IMDb #123 Review: Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Source: Wikipedia

Because this movie keeps insisting (and demonstrating) that life is nothing like fairy tales, it paradoxically becomes the perfect fairy tale. Not "magical realism," the paper umbrella that literary types slink under to duck the shitstorm associated with genre fiction. Not that. Fantasy, real fantasy. Because everything about this movie is fantastic. Even the icky parts.

The backdrop is rural Spain, 1944, in the midst of civil war. The players are archetypes from fairy tales.

First, the most despicable stepfather in fiction. This brutal soldier shoots first and asks no questions because he knows all the answers and accepts no substitutes. The sickly stepmother, battered and pregnant, supports the strong husband who has done so much for her -- and to her.

Our heroine is the fey and lonely little girl who stumbles into a hidden world of magic. A world where she's a lost princess, where a creepy faun living in a stone maze gives her three vague tasks to complete before the full moon.

Like director Guillermo del Toro's obsession with monsters, there is strange beauty in ugliness. Brutal violence, torture, abuse, pregnancy? Crawling in mud, choking on blood? Facts of life, depicted in agonizing detail. Just because a movie features a child protagonist does not mean the movie is for children.

Amid the horror, both real and supernatural, beauty lurks. The music, the story, the acting, the effects (which have aged surprisingly well), and did I mention the music? Sublime. Rather than contradict, the beauty amplifies the horror, the horror the beauty.

I won't spoil any more than that.

But, by way of conversation, I have to ask. Does the magic only happen in the girl's head? You could interpret it that way. If you're a miserable bastard with a cynical streak as broad as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Different perspectives make for richer repeated viewings, which I humbly recommend.

You could mine this movie for symbolism till civilization collapses and the Underground Kingdom rises up to reclaim the planet from irradiated cockroaches.

119 minutes.

IMDb #127 Review: My Neighbor Totoro (1987)

Source: Wikipedia

A father and his two young daughters move to an old house in the country, which stirs up the local population of magical and possibly imaginary creatures.

How does Miyazaki, an elderly Japanese workaholic, so effectively capture childhood whimsy? Probably in an electrified cage, hooked up to an automatic milking machine constantly pumping rainbow-hued imagination-goop from its bulging udders.

Toss back a warm glass, friends, things are going to get weird.

Japans's preemptive retaliation for Pan's Labyrinth features the Miyazaki hallmarks you might recognize by now. Lush art and animation. Obligatory flying sequences. Spunky heroine(s). Great music courtesy of longtime collaborator Joe Hisaishi. And, this time, a profound absence of violence or harsh language or anything remotely objectionable, barring a brief scene of communal bathing probably put in to freak out the Americans.

So the kiddos whiz around the house like tiny drunk people and discover weirdness popping out of nooks and crannies. Living coal-dust puffballs snuggle in the walls and attic and under the floorboards. A cat-bus with spotlight eyeballs and luminescent mouse taillights wanders the hills. Near the huge tree out back, the toddler tumbles down a tunnel and lands on the tubby belly of a fuzzy snoozing beastie. The eponymous Totoro.

Wacky inexplicable adventures occur.

Yes, it's a perfect children's movie, but it doesn't lie to its audience for a minute. Yes, kids, there's awful shit in the world, and magic shit won't make the awful shit go away. Their mom's sick and dying and the family has to prepare for that. Sure, magic can make plants sprout sky-high in seconds (then suspiciously creep back to millimeters-high in the morning) but can't fix their money issues for them.

The hardworking dad looks baffled but remarkably accommodating to all this weirdness he can't see.

Does that mean none of the magic is real? People who ask that question, I attribute the same amount of credibility as the theorists who propose that Totoro is a metaphor for the nuclear bomb. In the unlikely scenario that's true, it remains far from the strangest thing to spring from Miyazaki's bottomless weirdness reservoirs, or wherever he gets his ideas.

86 minutes.

IMDb #185 Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Source: Wikipedia

Acclaimed auteur Wes Anderson cooks up a blindingly colorful tragicomedy, by packing it with rectangles and spectacular cinematography that even a movie dunce such as yours truly can detect.

Generations ago, in our story-within-a-story-within-a-story, a naive pencil-mustached lobby boy receives tutelage from the staggeringly overqualified concierge of the titular hotel. In their Europe, fictional countries blend with real ones, just as bizarrely beautiful contrivances mingle freely with pitch-black comedy and brutal realism, sweetening but never sugarcoating.

The concierge enjoys amorous affairs with wealthy old ladies. Until one paramour's timely death pits him against her awful family of cartoon villains. He and the lobby boy embark on a quest to find the hidden will and save a priceless painting. Together the characters spend a disproportionate amount of time away from the titular hotel. Meanwhile, their fictional European nation undergoes a coup, which floods the train systems with humorless men with machine guns and itchy trigger fingers.

The pace swishes along at a crisp, brisk trot. Manic antics are executed with deadpan flair. The sets scintillate with symmetry and dazzling architecture; even the detention facility is picturesque. Obscenities fly in the rapid-fire, wit-charged dialogues.

If the blunt humor and dizzying speed don't put you off, there's a brilliant story in there somewhere. An unconventional romance, an eloquent comedy, a completely unexpected suspenseful thriller. Which makes it even more soul-crushing when bleak reality ensues and that delightful world evaporates and the hotel becomes the drab ruin you knew it would become all along because you paid attention in the beginning.

100 minutes.

IMDb #196 Review: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)

Source: Wikpiedia

Miyazaki's first original movie establishes the blueprint for all the others to follow. Kickass heroine? Top-notch animation, music, storytelling? Heavy-handed environmentalist subtext? Gratuitous flight sequences? All that and more.

As the clunky opening narration informs us, the evil industrialist society was razed by fire-puking Evangelion prototypes. In the resultant wasteland, agrarians eke out a meek existence in the Valley of the Wind, where the sea breeze wafts away poisonous spores.

The dominant species on this hellish world is the gigantic psychic trilobites who've never heard of the Square Cube Law.

The titular heroine loves these freakish physical anomalies. She's so self-sacrificial, so all-embracing, her Messiah complex could engulf planets. Though her name stems from a minor character in Homer's Odyssey, her odyssey is quite different: save every insect, every human. She talks to herself a lot, and to animals. She's no Gandhi, as her kill list attests. But her weepiness shows she at least feels bad about it.

Chocobo-riding Gandalf brings bad news to the idyllic village. The evil morally ambiguous empire is spreading, and so is the toxic jungle. Coincidentally, a foreign airship crashes in their valley, leaving an embryonic humanoid bio-weapon. The evil empire wants this thing. So the messianic princess Nausicaä goes with the morally ambiguous empire princess on adventures. Like getting involved in stratospheric airship battles, picking up an unnecessary totally-not-a-love-interest (voiced by Shia LaBoeuf?!), and incrementally advancing the plot.

Meanwhile the village in the valley rankles against their imperial overlords, especially the princess's assistant, a deliciously cynical coward. Via politically complex shenanigans, they end up in the path of a rampaging herd of pissed-off giant psychic trilobites. It happens.

The animation isn't as polished as Spirited Away, but for the eighties, it's magnificent. The music isn't my favorite of Joe Hisaishi's, but it's still splendid. And the spotty, stuffy English script is wonky but workable. (Go Disney dubs!)

The only real surprise in store is how astonished the characters are that our messianic archetype protagonist fulfills the requisite ancient prophecy.

117 minutes.

IMDb #236 Review: Castle in the Sky (1986)

Source: Wikipedia

Strap on your steampunk goggles for the ultimate rollicking yarn from Studio Ghibli, an adventure about a pigtailed princess and her magic rock and the enormous tree they send soaring into the mesosphere.

But seriously? It’s gold. Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese Disney, strikes again.

A girl drops into a mining-town monkey-boy’s life–shenanigans commence. Pirates pop up, a posse of ponces headed by a motherly shrew chasing after the ingenue’s sparkly plot token. Then the military rolls in with their anachronistic arsenal. The countryside explodes into mayhem and sweet, sweet prepubescent romance.

Expect the Miyazaki hallmarks. Flight sequences (more than usual), evil government, gray morality, funny background events, blatant environmentalist messages. Also, some of the finest hand-drawn animation in the business. Glass, water, clouds, and DESTRUCTION have seldom looked so good.

Even better, the Disney dub adds flavor to a quiet film. Bonus orchestral music by Joe Hisaishi. Funny throwaway lines. And a cavalcade of big-name voices.

To wit: Mark Hamill cavorts as the exposition-happy villain. Cloris Leachman squawks as a feisty old buccaneer lady. Anna Paquin, as the heroine, occasionally slips into her adorable native New Zealand accent. As far as dubs go, not bad.

Space left over? Story time. Miyazaki named the floating continent Laputa after a location in Gulliver’s Travels. Strangely, the great director neglected to recall that Jonathan Swift was a satirist–in Spanish, “la puta” translates neatly to “the whore.” The film might’ve proven difficult to market in Spanish-speaking countries.

Recommended for adventurous adolescents, picky snobby discerning otaku, and recovering acrophobes.

126 minutes.

IMDb #237 Review: Jurassic Park (1993)

Source: Wikipedia

In the far-flung future of 1993, where DNA decay doesn’t exist and computers age worse than B-list child actors, one man has a vision.

• First, resemble a creepy, pudgy, possibly insane Steven Spielberg. Check.
• Next, clone dinosaurs using blood from mosquitoes fossilized in amber, also frog DNA for unexplained reasons. Somehow, check.
• Finally, invite the public to an island theme park swarming with huge, murderous, science-spawned monstrosities.
• Mission accomplished.

But wait, intermediate step. Bring in paleontologists, a lawyer, and a world-famous mathematician (those exist?) to inspect the site and deem it a terrible idea. Frigging awesome, but still terrible.

Anticipate painfully lame educational tours, obnoxious children, and irritating quirks from the “rock star” chaos theorist. Then things get really bad.

The disgruntled IT guy screws over everyone. Not just his cheap-ass boss–everyone. For the crimes of demanding a decent paycheck and being a fat, traitorous, legally blind slob, he meets an embarrassing demise. So do some other people.

Suspense happens as the less unsympathetic humans scramble for shelter.

But we know who the real stars are. They’re apparently warmblooded, deficient in the feathers department, and exemplary of the finest special effects the early nineties could afford. No joke here: it’s the dinosaurs. These beautiful bastards roar, chase, bite, and brutally dismember just as well today. (Note for posterity: dino action starts around the one-hour mark. Skip the human palaver, bring on the bloodshed.)

Best (?) of all, certain kitschy touches–juvenile gags, cheesy lines, and silly sound effects–reach out to a broader audience, so kids can enjoy the primal carnage too.

127 minutes.

IMDb #242 Review: The Graduate (1967)

Source: Wikipedia

Apparently, once a college overachiever gets slapped with a diploma, he dissolves into a tepid milksop inexplicably attractive to the opposite sex.

Apparently, adults are self-absorbed, socially myopic, manipulative bastards. Moreover, they spew unsolicited advice at slightest provocation (e.g., breathing), enforce tyrannical control of their grown children, and make sexual advances on said children despite being middle-aged and married.

Apparently.

Being somewhat sensible, the title character (very young Dustin Hoffman) worries about his future. Not that he’s inclined to do much except brood. Then the icy-hot temptress Mrs. Robinson slinks into his life, just like the enormous spider crawling down the back of your neck right now.

Mrs. Robinson’s motives are murkier than your spider’s, who at least has a warm place to snuggle into before an immanent squashing. The white wannabe-widow’s methods are far more deplorable. She tests, teases, tantalizes her way into the protagonist’s pants, to less than surprising results. Our hero exhibits the moral fortitude and emotional range of a moist wank-rag.

To complicate things, the hot mom’s hotter daughter drops in from Berkeley. Things happen. (Apparently, confidence is a sexually transmitted disease.)

Just because I cringed every scene doesn’t make the movie bad. The dialogue’s realistic, the situations believable, the tan lines staggering.

And the music. Simon and Garfunkel nail the soundtrack–to the wall, by the ears. Their tingly harmonies enrich montages of boring airports, lonesome moping, and speeding in the red hot rod/portable Freudian metaphor.

Recommended for the happily married, the unhappily matriculated, and shotgun wedding planners.

105 minutes.