count another 12 making-of documentary shorts, ranging from the film’s special effects and sound design to early storyboards.
Two of the more interesting are “Glass Decoded,” which unveils some continuity “secrets” of the trilogy, and “Connecting the Glass Universe,” exploring Shyamalan’s concept of a comic book movie grounded in reality.
In Hollywood they say everyone secretly wants to direct, but the smart ones really want to be producers.
Marsai Martin, who plays one of the kids on the TV show "Black-Ish," supposedly pitched the idea for "Little" when she was 10 years old, inspired by the seminal Tom Hanks comedy, "Big." At age 14 she's now listed as executive producer of the body switcheroo comedy she stars in, the youngest person in Hollywood to receive such a credit.
It'd be an inspirational story, except for the fact that "Little" is so loudly, aggressively awful.
The setup is that instead of a 13-year-old transforming into a 30-year-old body, a grown woman played by Reginal Hall has a curse put on her that turns her back into her 13-year-old self. Rather than entering the adult world and charming everyone with their childlike innocence and imagination, here the protagonist is already a world-weary stiff who must rediscover what it means to be a kid.
(We pause here to remember "Big" director Penny Marshall, who passed away recently and never got the recognition she deserved as a filmmaker, including never being nominated for an Oscar.)
"Little" is directed by Tina Gordon ("Drumline") from a script she co-wrote with Tracy Oliver. The set-up is that Jordan Sanders it the 38-year-old owner/CEO of a tech company. She's rich, has a fabulous wardrobe, drives a BMW i8, is on the cover of magazines -- and is a total rhymes-with-witch.
When she's abusive to a food truck owner's kid, a wave of a magic wand means she wakes up the next day occupying the same body she had 25 years ago, right down to the frizzy hair and awkward glasses.
(Interestingly, she doesn't regrow the braces she had as a kid, so it's curious why she suddenly needs glasses again. Can kids not wear adult contacts? Or did the LASIK wear off?)
The biggest mistake the movie makes is making Jordan SO irredeemably nasty, both as an adult and a kid, that we can never relate to her as a person. How awful is she? Her employees are utterly terrified of her, scuttling away when they see her coming. When one fellow dares to eat an apple at a pitching meeting, she grabs it, licks then entire skin and then demands he take another bite.
There's movie-mean, and then there's she-would-get-sued-after-a-single-day-mean. One's funny, the other is not.
Jordan's middle school adventures are as predictable as you think. She encounters a new generation of nasty cheerleaders running the show, and a trio of uber-nerds who think they're going to be suddenly released from their prison of uncoolness if they compete in the talent show. You can take a wild guess where the movie's big finale winds up.
Issa Rae plays April Williams, Jordan's put-upon assistant who secretly has big ideas for an app that she's never been able to pitch. With Jordan sidelined to kiddie school, April has to take over the wheel of the company, with mixed results.
Rae has plenty of onscreen charm, but the script doesn't give her a lot to do but react to Jordan. I would love to see her in her own romcom vehicle.
The sexual dynamics of "Little" are... uncomfortable. Jordan has a gorgeous boyfriend, Trevor (Luke James), who she has listed in her phone contacts as "D-Boi." Google it for the NSFW definition, but suffice to say that she only keeps him around for sex. But, of course, Trevor has a heart of gold and secretly wants more. When he sees little Jordan, he takes her for Jordan's daughter and immediately wants to daddy her.
Really? What kind of dude lets himself be treated as sexual appendage, except for someone who's looking for the same?
Then there's Gary Marshall (Justin Hartley) -- hello inside joke -- Jordan's dreamy teacher at middle school, upon whom she attempts to put the moves despite having a preadolescent body. She actually does the same thing with Trevor, so it's a whole next-level thing of creepy.
There's even a musical sequence that seems to spring out of absolutely nowhere, with Jordan suddenly writing on a bar like Michelle Pfeiffer in "The Fabulous Baker Boys."
Martin has a lot of spunk, but the story is basically just an excuse for her to vamp in costly clothes and make smug expressions for the camera. There isn't a defined character underneath all the mugging, and what there is we can't stand.
