An American Tail (1986)

This animated classic is a piece of nostalgia that I am dearly fond of. Before even watching it for the first time in a few years I knew exactly how this film would rate. That doesn’t mean I didn’t give this film a fair assessment though. The animation, the music, the emotions- just about everything in this film is marvelous.

An American Tail is the story of immigration and hope. The Mousekewitz family lives in Russia under a time of great duress. They decide to flee to America, where everything is supposed to be better and they will be free from the tyranny of cats, who have tormented mice relentlessly in their homeland. Along the way, the only son gets lost at sea but makes it to America, only to start a frantic search to find his family. He is helped along the way by a number of colorful characters. Some are good and some are bad, and all of them have some kind of symbolic quality.

All of the mice represent the immigrants from Europe to America during the turn of the century, a period of significant immigration. Cats are the antagonists, representing the worst in Americans. They seek to eliminate the mice, doing anything they can to drive them from their homes. Some of them pretend to want to help the mice by offering them employment as indentured servants in mills and industry. A very few number of cats are actually kind and caring, thought they fit very awkwardly in with the rest of their kind.

It’s not really the cheeriest depiction of how the US handled immigration and I’m not sure it’s an entirely fair one. Producers David Kirschner and Steven Spielberg are both Jewish and Spielberg has a knack for highlighting the plight of the Jews when possible. It’s not that I don’t believe Jews and immigrants were mistreated, it’s just that the extent to which they are mistreated in this film seems suspect to me. For every case of abuse and exploitation, I’m sure there is an example of an immigrant who found a happy niche and succeeded in the New World.

But that’s really the only complaint I have about this film. It will easily go over a child’s head but it is an interesting side note for adults to ruminate on while watching this delightful film. The animation is very rich and I even would go as far as to say that it is better in quality than what Disney was producing at the time. Instead of glossing over everything, An American Tail isn’t afraid to be very detailed about the grit and grime associated with the slums of the New World.

The music is also fantastic. The film is full of memorable songs that get stuck in your head and stay stuck for years. It’s one thing to have catchy songs in your animated film, but to make them so enjoyable and endearing is something special. If you’ve seen this movie, you know what I’m talking about. I you haven’t seen An American Tail, you don’t know what you’re missing!

Plain and simple, An American Tail is a darling of a film that is perfectly suited to be watched by children and adults and will surely become a favorite for all ages. Even if you think you’re too “grown up” for a film like this, you’ll be surprised. An American Tail will melt your heart again and again.

RATING: 3.75 out of 5

First Knight (1995)

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

I don’t know if this has come up yet, so I want to share something with you: I am not a big Richard Gere fan, so many of his films I see are likely to have their ratings tainted by subjectivity. Just a fair warning. Anyway, First Knight falls into some of the standard pitfalls that King Arthur films succumb to, but it goes further than other interpretations do in getting things horribly wrong.

Many Arthur films screw up in a number of excusable areas. First, they typically set the Arthur story too far into the Middle Ages, with shining armor, valiant knight and glorious castles. In fact, Arthur existed in the 5th or 6th Century when things were not as opulent and glamorous as the romanticized tales have led many to believe.

Secondly, most Arthur films really overdo the kinship of the Round Table. Depictions of gorgeous stone or wooden tables abound and the knights were all dashingly handsome. In reality the round table probably didn’t even exist. The knights were really a kind of rag-tag band of wandering men who fought for justice. Their relationship was probably close, but not as glorious as we’ve come to believe.

Finally, almost all Arthur films, and most films with knights and swords, use horrible swordplay for their fight scenes. As heavy and cumbersome as real swords would have been, the parrying and quick swordsmanship defies physics. It’s all stage and film trickery meant to make the fights look cool and more dangerous.

But like I said, all of these items are excusable because they have been commonplace in presentations of the Arthur legend for quite some time. First Knight has bigger problems on its hands.

For starters, Gere plays Lancelot very poorly. Gere is only 5’11” and many of the actors in the film are of a comparable height. Guinevere is only a few inches shorter than Lancelot, though you can hardly tell because of her hair and all. King Arthur is several inches taller than Lancelot, which is a historical no-no. Lancelot, by legend, was a very tall man, towering above many of his peers. This little goof really jars your suspension of disbelief if you know your Arthur at all.

Along with Gere’s height, his performance of Lancelot is completely void of any accent. Literally every single character but Lancelot speaks in an appropriate British accent. The fact that Gere refuses to even try to pull off an accent is a major point of contention with me. They have voice coaches for a reason. Use them.

The dialogue is very wooden, unsatisfying and predictable. This is a huge detriment because most Arthur stories include very beautiful prose and really capture the beauty of the romanticized Arthur legend. This is compounded by the fact that the acting is rather unbalanced. Some actors perform up to par, but most either overact or under-act their roles. This leads to a bizarre up and down feeling when processing the lines.

The special effects and stunts are all a little to modern as well. Camelot is presented as a gigantic city with opulent towers and brilliant colors. It’s all too over the top and came right out of left field for me. A stunt involving a runaway carriage was also rather hokey. It was essentially set up as a medieval car chase, with all the predictable elements of the bad guy jumping on top, crashing through windows and breaking off of doors. Sorry, been there and done that a hundred other times without the added cheese of a medieval setting. There was also a gauntlet prop that Gere ran through in exchange for a kiss from Guinevere that was easily far beyond the design of anything from the Middle Ages.

The love story is altogether unconvincing and they go about Arthur’s death all wrong. Somehow, the writers found it a bright idea to have Arthur snuffed out by relatively minor character from Arthurian legend. The man, Malagant, never amounted to beans in Arthur histories and his position as an evil conqueror and murderer was just confusing.

In the end, First Knight gets a lot of things all wrong, but still manages to look pretty. Ironically, many of the castle locations are shot as old and overgrown with vegetation even though these structures would have been new at the time. Girls will swoon over the sappy love story and guys will sit there with a glazed look on their faces. While it doesn’t quite do enough damage to itself to drop too far in my rankings, I would advise against seeing this film unless you seek an example of how not to present the Arthur legend.

RATING: 2.25 out of 5

Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation (1986)

In many ways, this is just a repackaged copy of the first Care Bears movie. It’s part sequel, part prequel and ultimately more memorable than the first (at least in my mind). Two kids receive comfort from the Care Bears and they in turn help the Care Bears stop a dark and evil force that wants to eliminate caring from the world.

We’ve been here before, but something in the execution clicked more for me in Care Bears II. I often had blended the two together in my mind and forgot some of the particulars. The film begins with True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse taking care of the young Care Bears and Care Bear Cousins as they try to avoid the dreaded Dark Heart. The Great Wishing Star bestows special powers upon these two and all of the little ones in tow (thus explaining how the Care Bears got those symbols on their tummies).

When Dark Heart strikes out on a new conquest against caring, True Heart and Noble Heart leave the cubs in the hands of two young children from a summer camp that had all but given up on caring. Taking care of the cubs gives them a purpose and they enjoy it. When they return to camp, they find that Dark Heart has set up his base there and is posing as a young boy (among many other things he can transform into).

In just a short time, the Care Bears and their Cousins are mostly grown up and willing to take on Dark Heart in order to keep caring in the world. They are over-matched and their existence is threatened by Dark Heart's powerful magic. Only the return of the elder True Heart and Noble Heart can make them strong enough to defeat the villain, which can always be assumed in a kids' movie.

The animation is just as good as in the first film and the music is a bit more memorable, but it is essentially the same story as before, just with a few different elements thrown into the mix. I prefer it to The Care Bears Movie, but most viewers will find little difference between the two. It provides a solid message of the importance of friends and caring to its intended audience of young children and goes by in a breezy 76 minutes, so parents won’t be bored with the subject matter either.

Good lesson, fun songs but the same basic story as before, so no increase in the rating from the first installment.

RATING: 3.25 out of 5

Bio-Dome (1996)

Before there were stupid Will Ferrell movies there were stupid Adam Sandler movies. Before there were stupid Adam Sandler movies, there were stupid Pauly Shore movies. Bio-Dome is one of those stupid Pauly Shore movies. The only difference between this and some of Shore’s other cinematic craptastrophes is that it promotes being responsible caretakers of the Earth. Aside from this, Bio-Dome fits into one of two categories: brainless juvenile humor flick or total guilty pleasure.

Bio-Dome pits Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin against a team of scientists trying to make environmental progress by secluding themselves inside an artificial closed ecological system in the Arizona desert. Shore and Baldwin (as Bud and Doyle) think the Bio-Dome is a mall, so they stop to go to the bathroom. After sneaking inside, they are unwittingly locked in with the scientists after the unveiling ceremonies for an entire year.

Bud and Doyle live by the motto “Just because we’re stuck in a bubble doesn’t mean we can’t cause any trouble.” And they do just that! Their slacker tendencies and disrespect for the experiment lead them to turn the Bio-Dome into little more than the wreck the Earth has become after throwing a large-scale party and letting people in through the back door.

To repent for their environmental sins, Bud and Doyle decide to help the Bio-Dome team save their mini-environment. This involves a lot of clever plugs for ways to help clean up the Earth. Along the way, Bud and Doyle flirt with the attractive female scientists and crack numerous sophomoric jokes, often involving crude humor. A few jokes are even totally random and make no sense whatsoever, including a montage of work set to the Men Without Hats song “Safety Dance” that includes a midget in medieval attire (just like in the music video). It also features a very early appearance of the acoustic-metal-comedy band Tenacious D.

As silly and thin as the soul of this movie is, it is a redeeming quality. Bio-Dome came out around the time of a resurgence in Earth-friendliness and capitalizes on this by milking its pro-environment stance for all its worth. Is it exploitation? Hard to say, but the clash between Bud and Doyle and the uber-smart scientists is worth a few laughs.

For some, Bio-Dome is a piece of nostalgia and a guilty pleasure worth revisiting once in a while. It’s better to make that once in a great while, but the film is mostly harmless if you feel so inclined to watch it. Bio-Dome is ripe for making fun of MST3K style, but it can also prove to be a semi-entertaining 90 minutes of brainless nonsense.

No one will remember Bio-Dome for any amount of greatness, but you can’t escape the fact that its “so bad it’s good” cult following illicit a few chuckles, groans and smiles whenever mentioned. Arguably Shore’s most remembered film, Bio-Dome is a part of the cultural lexicon of the 1990s and can’t be completely ignored, useless as it may be.

RATING: 2.25 out of 5

1408 (2007)

Based on a short story by horror legend Stephen King, 1408 stands tall against its recent horror genre peers. You see, 1408 is a different kind of horror film. While most films in the genre these days go for shock and terror by barraging viewers with violence, bloodshed and graphic anatomical gore, 1408 goes back to the roots of horror. The thing that drives this is simply the fear of the unknown.

John Cusack stars as Mike Enslin, a paranormal investigator who makes a living writing about haunted locations across the country. He himself is a skeptic and does not believe in ghosts or God, but has no issue with taking people’s money by writing his fantastical and false reviews and accounts of his stays in “haunted” places. One day he gets a postcard from a hotel in New York that simply advises him not to enter room 1408. Taking it as a challenge, he attempts to book the room but the hotel staff repeatedly attempt to block him from staying there for any amount of time.

Enslin confronts the hotel manager, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who also attempts to keep Enslin from staying in room 1408, but Enslin’s determination wins out in the end. Enslin is led up to 1408 personally by the hotel manager, who refuses to enter the room and leaves quickly. Enslin thinks this is all part of a ruse to excite him and get his mind running overtime before beginning his stay.

The freakiness begins almost immediately. At first the scares are innocuous enough to draw chuckles out of audiences. The room starts off with a few very basic and predictable happenings that have been used many a time. If they are clichés, then they are masterfully used clichés, because somehow we know that room is just warming up, playing games really. Such things would generally be freaky to us if they happened in real life, but seeing a skeptic who knows all the tricks try to rationalize what he is experiencing is darkly amusing.

Eventually, 1408 quits playing cutesy little scare games and unleashes its arsenal upon Enslin. The scariest thing about this is that neither Enslin nor the audience has any idea what this room is capable of. Having dispensed with the standard spooks, everyone is treading in dark, unknown waters. With serial killers, monsters and aliens it’s usually easy to figure out what will happen based on the conventions of their kind. A haunted room is not typical and there is no way of knowing what is coming next or whether or not we have seen everything the room can do to its victims.

Samuel L. Jackson’s character puts it best when he says “It is an evil f--king room.” Eventually Enslin stops trying to rationalize everything he’s experiencing and focuses solely on surviving, which proves to be a hellishly daunting task. The torments he faces are all disturbing, bizarre and virtually free from any gore. This film puts the adolescent torture-porn sub-genre that’s so popular these days to bed and focuses on mature thrills and chills.

The fear of the unknown is only part of this masterfully carried out film. Not knowing what the room is capable of is enhanced by what the room actually does. Everyone has been to a house or hotel that gives off a creepy vibe or their mind gets overactive when their alone in the house, so seeing a fairly unassuming looking room turn evil is doubly creepy. Instead of a dark and shadowy room with moldy carpet, stains on the tile floor in the bathroom and marks on the wall, 1408 just looks like an old hotel room. If it decided to leave you alone, you would have no idea that this room is pure evil.

The fear of the unknown along with the creepiness of evil being something all-too-familiar to us compounds in 1408 for some great moments. John Cusack really performs admirably as the sole star of the film. It is very difficult in film to isolate one character and keep him or her interesting, but Cusack performs deftly and really anchors the film. It is a vast departure from his normal work in films, and is more in the vein of his performance in Identity. His seeming normalness enhances the terror and he is very convincing.

While there are a few slow parts and some things don’t work as well as the filmmakers planned and hoped for, 1408 is a success. It provides old school chills that prove you don’t have to resort to gratuitous violence and relentless carnage to make people squirm. I hope the likes of Eli Roth and the folks behind the Saw franchise took notice, because genuine terror need not come from a knife or other sharp instrument. Sometimes the scariest things imaginable are just on the other side of a door.

1408 isn’t likely to put an end to the popularity of torture-porn films, but it does offer a ray of hope that horror films haven’t completely lost touch with their roots. Bravo.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5